three eleven

Anyone Good

2012-01-15T11:30:00.000-05:00

Texts: 1 Samuel 3:1–10, John 1:43–51

Some people find Psalm 139 to be reassuring. Some do not. We have just sung the beginning verses together. How do they strike you?

You have searched me and known me, it says. You know all that I do. You know all the paths I travel. You know all my ways. You know more about me than I do myself. There is nowhere I can go where you are not, no time when you are not with me.

For some, this is comforting. God will find us in the depths of despair and the worst of wickedness. When we are most alone, most frightened, in peril, in captivity—then God will be there with us. Like Jesus with the lost sheep, like a parent with a lost child, God will never leave us alone. God will always search for us and find us. Your hand will lead me, says the psalm.

But for others, this is scary. God pursues us to the ends of the earth. Like a divine stalker, God is always on our case. God is invasive, demanding, and relentless. There is nowhere we can hide. God will never leave us alone. God follows us and hounds us. Your hand will grab me, says the psalm.

The call of God is never altogether welcome. At best, those whom God calls are ambivalent about it. God calls us to adventures and duties that are often perilous, tedious, or just hard. God’s call can disrupt our lives and confuse and antagonize those whom we love. At the same time, God often calls us to a new and better life, one that is more like us (God knowing us better than we know ourselves; says the psalm: even before a word is on our tongues, O Lord, you know it completely)—a life that is more suitable for us than our current lives.

God does call us. We are called through the things of the world. Through wind and ocean, and scripture and friends, and our heart’s response to suffering and injustice. We are called through the hand of the Holy Spirit, nudging and guiding us as if we were walking blind along some rocky trail. And we are called, as Samuel was, by the spoken word of God. Or as Nathanael was, by a direct invitation from Jesus.

God calls us often, I’m convinced. That longing we sometimes feel and the urgings of our consciences are signs of God’s offer. But we hesitate to accept.

We might, as Samuel did, mistake God’s call for something else. The word of God was rare, it says, and visions were not widespread. Why would a voice in the night be God’s voice? Samuel thinks his mentor, his teacher, his master, Eli is calling him. Eli is old and sick; perhaps he needs some help. But Eli sends him away. It was not Eli calling. Does Samuel think, as we might, that perhaps it was a dream, or maybe that Samuel’s concern for Eli made him imagine a voice.

There are a lot of voices competing for our ears, demanding attention and action. And many are compelling and even good. Why should we think that any of them is the voice of God?

God calls Samuel three more times. Three times Samuel is confused. But Eli, older and wiser, knows what is going on. His advice to Samuel is to act as if it was God who was calling, and to listen, and to see what happens next. And thus Samuel hears God, and becomes God’s prophet.

We might think the voice calling us is God’s but deny that it is us whom God is calling. Why would God call a boy like Samuel? When God calls the prophets, they usually think God made a mistake. I’m too tongue-tied, says Moses. I’m too young, says Jeremiah. I’m too wicked, says Isaiah.

We are just ordinary people. Not all that good, not all that compassionate. Too selfish, perhaps; too young, too old, too committed to other paths; too unsettled, too unreliable. Yet people like us are those whom God calls.

Nathanael’s amazement with Jesus is not that Jesus miraculously saw him under a tree (anybody could have seen him there), but that Jesus knew him and perhaps in spite of that invited him to be one of his disciples.

Or we might suspect that it is God who is calling and that it is us whom God calls, but not be eager to respond. Prophets are reluctant for good reason. The rewards of a life obedient to God, while deep and profound, are balanced with the hardships. Samuel has to prophesy against Eli, the disciples meet a bad end. It can be rough. Yet, having heard God calling us, how can we refuse? How will we live knowing that we refused God’s invitation?

Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we especially honor this Monday, had a good life. He thought he’d teach and be a pastor and have a family. He only reluctantly agreed to speak at a rally for Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, he knew that God was calling and calling him in particular. He later said:

“If a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right and that which is just, and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer. . . or he is afraid he will lose his job. . . he may go on and live until he is 80, and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

God calls us, prophets and disciples, one by one. The call, as it was to Samuel, or to Nathanael—or to Martin Luther King—the call is not some general advice on how to live a good and faithful life. It is particular to you. God has searched us and knows us. We are called by name. Samuel, Samuel—that double naming is Biblical code for God’s calling voice.

A call is an invitation to change something. Something in our heads, or hearts, or lives. In small steps or big ones. In what we do, the way we see things, the effect we might have on the world. To make different decisions than we have been making, and to hope for different things.

We think: there is a voice calling. We think: It is God calling. We think: It is God calling me. We hear our name. We hear an invitation: Come and see. We answer: Here I am, Lord. Speak. I am listening.

The Beginning When

2012-01-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

Text: Genesis 1.1
Other texts: Mark 1.1

Let’s begin at the beginning.

Stories which begin at the beginning are not about the past. They are about the present. They are ways of explaining where we are at the moment by trying to figure out how we got here. Stories that start at the beginning are always auspicious. Beginnings are not determined by events of history but by our portrayal of history. The moment which we call a beginning is a choice we make, chosen because it reveals to us the essence of our existence.

“At the beginning of God’s creating …” so begins today’s first reading. Genesis One, chapter One. Or “In the beginning, when …” as a more common translation has it. The story of Genesis is not the story of the absolute beginning of things but of the beginning of ordered creation. The formless void is not nothing. It is merely formless. Chaos, darkness, wind, sweeping over the waters, exist. But unformed. God forms the world from these things, from chaos. Creates boundaries, distinctions between formlessness and form. The form of things that now exist, formed by the hand of God.

It takes time. Time, the passing of the day and night, is created first, out of the light that was extracted from the darkness. Periodicity, habit, predicability are created. Time passes while the world is created. Six days. Each day some things are formed from other things. The things that are formed cooperate with God to create new things. The earth brings forth living creatures, the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures. Let all these things multiply according to their kind. And they do.

This story tells us about our world and about God. It tells us that God has an interest in the forms of things, of their particularity, of the Spirit that breathes life into all of creation. All things live, are creatures. It tells us that by the ticking of time we come into being and, by implication, by it we die. It tells us that the creation is a cooperative process between God and what God has created. Creatures have a hand in the form of the future. Creation is an ongoing process of which we are in some way agents.

And the story tells us that all this is good. Good in the sense of pleasing. And also in the sense of fitting, or harmonious. Creation is a system of appropriate things that are good. And it pleases God that it is so.

None of these things is self-evident. That God cares about the universe and its tiny elements, that God enlists creation to continue creation, and that all this is good. This is not a story that all our culture shares. It is a story that our faith shares, because it fits what we hold to be true. Another way to say it: God is intimately involved with us, we are partners in creation, existence is a blessing. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. So begins the Gospel of Mark, the earliest written Gospel and which should by rights have been the first book of the New Testament, as Genesis is of the Old. This first verse has no verb, and therefore is the title of Mark’s book—The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ—and could serve as the title of all the books that follow.

Unlike in Matthew or Luke, the story of the life of Jesus in Mark starts when Jesus is a adult. Mark has nothing to say about the birth of Jesus or his ancestry, and unlike John, Mark does not place Jesus in the cosmic scheme of things. Yet Jesus does not come from nothing. He has parents, is raised a Jew, and follows the prophetic tradition established by John the Baptist.

This story at the beginning Mark does not start with the story of Jesus’ life. Rather, it tells the story about how Jesus comes to be—It is not just some news, or the latest news, but good news. Jesus is named here. His identity is establish by the proclamation of John the Baptist, and it is confirmed by the voice, presumably the voice of God, coming from heaven. You are my son, says the voice. I love you. And, the voice adds, I find this pleasing. The creation of the good news of Jesus in Mark echoes the creation of all things in Genesis. God names Jesus and pronounces him—and his work on earth—to be good.

The ministry of Jesus continues the pattern that we have come to expect from God. God is intimately involved with us. God uses us humans in partnership to create or transform the world. And it is all good. This is no more self-evident than is the story of creation in Genesis. We tell the story because, as with creation, we hold its premises to be true. Jesus is neither a hands-off God nor one that acts alone, independently of humans nor one that approaches the world without passion.

The stories in Genesis and Mark are beginnings because they establish for us a foundation of existence. But they are beginnings, not the whole story. Creation and redemption, life and healing, and goodness, are a prolonged, ongoing, and still-continuing event. Our lives are not some winding down of an ancient big push by God and then another little extra nudge by Jesus 2000 years ago. Nor are our lives ethically neutral short-lived animations in an uninterested universe. What we do matters to ourselves, our fellow creatures, to the universe, and to God.

“In the beginning, when …” and “the beginning of …” are just words. They open stories that are remembrances of our origins. But they are more than just nostalgic tales. These stories define us who tell them. We write them down in an important and revered holy book, and we tell them to ourselves over and over, because we need to remind ourselves of who we are.

What we say about ourselves makes a difference in the way we act. It changes our hopes and puts our fears in a particular perspective. It changes how we judge ourselves and judge our plight—how we interpret what happens to us.

The universe is neither indifferent nor pitiless. It is good. We are loved. God is with us.

Praise the Lord, Be at Peace

2012-01-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

Text: Psalm 148

Here is a summary of Psalm 148:

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! This means you. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 148 is a psalm of praise. Psalm 148 is one of the five psalms of praise at the end of the book of psalms. The word for praise—alleluia—appears a dozen times in this psalm. Praise is what this psalm is all about.

Everything is called to praise God. Things up above are called to praise God: the heavens and angels. Sun, moon, and stars, the chaos out of which the universe was formed. Things on the earth are called to praise God. Monsters of the deep. Wind, fire, and hail. Mountains, trees, animals. Things that creep and things that fly. All of them. And people are called to praise God. Kings, princes and rulers. Men and women, children, old and young. All people. Joy to the world!

This order of things is not arbitrary. The psalm echoes the story of creation in Genesis. The sky and the waters, separated from chaos; the creation of geography; then living things; then humans. God created all these things. All these things praise God. Praise and creation are related. Praise the Lord!

What is praise? The word is alleluia. The root of the word is the word for “bell.” It means ring out loud and clear. Ring out loud! Ring out clear! Don’t equivocate. Don’t hem and haw. Don’t muddy up what you are saying. When you praise your child for doing something great in school, you are loud and clear. When you praise her or him to your neighbor, same thing. When you praise God, same thing.

The psalm joins together all creation without making distinction between one kind of thing and another. The moon and the fruit trees and the mountains and the cattle all praise God. Kings and commoners, rocks and angels, bugs and birds—all have the same standing before God. Because they are all created, they all give God thanks and praise. It is right to give God thanks and praise.

Praise is not so much an action—though it is partly so, as I’ll talk about in a minute—as it is an orientation, an orientation of existence. It is a way of looking at things, a lens through which one sees the world. Is the world praise-worthy? Do we see it as a bunch of inert rock and bone? Or do we see the world as something that invites us to praise it? Abraham Joshua Heschel, an awesome theologian, wrote “It is so embarrassing to live! How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned rights to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.” This world calls us forward to praise it.

How do the mountains and the fire praise God? They are mute, so we think. What do they share with kings and children with which this psalm groups them? They fill us with wonder, but having neither motion nor mouths, they cannot wave their hands and sing. What they have in common with us is that they exist. They are creations of God—back to Genesis. Created before us, even. They praise God by being mountains, by existing. By doing what God created them to do.

In the same way, do we praise God. When we conform to the way God hoped—hopes—us to be—that is one way to praise God. Praising God is a way to be, and a way of being, in sync with God. It is not a coincidence that the psalm echoes Genesis. Praise and existence are tied together. We are created, it seems, in order to praise God. Or perhaps we can say that we are created as creatures that praise.

Praise is a way to align ourselves with God. When we are praising God, we are in alignment with God. When we are in alignment with God, we are praising God. Praise is therefore a way—the way, if you believe the psalm—the way to contentment. A way of being at peace. Removing things that encumber us, not battling everything, letting things go that impede us, the things that drive us crazy. Besides being good for us and making us feel great, it is and loud and clear message to others. The message says: this is a way—or the best way, if you want—to the good life.

Unlike mountains, though, we do have motion and mouths. So we can do and say things that are praising. Mouthing words and going through the motions are not the same as praising God, but practically speaking they are good first steps. As with many things about us and God, doing stuff often is the path to knowing, believing, feeling, and loving. And praising.

When we praise, we stand in both gratitude and obedience. This helps us figure out what we can do and say. What someone called the vocation of praise.

For starters, invoke God. That is, call on God. When you pray, address God, just like you would start a conversation with a friend. This acknowledges God’s existence and also—more importantly—God’s interest in you.

Then, first, be grateful. Thank God. Make a list of things you are thankful for. Thank God for them. Put them in a book, or keep a journal online, or say a prayer of thanks each day. Theologically, this acknowledges that we are creatures and owe our existence to God. Psychologically, this helps us focus on what’s good in our lives and not so much on what is not so good at the moment.

And second, be obedient. Try to do what God guides us to do. I admit it is not always clear, but it usually is. Hear God in scripture, worship, hymns, and in your own prayers. Theologically, this acknowledges that we trust God for guidance. Practically, this is a good way to decide what to do. What would Jesus have us do? Imagine turning to Jesus and saying, “So, Jesus, what do you think about this thing I’m planning to do?” Pay attention to what your heart (or spirit, or Jesus) says when you ask this. Or remember what Moses advised the Israelites about choosing life. Ask yourself: “Is this thing I’m planning to do choosing life or is it choosing death?”

Finally, and perhaps most important, do this all in a community of faith. Practically, this is makes what can be a difficult task simpler, more pleasant, or even possible. It is not always easy to be grateful, obedient, or in conversation with God. Sometimes it seems that God is far away. Sometimes things are going so badly that they overwhelm our ability to even say thanks without feel hypocritical. Sometimes we can’t figure out what choice is life-giving. Other people can help. Both generally, as in worship and fellowship. And specifically, in conversation with people who probably are going through the same thing as you. And theologically, this psalm has everyone praising God together. When you cannot praise God, someone—or some thing else, like a mountain or fire—will be praising God anyway. All—another word that is used a lot in the psalm—all will be praising God. Even if you cannot at the moment.

Here is a summary of the Gospel reading for today: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! When Simeon saw Jesus, he took the baby in his arms and praised God. And when Anna laid her eyes on Jesus, she began to praise God and to tell everyone about him. She spoke loudly and clearly, we can imagine. For them, and for many, the birth of Jesus gave them hope and reminded them of their call to and their ability to praise God.

As the life and teachings of Jesus continue to remind us. The church is the steward or caretaker of a community that praises God. It is a job of the church to nurture gratitude and obedience to God. It is the job of the community of Christians to support followers of Jesus in a life of praise.

Praise the Lord!

Serious and not Serious

2011-12-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

Text: Luke 1:26–38, 47–55

These are serious times. We are dealing with serious issues. There are many dark places in the life of this world. Things are not working out as we thought they would. Our confidence is shaky, and enemies of spirit seem to surround us.

But we are not the first to find our present circumstances worrisome and our future uncertain. It was so when the angel Gabriel visited young Mary, at first so perplexing her, and in the end thrilling her. She would be the mother of a new age, a new kingdom. Occupied by Rome, oppressed, and maltreated, the people of Israel would be saved, freed, restored under God’s favor. Through Mary and her son.

Mary was not the first, either. Mary’s song is a hair’s breadth away from a copyright violation of the song of Hannah in the first book of Samuel, and it echoes the songs of Miriam (in Exodus) and of Deborah (in Judges). All women who saw and praised a new coming of God that would bring about God’s kingdom. A resetting of the world to conform to God’s design, which means not only power to Israel, but more importantly a world of compassion and justice for all people—men and women, rich and poor, family and alien. A new thing, but not a new new thing. For all, these were times—like ours—times of change hoped for. Serious times.

Theologians debate: who was Mary? Was she extraordinarily pure and good, and for that reason chosen by God to bear and then mother Jesus? Or was she ordinary, and chosen not in spite of but because of that? Are we to be amazed that a flawless person like Mary existed or instead that God would chose any old Mary to bring God to human birth?

Mary is called as a prophet is called. Surprised, at first frightened. Wondering, as all prophets do, why me? Astounded not that a king would be born (that astonishment would come later), but that God would come to her for anything. She is nonplussed by the messenger before she even hears the message. Greetings, favored one!—that is all Gabriel says. Why would God favor her in anything—she, of all the people in the world, she who has nothing.

Surprised, frightened, eventually obedient. Saying yes without knowing—how could she know—what she was getting into. Hard enough to be a mother at all, harder still—painful, it turned out—to be the mother of the restorer of the world. Here I am, Lord, says Mary, the same answer of all those who become prophets, hearing God’s call. Here I am, say the prophets. All ordinary people in hard times delivering God’s message.

The song we just sang, Mary’s song, called the Magnificat, is a song of praise for things to come, but mysteriously wrapped in sentences written as if they had already happened. The grammar reminds us that Mary’s hopes are not for some far-off spiritual future but about the present state of the world, hers and ours.

As all prophets do, Mary reminds us how the world should be. Her verbs are strong, simple, clear. God scatters the arrogant (the King James version says “scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” making us think that they only imagine they have something to be proud of). God brings down the mighty, the rulers and leaders in power. God raises up the lowly, the oppressed, the humiliated. The rich are sent away with empty pockets. God feeds the hungry.

Yet here we are, two thousand years later. Where people still go hungry, and the rich still prosper, and the poor remain poor, and the powerful continue to consolidate their power, and are proud of it. We have just sung Mary’s song with energy and feeling. Yet is Mary’s song good news to all? Do the proud and the humble, the hungry and the well-satisfied, hear this song in the same way? Do we hear it as prophecy—or as sentimentality? It is exciting, but can it be real? Does it call us to action, and if so, what kind of action?

My spirit rejoices, sings Mary, who has invited people for centuries to join her in joy. And mostly we accept that invitation. Rich and poor alike. Why is that, when Mary seems to talk about winners and losers. Why aren’t the rich afraid, or at least embarrassed. Why aren’t the poor in despair, or at least annoyed. The song threatens and promises. And different fates for different people.

Yet all celebrate with Mary. Why is that? Partly it is because the song is about Jesus, whom we revere and follow. And partly it is because the inequalities that benefit some and deprive others make all, or almost all, uncomfortable. The promise of Jesus, as you have heard me say before, is not to swap power centers like political parties do when one gets control of Congress, but to change the relationship between people from up and down to horizontal. What would the world be like if that came about? A good world, many would say.

But mostly we all celebrate because we are pleased to remember that God is effective, that God can effect this world. Sadly, it is easy to think cynically that God cannot change things. To think that the stuff Mary sings about is not possible. But this song has the power to thrill us because we remember that it is possible. Mary is filled with enthusiasm. Nothing is impossible with God, the angel says. And when we sing this song, we feel that to be so. Hooray for Jesus, the song says. And hooray for the world, it says. But mostly, hooray for Mary’s proclamation that Jesus can seriously change the world.

My spirit rejoices in God my savior, sings Mary. She dances and sings, which is what the word means here. The times are serious, but not solemn. We can rejoice in God’s wish and power to heal the broken world. My spirit dances and sings.

There is a power behind the words of this song. It is the power of God to use us—to bless us—to make the world better for everyone. To restore justice, to live in peace, to care for each other. And the power of God to change the world, to save it from serious problems, to heal it, to restore it.

To take us from who we are now to whom we might become, and to be who God has called us to be.

To Be Found at Peace

2011-12-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

Text: Mark 1:1-8 Other texts: 2 Peter 3:8-15a

The beginning. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, writes Mark. First verse, first chapter, in the first of the four Gospels to be written.

Except that it is not the beginning. It is not the beginning at all. The good news starts long before. We know that Mark knows that, because by his reckoning in the next verse, it begins at least as far back as Isaiah, five hundred years earlier. And in Matthew’s Gospel it begins with Abraham. And it John’s Gospel it begins with the creation of the universe.

Mark’s Gospel, more than the others, is like a video clip of a much longer film. There is no baby Jesus in Mark, no genealogy to prove pedigree, no cosmic stage setting, hardly a preface at all. Here is Jesus, Mark says, all grown up and doing great things. Healing people, and teaching them. And at the end, the other end, at the Easter end, the story ends with an empty tomb, and that’s all. No post-resurrection appearances, no sending out of the disciples into the world, no final words. Just: stop.

The story of the good news in Mark is a snippet. It is a middle piece of the story that is not only the life of Jesus, but the story of the life of the world. By starting in the middle, Mark makes us aware that this episode of Jesus is part of a much larger cosmic story that goes from creation to the end of time.

The story of Jesus is part of salvation history, a churchy phrase that means the history of God’s hand in the affairs of our own human, earth-bound existence. This short and intimate view (the life of the person Jesus here) inside a long and boundless view (the life of the universe) is a distinguishing (though not exclusive) mark of Christianity. Our faith seems to have two ends, represented physically in the Bible, starting with the creation story (another “in the beginning…”) and ending with the new city of light in Revelation. And for some people, these end points are the main points. Creation and the end of time are what it is all about. Even in the story of the life of Jesus the highlights seem to be the beginning—the birth of Jesus at Christmas—and the end—the passion of Christ at Easter.

Yet for all our interests in milestone events, our faith is not primarily one of originations and destinations. Christianity, just like our lives, is certainly full of events and celebrations. But they are signs of a deeper, longer, more satisfying story. Most of our lives, our lives in the world and our lives of faith, are lived in the boring middle, the day to day, the ordinary. When you get on the Mass Pike and it says that you are heading to Natick and Albany, it does not mean that those two ends are the whole trip. Or in the west, when you leave Lincoln, Nebraska and the sign says Denver, 486 miles, it does not mean that there is nothing in between; there is a lot of driving ahead of you.

The markers in our lives are prominent, but they themselves are not the story. We do not live in birth and death, we live in between them. Our lives are full of what seem to be key events. Our children are born, we start school, we marry, we begin new jobs. Momentous beginnings. People we love die, relationships are broken, we are laid off, we lose our fortunes. Discouraging endings. Yet just listing those events tells us little about the richness, the beauty, the suffering that make up most of our hours. It is in these hours which Jesus spends most of his time, in all the Gospels. It is these hours that are filled by our faith and our life as followers of Jesus. These hours are the ones that bring us together in community to pray and worship and eat together.

The lives of many of us here are full of transitions Beginnings and endings all smashed together, it sometimes seems. But though we often characterize the transition by an event—I’m graduating, getting married, moving to Houston, retiring—the transition is in fact the time between. It is all the time except the event, the time around the event. Getting married, say, marks a new part of one’s life. But the transition from friend to spouse started long before and carries on long after the wedding.

In every transition we are leaving something and going somewhere at the same time, and over time. We grieve for the past, whether or not we are pleased to be leaving it. We are anxious about the future, whether it saddens or excites us. What was is known, for good or ill. What will be is a discovery, for good or ill.

The prophet Isaiah joins with Peter in today’s readings to remind us that in the scheme of things we are tiny, fragile, ignorant, and short-lived. People are like grass, the prophet writes, our constancy is like the flowers of the field. We owe our brief lives to God. Peter tells his readers that what is long for us is a moment for God. What seems to be a thousand years to us is as a day to God. We live briefly in a much longer and more vast story, the story of the universe and salvation history. In the end, says Isaiah, God comes to restore the world. In the end, says Peter, all things are to be dissolved (a word which means they will all loose their moorings; things fall apart).

In neither case is this news meant to discourage us or to make us feel that our lives are insignificant. On the contrary, it is to make us think about how we will live in the in-between time. How will our lives go now, while the universe from which we come is here, while we are here, involved between our own beginnings and endings?

What sort of person, asks Peter, ought you to be? While you are waiting, he says, don’t worry so much about what you are waiting for, but how you will wait. Do not be anxious about the future, and do not regret the past.

Peter says to strive to be at peace when God comes upon us. We search for peace. Where can we find it? We look for it in security, in certainty, in keeping control of things. We look for it in power and righteousness. It is not there, Peter says. It is in knowing that our story, though finite, is part of a much larger one, that our story is part of God’s.

We do not exist without God, but God’s story is in part made up of our own. Our stories are strands that are woven into the braid that is the story of God. That story stands forever, Isaiah says. It begins at creation and goes to the end of time, and and each of us is forever part of it.

You Don't Miss the Water Until the Well Runs Dry

2011-11-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9

Advent, as you’ve heard, is a time for reflection. It begins as we ponder where we are in our lives and in the scheme of things. It is in that way like Lent. It starts that way, in any case. But though the church knows that all of Advent is supposed to be time of preparation, it cannot resist getting excited toward the end, as we approach Christmas. It is not surprising. As we think about what was, we naturally wonder what will be and how it will be different. At the beginning is now. At the end is Christmas. Advent is a fast ride from sober reflection to the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of God, Emmanuel, meaning God is with us.

Emmanuel—God with us—is how it ends. Hooray for that. But that is not how things start. It is great to celebrate God’s presence. But sometimes God does not seem present at all. Sometimes God seems far away. Or vague. Or invisible. Or hard of hearing. Sometimes we feel alone. A friend of mine, who is going through a rough patch these days, says it feels like God is here, but a couple of states away. Like a friend who moved to the other coast. Or maybe it was you who moved.

The passage we heard from Isaiah this morning is called a lament. Laments are a proclamation about pain being suffered combined with a call for God’s intervention. Things are not good right now, God, and we’d wish you would do something about it. Laments are common in the psalms, which is one reason they are so appealing to people in daily life. A good chunk of many people’s lives is enduring pain (physical, emotional, or psychic) and a deep wish that God would come fix things soon.

It is this situation that prompts Mark to include this “end of the world” speech of Jesus. It speaks about suffering now (Israel was occupied by the Romans and the people oppressed) and suffering yet to come (about which Jesus has just told his disciples), but with the assurance that God will come soon (before this generation passes away).

Isaiah talks about the same thing, but usefully also talks about how hard it is to wait on God when you are in trouble, and the thoughts that you might have as you are cooling your heels hopefully.

This passage in Isaiah was written in a time that was supposed to be great, but wasn’t. All of Isaiah covers a period of about two hundred years, during which the Israelites are taken out of their land into exile. But by the end of the book, they are back home, hoping that all will be restored to the good old days when Israel was strong and righteous. But it seems it is not happening. Things are not working out. The prophet calls out to God. Complaining, explaining, and seeking God’s help. As with someone whose relationship is in trouble, his remarks reveal conflicting and powerful emotions. They go like this: you (God) were great. But now we are not so sure. You got angry. Ok, we messed up a little. But it is your fault; you made us do it, or at least let us.

The prophet starts by remembering how great God was. How powerful and good. How awesome. How God did surprising things. The presence of God is revealed to us, sometimes in astonishing and sudden ways, and sometimes we are overwhelmed. We turn our hearts and attention to God. No eye has seen any God besides you, Isaiah says.

Yet now, for some reason, we are estranged, Isaiah says. You are angry, God. You must be, since nothing is turning out right. Where are you? Where are the golden days, the sweet days? Where is the God in whom we put our hopes and trust?

Now it is true, admits Isaiah, that we maybe had something to do with this situation. We sinned. Against others and against you. We did stuff that we knew was not good and that would hurt you. We are a little ashamed, he says.

But really, God, he goes on to say, it is all your fault. Because you hid yourself, Isaiah says, we transgressed. We cannot be good without you. Our goodness comes from you. You left us in the lurch, in the muck by ourselves. We are lost without you, and you did not come to save us.

Yet Isaiah does not despair, does not give up on God, resigned to live alone, without God. Rather, he asks that the relationship between God and people be restored. Do not remember our sins, he pleads. Can we start again?

We are joined to God not by our goodness, and we are estranged from God not by our faults. We are joined to God not by what we do but by who we are. We are God’s creatures. God is the potter, Isaiah says, and we are the clay. We bear the mark of God’s hands, and our form is the result of the imagination of God. Our longing for God to be near, and the feeling at times that God is not, is a result of our connection to God, even when it feels like God lives in some other part of the country.

There is for sure a wish in these passage for God to come and fix things. My friend I mentioned earlier would of course like to have all the bad things in his life repaired. But he does not expect that to happen, really. That is not what bothers him. What worries and saddens him is that he feels alone, that God is not there with him, that God is far away. The fixing, though needed and welcome, is superficial. He wants God back.

There is a deeper longing to feel God near us. To be made whole by God’s presence. We are all God’s people, Isaiah says. God is our being. In Advent we, along with Isaiah, recall our past relationship with God, and wonder about the present, and look with hope to the future for Emmanuel, God with us.

In Our Time

2011-11-20T16:36:00.001-05:00

Text: Matthew 25:31-46

There are four names for this Sunday. It perhaps is a sign of confusion in the church about the nature of Jesus. Or perhaps more true to say that it is a sign of the many natures of Jesus.

First, today is the last day of Pentecost, the last day of the church year, and the end of the days of ordinary time in the church calendar. It is the day we turn our churchly thoughts to special seasons of prayerful reflection, like Advent, and of celebration, like Christmas.

Today is also called Christ the King Sunday, always this last Pentecost Sunday. This man Jesus who has been living with us and teaching us in sermons and in parables all summer long, is revealed today to be one with the king of the universe.

Today is also called the Realm of Christ Sunday. Jesus brings a new world, a new way of being, to this ordinary world of joy and suffering.

And today is also called Judgment Sunday, reflecting the scene just painted for us by Matthew, in which distinctions are made and actions judged.

This story in Matthew is a parable. It, like the others that precede it in the Gospel, teaches us about what it means to follow Jesus. But it is no ordinary parable. It is the last parable in Matthew, and these words are the last public teachings of Jesus before he goes to his death. In that sense, they sum up or at least add an exclamation point to the stories in Matthew of Jesus’ ministry. It is as if Jesus were saying to his disciples—and as always therefore to us as well—as if Jesus were saying: if you remember none of what I’ve told you, at least remember this. Remember this story.

The different names of the days of this Sunday reflect different interpretations of the parable.

If it is the day of the king, then we have to ask: what kind of king is Jesus? If you are any other king or ruler, the answer is that Jesus is a scary kind of king. Jesus preached about sovereignty that overrode national and ethnic sovereignty. People’s loyalty to God overrode their loyalty to others, and their obedience was to God before others. To God, and not to other kings, or institutions, or even to family. There are many things that demand our loyalty and obedience, but if we honor Christ as king, then those other things are impostors. Charlatan leaders. On this day especially, we reject them. They are not the boss of you. Christ is.

If it is the day of the Realm of Christ, then we have to ask: what kind of world would it be if Jesus were the ruler of it? It would be the kind of world that Mary sings about when she hears that she will be the mother of Jesus. Who expects that her child would scatter the proud in their self-centeredness, remove the mighty from their seats of power, exalt the humble, fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away. Jesus preached about changing the relationship between the first and the last, making what was up and down to be side by side. This is the Jesus who was so joined to the hungry, the alien, the homeless, and the prisoner that what is done to them is done to him. And that to cause suffering in them is to cause God to suffer. In the realm of Christ, the injustices that we take for granted and as inevitable, are not. When Jesus teaches us to pray for the kingdom—the realm—of God to come, this is what he teaches.

And if this is Judgment Sunday, then we have to ask: how are we doing? Not how will we make out at the end of time or at the end of our own individual times, but how is the world doing right now? How are things going in regards to the bringing about the the realm of Christ? This passage—for all the inspiration it brings to our good hearts—this passage is a judgment. It is a critique. Here is the world as it might be, Jesus seems to be saying. And then asks, how is the world as it is now?

Imagine a world in which there was plenty of food, but some had none and others had much more than they could eat. Imagine a world in which there were medicines to heal people, but some people could not get them. Imagine a world in which people were put into prisons far away and then forgotten. Imagine a world in which aliens were despised. Imagine a world in which some people had too little clothing, in which some people had no shelter. It is, sadly, not hard to imagine. Just as you did not do it to these, you did not do it to me, taught Jesus. As you denied these, so you denied me, he taught.

Where in time is this story in Matthew? On the one hand, it is a story, a teaching, told by Jesus in his time. It is about some other time, in the future for the disciples, but no one knows how far. On the other hand, it is a story in the present of the disciples. It is about the time they are living right now. It tells them, through a story about the future, about how the world is judged now. And in that sense, it teaches them how the world should be in the present. Teaches us.

This is a parable, not a prophecy. It is designed to make us think about what is going on and our role in it. We are right to judge ourselves. Unlike the sheep and the goats in the story, who do not know what God expects of them, we do know. We have the benefit of hearing this story. We know better. As the sheep and goats were, we will not know who we are. But we will know what we do and do not do. When we judge ourselves, our world, we cannot claim to have been ignorant.

There are two sets of criteria given by the man who sits on the throne. In one, the righteous are commended for feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner. In the other, the cursed are condemned for doing nothing. It is hard, practically impossible, to always be good. It is harder, willfully impossible, to never be. We are commended for sometimes righting injustice. We are condemned for always refusing to.

This parable in Matthew is not about salvation. It is not, as some fear, about good works earning God’s respect. It is about sanctification—a churchy jargon word that means “being good, doing good.” Our faith, and the love of God unconditionally given, is supposed to guide us to living good lives. For followers of Jesus, his words and teachings and actions tell us how.

These words in Matthew chapter 25 are the last public teaching of Jesus. The first public teaching, starting in chapter 5, is the sermon on the mount. The sermon is as surprising as is the parable of Christ the King. Do not resist an evil-doer. Love your enemy. Give to everyone who begs from you.

The sermon on the mount and the parable of the king are like bookends, like the introduction and conclusion, of a treatise not only on the nature of Jesus. Not only on who Jesus is. But also instruction—surprising instruction—about who, as followers of Jesus, we are to be.

Re-forming the church

2011-10-30T11:02:00.000-04:00

Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Romans 3:19-28
Reformation Sunday

It is fitting that we welcome new members to Faith on this day, Reformation Sunday. For Reformation Day—which is tomorrow, always on Halloween—is a celebration of a particular event of history, theology, and community. We who sit here today inherit the legacy of that event, when the church asked itself: What is the church, anyway, and what should it be?

This is not a new question. But the urgency of finding an answer to that question comes and goes. It has only been recently become urgent again. We are in a strange and changing time now in many ways, and certainly so in the ways of being church. It is an echo of the Reformation 500 years ago, when something was happening—no one quite knew what—with society, with politics, with transportation and commerce and communication, even with the weather (the world was emerging from a centuries long cold spell).

When anyone comes to a church, they come to at least three places at once. An historical place, a theological place, and a community.

First, we come to a long spiritual history.

This is Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge. We share this church with others in this moment, and also with others of the past (and of the future). This church—as you have heard me say perhaps too often—is you. There is no church you come to that exists without you. And yet, Faith today is continuous with Faith of the recent and long past. Others have shared this space. We hear their voices and see the work of their hands. We sit in the pews that some carved, and we imagine their prayers rising up through the same dark peaked ceiling.

This is a Lutheran church in America, started as an immigrant church. The church in the U.S. is separate from yet part of the worldwide assembly of Lutherans.

And Lutherans everywhere are part of the Protestant tradition that includes many other denominations. Lutherans like to think of themselves as the founders of Protestantism, and that is partly so, but there were many voices of protest besides those of Luther and his buddies. And Luther himself stood on the shoulders of other brave protestors before him.

Protestants are Christians. There are other Christian churches and people who follow Jesus Christ. We think of the Roman church, but Catholics and Protestants are not the only brothers and sisters in the Christian family. And the Christian family is part of the extended family of the people of the book, which includes our cousins Jews and Muslims.

And we come to a history of ongoing reformation.

We celebrate the Reformation today. We call it The Reformation, as if there were only one. But the history of the relationship between people and God is marked by reforms. Jeremiah, the prophet who spoke to us in the first reading, lived in a time of turmoil and doubt. Defeated, occupied, and exiled, the Israelites wondered how they should consider the covenant with God: God is their God, they are God’s people. Was that still true? Had God abandoned them? Was the deal still on? And if so, how could they continue to know God?

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God promises a new covenant. But what is new is not the law but the way the law is carried. A new form of remembering and teaching it. I will put the law within them, said God. It was the same guidance made by the same God, but conveyed in a new way.

The line of our spiritual heritage twists and turns through reformers from long before Jeremiah to long after Luther. And including in our case Jesus, who like all reformers did not consider himself to be radical (I come not to abolish the law, he said). The reform of the church is always a call to repent, meaning to turn back to the basics of our relationship with God. A call to restore the trust and love and joy that comes from knowing God and knowing that we are known by God.

In doing so, reformers seem radical because the current state of affairs has become hateful and unbearable. They cannot help saying so, which makes them unpopular with some who like things the way they are. But the reformers do not intend to condemn the world as it is (I’ve come, said Jesus, not to condemn the world but to save it). Rather, they try to restate what we all knew about God all along, but had lost the words and the ways to remind us.

Second, we come to a theology of grace.

Central to the teachings of Luther, and of the Apostle Paul, and of Jesus as we understand him, and of Jeremiah and the prophets, grace is the essence of the God we worship. The notion of grace permeates the entire Bible. I forgive their iniquity, says God in Jeremiah, and remember their sin no more. God forgives us no matter what. There is nothing we can do that God will not forgive us for.

Lutherans are especially adamant about this, but it is a matter of degree, not principle. Neither Paul nor Luther invented this idea, though they did proclaim it. God is a God of constant and unremitting forgiveness. There is nothing we can do to lose God’s love. The flip side of this is there is nothing we need to do to gain it. No special action, thought, belief, or attitude. We already have it. It is God’s to give, not ours to earn. A corollary is that God’s grace applies to all people, not just us.

Which is a good thing, because Luther reminded us that we are both saints and sinners at the same time. We are generous and sour, kind and selfish, compassionate and mean. What is in us is in others; what is in others is in us. We are disallowed, as Paul writes, to boast.

And, finally, we come to a community of others.

Unlike in other times, no one is culturally required to come to church. We are here in this church because, as we pray, we hope to both be nourished here and to nourish this church. The word for church comes from a word that means called out to assemble. We are called to be here, and we are called to come out of our houses and our jobs and our own private places to assemble with other people also called. We are religious as well as spiritual. We worship together humbly, support each other with intentional respect, companions on the same quest, discovering in each other similar doubts and hopes. We share worries and joys together.

We celebrate the Reformation not because it was something new. It was not. Reformation is a habit of the church. And not because it was unexpected. The forces that led to it had been building for over a century. And not because it was radical. Luther was a Roman Catholic monk who repeatedly defended the church while attacking the way it acted.

We celebrate the Reformation because it reaffirmed that nature of the church as a work in progress. Not one church perfect for all in all times, but an adaptive and vital church that constantly listens to and returns to God.

We come here to this place that is tied to a history of other people seeking to know God; sharing a pretty well developed theology of creation, grace, and God’s presence among us; and formed into a familiar community. That tells us perhaps what the church is, but it tells us little about what it will be.

Our church partners (the Presbyterians, for example), speak of the church as reformed and always reforming. That is both a recognition that the church is always forming itself anew (not only in the official Reformation) and that the church must continue—and will continue to—change. It is easy for us to drift into patterns that seem so comfortable that we think they must be godly. We can forget that God continues to work in the life of the world. We then need prophetic voices then to help us rediscover God.

On this Reformation Sunday we can celebrate that ours is no doubt a time of reformation. We are in a time of disturbance and uncertainty. What will the church be like in our lifetimes? God only knows. It will not be the same as it was or is today. By those who are called to assemble, and with God’s help and guidance, the church will be reformed.

Thanks be to God.

Possible Kingdom

2011-10-23T11:08:00.000-04:00

Text: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Other texts: Matthew 22:32-46

If there were a mission statement of this church, which there is not, we could do worse than borrow the answer Jesus gives to the Pharisees when they ask about the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. After all, this is the trunk on which hang all the branches of the law and prophets. It is a summary description of the way to a holy and good life, a way to which Jesus subscribed. In this summary, Jesus combines two essential passages and ideas in the Bible from Deuteronomy and Leviticus (which we heard today).

On the pledge cards that are in your bulletin today are three pictures. (They are supposed to represent worship, fellowship, and service.) One of them shows this room, called formally the nave, informally the sanctuary. But it shows it backward, so to speak. It is the way I, standing up here, usually see this space. It is also shows the threshold to this room. There is a doorway. It is bidirectional. We come in to worship together and we go out to serve the world through our daily lives and actions. It marks the two parts of our lives with God. Sanctuary, a place set apart, a place of rest and worship, a sacred place. And mission, our lives in the world, a place of action, mercy, and kindness, another kind of sacred place. Both are a part of a holy life, both subjects of the law about which Jesus speaks.

It is common, and unfortunately especially so by Lutherans, to portray the law as legalistic and nit-picky. But it is a mistake to do so. The laws—the commands and guidance given by God via Moses to the Israelites—are a means of grace. They seek, in the large, to order the universe. To maintain harmony within creation and between people. They are a way—as there are in all faiths—a way of right action. And a way of reminding us that the world was both created by God and that God is here with us in it. They teach us to be holy because, as it says, God is holy. Be holy, says God, because I am.

The law has two approaches to doing this. One approach is interested in purity. Keeping things separate, the enforcement of boundaries, the prevention of pollution, all of which seek to keep the channel clear. To keep us on message. But the other approach—and the subject of today’s reading in Leviticus—is the opposite. It is interested in breaking through or ignoring the boundaries because of the need to do what someone called the “messy, disruptive ethical obligations … to set wrongs right.” What it takes to take care of our neighbor, even if our neighbor is not one of us, is outside of our walls. Even if a stranger, an alien, even if our enemy. To be just and kind and merciful to others.

To love God with all your heart, soul, and mind is first of all to love God with all yourself. Not just your prayerful self, or your generous self, or your good-natured self. Not just your intellectual, clear-thinking or believing self. But with your angry self, your selfish self, your mixed up self. Not just with your self that desires to be good but the self that would rather not. You cannot therefore love God by feeling good about God. It is not about your feelings, which you cannot control, but about your actions, which you can. This commandment does not ask us to like God—although we may—but to be loyal to God. To do what God says, to listen for God, and to put God ahead of all the other things that call us.

The command to love our neighbor works the same way. It calls on us to love other people with the same impartiality as we love God. We are not perfect, but since we know our own motives and inner good will, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. To love our imperfect neighbors is to extend the same benefit to all others. Loving your neighbor as yourself means to put your neighbor ahead of all the other things that you might otherwise like to do in regard to your neighbor. This is unlike enlightened self-interest. It does not say that loving ourselves leads in the end to good things for our neighbors. It is the needs of the neighbor that call us first; whether it benefits us is not the main point of this commandment. This command puts the burden of care and justice on us, not on some other force or system or people.

It also does not ask either us or our neighbor to be good, or likable, or admirable. Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. We can like our neighbor, or be afraid of our neighbor, or be disgusted by our neighbor. It is all the same. Partly this is because we are all made in God’s image, even people we despise. Partly it is because we realize that we could be them and vice versa—love foreigners, the Bible says a few verses down in Leviticus, remembering that you yourselves were once foreigners in a strange land. But in the end it is because we belong to God. Love your neighbor, it says, I am the Lord. The two things are tied together.

Loving God and loving other people are not the same thing. The second command to love others, says Jesus, is like the first to love God, but not identical to it. Yet though one follows the other, they are not separate. The are alike and connected. You cannot love God without loving what God loves. Loving others reflects and is modeled on our love for God.

The reason why this all is part of the law, rather than just something nice to do, is that the purpose of the law—as lived and taught by Jesus—is to create the kingdom of God, the world as God intended it to be and we hope it to be. These commandments on which hang all the others seek to create a world in which all people might thrive. They are like the laws of physics—here is how things work. Or like a recipe—here is what to do to make things be the way you want.

We who gather here in worship, fellowship, and service in the name of Jesus—who come in to this sanctuary and go out from here in mission—we share the idea that such a world is possible, and that we have a hand in helping it come to be. Though we cannot follow these commandments always or easily, being not perfect, we acknowledge that they are the right ones to follow. That they lead to the world that we hope for.

So if we would like to have a mission statement, which we do not now have, we could make it this. So that the world may be as God’s kingdom and that all may thrive, to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds; and to love others as ourselves.

Talking to Caeasar

2011-10-16T14:48:00.001-04:00

Text: Matthew 22:15-22

One of Martin Luther’s contributions to the discussion of the church and its role in our lives was the insistence that our faith be grounded in the Bible. Sola scriptura, as he put it in Latin. Scripture alone. Meaning that other guides to our faith were secondary, even if useful. When in doubt, turn to the book. He came to this rule of thumb through his own experiences, trying to figure out what he and what the church should do in a time of crisis for both.

It’s a good start. But as you know from your own experience, what scripture says is in detail not always clear. There are lots of reasons for this, good and bad. One of the not so good reasons is that people like to do the job backwards. That is, they know what they want to think and they find passages in scripture that support their own view. These passages are called “proof texts”—verses that prove our own personal points. This is not what Luther meant. But even if we are careful and open to listening to the Bible, we are hearing with modern ears words that were spoken at least 2000 years ago. They speak to us, but they were not spoken to us in particular. Therefore, we might mistake (or ignore) the context in which they were said or written. We do not live in the time of Jesus, for example, and we cannot assume that people who heard him heard as we do. They probably did not. The words do have meaning for us—the Bible has been a bestseller for a long time. But we need to think hard about how to apply what Jesus said to other people, and apply it instead to us and our time. And as Luther would advise us, we need to do that—as he did—in study, prayer, and hearts open to guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew has long been used a proof text. It has been used to call for or justify the idea—which by now is a modern dogma—of the separation of church and state. But this is not true to its original time, and it is not helpful to us in our current time.

When the Pharisees and the Herodians approached Jesus, Palestine was occupied by Rome. Rome, a foreign empire, had possession of the land and governance of Israel. Though leaving the culture pretty much intact, Rome had installed a vassal king, Herod, and extracted wealth from the land in the form of taxes paid in Roman currency. On the coins it read, Tiberius, divine son of Augustus. The Herodians supported Herod, and argued that the people should pay the taxes. They were the collaborators. The Pharisees argued that to do so violated Jewish law and that people should not pay. They were the resisters.

They came, it says, to entrap Jesus. People interpret this to mean that Jesus was put between a rock and a hard place—forced to commit either sedition or blasphemy, and therefore getting into big trouble. But that is not quite what the passage says. He is not being asked to choose between religion and politics but between two different camps who have adopted two different tactics in the face of foreign occupation. Jesus will not do this. He will not support one or the other.

But he also does not say that some things belong to Caesar and some things belong to God. He does not say we must balance the demands of church and state. The issue is not church or state—in the time of Jesus and for about 1500 years after that, there was no distinction between church and state—the issue was how to respond to the demands of a conquering power. In that sense, this passage does not apply to us at all. Our circumstances are not similar.

It would be a short sermon if that was all there was to it. But there is something in this story in Matthew that catches our thoughts. Jesus’ response—in the traditional version “render onto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”—has mystified and motivated people for a long time. We turn to this story for some guidance about how to behave as faithful people who live in a culture that does not share our faith or our understanding of God’s teachings. Whether that culture is the institution of the church—as it was for Luther—or the state or the secular society.

Until recently, modern Protestant mainline churches in the west—including Lutherans—have considered churches to be separate from but parallel to the secular world. Either withdrawn from or resigned to the goings on in the world. They argued among themselves about whether the church was within, against, or part of the culture. They made the church a place where people could take refuge from culture, think about things of the spirit, and hang around with other Christians. Though that is part of the story, it is not the whole story. (Lutherans sometimes turned to Luther’s notion of two kingdoms. But Luther never argued that the two worlds could be separated this way.)

In this view, when our faithful consciences disagree with the acts of the culture, we have to ponder which way we should turn. People have said about this passage that it is about maintaining dual allegiance to two realms, or that is is about living a balanced life in face of the demands of faith and the demands of the culture, or it is about the hardship in trying to do so.

But Jesus is not saying here that we have a difficult and annoying balancing act between two calls for our allegiance. We only have one allegiance: it is to God. Jesus is not saying “sometimes obey God but sometimes obey Caesar instead.”

Our hope is that someday the world will be the way God intended it to be. Your kingdom come, we pray, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This is a prayer and a call for this world to be healed from sins and sorrows and to be saved from fear, violence, and greed. To be for all a good world in which to live.

Jesus teaches us in this passage that our job is to make the world of Caesar be the world of God. To live in the world according to our faith. I do not mean that Christians should convert everyone or to teach dogma in schools or to make Sunday the official sabbath. I mean that for those of us who profess to follow Christ, that his teachings be our guide in the whole of our lives. We who are Christians need to ask ourselves when we think about political action and policies not what would Jesus do, but ask instead: What did Jesus teach me to do.

The passage today in Matthew uses taxes as a way to focus on this question about what to do. So let us do the same. And let us start that by talking about food, which was, along with money, a favorite interest of Jesus.

On Friday, the Greater Boston Food Bank held a luncheon for its supporters and agencies—people like Faith Kitchen. Partly the event was to thank everyone for all they have done to feed people. And partly it was a way to remind everyone that there are a lot of hungry people in greater Boston.

In the past year, the Food Bank has fed over 400,000 hungry people. That represents about one out of every nine people in our neighborhoods. Most of those people go to bed at night not knowing where their next meal will come from. The Food Bank in the last year distributed 31 million pounds of food. Agencies like Faith Kitchen know that that is not enough; in the past few months the meals served here at Faith have been packed with people, many of them new to Faith Kitchen.

Even in our area, which has felt the effects of the financial downturn less than other parts of the country, one in nine people do not have enough to eat.

The Food Bank is truly great, but it does not live on donations alone. It relies heavily on a program called the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program. And money for that comes from the Commonwealth. That is, it comes from taxes. People who are hungry are fed through people’s taxes.

Unlike in the time of Jesus (and unlike in colonial times in this country), taxes are not a way of drawing wealth from one nation to another. Instead taxes are one of the many ways we act together for the common good. (Being law abiding, serving in programs like the military or Americorps, being civic boosters, are some other ways.) We all live together in one nation, and taxes are one of the things that help that work.

The people ask Jesus: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? Jesus might have quoted the summary of the law: love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. In our time, for many things, one way we enact our love for our neighbor is through paying taxes for the benefit of our neighbor. Contributing to the common good is a way we care for our neighbor.

How shall we as people of faith act also as people of a secular culture? Jesus tells us to render onto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. Our call is not to flee from, or be resigned to, or give in to, Caesar. It is to call Caesar to account, to enlist the culture as a means to enact God’s will and hopes.

I’m not saying that you should love to pay taxes. Or hate them. But that you see them through the lens of your faith. I’m not telling you how to vote. Or what to think politically. What I am saying is this: for Christians, the decisions we make in the world must be considered in the light of our faith. That what we do in the world should reflect our faithful understanding. That when we think of the demands of Caesar, of the world, we think about them in terms of the commands of God.

Song for Living

2011-10-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

Text: Psalm 23
Other texts: Isaiah 25:6-9

A man walks down the street. He is pushing a shopping cart. In the cart are bags and empty bottles. The wheels of the cart go clink-clinks when they cross the seams of the sidewalk. The man’s feet hurt. He rests on the steps in someone’s doorway. People look down when they pass, wishing not to see him. Sometimes he sleeps behind a church. In the winter, his hands get cold.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

A child sits on the curb. He is humming a little tuneless song. The cars rush by in front of him. When the trucks go by with their rattles and groans, the boy’s hair gets blown. Otherwise it is as if he does not notice. In his hands is a disposable camera. He picks it up by the strap, then smashes it against the sidewalk. He smashes it again and again, until the camera opens and little plastic parts spill out. “It’s broken,” he tells his little sister, who is about four years old. Then he calls her a slut.

The Lord is my shepherd. He leads me beside still waters.

Inside, the man’s voice is gravelly with anger, the woman’s voice harsh with fear. They rise and fall like some modern harmony. There is a moment of quiet. There is a sound of doors slamming and silverware spilling. Something breaks. “We are not fighting,” he says, “this is a discussion.” She says, “get out, get out, get out.”

The Lord is my shepherd. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

A woman mourns her brother, and she wishes he were here with her now. She thinks: There was no reason for her brother to get so sick. Her brother was the healthy one. The smart one, too, and handsome. He would have been a rich man, everyone always said.

The Lord is my shepherd. He revives my soul.

The man sits by himself, watching. Time goes way too fast. Maybe it is a blessing. The life he thought was his to have never quite came. He wasn’t very lucky. And truth to tell, he did some stupid things. It’s hard. He’s not the person he thought he was. Not everything he has done has made him proud. People ask him how he’s doing. “No regrets,” he tells them.

The Lord is my shepherd. He leads me along right paths.

We are surrounded by enemies. But they are not the enemies we think. Not terrorists and robbers. Not people eager to harm us. Our lives are a mixture of good and bad, abundance and scarcity, joy and sadness. Things happen to us. We do things, We find that we are not the captains of our own ships.

The twenty-third psalm is about our deepest longing to be saved from sorrows. It is about our profound understanding that we are not made to live in sorrow. We know that we are creatures of sorrow, but we know that we are not made to be that way. There is dreariness and dread in our lives, but we know that God’s expectation for us is otherwise. We know that we walk down dark and scary valleys, but we know that we walk there neither alone nor desperate.

The twenty-third psalm makes us weep to hear it. It is not a sad song, but it reminds us of the sometimes sad songs of individual persons, men, women, and children. People we know and people we are. Songs we sing about us and about the people we love most dearly and the strangers—the mixed-up boy, the freezing man, the mourning sister—whom we see every day. It reminds us of the people we pray for, the things we ask of God. It’s not that we are creatures of sorrow. We are not. We are creatures of joy, beset by sorrows.

The psalm is not a sad song. We weep because it is a song that reminds us of what we wish to be, what might be, what we want most.

To be free from want. Not to have all we want, but to be free from the power of wanting.

To have enough to eat and drink, and which is pleasing and good, perfect as clear cold water.

To see beauty, and to live in, create, and preserve from harm places as beautiful as green pastures.

To have a light heart. To take pleasure in our existence and to make stupid jokes and dance and laugh out loud in inappropriate places. To forgive ourselves and others.

To have inner peace. To be free from apprehension, worry, and regret. To be revived when tired and restored when depleted. To live in trust. To be good.

And finally, to be guided by God’s hand. To be shown the way to these things. To be led along the right paths by God who both is way wiser that we and who forever loves us.

The psalm tells us that though surrounded by enemies, God prepares abundant life for us. Surrounded by enemies, we are served a feast that God lays out for us. The enemies—the things of sorrow—are still there. But we eat, and take pleasure, and laugh. God is with us. And for that, we weep in relief.

The prophet Isaiah speaks to the people of Israel in up until then their darkest hour. He reminds them of the promised life, the life created for them, a life that is possible, that is inevitable. God will wipe away the tears from all people, the prophet says. God will prepare for them a life of satisfying abundance.

A shroud—a veil, a blanket, a fog—a shroud covers them. The shroud is sorrow. They live in sorrow. But that is not their destiny, their nature as creatures of God. God will destroy, the prophet says, the shroud that is cast over all people. These verses move us. They are hard to believe, yet if they do move us, it is because we do believe them. We are drawn to them.

Christians are people of unsentimental hope. We know about the enemies, but we know about God, too. We have heard God’s promises, and in the valley God has walked with us the person of Jesus. God knows about sorrow. And God knows about abundant life. About vitality and beauty and renewal and refreshment and laughter. And God has made it clear which, between sorrow and life, God prefers for us.

In his baptism, Cormac today has been called by name into a community of people—all Christians all over the world, and the particular people here—who turn in hope and trust to the words in Swedish which ring this altar: the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Freedom of Little

2011-10-02T14:39:00.000-04:00

Text: Philippians 3:4b–14

There is a view of the world that elevates the spirit and despises the body. In this view, the spirit or soul or psyche is perfect and pure. The body is imperfect and corrupted. The spirit is good in essence, and the body is bad in essence. There is nothing good about physical creation. In this view, salvation is a process of leaving the dirty body behind and letting the clean soul ascend. The world is rubbish and salvation is an escape from it.

This idea comes from gnosticism, a philosophy common at the time of Jesus. Though gnosticism was condemned by the early church as a heresy, the notion continued and continues to run strong in people’s view of the moral universe. This view is not, however, something that Jesus subscribed to or taught. Jesus was a healer of bodies, and a lover of good food and wine and interesting company. Jesus was a person who did people sorts of things and, it seems, liked the things that people ordinarily did.

And it was not the view of Martin Luther, who also liked to eat and schmooze. Luther was an earthy person, passionate and a little vulgar.

The world was created good, it says in Genesis. And God loved the world, it says in the Gospel of John. Our bodies are created by God. God feeds and clothes us and the rest of God’s creatures. God is generous to creation, and God promises an abundant life in this world. The world is full of good stuff.

You might think, on hearing today’s readings from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, that Paul would disagree. He talks about rubbish and leaving all this behind. And elsewhere he seems to condemn what he calls the “flesh.” Paul does have an issue in this passage, but it is certainly not about how the world is sour and the soul sweet.

We cannot deny that things of this world—stuff—can be a problem. And by stuff, I mean both material stuff and intangible stuff. Stuff that we carry around with us. Stuff we store away. Stuff we fret about. All the things to which we are so attached. Some of that stuff is material. Material goods. And some not. On Paul’s list are things of success and birth. Status, class, ethnic origin, positions of authority and responsibility, titles, reputation. It’s things and things associated with things.

Stuff can burden us. We spend thought and energy getting it, worrying about it, maintaining it, cultivating it, storing it, and eventually discarding it. It can define us. Paul is the Pharisee, the Benjaminite, the zealous persecutor. We are known by the things we have and the accomplishments we’ve achieved. And it can lie about us, making it appear that what we have—or equally what we do not—is who we are. We are not what we have or do not have or what we have succeeded or failed at. Things steal us, they steal who we are.

I don’t want to be crabby about this, because Paul is not crabby about it. He is not talking about virtue. He is talking about freedom. The problem is not stuff itself. Some of which, after all, is essential. And much of which is good, giving us pleasure and graceful appreciation. Paul’s complaint is not with stuff itself, not with the things of the flesh themselves, but with their hold on us. Which comes from our hold on them, and on our inability and unwillingness to let them go, unable and unwilling to consider them as peripheral, rather than foundational to our lives.

When Paul speaks about regarding all he had as rubbish, he says more literally that he reckons all those things as being dreck. He is talking about how he accounts for this stuff, as an accountant might record assets in a book. It goes in the “this is not critical to me” column. What he has lost, as he says, is how important these things were to him. They used to be in the “totally important to me” column. But though they still may be good and sweet and fine and beautiful, they no longer determine how he sees himself or his life or his work. The are accounted as having very little to do with him.

This passage in Philippians is a story. A story of about Paul himself. It is a salvation story. Paul comes from a culture—a Pharisee, tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew it says—that itself is defined by a salvation story. The story is the story of the Exodus, of a people freed from slavery. A people transformed from being slaves in Egypt to being partners with God and a light to the world. A people whose expectations were radically altered by God.

The story of Paul in this passage in Philippians, like the story of the Exodus, is the story of amazing grace. I once was lost but now I’m found. It is not that he repudiates the value—positive or negative—of what he had done before, or the pleasure he took in it, or even the sorrow he had over it. It is that he is now in a new story. Forgetting what lies behind, he says, and straining for what lies ahead. His motives are different, the way he sees the world is different, the climax of the story as he can imagine it is different.

The story is not over when Paul writes to the church at Philippi. He is in the middle of it, as he says. Transformations almost never come all at once. Even for Paul, who was struck blind on the road to Damascus and heard Christ’s voice—even that event was just the beginning of something new. He was changed by the help and guidance of others and by his own experiences after that sudden event. What is calling Paul forward now is different. No longer a closet full of tangible and intangible property, but the call of Jesus.

Paul does not demand the Philippians make the same change as he did. But he does invite them to. We don’t have to live our same old stories. They do not have to control us. It is possible to live in a new way, it is possible for the story to have a different ending than we thought.

Paul’s experience—the way he talks about it—is the experience of one who was held captive but now is released. By telling this story, he invites us to have the same experience. To change what we reckon is good, important, and compelling in our lives. To experience the freedom of a Christian. To be free.

Social Instructions

2011-09-25T14:35:00.000-04:00

Text: Philippians 2:1–13
Other texts: Ezekiel 18:1–4, 25–2; Matthew 21:23–32

There are two brothers on the cover of today’s bulletin. You know from the Gospel reading that one is the good brother and one is the bad brother. You can tell who is the good brother. He is the industrious one carrying the shovel. The bad brother is sneaking out to the left of the page to escape. Or maybe I have it backwards. Maybe it is the other way around. The bad brother is all dressed up like he is going to work in the vineyard as his father asked him to, but as soon as he gets out of view he will put the shovel down and sit under a tree. Or just hold on to the handle, looking good, while he chats with his buddies. The good brother does not care how he is dressed. He does not put on airs; he just goes to work. I guess there is no way to know, really, who is good and who is not.

Lutherans are fond of saying the we are both saints [not the canonized kind] and sinners at the same time. This is not because humans are wishy-washy. Being complicated in this way is the nature of humans. Sometimes we do good, sometimes not. Hooray when we do, too bad when we do not. Sometimes good comes because of what we do, sometimes in spite of it. And bad things in a similar way.

But even if we are both saints and sinners, and even though the good that comes sometimes seems to come from God’s hand and not ours—all that does not mean that being saintly or sinful are the same thing. They are not equal. Of the two, being a saint is better.

In Ezekiel—the first reading today—the people quote a proverb (not an official proverb, not from the Book of Proverbs, just a saying). The proverb says that the parents’ sins (the sour grapes) are visited on the children (setting their teeth on edge). God says through the prophet that God does not want to hear this kind of talk anymore. It is true that we feel the effects of the actions taken by our parents and their parents and so forth. And it is also true that what we do will affect our children and grandchildren. But it is not true, according to this passage, that we are victims of a kind of historical reductionism: that our past determines our present, or that our present determines the future. That we are just bits of life carried downstream by the flow of events. Instead, what we do matters. For better or worse, it makes a difference what we do. Better, once again, to be a saint.

This is not to say that the past does not matter. It might seem that the prophet is describing a kind of death-bed conversion here. When the righteous turn away from righteousness, they die. And when the wicked turn away from wickedness, they live. Repenting—which means to turn—does change things. But it does not wipe out either the effects or the memories of past actions. It does change the present. A life of evil is not rendered good by a change of heart, but the change of heart does make things better. In the present. That is, this is not about judging someone’s moral net worth. It is about what kind of person he or she wants to be, or is, at the moment. It is a better life, a fuller life, to be righteous. It is a worse life, a deadly kind of way of living, to be evil. Changing what you believe and changing what you do changes who you are. Being good is good for you and the world. Be a saint. Everyone will benefit.

If we have a change of heart, what should our new heart be? Presumably, we would like saintly hearts. If so, the Apostle Paul, who is never shy about giving us his opinion, tells us exactly what we must do. Here is his list: 1. Do nothing from selfish ambition and conceit. 2. Regard others as better than yourselves. 3. Look first to the interests of others rather than your own, and 4. Be of the same mind as Jesus. In summary. be humble. Have a humble heart.

It is hard to imagine in the world, with all the striving and grabbing and proclaiming going on, that being humble is high on most people’s list of goals. Rather, being ambitious and self-interested—enlightened or not—is. Being so is our culture’s creed. The path of humility is not one most of us wish to take. We do not value humility, at least in ourselves.

But we are followers of Jesus. Paul reminds us of that and connects what we do to what Jesus did. He quotes a very old hymn about Jesus. Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself. That is not to say that Jesus was timid or diffident. He was passionate, energetic and courageous. It seems like God is hoping for in us, as followers of Jesus, a combination of energy and humility.

When the hymn talks of Jesus’ emptying himself, it possible to hear that as: Jesus strives mightily against his godly nature, but remains true to his human one. But God is a person who, in our experience, does things for us, with us in mind. God does not prefer to strut around saying how great God is. God creates the good world and feeds us in good season. God so loved the world that God came as Jesus. The God of the Bible is overwhelmingly a generous God. Jesus, the human embodiment of the nature of God, is naturally inclined to empty himself, rather than, as Paul says, to exploit his position.

Number four on Paul’s list—be of the same mind as Jesus—could be translated one of two ways. It could mean: have the same mind as Jesus. That is, be like Jesus is. Or, it could mean: let the same mind be in you that you have in Jesus. That is, you are already as Jesus is; go with it. Let the Jesus-mind that is in you be the boss of you. Then being a saint is not a struggle against your nature, but an embracing of your nature. A letting go of some other stuff in you that is keeping you from the energetic humility of Jesus.

Our joy is complete in others, as Paul says. We are in this together, and we know in our hearts that that is true. It hurts to see others suffer. It lessens us, makes us individually incomplete. That is because of the Jesus-nature in us, the image of God in which we are made. We become complete when we are overcome by others’ needs, pain, hope, and desire.

The problem with the two brothers in the parable is not that one worked and the other did not. And the problem is not that they did not do what they said they would. The one brother worked when he said he would not, and the parable clearly favors him. The problem was that other brother was chattering away, making claims that he had no intention of fulfilling. Getting admiration for saying the right thing, but not intending to do it. He was posturing.

He is like those who talk about compassion, but are mean spirited. Who talk courage but who have no nerve. Talk generosity but are miserly. Talk concerned but can’t be bothered. [It seems we are hearing a lot of talk like that these days.]

If you are trying to empty yourself, you can not at the same time be full of yourself. You can not be humble if the thing you are most concerned about is yourself. You cannot hear the voices of others calling to you if you delight so in the sound of your own voice.

When we prosper while others are suffering, we are not prospering. We are not joyful. We are not complete. We are not the Christ in us.

The priests ask Jesus about his authority. As Christians, we claim that Christ is authoritative. David Brooke wrote the other day that a competitive society like ours “requires a set of social instructions that restrain naked self-interest and shortsighted greed.” If we take Jesus as our authority, then we have those instructions.

Be humble. Look not to your own interests. Do nothing from selfish ambition. Regard others as better than you. Be overcome by the call of others. Listen to God and God’s children. For as Paul writes, it is God who is at work in you.

Angry Men

2011-09-18T14:32:00.000-04:00

Text: Jonah 3:10–4:11 and Matthew 20:1–16

It is not hard to think that the dark force of anger has taken over the heart of the world, driving out compassion as thoroughly as it did from the heart of Jonah.

As often, the first reading and the Gospel reading are related. Today they are stories of angry people. Angry for different reasons. Angry at God, at other people, at God’s mercy for those other people. In one story, the story of Jonah, the angry person is a prophet and he talks to God. In the other story, the parable of the workers in the field, the angry people talk to a property owner, whom some think stands for God. Each story ends with a question from God.

Jonah was a reluctant prophet, as most prophets are in the Bible. God called him for a mission. The mission was to warn the people of Nineveh that God was planning to destroy the city and the people in it. That’s because Nineveh was evidently a pretty rotten place, brutal and wicked. But Jonah tried to run away from God. He sailed off, but soon was swallowed up by a big fish (which we all think of as a whale). After three days of this, the whale vomited him up (Jonah evidently disagreed with the whale), and Jonah went to Nineveh, where he told everyone that they had forty days to clean up their act, or else.

Which they did. They believed Jonah. They took off their everyday outfits and put on sackcloth, they fasted, and they prayed. They “gave up their evil ways and their violence,” the story says, and said to one another, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” They did these things, and God did relent. God changed God’s mind. Which brings the story up to the passage for today.

You might think Jonah would be thrilled at his success. His preaching saved 120,000 people (and many animals) from suffering and death. But he was not pleased. He was displeased, it says, and he became angry. The word means he burned hot with anger. “I knew it!” he says to God. “Didn’t I say so when you first tagged me for prophecy.” I knew four things about you: 1. you, God, were a person of grace and mercy, 2. you were slow to anger, 3. you were steadfast and patient in your love, and 4. you were eager to not punish people.

Basically, God was as unlike Jonah as you could get. God was slow to anger, and Jonah was quick to anger. God favored mercy, and Jonah favored vengeance. Jonah was committed to punishment and God was committed to finding ways not to punish. Jonah thinks God is just wrong about all this. He knew what God was like—merciful and all that—and he didn’t like it.

Jonah felt that a rule was a rule. If you are brutal and wicked, you have to pay. A last minute apology should not get you off the hook. Repentance should not get you off the hook. Nothing should get you off the hook, including divine compassion. You do a bad thing, you get punished. That is only fitting and fair. (Jonah does not point out that God let him, Jonah, off the hook when he fled and ended up in the whale’s belly.) The text does not say anything about how we all do bad things once in a while, though that would be a good question to ask Jonah.

What God does ask Jonah is: “Jonah, should I not be concerned about Nineveh?” That is the question. “Should I not have compassion for Nineveh?” God does not deny that Nineveh was bad. God does not deny that maybe they deserved to be punished. God does not deny that they violated the rules, the law, the orderly operation of things. What God says is that, in spite of all that, God prefers not to punish. God has a preference for compassion. Is it good for you to be so angry, Jonah? God asks. Should I not be concerned about Nineveh? God asks. And with that question the story and the book of Jonah ends.

A rich man, a landowner, hires some day laborers to work in his vineyard. This story in Matthew is a parable, usually interpreted as a allegory. The landowner hires five groups of people over the course of the day. He agrees on a wage for the first group, but is a little vague about what he’ll pay the others. At the end of the day, when they line up to get what is owed them, the landowner pays all workers the same amount. The ones who worked all day get the same as the ones who worked just an hour.

The ones hired first were angry at the rich man. Presumably they wished he had paid them more—unlikely as they had already made the deal—or paid the others less. But all the workers were poor. They all needed work. None of them was getting paid much. They were all in the same boat. One reason the people are angry is that they are powerless and the rich man is powerful.

But the other reason, the reason they state, is that the landowner has made them—the last hired—equal to us—the first hired. He has not made the last first, but has made the first and the last be the same. They is no distinction between them in his eyes. He treats them equally poorly or well.

Jesus is not trying to tell us, I suspect, that God is arbitrary and high-handed. But that, like the landowner, God has a preference for grace. “Are you envious,” the man asks, because I am good?” And with that question, the parable ends.

Rules—about crime and punishment, about fair pay for work, about agreements—serve people because they try to make things orderly and predictable. Not everything need be negotiated from scratch, some things go without saying, people do not need to be super vigilant about every moment and action. There is a structure to the world in which people move. Jonah’s complaint and the workers’ complaint amount to arguments for good order. They do not like it when God relents (they would say reneges) or is unfairly (as they think) generous.

It is not that order is not good to God. It is that order is not primary. For God, compassion and generosity are. Unconditional grace, as modern Christians would say, is the primary mode of God. Both these stories are examples. Equality and fairness sometimes (even often) align with compassion. But when they do not, compassion prevails.

We are called in our lives of faith to change. God calls us to change, to be different than we are or might be. We are faithful not only to praise God and not only to know God, though those are both fundamental and important. But we look to God to form us to be better, to do good, to change the world if we can for the better. We look to the actions of faith—worship and study and prayer and sacrament—partly to be able to listen to God telling us how. If we believe God to be merciful, slow to anger, persistent and patient in loving, and eager to find reasons not to punish people, then we can lean on that belief to shape our lives and our actions to be the same.

Some people are angry, as Jonah was, that people do not get what they deserve. And they are angry, as the workers were, that people don’t deserve what they get.

We are called to not let anger drive out compassion from the heart of the world. In our angry world, we are called to be voices for compassion instead. In our angry world, we are called to be voices for generosity. God asks: should I not be concerned for Nineveh? Should not God be concerned for all people? And if God is, then are we not also called to be?

Speaking in Concert

2011-09-04T16:12:00.000-04:00

Text: Matthew 18:15–20

How does it make you feel to know that if you and someone else agree about anything you ask, God will do it? How does it make you feel to know that if two other people agree, they get the same deal?

Does it console you, knowing that God responds to the prayers of people? Or are you dubious, wondering how well this actually works in practice? Are you amused, thinking that the chance of any two people agreeing on anything substantial is very small? Or are you terrified, knowing the harm that can be done—that has been done, is being done—when humans are given power.

This passage seems to grant us a great power. The power to confer. The power of agreement. And the power to enlist God in our own endeavors. Yet it seems unlikely that Jesus would give us carte blanche, a blank check, to get whatever we ask for, as long as two of us agree. Not only unlikely, but in violation of our understanding of scripture and of human experience.

The story in Matthew starts with two brothers. Our Bible translates this as “another member of the church,” but that is because it wants us to realize that is not just brothers who sin against one another. Sisters do, too. But brothers and sisters are different than church members; they are more closely connected and intimate. This reading is about more than just what to do about a difficult fellow parishioner.

Brothers fight. Siblings fight. People fight with one another. So here’s what Jesus says to do first: talk to each other. Just the two of you. Alone. Sometimes that works. If so, good for you both. But sometimes people don’t listen to one another. Note that the goal here is not agreement but communication. Being attentive to one another. Listening to complaints and fears and hopes. But if he didn’t hear you, it says, bring along some buddies. And finally if he doesn’t listen to them either, then you can bring in the church. And if that does not work … well, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

There is a widening circle of involvement here. From just the two of you at first to the whole community. Fights rarely affect only the two combatants. When parents battle, children suffer. When nations battle, the populace suffers. Violence and anger are corrosive and cancerous conditions that often touch others besides ourselves. Not always, so the first remedy is the least aggressive. But if it is not enough, in the end the community has an obligation to become engaged.

But no matter what, the goal of the process in the passage is not punishment but reconciliation. It is not even redemption—we are not talking here about making people better—but the restoration of relationships. We hope not to shame each other, to embarrass or chastise each other. Not to make people feel bad about what they have done. But instead to bring people back who are lost. Or who we feel have sinned against us. To allow people back who have been cut off, ignored, or condemned, or ridiculed.

This passage in Matthew is sandwiched between the parable of the lost sheep (that’s the story illustrated above the altar) and a story in which Jesus tells Peter that Peter must forgive others 77 times, which means forever (we’ll talk much more about that next week). These are stories of reconciliation. People are lost and then recovered. And not necessarily easily, but through persistence and dedication to the principal of forgiveness. About which Jesus had a lot to say.

Near the end of this passage, after you and your associates and your church have all confronted your brother or sister, when all else has failed to open his or her ears, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Before we think this means that we are being instructed to write this person off, we need to remember that Jesus loved people like that. Earlier in Matthew he is called a friend of sinners and tax collectors. And it is true. He hung around with them and shared meals with them.

With Jesus, there is no end to reconciliation. We work at it until it works. There is no giving up in disgust or dismay. If we have to stay there all night. Or all our lives.

We are not so great at living beyond the fight. We know how to celebrate victory, but we are horrible at living in peace, existing with our neighbors who once were our enemies, and just staying with that. We are not good at what Jesus tried to teach us, which is how to forgive so that we can live beyond the sin against us. Listen to your brother who has sinned against you. And in the end, if that does not work, treat that one as a sinner and a tax collector. Someone you live with.

Jesus tells us that if two agree about anything, God will do it. In the next verse, he tells us that if two (or maybe three) are gathered, Jesus will be there with them. These two verses are not describing two different things. They are parts of the same requirement. If we are gathered and Jesus is there, then we will ask what God can in good conscience do.

The word “agree” in this passage is the basis for the word “symphony.” To agree means to speak together. The power to forgive does not depend on our ability to speak the same words in the same voice. It requires that we speak in concert, led by Christ.

The power of agreement is not a general power. We are not being given the words to some magic incantation. The power is specific. It is the power to forgive (which Matthew in our Bible calls loosing and binding).

It is the power to forgive what is difficult to forgive. It is a power given to us by Jesus to hang in there and forgive what otherwise might be impossible. When we are gathered together, and imagine Jesus standing there with us—can we ever say “OK, I’ve had it. I’ve tried my best. But enough is enough. I am out of here. See you in court. Or on the battle field.” Can we ask God for victory if we do what Jesus does not?

Or can we instead ask God for the power to do what Jesus asks us to do: to persist in forgiveness, and live in peace?

The Man Who Would Not Be King

2011-08-28T15:30:00.000-04:00

Text:, Matthew 16:21-28
Other texts: Exodus 3:1-5

Last week we heard Peter name Jesus as the Messiah. “Bless you,” Jesus said to Peter after Peter proclaimed this. Jesus told him that his insight was God-sent. Jesus names him Rocky (from Simon) and tells him that the church of Christ will be built on his stoney shoulders.

What a difference a week makes. Or in the timeline of the story, what a difference a moment makes. For when Jesus gets down to details of what being the Messiah might mean, Peter rebukes him. Jesus talks about the days ahead filled with suffering and fear-driven violence. But Peter cannot stand it. “God forbid it,” he says to Jesus, meaning “I, Peter, wish I could forbid it.” This is not what Peter hoped for for his friend and not what anyone hoped for in a Messiah.

Jesus is tempted lots throughout his short life. First, in the desert, where in some versions of the Gospel the devil offers him food, safety, and power. And at the end of his life, on the cross, where he is tempted to do something—flee, perform a miracle, who knows—to save himself, to escape his coming execution. And here with Peter, to abandon his mission, which anyone can see will lead to a bad end for him. In all these cases, the underlying temptation is the same: to live an ordinary life, in peace, with good friends and daily bread.

But that is not his job. He has come to heal the world, and no matter what you think that means, it entails struggle and grief.

But there is a second temptation for Jesus. And that is the temptation to be the warrior that many of his followers hope for. The Messiah not in the way Jesus describes it here, but the king that the crowds wish him to be. Someone who will conquer the land for Israel and defeat the oppressors and occupiers. A king like great King David, who once ruled Israel. Someone who knows how to fight and to win. Not go quietly to the cross.

In Exodus, God comes to the world to be a savior. God calls to Moses because God sees that the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are enslaved and oppressed. I have observed the misery of my people, God says. I know their suffering, and I have come to free them from slavery in Egypt. This is a story of promise, since God promises not only to free the people but to bring them to a fertile and good land, a land of milk and honey. The story for Israel promises a happy ending.

But there is a story on the other side, which is the story of the people who lived in the land before the Israelites invaded it. Given to Israel, it is taken from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Other people. It is hard to know in real life whether the story really turns out well in the end, for much of the rest of the Bible is the story of battles won and lost, people exiled and returned, cities destroyed and rebuilt. It is still today a violent and open-ended story.

The temptation to turn salvation (which means healing) and redemption into warring, and to turn God, including in the form of Jesus, into a warrior, finds its source not in the divine being but in our own hearts. We want a victory over enemies, freedom from oppressors, bountiful lands. We want to think that God is on our side and no other side. We want our salvation at whatever cost, not wondering whether God works that way at all. We wish to enlist God in our battles.

For some, this is the point of God. The emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century allowed Christians to worship freely and to gather publicly, had a change of heart—or so the story goes—when he won a battle led by banners showing the cross of Christ. For some, the light of Israel to the gentiles was not the example of a compassionate and obedient community, but the rise of a nation in an otherwise occupied land.

At the end of this story in Exodus, Moses asks for God’s name. And God gives Moses two different names. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” But then there is another name, given in an identical protocol: God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’”b This is my name forever, says God. But which name?

This second name is the name of a God of a particular people, the people of the tribe of Abraham and his descendants. But the other name, the first name, is the God of creation, creator of the universe and all that is in it.

In Christ, the savior refuses to be king, becoming instead a victim, true to his teaching, and showing us thereby a different way for the world to be. No wonder Peter says, “God forbid it.” But God backs this plan of Jesus. Jesus rejects our temptations. “Get behind me,” he says to Satan. The longing for a warrior king God is human thing, not a divine thing. We are wise not to be tempted to ask our God of creation to be a destroyer of enemies. And not to think that the destruction of enemies is the work of our own healing God.

The Way of Blessing

2011-08-14T12:28:00.000-04:00

Text: Psalm 67

We have been reading Genesis after coffee hour. This is the fifth or sixth book of the Bible that we are reading straight through, guided only by our curiosity and the Holy Spirit. We started with Job, and have since read a mix of Old and New Testament books.

But we have come to Genesis to start at the beginning of things, thinking that not only would we get the foundation stories of our faith, we would get some of the fundamental theology, too. And so it has turned out to be.

Genesis starts with two different stories about the beginning of the world. You are probably familiar with both. The first is the creation of the world in seven days including one day of rest. Let there be light. After each day, God sees that what was there was good. And at the end, God sees that everything God had made was very good. Things are good, very good. The word means perfect, or just right, just as things should be. And that’s how the story ends. God sees all creation as very good.

The second story is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This is a very different story from the first. It is less cosmic, more local, for one thing. And the events are different and in different order, for another. And in this story, things are not so good. The story is full of procedures and rules. And full of judgment. The first couple are disobedient. And as a result, they lose their garden, and are exiled from it. And that’s how that story ends. Not very good.

These two stories represent two ways to think about the nature of humanity and about God’s relationship with us. These two ways are in tension throughout the Bible, and in our own thoughts and conversations about how things are, how they got that way, and what the future holds.

In one way, people are intrinsically not so good. They do bad things, and the way to make the world work is to keep them in check. I’m going to call this the way of troubles. There is a lot of this in both the Old and New Testaments.

In the other way, people are intrinsically good. They do bad things because they are fearful or cowardly—things get in the way of being good. The way to make the world better is to help them overcome their fears. I’m going to call this the way of blessing. And there is a lot of this in both Testaments, too.

How you think about people affects how you think about God. Is God mostly someone who keeps us all on the straight and narrow through rules and punishments? Or is God mostly someone who helps us to do the right thing by freeing us from our timidity? I do want to point out that in both views, God acts out of love for us and does not abandon us. Someone once called these two ways of God’s acting as God’s saving activity and God’s blessing activity.

The psalm today, Psalm 67, is all about God’s blessing activity. It does not equivocate. It is about God’s blessings, God’s goodness. It starts out first asking for God’s blessing. Then in the middle it gives thanks for God’s blessings so far. And finally at the end it asks that God’s blessing please continue on in the future.

The psalm is strikingly satisfactory. It feels good to read and hear this psalm. It has an atmosphere of rest and confidence. Something that reformer John Calvin called repose. There is a sense here of being so completely blessed by God that we are as we are meant to be, complete in ourselves and married to God our creator.

It seems that there are no enemies here. That is not quite true, but the enemies are off stage, so to speak. In the wings. It is not that the psalm is naive about the ways of the world. It does not deny sorrow and oppression and violence. They have and no doubt will again have their time, but that time is not now.

This psalm is a little treatise on blessing. It tells us four things about the way of blessing.

First, we agree that there are some good things in the world. Perhaps you think this should go without saying, but no one sees good things all the time and some people never do. In times of deep despair and loss, it is hard to see any good. “The earth yields its increase,” says the psalm, but sometimes it feels, or it is, that earth is barren and there is no harvest. To see blessings is to first see good.

Second, we acknowledge that God is the source of all good things. “God, our God, has blessed us,” says the psalm. A blessing is not just something good, it is a gift from God. If you think that the person responsible for the good in your life is you, then good for you, but it is not a blessing. Blessings reveal God, or perhaps blessings are a way for God to reveal God’s self. Blessings are pure grace, unearned, undeserved and often unexpected.

Third, that God blesses us makes a difference to other people. Our mission as a worshipping community is to be a light to others so that they also might see and know God as we do. Others see the blessings we have received, the psalm says, and are glad and sing for joy. “May God bless us,” it says, “so that your way may be known upon earth.” Blessings reveal the nature of a gracious God.

And fourth, blessings move us to be grateful. “Let the people praise you” is the psalm’s refrain. Gratitude for our blessings is not a requirement but a response. It is a benefit. Gratitude itself is a blessing. It is better to wake up feeling grateful rather than sour. Better to go to bed feeling grateful rather than disappointed. God’s blessing gives us a target for our gratitude. As in the psalm, in the same breath we ask for and are thankful for God’s blessings.

We’ve been talking about blessings as if they were things. But they are not things. They are embodied in things: a good harvest, as in the psalm; good friends, music, prosperity, lively energy, contentment. But to see those things as gifts from God, to see them as blessings, to be thankful for them, is more like a lens through which we see the world. Or a framework that organizes our thoughts about the world and what happens to us in it. To see things as blessings is to see in a particular way. When we hear the psalm, it appeals to us because we can admire the writer of it for the clarity and enthusiasm through which he or she views the world.

At one point, in our long-distant past, when the people of God were trying to decide whether to be people of God after all, Moses stood before them and asked them to choose between two ways of being: I put before you blessings and curses, Moses said. The psalm describes a way of living that is available to us, has been offered to us. A way of seeing. A way of blessing.

May God bless us. Our God has blessed us. May God continue to bless us.

Little Steps for Little Feet

2011-08-07T12:33:00.000-04:00

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

There are three versions of this story in the Bible, the other two are in John and Mark. But what makes this one special is that most of the action is centered around Peter, who does not even appear in the others. Peter, a man who in all the Gospels is a stand-in for us as we try to figure out how to live a life of faith.

Many people see this passage as a story of a man who starts out in faith but ends up in doubt. They see the faith that Jesus commends Peter for enabling him to step out of the boat into the troubled sea. The implication is that with just a little faith in Jesus we can, with his help, do miraculous things. That may be so, but that is not how this particular story goes.

The disciples are alone on a troubled sea at night. Water, even though the source of livelihood for the people in the area, can be deadly. Just as it is for modern day fishers and other workers on the sea. The waves are tormenting the boat. Surely the disciples must be tired, and it is likely they are frightened, too. That’s even before they see an apparition—not a ghost like a long-dead soul, but a shadowy and ominous presence. And it is walking on the sea, which is pretty weird. But hooray! It is Jesus. “It’s me” he says. Don’t be afraid. It is hard to tell whether that worked for most of the disciples, who we imagine to be cowering in the back of the boat.

But Peter is being Peter, a man who is without fear, because he is so clueless. Not much fazes Peter. Does he first look back on his huddled colleagues? But then he turns to the ghost who claims to be Jesus and says, “if you are Jesus, ask me, Peter, to walk over to you on the water.” What a strange request. Any other test would have been safer. Some authentication password or security questions. “Tell me your mother’s birthday.” Or “Who is Martha’s sister?” Or just ask him to come a little closer. But Peter asks Jesus to ask Peter to step onto the sea. So Jesus does. “Come,” says Jesus. Come Peter, here to me. Come walk to me as I am walking to you.

Peter is in a pickle. He has painted himself into a corner. Do the other disciples tease him now? Nice going, Peter. You are in deep trouble now. Good luck with that walking on water thing.

There is a moment of faith in this story. But this is not quite that moment. Peter steps from the boat. This moment is perhaps a moment of regret at his foolishness. His big mouth getting him into trouble as usual. Or a moment of bravado. He steps from the boat. Thinking, I’m convinced, that he is about to take a cold bath.

But he does not. Imagine Peter, looking down at his feet, standing on top of the swirling waves below him. It is a shocker. This is the moment of faith. When Peter does not sink. When he realizes that he will not sink, when he knows that Jesus is in control of the dreaded sea, that this person ahead of him is Jesus.

Peter walks up to Jesus—how many steps did it take? how long did it take? Long enough for the moment to fade, as faith sometimes does. Fear overcomes Peter, the enormity of what he has done, the violence of the world around him, even with Jesus by his side. He begins to sink, cries out to Jesus, and takes his saving hand.

Ah, Peter, says Jesus. You of little faith, our Bible puts it. But there is no condemnation here. The word Jesus uses could mean that Peter has a little quantity of faith. Or it could mean that he had a short moment of faith, which seems to me to be more true to the circumstances. Jesus is not berating Peter for having too little of some magic substance. It is just as likely that he is praising Peter for having enough faith, even if it only lasted for a minute or two. Good for you, Peter, I hear Jesus saying. Even though you were scared, you did it. Here now, take my hand and we’ll go back to the boat together.

Faith is not so much something you have. But something that happens to you, or that is a part of you, or that colors the way the world looks to you. It is not a thing as much as a way of understanding things. Not a substance, but an action on the part of God.

Faith sometimes comes to us—that is, happens to us—in a powerful blasting moment. An instant transformation that makes our lives different forever. In this moment we lose an old way of being and come upon a new way. So such moments are scary and exhilarating, for they mean a loss of the familiar and the discovery of the unforeseen.

And sometimes faith happens to us in secret. Hidden from us. And one day, we find, like Peter, that we have been acting in faith, trusting in God, and listening to hear God’s voice as we plan our futures and understand our present.

But more often, faith grows in us, like affection or love for another. It is like trust, which as you know is another meaning of the same word. It takes a long time to develop, and the path is often a rocky one, as it is in any ongoing relationship. There are good times and tough times. It develops, rather than progresses. It is less like a wedding and more like a marriage.

When Jesus calls Peter, he does not call Peter to be faithful. He does not ask Peter to feel some way, or even to believe some thing. This is not a call to conviction or devotion, but a call to obedience. He asks that Peter obey him. To do something. It does not matter whether Peter believes Jesus or not, only that he does what Jesus asks him to do.

God calls us, even when we do not know that it is God calling, and we respond even when we do not know to what we are responding. For some reason, we take that step off the boat. The water supports us as it never did before. We are surprised. Maybe later, like Peter, we become confused (Jesus says to Peter: why did you become of two minds). Life becomes more ordinary. We sail on, as the disciples, Peter, and Jesus did.

This is not the end of the story for Peter, but one episode in an ongoing saga, with high and low points yet to come.

A life of faith is full of small steps. Actions—occasionally big, usually little—that sometimes lead to unexpected results. Doing what Peter does—that is: Listening to what Jesus says. Taking him seriously. Trying to respond. Seeing what happens when we do.

The Prayers the Spirit Prays for Us

2011-07-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

Text: Romans 8:26-39

The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

This verse is the scriptural basis for the closing of the prayers of the people, when we rely on the Spirit to pray the secret prayers that are deep in our hearts. We assume with these words that there are longings of our hearts that we cannot express, or perhaps even know in detail.

We are not complete without God. If we are complete without God, would we pray? If we are strong, and clear minded, and self-satisfied, it is hard to know quite what we would pray for. Maybe we could pray in a transactional way, like ordering something from Amazon.com. A prayer could be an order, or a wish list. But this is not what Paul is talking about.

Paul is talking about being separated from God. And things that might separate us from God. Things that get in the way of our being close to God. When you hear that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, no height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—when you hear these words, you might be moved to tears. How could this be? To be alone from God is scary and disorienting and lonely.

Partly it is like being alone from anyone you long to be with. Your lover, or your parent or your children, or a friend who is far away. Or just being alone. But more deeply, it is that God is part of us, essential to our existence. And to be separated from God is like drowning. Suffocating. We are not built to be without God. Perhaps that’s one of the things we mean when we say we are made in God’s image. You might feel this even if you do not believe it. You might find Paul’s words powerful even if you do not even believe in God. It is not about belief.

In these past few days of hot and humid, people have been feeling crummy and confused. Out of sorts and unable to think clearly. Trying to do useful work in the heat feels like when you read the same paragraph in a book over and over again and just don’t get it because your mind is mush.

But it does not require extreme weather to be distressed and disoriented. We are never as focussed, bright, and strong as we would like to be. It is our creaturely nature. Even though we have deep longings, it is not always clear what we want. Not all that we desire is easily expressed. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, the verse says. The word for weakness means “not strong.” It is not a question of failing or not living up to expectations. No one says you are weak because you cannot lift a mountain. You are just not strong enough. The Spirit helps us because it is our nature to not always know clearly how to ask and what to ask for. Even when we are desperate to. We do not know how to pray as we ought, it says. But again, there is no judgment here, no should. The word translated as “ought” that Paul uses means more like: what we need to say to convey what we mean. We don’t even know it, much less know how to ask for it. Or sometimes we just cannot pray. Out of shame, or anxiety and the press of time, or being tongue-tied. We could use some help.

The Spirit helps us, Paul says. It does not help us like someone we hire to help us. We are not paying the Spirit to do our praying for us. It helps us more like someone who loves us helps us. Someone who knows us intimately and respectfully. Who sometimes knows what we want better than we do. The word that Paul uses to describe what the Spirit does when it helps us is a strange one. It appears only here and in the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke. The word implies a generosity plus togetherness, or being with. One Bible says that the spirit joins its help to our weakness.

It seems from this passage that God puts the Spirit into us in order that the Spirit can speak our deepest longings to God. The Spirit intercedes—another strange word that appears only here in all the Bible—intercedes with sighs too deep for words, it says. The Spirit says for us what we cannot seem to express. Our inexpressible groanings, as one Bible puts it. As someone said, we have our own personal groaner. And the job of that groaner is to convey to God our ongoing state and desires.

There are many things that might come between us and God. Things that might separate us from God. Paul makes a partial list of them. They are not cosmic but day to day and ordinary. Hardship: that is, the meeting of daily needs in times of want. Not enough food, no shelter, illness. Distress: that is, being without options, stressed and pressured, feeling stuck in a tight spot, no clear exit. Peril: that is, physical danger, risks and hazards. The sword: that is, war and violence.

Fear and worry and anger and suffering sometimes turn us to God, but just as often they keep us away—drive us away. We become silent as far as God is concerned. We are not interested in praying—either to talk to God or to listen. We feel estranged. Perhaps we want to be separate from God. Perhaps we are looking for reasons not to engage with God. Perhaps we really couldn’t care less about God at the moment. But the Spirit continues to keep the lines open, the channel open.

There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God. Not even our own silence. It is our destiny, as Paul says, to be connected to God. God makes it happen. Not because of our own efforts or desires, but because of God’s. For better or for worse, we cannot mess this up. God will not leave us alone.

Made from God, when separated from God we feel incomplete and homeless. The Spirit resides in our heart, praying for us, so that we might be drawn home, and made whole.

Saints and Sinners Both

2011-07-17T17:06:00.001-04:00

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We are going to start today with a little Bible study.

There is a school of thought that says that the closer things are to us, the more influence they have over us, and the more they affect who we will be in the future. Things that are far away in time and space are less important to us day to day than things that are near. One purpose of the Bible, or one thing it has succeeded in doing, is keeping Jesus close to us. Jesus lived and died two thousand years ago, yet his life and teachings remain in us. The institution of the church has done the same, preserving the story of Christ and keeping it near.

The church and the Bible do an OK job of this, but they are not perfect. We are a long way in years and culture from the time of Jesus, and much more from the time of Jacob, the hero of today’s first reading. Our devices—books, tradition, ceremony—do their best. Though the church claims the Bible is inspired (Lutherans of our sort do not officially insist that it is inerrant)—though it may be inspired, no one claims that all interpretations of it are. And even the translations we read are interpretations. It is a twisty road that runs from the words that Jesus spoke in Aramaic to the stories people told about him to the writing down of those stories in Greek by Matthew to the assembling of all the fragments of the Gospel (there is no such thing as the original complete Gospel of Matthew, just little bits), to the translation of the result into English. There are by necessity interpretations all the way, before it even gets to our own thoughts.

Why does this matter? Because everyone in the chain of interpretation has some agenda or other. Everybody has a stake in the meaning of Jesus and his words. Jesus means something, otherwise the people would not even be involved in the program. They cannot help, and they might not want to help, explaining Jesus in a way that makes sense to them in their own time, according to their own circumstances, and in light of their own hopes and fears. We have to remember this because their agenda may not be ours.

Today we look at the agenda of Matthew, the author of today’s reading, in telling this story of Jesus telling a parable. This parable appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, not in the other very similar Gospels of Mark and Luke. It is possible that Matthew made it up, but I’d say that’s not likely. It is likely, though, that Matthew included this parable because it suited his purpose—his agenda—but did not suit the purposes of Mark and Luke. If you want to guess what Matthew’s purpose is, you can refer to the little program guide he includes right after the parable. An interpretation of the parable as an allegory. I suspect this interpretation, even though it is in the Bible, was made up by Matthew. I have doubts that Jesus said what Matthew quotes him as saying.

I say that for two reasons. The first reason is that we know from the rest of Matthew that he was really interested in figuring out why everyone did not immediately turn to follow Jesus. And more to Matthew’s point, why those who did went to a different church than Matthew did and probably disagreed with Matthew. Now, there were not really churches like that in those days, but there were communities of followers of Jesus. And they all had slightly different ideas about what Jesus meant, said, and did. In spite of Jesus command that his followers love one another, by Matthew’s time they probably didn’t.

And the second reason I think Matthew made this up is that in this passage, Jesus interprets the parable. Which he sometimes does elsewhere, but not often. And interprets it as an allegory, which parables were not. Not allegories. Matthew has Jesus saying “this part of the parable stands for this other thing.” But parables are not really told that way. They are intended to be weird little stories that make us think. They are the Christian equivalent of koans. In them, there is usually a shocker of sorts. In today’s parable, the shocker is that the landowner does not weed his crops, but lets a dangerous invasive look-alike plant grow among the beneficial wheat. Why would he do that? That is one of the things that is supposed to make us think.

This does not mean that we can just toss out the allegorical interpretation of the parable. The verses are, after all, still in the Bible. People left them in when they were first assembling and then repeatedly copying this Gospel of Matthew. They could have left them out; they have left out lots of other parts of which we have evidence. But it does mean that we can look at this parable with different eyes than Matthew’s. Which we will do now. (Finally.)

One way to think about parables is that they are like poems. They paint word pictures. They are about deep things in the guise of stories about events. They have points and themes. Matthew picks up these themes in today’s parables, and I’m sure you did, too. (Just because Matthew interprets these themes does not mean they are not in there.) This particular parable is more complex than most, and it has at least three themes. Which are: the existence of evil; the impossibility of human judgment; and a call to action.

[Regarding evil.] Martin Luther promised to spit in the devil’s face. And he wrote that we should share the Lord’s Supper everyday to have the strength to fight evil. In the ceremony in which we welcome new members we all agree to renounce the devil and all his empty promises. What is the cause of bad things, vicious and nasty actions, malevolence? We modern types do not often personify evil. Evil seems mysterious and unexplainable. Often more of a corruption or perversion than an active force, or inherent in creation and life, or sometimes just considered a shortage of goodness.

But in this parable, the sower of the deadly weeds is an enemy, a force for badness, purposely causing harm and sorrow. Evil is not happenstance. There is a battle in the background between two forces, competing for the world, and in this battle we are at the same time the victims, the pawns, and the fighters. It is not that there are good people and bad people, but that that goodness which we all desire fights against the evil which we all deplore. All are on the same side here.

[Regarding judgment]. Though Matthew hopes to punish evildoers, in the telling of the parable Jesus is more gentle. Good wheat exists, and evil weeds exist, but humans are not called to figure out which are which and certainly are not called to eradicate the weeds. We are not called to judge. That does not mean that judgment is not real. There are lots of stories in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, about judgment. But the prerogative of judgment and the skill it requires are not ours, do not belong to human beings. Just because we acknowledge evil does not mean we can identify it.

In another story near the end of Matthew, the Son of Man sits on his throne, and separates out the good sheep from the bad goats. But in this scene, first, none of the goats or sheep know which ones they are before they are judged. Which one am I? they all wonder. So people are not able to see very well who is what. And second, it is not clear how many folks end up in the goat pile. If any. Maybe none. Lutherans say that we are all saints and sinners. We are weeds and wheat. It is not even possible to be all wheat, all good. We are not qualified to judge one another.

In the parable, the servants ask it they might pluck out the weeds. But the landowner says “No.” Just “no.” You may not. We are commanded not to judge. It is not just that we are discouraged from making such judgments. We are prohibited from doing so.

[Regarding action]. What, then, are we to do? How shall we behave as human beings in the world. There is a call to action in this story. But not a call to arms. We are guided to be humble, patient, and vigilant. Humble, because we know we are not God’s proxy judges. Patient, because we are not so clever that we can know the future. And vigilant because we are mindful of the devil’s empty promises.

To worry about weeds is not only destructive, it is a waste of time and energy. And it limits our gratitude, joy, and freedom—which seem to me to be good gifts not to be squandered.

Following this guidance, we first of all give God a chance to get a word in edgewise and to do God’s work. And second, we open for ourselves—or maybe better to say we leave open for ourselves—a different way of being than usual, a chance to see things go in an unpredictable and surprising way, to have a larger future.

Like all parables, this one is about something. Many have interpreted this parable as being about the church. (Yet another allegory). But that is a narrow view of things. For this is about the realm of God. Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of heaven is like, he says. This parable is one of a series in Matthew, which all seem to say: there is more to the world right now than you might think, there is a different way to be, and better things are still to come.

Evil and good grow side by side, and it is often hard to tell the two apart. Yet people are called to act with restraint, being mindful of being at the same time saints and sinners, and in the end they trust in God to resolve and reconcile, and are gathered into God.

Depending

2011-07-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It may seem odd on this weekend celebration of Independence Day to speak about yokes and burdens. After all, did our forebears not free themselves from the yoke of tyranny and the burden of injustice? Aren’t we the home of the free, not the home of the beasts of burden that work hard for someone else’s benefit? Not home of the servant, the reins of our lives in someone else’s hands.

Yet here is Jesus. As usual, making us think some other way than we’d like to think. Jesus seems clearly to be offering a gift here. A positive good. Come to me, he says, all you who are weary and carrying burdens. Come to me, and I will remove the yoke from your shoulder. Nope. That’s not what he says. Take my yoke upon you, he says, and you will find rest. If you wish to find rest from your burdens and your weariness, put on this yoke, take up this yoke.

You might say—as some have said—that Jesus is offering to join us in bearing the burdens we already bear. A yoke is a device that lets two oxen—or some other animal, or people, even—to pull more efficiently by dynamically balancing the load between them. Two animals can pull more, more easily, yoked together than they could harnessed separately. So, the picture that appears today on the children’s blessing cards that we give at Communion shows Jesus and someone—signifying you or me—yoked together. Jesus is helping us.

But that’s not quite what Jesus says here. He does not say, let me give you a hand. He says, take my yoke upon you. Learn from me.

A yoke is a method for being led, for being guided, a device for those doing the will of another. It is not a device for those who are doing the leading, the guiding, and the directing. A yoke is the answer to the question: who shall guide us and how, not whom shall I guide and how, and not how shall I myself choose the best direction in which to go and how shall I get there. The question to which Jesus supplies the answer is the question we all want to know the answer to. The question is: how shall we live?

How shall we live to most effect our safety and happiness, as the Declaration of Independence puts it? How shall we achieve happiness? How shall we achieve goodness, be good people? How shall we sustain and increase our capacity for love? How shall we increase our ability to have compassion for others who are not like ourselves? How shall we find peace of mind?

The people of this generation, as Jesus calls them, desire to learn, to know, to be shown the answer to these questions. They desire to find a prophetic leader who will guide them and show them the way. They desire this, … and they don’t. They long to be led, … and they don’t. Their wishes are ambiguous and conflicting. They heard John the baptist, who told them how to live. They spurned John, saying that his asceticism was demonic. They heard Jesus, the Son of Man, who told them how to live. They spurned Jesus, too, saying that he was a glutton and a drunkard. They don’t know what they want.

They want to be guided, yet also to refuse guidance. They want to be able to count on others, yet be independent. They want to ask for help, yet reject help. They want to ask for wisdom, yet preserve the right to act in ignorance.

What Jesus offers them—as John before him did—what Jesus offers them is a disciplined way of life. To follow him, which means to be led by him. To put on his yoke. To do what he teaches us to do. To believe in him in the sense that we trust not his existence, or his heredity, but his guidance. Learn from me, Jesus says.

And he says, I am humble of heart. Discipline is by nature a humbling activity. To be humble requires that we acknowledge we are in need of help, that we are uncertain, and that we are not in control. Discipline by nature is a quiet activity. It requires that we listen rather than talk, hear rather than pronounce, that we keep our opinions to ourselves. Discipline by nature is a focused activity. It requires that we put aside distractions, rather than seek them out, and that we strive for a simpler life.

Christianity is religious, not only spiritual, because it embodies practices as well as beliefs. It is a discipline. It requires, among other things, periodic and repeated worship with others, almsgiving to those who have less than we do, regular prayer, and an attempt to love our neighbors and our enemies as we love ourselves and to forgive those who sin against us, and to not worry too much about the future. We gather into communities, churches, both because it is easier to do these things together and because Jesus told us to.

We perhaps have forgotten that the Declaration of Independence was really a declaration of redirected dependence. Not of anarchy or individualism, but a plan to choose how we would be led.

Take my yoke and learn from me. This is an offer of a disciplined life following the guidance of Jesus. This is an offer that, by taking up this way of life, we may find happiness, become good people, have compassion for others. That we will find rest for our souls. That we will know God.

The Spirit in Between Times

2011-06-12T09:26:00.000-04:00

Text: Acts 2:1-21

The day of Pentecost in the church calendar seeks to tame the story of Pentecost in the Bible. We make predictable an event which is totally surprising.

People sometimes call the reading in Acts the story of the birthday of the church. This makes it seem simple, pleasant, and definitive when it was none of these things at all. Instead, it was complicated, scary, and fragile. We imagine it to be a celebration of diversity, an inauguration attended by people from around the known world, and an installation address by Peter, the rock on which the new church would be founded.

Yet for those involved, if we are to read it from the inside, so to speak, it was an occasion of confusion. Some people—they, it says; we don’t even know who or how many (anywhere from a dozen to 500, depending on where you look)—some people are “in one place.” Is this place a room (as many paintings show it to be), or outside (where the listeners could more easily hear all the various languages being spoken?) And were those languages a new language, as some think, or the natural languages of the time?

What happened in the place? Not a wind, but the sound like the rush of a wind. Not fire, but divided tongues as of fire. Something like a wind and something like fire touched some number of people who were gathered somewhere, and they began to speak in some way.

We cannot fault the tellers of this tale. It has all the confusion of amazing and unexpected events. Crowds gather and something remarkable happens that in the end changes the world. People’s accounts differ. Each is affected in his or her own way. Some think the speakers were drunks, and some think they were prophets. Each person sees and hears things from their own point of view. Each, as it says, in their own language. Their own culture and individual history and hopes.

Imagine how it felt to be part of this event. How did it sound, that sound like the wind? How did it feel to be touched by that tongue like a flame. Was it loud there? Was it hot? What did it smell like? Could they sense the excitement of others, or maybe their fear? What did they see?

Pentecost and events like it are not so much the birth of something new as a time of extreme transition. The forces on the people and the times are like the forces on the crust of the earth before an earthquake, and the event is the earthquake. There was one way. And now there is another way. At the time of this particular Pentecost, things were changing. Judaism was changing as a result of the occupation of Palestine and the destruction of God’s house, the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jesus movement was changing as a result of the crucifixion of Jesus and his ascending departure. And the lives of Jesus’ followers were changing as they went from being disciples—students—to being apostles—people sent by Jesus into the world to do something grand and dangerous.

It is not surprising that the people who were gathered there felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. For times of transition are where the Spirit is both most comfortable and also most helpful. The Spirit, especially in contrast to the other persons of the Trinity, works in what someone called the realm of insubstantial creation.

People in history have had a hard time characterizing the Spirit. There was a time when pictures of the Trinity showed Father, Son, and Mary, thus avoiding the whole issue. And later, the Spirit was shown as a dove (drawn from the baptism of Jesus, where it says the Spirit descended like a dove.) But the Spirit is on purpose vague around the edges. The word for spirit is the word for wind, which is powerful, surrounding, and unbounded. If we were fish instead of mammals, I’m sure the word for spirit would be the word for water. Of the essence and ever-present. Not exactly a thing.

The Spirit is most obviously present in times of change (as in the creation of the world in Genesis, and the creation of endeavors in our own lives). Which is perhaps why it seems so appealing in these days. Change is what it means to be a creature, and probably every generation thinks that its time is the most unstable, but in these times of ours of personal, national, and worldwide change into something who knows what, it is good to have God the Spirit be present among us.

In the face of the people’s amazement and perplexity, Peter explains that this is one of those times. And he mentions the prophets, and quotes Joel who wrote that in these days God will pour the Spirit upon people and that they will prophesy and have visions and dream dreams. Prophets and dreamers and visionaries are our conductors on the train to the future. They tie the past in memory to the future in anticipation. They are always the right sort to have in times of change and transition. But what happens in Pentecost and in Joel’s writing is that everyone touched by the Spirit begins to dream dreams. All the sons and daughters. You and me.

When we are not quite sure what just happened, and when we are not quite sure what is happening now, and when we really not sure about what will happen next, we need dreams to survive. Things are different, and we need a grand vision, going easy on the details. The Spirit is a dreamer of dreams more than a planner of plans.

The colors of the altar today are multi-colored, to signify the variety of people visited by the Spirit on this day in the story and in these days in our city and world. But next week they will be green. The changing colors mark the transition from the season of Easter to the season of Pentecost. We will then be in ordinary time, when we read more about the daily life of Jesus in stories about the daily lives of people.

Our daily lives are full of little Pentecosts. Often not as momentous, but sometimes so. When we do not know what to make of things as they are but we have not yet found out what they will be. When the old order of our lives seems to verge on chaos, and words that we thought we knew lose their meanings. It can be exhilarating or scary, but in either case it is unknowable.

In the end, the story of Pentecost is not the whole story. The Church does begin. The people do go out. Transitions do not go on forever, but are in between times. What is about to happen, does happen. The prophets speak, the dreams unfold, the visions become clearer. And the Spirit leads us, as it led the people who had gathered all together in one place, into something new.

Fear or Faith

2011-06-05T17:19:00.000-04:00

Text: Acts 1:6-14

The sudden and unexpected execution of Jesus. His amazing resurrection from the dead. His appearance to the disciples, talking with them and sharing meals with them. Now his being lifted up. Taken from them, the men in white say, up toward heaven. It is a fearful time for the followers of Jesus. Nothing has been what it seemed, nothing has gone the way they had thought or hoped. Still looking for the nation of Israel to be freed and restored—is this the time? they ask—instead their teacher, healer, Messiah last left them, their hopes unfulfilled.

The story at the end of the Gospels shows the disciples gathered, dumbfounded, frightened, uncertain what to do. Shut in a room, safe for the moment. They have a choice: remain huddled, timid, cautious; or to leave, go out, continue the work of Jesus, speaking, healing, confronting and changing the world. Their choice is the essential Biblical choice. I put before you life and death, as it says in Deuteronomy. That is the choice we always must face. Choose life over death, choose love over hate, choose hope over hopelessness, choose compassion over neglect. How shall we live?

Actor Tom Hanks spoke last week to the graduating class at Yale. In his sermon—for that’s what it really was—he talked about fear and faith. He quoted John Paul Jones, who said “if fear is cultivated, it will become stronger; if faith is cultivated, it will achieve mastery.”

We cannot let fear prevail. Fear wishes to rule us. Hanks said that fear lurks in the darkness at the edge of town. Fear captures our hearts and softens our brains. That’s why people who wish to seize or hold power use fear to move us. And why people who wish to possess our time, our money, or our passions—those who wish to sell to us or recruit us—seek to create fear within us.

C. S. Lewis once said that we fondle our hatreds. He might have said the same about our fears. We take our fears out and touch them, keeping them alive. We work on them. When it seems they are subsiding, we wake them up. We keep them excited. We nourish them, as Jones said, so that they might stay strong. It is wicked, but we do it.

Fear is destroying the nation, corrupting and perverting generosity and bravery into greed and violence. Destroying the world. Fear drives us to war. Fear drives us to pull back from helping people in need. Fear drives us into our locked rooms and locked nations, seeking safety, and being diminished.

The sovereignty of fear, its voice, its authority, comes from us. We give it. We do not have to do that.

For against fear stands faith. This is a battle. It is one or the other. Faith is the counterforce, the antidote. Faith puts us in context: remember that we are creatures, that we are mortal, we are small, yet we are blessed. We are children of God along with all other people, making them our brothers and sisters. Our fate is out of our hands; it belongs to God. Everything is possible. The worries that we plot are only fantasies, guesses. New life is possible. Faith makes us free to act surprisingly, with courage. That courage fights against fear.

Courage is not a result of will. We cannot just wish to be courageous. Courage is fed by faith. And faith is fed—cultivated—by two things. One of those is gratitude. The other is forgiveness.

Gratitude is a skill, a tactic, it takes practice. Give thanks for your blessing. Speaking as if you were grateful makes you grateful. Wake up in the morning and say thank you for your life and all the good things in it.

And forgiveness is likewise a skill, a tactic, requiring practice. Speaking as if you forgive others helps you forgive them. Say you are sorry. Accept the apology of others. Tell people you forgive them, even when you are not so sure. You will start to forgive them. Tell God you forgive them.

Thanking God and forgiving others generates courage, nourishes faith and defeats fear.

This past week the yearly assembly of the New England Synod gathered in Springfield. Most of the meeting was going to be devoted to community service projects in this hard-time city. A couple of days before the assembly was to convene, there were as you know tornadoes which destroyed property and took lives. Many people wondered whether the assembly should be cancelled. Tornadoes are scary and dangerous. The city was in disarray. Would we be OK? Perhaps we should all stay home, we thought, where we were safe and things were familiar. Fear spoke to us. But faith called louder, and the assembly was held.

When a disaster like the Springfield tornadoes strikes, people check the news on TV or online. We look at same few dark videos over and over again, and we watch the same slide shows of destruction and suffering. This is not, as I once thought, obscene and voyeuristic. Those pictures and videos and voice recordings call to us because we are trying to figure out how we can help, what we can do. We are built to watch out for each other, to care for each other. In Springfield or Haiti or Japan; in places of famine or drought or disease. The suffering people call to us to defeat our fears and come help. Don’t be afraid, they say, give us some help, they say.

And so in our case about 400 Lutherans showed up this weekend to feed people, raise money, clean up the mess, repair homes, entertain the discouraged. A small victory over fear, but a triumph nonetheless. That’s how it works.

When Jesus ascends to the heavens, the disciples fear they have been abandoned. But Jesus tells them here in Acts, as he also does in the Gospel of John, that the Holy Spirit will stay with them.

And in the end they remember that Jesus has prepared them by praying for them, by teaching them how to pray, how to praise God, how to forgive others. He has taught them how to serve those in need, to heal, and to love even their enemies.

Christians cannot continue to cultivate fear. And we need to resist the world’s efforts to cultivate fear within us and within others. We have been given the tools of faith, instruction in their use, and the power of the Holy Spirit to fight the powers of fear. Before us, as before the disciples, have been set fear and faith. May faith prevail.

God's Restless Heart

2011-05-29T17:24:00.000-04:00

Text: Acts 17:22-31

Standing on Mars Hill, called in Greek Areopagus—meaning the rock of the war god Ares—Paul is impatient. He has been driven out of Philippi and Thessalonica and the city of Berorea, and has been spirited away by his friends to cool his heels in Athens. But Paul, who cannot sit still for long, starts to chatter away in the market square about one thing and another, where one thing is Jesus and the other thing is God. He makes an impression: the Greeks, it says in the book of Acts from which this story comes, call him a babbler. The word in Greek describes the noisy chattering of flocks of small birds. So that’s how some saw Paul. But others think it’s worth a listen, and they gather on Mars Hill to hear him.

There is something about Paul and his words that draw them in. Why would these learned Greeks bother to listen to this noisy Jewish/Roman/Palestinian bird, aside, as it may be, from idle curiosity about some new idea? It may be that they, as Paul later says, are fumbling in the dark, as we all are, looking to touch God with their own hands. They wish to fill, as someone described it, an existential abyss. There is a emptiness that we all feel, a cosmic longing for something that completes us. Saint Augustine, who so strongly influenced Martin Luther, said of God: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” This restlessness, plus I’m sure Paul’s charisma and his way with words, open their ears to him.

Unlike Peter’s speech at Pentecost, which we’ll hear in a couple of weeks, Paul’s cannot call on the salvation history of the Jews to convince the Athenians. It is not their history. He cannot use jargon. He cannot assume sympathy. Instead, he gives a speech that lays down the fundamentals of his faith. This is a tiny treatise on monotheism—a foreign concept to the Greeks. Paul describes a single, timeless God, cosmic and intimate at the same time. He tells them three things about his God: who God is, what God does, and what we do in response to God.

Who Paul says God is.

God is creator of the universe. All things were made by him. Without him there is nothing made. God is very large. All the substance of the universe, all those stars and all that energy, all that knowledge that is embodied in the heavens—God made all that. God spoke the world into being: let there be light. God took chaos and made some things out of it. The order of the universe and the laws that govern it are embodiments of God.

But more than creator of the universe, God is an enthusiast. God is a fan of the universe. After creating each part, it says in Genesis—a word that means birth—God pronounced it good. We exist in a universe which at its core, in its DNA, in its essence, is goodness.

God does not live, Paul says, in shrines made by humans. God does not live in little boxes like temples or churches. God does not reside in idols or in symbols or even in words. These things can lead us to God and remind us of God, but they are not God. We do not worship them. By the same token, we do not need to maintain God, to feed God, to bring offerings to God, to appease God. We do not have to please God—as though he needed anything, Paul says.

Yet even though God is big and old and self-sufficient, God is at the same time small and spirited and intimately connected with the lives of people. God is not far from each of us, Paul says. God is neither standoffish nor condescending. God is as close to us as our parents, our family. We are, it says, we are God’s offspring.

What Paul says God does.

God gives life and all things. God takes creation and animates it with life. God organizes substance and energy into biology and consciousness. God takes time and organizes it into history. In other words, God takes things and organizes them into stories. Jordan Mueller, a member of Faith, did a research project a few months ago in which he counted the occurrence of each word in various Bible versions. In all cases, the most common word was—no surprise here—God (or Lord, or Jehovah). And the second most common word was “says.” God said, the Lord spoke. God, as Paul notes, allots times and boundaries by talking about them.

What Paul says we do in the face of this creating, speaking God.

We try to find God. We search for God. We try to fill the abyss, the empty space inside of us that seems to belong to God. It is as if we were created with this spot in us just so that God could fill it, reside in us. We search for God, Paul says, and we grope for God. A word that is perhaps better translated by other versions of the Bible as “feel after” or “reach out for.” As someone who is blind might reach ahead, generally and imperfectly seeking something specific and necessary.

And in the end, finding it. Finding God. For all the mystery and majesty, God can be found. This is a radical notion, meaning that it is at the root of our faith. This God, who is big and little, far and near, awesome and intimate. This God, who organizes existence, and creates patterns out of chaos and stories out of moments. This God to whom we owe our existence and our breath. This God wants to be found. God likes us, and God wants us to be near. God longs for us to be near as much as we long for it.

We live and move and have our being in God, Paul quotes a Greek poet to the Athenians. The Athenians agree with that much. But it is more than being like some mortal fish swimming in a Godly sea. In the experience that changed his life, that made him an apostle and missionary, Paul learned that God and humans desire each other fervently. God may be unbounded by space and time, but God is not without passion. It is as if God also knows an emptiness which is filled only by God’s creatures, and that God and creation, God and we, live in each other. Our reaching out is matched by God’s.

I am in my father and you in me and I in you, Jesus says to his disciples. We dwell in each other. Perhaps God’s presence among us means that God’s heart is restless, too.

Handyman

2011-05-22T15:40:00.000-04:00

Text: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 Other texts: John 14:1-14

Into your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray, trusting in your mercy, through Jesus Christ. In these words we conclude our own prayers each Sunday. Prayers of the people, this part of worship is called. Which strikes me as odd, since who else would be praying, and what are the other prayers if not ours? But of course, the title means prayers that are not written down beforehand or part of the formal liturgical prayers, but are prayers in our hearts—prayers thus of a particular person, you—and prayers that must be shared with others—all who are in this place in this moment, this particular congregation gathered here today.

Into your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray. We are handing over to God the people, including ourselves, and events for which we pray. From our hands to God’s hands. Our hands have proven themselves not to be sufficiently able to handle things.

For there are things that were beyond our reach and beyond our strength. Curing sickness, mending hearts, keeping people safe, banishing fears, undoing wrongs. In our prayers, we let go of our pretense that we can save others, or ourselves. Our petitions and thanksgivings, our concerns and celebrations, are humble prayers: asking God for a hand, or thanking God for a hand that was given.

Into your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray. These words come from today’s psalm, psalm 31. In it, someone seeks to be saved, to be delivered, to be rescued. To be redeemed. All of these words have one ordinary and urgent meaning: I am stuck in a bad place: get me out of here! And make haste it says: do it quick!

Deliver is the right word, here, because it conveys the notion of movement. We are in one place and hope to get to another place. Take me out of the net in which I’m trapped, the psalms says. Pluck me from the tangled mess I’m in.

People find themselves in enemy hands. Rescue me from the hand of enemies, the psalm says. Caught up in the nets they have woven for us. These enemies are many, tricky, and strong. And old-fashioned, as old as the psalm. Enemies within. Pride and greed and gluttony. Fear and anger. Worry and regret. And enemies without. Disease, addiction, and violence. The devil and all his empty promises. We put our lives into the hands of forces that are not trustworthy. Or just as often those forces grab us and hold us tight against our will.

I am in distress, it says in the few verses that the lectionary skipped over—I am in distress and my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. My life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing.

There is a tug of war here between, as Martin Luther wrote, between us and these forces that threaten to devour us. Our enemies are tenacious. Stronger than us.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit, says the main character in the psalm. By stating this, we take ourselves from the hands of our enemies and give ourselves to the hands of God. It is a transfer of trust: from what is untrustworthy to one who can be trusted.

We commit to God those things which are beyond our own powers and abilities. We give our lives—that’s what the word spirit means here—we give all of ourselves to God. We let go of the notion that we are in control and put the course of events into the hands of God. Trusting, as we pray, in God’s mercy.

My times are in your hand, the psalm says. This is a statement of resolve: here, God, take my life. And also it is a realization: my life has always been yours. The psalmist, who starts by asking to be rescued, ends up by being freed. Letting go of one’s life results in freedom. Into your hands, O Lord, the verse more completely says, into your hands I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, trustworthy God.

The disciples are, like the person in the psalm, in the hands of enemies. The followers of Jesus are fearful—with good reason—of the present and the future. This Gospel passage is part of what is called the Farewell Discourse. The disciples know that danger threatens, that Jesus will leave them. They must have a notion by now that their lives, as followers of Jesus, will be difficult. The combination of almost certain impending danger and grief would trouble anyone.

Yet Jesus assures them: do not let your hearts be troubled.

The only antidote to this terror is to trust in God, Jesus says, and to trust in Jesus himself. In my father’s house, he tells them, there are many rooms. Or sometimes translated many mansions, or as in our Bible, many dwelling places. It is easy to think that Jesus is talking about some heavenly hotel. And Jesus is going to go talk to housekeeping about getting all the suites ready for his disciples.

Maybe so. But it seems as likely that Jesus is promising to each disciple what the person in the psalm prayed for. Which is a place for us in God’s hands. The word for dwelling place in this Gospel reading is “abide,” one of John’s favorite words. In John, Jesus is in us and we are in him. This mutual abiding is particular to each of us. Jesus did not promise that there would be one room big enough for everyone. There is one for each. The dwelling place is home. It is where we live, which in John is in Jesus.

Living in Jesus is another way of saying that we commit our spirit and time into God’s hands. The metaphor of rooms is reassurance by Jesus that for each of us, there is a place in God. That placing our lives in God’s hands is a particular event that God expects and is prepared for. We can trust in God not because of some vaguely hopeful sentiment, but because God’s hand is open to each person, ready.

We commit to God our lives and prayers for ourselves and others, trusting that God’s hands are eager to receive us.

When our hearts are troubled, when the future looks scary, when we are tangled up in net fashioned by enemies within and without, when our grip seems weak, into Gods’s hands we commend all for whom we pray, trusting in God’s mercy, through Jesus Christ.

But we had hoped

2011-05-08T09:02:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 24:13-35

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we had hoped. Four heart-rending words.

This is a sentence people speak to each other each in grief. In mutual consolation. Supporting one another. A resignation that things did not work out—not that we thought they necessarily would; probably they wouldn’t. But they might have. This one time they might have. There was a pretty good chance. It would have been so great, so much better, if things had worked out like we thought they might do.

On the road to Emmaus, two friends were talking to each other. We had high expectations, they might have said, we followers of Jesus. Jesus encouraged us. By his deeds, we could see he was a prophet, more than a prophet even. He healed people beyond healing. Made the blind see. Some say he raised people from the dead. By his words, we could see he was wise, brave, and intense. He claimed the authority of God. He condemned the hypocrites who ruled the church and the land. He shamed and embarrassed the rulers. By the promises that everyone read into his sermons—about being free, about evil being overturned, about the poor and the destitute receiving the blessings so far reserved for others—by those promises we could see a new kind of world. By the very fact that crowds came to be with him, to hear him, to be changed by him, and just recently to sing hosannas to him, we could see it was coming soon. And finally, by our own need for victory and freedom in a land of poor people oppressed by a foreign power, our hopes were fed.

We had high expectations. Foolish ones, though, as it turned out. But we had hoped.

But we had hoped. People cannot help hoping. It is in us. It is not the same as wishing. The kind of hope the two had on the road to Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem where Jesus had been killed, is a hope for a new way of the world to be. A new physics, a change in the laws of mind, spirit, and nature. It is hope for things to be very different than usual. It is the same hope we have that our mortal diseases will be cured, that our addictions will be lifted, that our broken hearts will be mended. It is the hope that time could reverse itself just a little to undo what was irrevocably done. It is the longing that nothing is irrevocable, nothing is impossible, nothing is final or fatal. It is a hope that leads us to have unreasonable expectations.

But we had hoped. The walkers on the road are trying to re-set. They are trying to talk themselves down. Talking to each other about all the things that had happened, it says. We had hoped, but we know now that was silly. We heard he was alive, but people have not seen him. You can hear the two friends trying to make things make sense again. They are trying to get back into the ordinary way of looking at things. They are trying, as poet T.S. Eliot wrote, to be cured of craving something they cannot find. They are trying to learn to avoid excessive expectations.

In that moment, Jesus appears. They are, he explains, seeing things in the old way. That way leads to the morass of self-recrimination and hopelessness in which they find themselves. There is a new way, just as they had once thought. It was declared by the prophets. They are foolish—how foolish you are, he says—but foolish on the flip side. Not fools to be hopeful, but fools to give up hope so easily. They have been quick to abandon what they knew. The evil does not erase the truth of the good. The crucifixion does not erase the ministry of Jesus. Just as disease does not erase good times past, and as addiction does not erase past steadfastness, and as heartbreak does not erase past love.

The travelers do not see him. Within the framework of the possible, Jesus is unrecognized. Jesus encourages them to try out a new strategy, a new frame of mind. Consider this: God is different than you think. The world is less limited than you think. God is more involved in your lives than you think. Our normal experiences are not necessarily good indicators of what is possible.

Yet all this almost-pedantic talk is not sufficient. Jesus can tell it is not working. Coyly he walks ahead, it says, as if he were going on. They invite him—as he figured they would—they invite this strange yet strangely familiar man, to their homes. There, he re-enacts what we readers recognize as the pattern of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharistic pattern. He took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. And then their eyes were opened. Jesus was made known to them, it says, in the breaking of the bread.

It is a turning point in their lives. They see Jesus and remember him. The walkers escape their disappointment, not through figuring out and talking about it, but through sharing a meal together in a special way, through a ritual that is full of meaning and memory, one that Jesus commanded them to do.

We celebrate The Lord’s Supper every week for many reasons. For example, Martin Luther said we should do so because we needed to eat to be strong to fight the devil. But another reason is that the Lord’s Supper is a way of thinking that is out of the ordinary. Sacraments, like other rituals, are a kind of new physics. They are messages spoken in another language. They are guided by tradition and scripture and the Spirit. And most of all they are something that we approach with humility and mystery. For a moment, we put aside the ordinary way of seeing things and adopt a new way. We come forward, and hear words that are both strange and comforting, we eat as we were instructed to by Jesus, and we leave transformed. We come back week after week, because we need reminding that there is a way to see things that we usually do not see.

The travelers on the road start out convinced that nothing has changed. That the world and their lives will be as they always have been. But Christians are right to have excessive expectations. It is what Jesus taught us. We are right to think that what is broken can be healed and what is stuck can be freed.

As the hymn from the Iona community says:

Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death.

It is risky to hope so deeply. It makes us vulnerable to grief and disappointment. Yet not to hope deeply, starves us.

Leave this room

2011-05-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

Text: John 20:19-31

It might seem like this passage in John’s Gospel is two stories, nearly identical versions, paternal twins. One without Thomas and one with Thomas. In each one, Jesus appears to the disciples who are locked in or shut in a room together. In each one, Jesus greets them saying “Peace be to you.” In each one, Jesus shows them his wounds to verify his identity. And in each one, some one or some many realize at that point that he is the same Jesus that they followed. The same Jesus who just a few day earlier was tried, convicted, and executed cruelly on the cross.

John’s Gospel was the last of the four to be written. Perhaps there were two stories circulating in the community when John wrote down his rendition of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Or perhaps he was including versions from two separate communities.

Either way, there is only one story now, made up of two similar parts. We assume that John has put the parts together for a reason. To indicate some important step in the development of the life of the church and the development of the relationship between God and people, God and us. There is a dramatic tension in the story as it stands. Between the first and the second parts, something happens, something changes, some new order is unfolding.

One thing that might be happening has to do with believing and seeing. Belief and seeing are important to John, so this interpretation makes sense. In that case, the most important line is “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The emphasis here is on Thomas, usually and unfairly called Doubting Thomas. Unfairly, because he only wants what the other disciples already have: the chance to see Jesus with his own eyes. All the disciples in both stories are understandably non-plussed when Jesus appears. Can this be the real Jesus? Can this be the same one we knew? And all are convinced when they see his hands and side. There are two things different between the two stories, and in this view the important difference is that Thomas is missing from the first story but present in the second.

But the other thing that might be happening here has nothing to do with seeing or believing. Instead, it has to do with mission. The important difference between the two stories is not Thomas’s presence, but that in the first story the disciples are commissioned to continue the work of Jesus in the world, and in the second story they—through the words of Thomas—accept that commission. In this interpretation, the most important line is “Thomas answered him: my Lord and my God.” This is not so much about the identity of Jesus as about his continuing role as master, teacher, and guide for the disciples. From then up to now.

The story describes a contract, which is what a commission is. An offer, an acceptance, a consideration. Jesus makes the disciples an offer. It sounds like an order—commissions do sound like that—but it is an offer nonetheless, as commissions really are. As the Father sent me, so I send you. The disciples may allow themselves to be sent or they may refuse. You may wish to send me, but I may refuse to go. The offer may be denied.

But this offer by Jesus to the disciples is not denied. It is accepted. Though the disciples hesitate in the first story, and though we have to wait a week to learn their decision, when Thomas comes back he speaks for them all. You are my Lord, Thomas says. You are my Lord, I am your subject. The movement of the total story through the two different versions is the doing of the deal, the making of the agreement, and provisioning for its implementation.

Jesus does not leave the disciples without resources. He grants them three. First, he gives them peace. Peace be with you. A valuable gift considering their fear and wonder. Second, he gives them the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit, he says, and he breathes on them. And third, he gives them a power, or an authority. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. This is a huge power (and it even has a name: the power of the keys—and is one of the few given to clergy on their ordination), though the power as always rests with God. They also get a fourth gift, the foundation for the others: the evidence that Jesus lives and is here.

The story of God and humans in the whole Bible has a trajectory, a story arc, or a motive, or the thing that pulls it forward through all its books. That trajectory is toward peace and freedom. Against fear and bondage. Against anxiety and captivity. Against judgment and toward grace—which is another way to say it.

The resurrection stories are part of that arc. They coincide with that arc. The readings for today mention peace, but they are mostly about freedom. In the reading from Acts, we hear how Jesus is freed from the power of death. It is, it says, part of the plan. In the psalm, we hear how God frees us from the power of fear. In the Gospel reading, how God frees us from the power of unforgiven sins. Jesus himself is a statement by God: you are free from the power of evil.

The disciples are locked in or confined in a room of fear. The door is closed. But earlier in John (in a passage about the good shepherd) Jesus told them: I am the door. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. Jesus both is a door and opens the door.

For Thomas, and for John, belief is not an action, not something we have to strive for or work at or feel bad about not having enough of. Not about doubting and conviction. But instead, it is a consequence of action. Or as in this case, the consequence of accepting the commission Jesus offers. Being convinced, through whatever means and experiences, that Jesus has the authority to make the offer in the first place. As God has sent me so I send you, Jesus says. And then being willing, both because of and in spite of all we know about following Jesus—both the joys and the hardships—to accept the offer. To be freed. To be sent. To open the door and go out.

Here is what we do not know: almost everything

2011-04-24T09:08:00.000-04:00

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

We are creatures of a moment. Our lives are small bits of encapsulated time. Seemingly bounded on both ends, mortals with beginnings and endings. Here is what we know for sure: we go from ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We say on Ash Wednesday: Remember that you are dust. And to dust you shall return. As if we needed reminding. We are assembled in the beginning from the ashes of long-dead stars. We are disassembled in the end to become the dusty raw ingredients of some other new life. Here is what we know for sure: birth, life, death. For all of us, it is the same. The same story.

Both ends oddly are times of both fear and joy. These two feelings filled the hearts of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Fear and great joy, it says in Matthew’s version of the Easter story. When a child is born, as when Mary the mother of Jesus looked on her son, as all parents look on their children, they wonder: will this child be all right? Will this child be happy? Be safe? Be loved and love in return? Will this child be fed in the spirit? What will this child’s life be? Parents filled with anticipation and apprehension in equal parts. With worrying-ahead and with great joy in equal parts.

And at the end of lives, though we who remain mourn our loss, those who go, go with fear and joy, though perhaps not in equal parts, some more one way than the other.

As parents and as mourners, here is what we do not know: what comes next? what will be?

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the tomb where the body of Jesus had been placed on the day of the previous Sabbath. Where he had been placed, dead, his death having been clear to everyone and attested to by the soldiers who went out to make sure. The two women went to watch the tomb, in Matthew’s story, not to anoint the body—that is in another Gospel. But to keep a vigil, to keep watch. Here is what they knew: Jesus was dead. The story of Jesus was over, except in memory. The once-promising story was ended, the closing scene had closed, fade to black, the credits had rolled off the screen. Were the two women sad? Of course they were, though it does not say so. How could they not have been saddened by both losses: both the loss of this man they loved and also the loss of everything everyone thought he was to bring: victory for Israel, freedom for the captives, a new world order. Finally, so important to Matthew, a good king of the line of David.

It turns out that the foundation of what they knew was shaky. The earth shook as they were at the tomb. It was scary, as earthquakes are. And scarier still: an angel in a white outfit suddenly appeared. It was a messenger—that’s what the word “angel” means—with a message for the two of them. The angel saw they were frightened. Who would not be? Do not be afraid, was the first thing the messenger said. As if they could not be. As if that would comfort them. Or maybe the angel meant to say: there is no reason to be frightened of me. I am just a messenger. The angel knew that they were seeking Jesus. And the angel said that Jesus was not there. Three clearly apparent things—their fear, their mission, and the empty tomb—one of which was astonishing.

Where was Jesus? He is not here, the angel said. Why not? Perhaps there were possible, reasonable explanations: Perhaps someone spirited him away (as the guards later think in verses we did not read). Perhaps this was the wrong tomb (probably not). Perhaps Jesus had only appeared dead (though they knew otherwise).

None of those things is the reason, says the messenger. Here is the message: Jesus has been raised. That is the reason Jesus was not there. Here is the same message again: Jesus has been raised from the dead. Here is the same message in a different form: You will see him soon, here, on this earth. As they did.

If you have come to Matthew’s Gospel looking for an explanation of what happened on Easter morning, you have come to the wrong place. There is no explanation. Matthew is big on history and genealogy, but not big on theology. Matthew’s is not like the Gospel of John. There is no theology here.

You may find that this text implies all sorts of things—in fact, people have been finding those things since the first century—but in this Gospel itself there are no implications drawn. There are only statements of fact. From this Gospel passage, here is all we know: the tomb was empty, Jesus was raised from the dead, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary saw him, Jesus spoke to them; and right after that the other disciples saw him, too, and he spoke to them. Aside from this, there is no help in Matthew for understanding Easter.

What did Jesus say to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary? He said “Hey, great to see you.” That’s really what the text says in Greek, which is translated in our Bible as “Greetings!” And he told them not to be afraid. What did Jesus say to the other eleven disciples? He gave them a command: go and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Which we here, 2000 years later, are about to do. And he told them to teach others all that they had seen and heard.

Most of the Gospel of Matthew is full of prophecy and prediction and foreshadowing, as we have talked about these past Sundays. But in the end, at the end, the message is this: keep your eyes and ears open, let Jesus greet you, tell everyone about it. Without elaboration or explanation. And tell them to do the same.

We are creatures of a moment. Here is what we do not know: almost everything. The story rarely turns out the way we think it will. The story is rarely over when we think it is. The boundaries are rarely as established as we think they are.

The Gospel of Matthew ends as Jesus meets with the disciples. But their experience of Jesus did not end there. The discovery of the empty tomb, the risen Christ, the appearance of Jesus gave energy and courage to the followers of Jesus to do as he ordered, telling the story over and over again. As we still do. Something happened—and continues to happen—with Jesus to transform people and shape their lives.

If we—like Mary Magdalene and Mary and the other disciples—if we follow Jesus, here’s one thing we know for sure: we will be surprised.

Great Expectations

2011-04-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Text: Matthew 21:1-11
Other texts: Passion according to Matthew

The sermon traditionally follows a reading from one of the four Gospels. That is because the preacher is supposed to take that his or her starting place. Even when the sermon talks about another of the readings, it is supposed to be influenced by the themes of the Gospel reading. But what are we to make of a day, like today, when there are two Gospel readings?

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is a strange day. It is like two Sundays folded into one. In fact, this Sunday has two names. One Sunday is Palm Sunday. We are in that Sunday now. In that Sunday, we re-enact a joyful march into Jerusalem. The people sing hosannas. They cry out that Jesus is a king and prophet and the fulfillment of prophecy and one who comes in God’s name. The disciples serve him.

The other Sunday is Passion Sunday. We will step into that Sunday in a moment. In fact, we are on the cusp between the two Sundays right this minute. In that Sunday, we hear the drama of the Passion of Christ. The people cry out for his execution by means of crucifixion and mock and torture him, and they call him a blasphemer. His disciples betray him and abandon him.

Why are these two Sundays mashed together like this? One reason is that the church at large decided a few decades ago that since people didn’t pay much attention to Holy Week anymore, they were missing the Passion story, which is what Holy Week is all about. They would hear about the triumph of the palm parade on Sunday. Then the next Sunday, being Easter, they would hear about the resurrection of Christ. But, they would miss everything in between, including the crucifixion, without which Easter does not make much sense. So the church affixed the crucifixion story to the palm story.

Another reason is that it seems like the two stories are actually related. The march into Jerusalem is, in Matthew’s Gospel, the beginning of the march of Jesus to his death. This, especially in Matthew but in all the Gospels, is Jesus’ destiny. By butting the two stories up against one another, we at least see that destiny unfold. What we don’t see is what goes on in the unfolding. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

But the reason I like best is that by placing the two stories side by side, we are forced to see how desperately people wanted to know, as the story we just heard asked: “Who is this?” Is this the king who will drive out the Romans from Israel? Or is this a criminal, seditious, blasphemous? Is this the world’s savior and liberator? Or is this a man who cannot save himself? Is this the man who speaks for God? Or is this a man who will not even speak for himself?

Matthew’s is a gospel of high expectations. Matthew’s agenda is not to prove Jesus was divine or a healer or a prophet to all peoples, some goals of the other Gospels. Matthew wants to show that Jesus has come to fulfill the promises God made to Israel in scripture. All the Gospels do the same, but Matthew does it more.

So today he quotes Isaiah, and the Psalms, and the prophets. When Jesus comes riding into the city, Matthew says he rides on both a donkey and a colt, which is a literal reading of Zechariah, who wrote: “See, your king comes to you, … gentle and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Yet the prophet was almost certainly writing Hebrew poetry, which uses repetition, not rhyme, for structure. Zechariah probably did not intend the king to straddle two animals at once. That is silly, something Luke and Mark seem to understand better than Matthew.

The people who line the road to Jerusalem expect that Jesus is the king who is to come to free Israel—that is, redeem it—from the occupying Romans and their toadies. The people sing that he is a descendant—son of—David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. He is the one who will restore peace, freedom, and justice—by restoring the nation to its rightful people and power. When we march down the aisles waving branches, we are acting as liberated rebels, welcoming our rebel leader. Singing hosanna! The word means literally “save, please.”

Yet, as we are soon to learn, it comes to nothing. Jesus is captured, tried, executed. The rebellion fizzles out. Jesus does not free Israel, and Rome remains powerful. With the same conviction as we re-enact the joy of Palm Sunday, we have to imagine the disappointment, the despair, of the people on Passion Sunday. This despair, though, does not have its roots in Jesus, but in us. Jesus did not promise to free Israel. We, standing by the roadside with our palms, just expected he would.

Expectation is cruel. It is bound to lead to disappointment. That is because expectations are fantasies of the future that are either met or they are not. If you expect the Red Sox to win the World Series—they either will or they won’t. You take no comfort in a near miss. If does no good to say “They didn’t win the World Series but they did well.” Not if you expected them to win. While I admit the Red Sox are important, if you find unmet expectation in, say, your job or in your relationship, it is much worse.

Since the first Palm Sunday, people have expected things of Jesus. For some, Jesus is not much more than a bundle of things expected. For many, Jesus bears all our longings: for comfort, or safety, or companionship, or liberation, or even victory in battle. For healing, and for justice. Since the time of the original Passion Sunday, people’s expectations have been unmet. I’m not saying that Jesus does not provide and effect much; I’m saying that our expectations of him often say more about us than about Jesus.

Apostle Paul writes that the death of Jesus on the cross was a scandal. Not only horrible, as it was for the many others of his time who were crucified, but inconceivable. Against all expectations and therefore a barrier—a stumbling block, he says—to those who might otherwise follow him. We put attributes and expectations on God, and then reject God when God does not conform to or meet them. Secularists sometimes do this when they argue against religion, but Christians do it too.

Holy Week is an intense time for Christians. A lot of story is crammed into a little space—like two Sundays into one. But it also can be a time to take a closer look at Jesus. Jesus did not go straight from Palm Sunday to Easter, but he did not go straight from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, either. While in Jerusalem, he said a lot of things and did a lot of things that made many people curious, apprehensive, or angry. The powers of the nation did not crucify Jesus because he was a nice guy. They feared and distrusted him and the transformation of the world that he preached about.

For this reason, I encourage you to read the parts of Matthew that we skip over today. That would be from chapter 21 verse 12 through chapter 26 verse 14. At the same time, I’ll be posting a short reflection about some of these stories each day this week, starting tomorrow, on Faith’s site. You can find out more in the bulletin.

The Palm and Passion stories together constitute a story of unmet expectation, but they say nothing about hope. Expectation and hope are two different things altogether. Expectations of others can mislead us, but our hopes are true because they are ours. We can hope for a World Series win in 2011 in spite of all the current evidence. Hope is not wishful thinking, it is deep longing. Expectations are tested, hopes are lived out.

The story of Jesus did not end with the Crucifixion. It did not end with the Resurrection. Or even with the Ascension a few weeks later. Whenever you expect the story of Jesus to be over, it turns out differently. It lived on in the apostles, in the early followers of Christ, and 2000 years later, lives in us. Sustained, as always, by hope for renewed life and a world transformed.

Is God With Us or Not?

2011-03-27T23:40:00.001-04:00

Text: Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42

Their fear obliterated their memory and it erased their gratitude. Without water in the desert, they forgot that God had freed them from slavery, had defeated their foes, and had fed them as they searched for the land to which God had sent them. Now, thirsty, impatient, and terrified, they complained to Moses: where is God? Is God among us—or not?

Fear drives out the memory of God’s good acts and intentions. But we cannot escape being afraid. We have had times in our own deserts, parched, exhausted, lost. We will have them again. That’s why we tell ourselves the story of God and us over and over again. That’s why the God of Israel is named “God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Why Jesus is named in the opening worship prayer as “Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

It is why we hear these stories Sunday after Sunday for our whole lives. It is why we read the Bible, the story not only of God or only of a people, but of God and us, God’s people, together. It is why the Baptism rite that we will soon celebrate starts by recounting God’s creation, God’s deeds, God’s redemption of Israel, and the baptism, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And it is why we relate the story before we share Holy Communion.

Wandering in the desert, the people demand water from Moses. It is not an unreasonable demand, for without water they will all die. And they complain about his leadership. Has he sold them a bill of goods? Has he brought them here only to kill them, and all they have, and even their children? Moses has promised them freedom and prosperity, but so far the freedom has been the freedom to suffer and the prosperity a mirage. Yet Moses speaks for God in this book, and Moses can see as well as we can that it is God’s promise that they now doubt. Where was God?

Is God among us—or not? It is the mark of the Israelites’ despair that they wondered not only whether God was no longer with them, but—with that last little addition: “or not”—whether God had ever been with them. Have they erred in interpreting all of history? Perhaps, after all, God is uninterested in humans. Perhaps, against all the teachings of their faith, God had turned away from them. And they were alone.

It is a tragic moment. And though quickly turned about when God through Moses brings water flowing from a rock and they all drink, the terror of the moment remains in the minds of the wanderers and the tellers of this story. For Israelites are God’s people and God is their God. There is no story of Israel that does not include God. And the deepest sadness of Israel has been—as it is in this story—to think that God—whose existence is never the question—that God has abandoned them.

Centuries later, Jesus walks to the well in Samaria. It is the heat of the day, and he too is thirsty. The fate of Israel is uncertain in these times, divided within itself and occupied by the Romans. It has been a long and at times a dreary story that has unfolded from the time Moses struck that rock in the desert. There have been ups and downs, and now is one of the downs. The years have not been good to Israel. Things have not worked out well, Israel has been torn apart, exiled, resettled, corrupted, and conquered. The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed once and, by the time John wrote this Gospel, destroyed again. Is God among us—or not?

This is John’s question in his Gospel, and the woman’s question, too. Once she decides Jesus is a prophet, and maybe more than a prophet, the first thing she asks is a question about God’s presence. I see you are a prophet, she says. So: where is God? Is God up on that mountain—where the Samaritans worship—or is God in that city of Jerusalem—where the Jews worship? None of the above, Jesus tells her. He tells her: God is here, right in front of you. We are longing for the messiah, she says. Jesus says to her: “It’s me!” The one standing here with you.

Jesus in John, more than in the other three Gospels, is God among us. Jesus is here, in this world, staying here. In John, Jesus resides, stays, remains—the same word used over and over. Where are you staying, the first disciples ask him. Come and see. Come and see, the Samaritan woman tells her friends. And Jesus stays with them awhile. And they come to believe him.

For all his divinity—emphasized in John—still, Jesus in this Gospel is committed to this world, and the salvation that Jesus brings is one that affects this world now, at the moment. In John, more so than in the other Gospels, Jesus has affection for the world. He makes wine from water. He cries for his friend Lazarus. He prays emphatically for the well-being of his friends, the disciples. After his death and resurrection, he hangs around with them, and in the end they all share breakfast.

For John, there is no faith if God is not among us. Our faith and trust in God develop over time in relationship, just as they do between people. How can we believe in and trust a being whom we do not know? And how can we know a being who is not here with us? The story of faith is first: presence; then second: experience; and at last, third: belief.

The church is a steward of God’s presence. That is, through common action, and through repetition and rite and testimony we remind each other that God is among us—yes. Even in the face of inevitable fear and doubt. So it is that in the ceremony we are all about to take part in, we promise to “join with others in worshipping God.” All together members of the body of Christ.

We cannot remain free of desert times, but our fear need not destroy our memory of God, who is here, in this body, among us.

Tempted to be Perfect

2011-03-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

Text: Genesis 3:1-7

It is tempting to read this passage in Matthew as a call to us to be perfect.

We are all tempted by one thing or another, we think, and in this Gospel story Jesus is tempted by the same things. One view is that we all need food, we all need safety, and we all need to have some control over our lives. So those are the things with which the tempter tests Jesus. A darker view of the temptations is that represent our desire to magically force the world to our will, to be the center of something spectacular, and to have power over all who would thwart us.

Either way, in the story Jesus is tempted as we are, by the things we are. But the difference between us and Jesus is that we succumb to temptations and Jesus does not. We are human, after all, and sin. But Jesus, who is supposed to be a model for us, is perfect. We, if you buy this interpretation, are supposed to be perfect, too. But I don’t buy it, and I don’t think Jesus would, either.

Perfection is a tricky sort of thing.

When a couple gives birth to new baby, or adopts one, you hear the parents say, “He’s just perfect,” “she’s just perfect.” The couple’s friends see a wonderful child, but sometimes a little bald or a little flushed or whatever—signs of humanity—wonderful but not perhaps perfect. It may be that the eyes of the new parents are blinded. It may be that they see perfection where the rest of us see only really-good.

It may be that parents see more poorly than others. Or maybe instead they see better. And that perfection is what they see. Their child, though as flawed as humanity can be, is perfect.

When God created the heavens and the earth—in Genesis, before the Garden episode we just heard about—when God created each day, at the end of the day God pronounced it good. God said in Hebrew: It is Tov. Which means a little more than good. It means good like everything is working fine and all the parts seem to fit the way they are supposed to. It means perfect, like when you finish a project and you’re pretty happy about it and you say, “perfect.” God made the world, and God said, “perfect. It’s just perfect.” Perfect for what it is, like a perfect new child is perfect—just so, creation was perfect.

The actions of the man and the woman did not undo that. A child grows and the parents still look and see a perfect child. Even though as people grow up they do things that are messed up, they are no less children of their parents, who see them as at the same time both flawed and perfect. Does God see creation with eyes any less loving?

The story of the events in the garden is a story written from our point of view. The point of view of humanity now. How in the world did we get to this state of affairs? In a sense, the garden story is a story of growing up. And like all good growing up stories, the key moment is the discovery of evil. The story doesn’t so much explain things as name them. We humans feel the force of evil. Something that is greater than our own individual inclinations to be bad. Something more cosmic than that.

The story is a story of discovery. An unfortunate discovery, for sure. The man and woman eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not just the tree of knowledge: this is not about wisdom. And not the tree of evil. The tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What the man and woman know now that they didn’t before is that evil exists, that is causes harm and hurt, and that it is different from good. And different from God. And they discover that humans are somehow caught in the interaction.

What changes is what they know, not what they are or who they are. Which is mortal children of God. This story is not the story of the beginning of sin. We do not learn from this story that sin is brought into the world by the actions of the woman and man, in spite of what the Apostle Paul argues. All we do know is that the are both tempted by a serpent, which most of us, correctly I think, make out to be the devil, the evil one. And that they succumb. They are changed. But they are no more changed in type or nature than we are as children or as our children are.

We often think of sin as some kind of unfortunate add-on. An ugly and burdensome accessory. Or like a few extra pounds that we carry. Something we can get rid of as easily as we can rid ourselves of extra weight by dieting: something difficult but possible. We sometimes look at the saints (or sainted people we know) as we look at the “after” models in diet ads. People who have amazingly prevailed.

But sin is not shed by spiritual diets. That’s what Luther found when he decided that all his good works (all his diet-like discipline) weren’t helping him. Sin is of us. That does not mean we are bad. Only that we are creatures. We sin.

God loves us for what we are. I’m sure you have heard that before. But this does not mean that God loves us in spite of our sins. Not that God loves our clean souls that happen to be covered in mud at the moment. God loves us in our sins, not in spite of them. God loves us because we are still perfect, each still God’s child.

We love one another for our vulnerabilities, not in spite of them. That’s why, I suspect, people love you. People love you for your vulnerabilities. Not because you are so great, but because you are great and also you are not always so great. God loves us because we are great and not so great.

The story in Matthew is not about us being perfect. It is not about us at all. It is about Jesus, who he is, his identity, and the life that he is about to enter. It is a temptation story, but the temptation that he faces in the desert and in his life is not the temptation to be perfect. Which is not a problem for Jesus. Jesus feels in the desert the strong urges that all people feel. Eating when hungry, worrying about being safe, trying to keep things under control. Jesus feels, in this beginning of his ministry, what it is to be human.

And the temptation of Jesus is to give in to his desire to be human. To be like an ordinary human. To be only so brave and not braver. To live a long and happy life in the company of his best friends. To avoid his mission and destiny. To avoid the inevitable suffering and the cross ahead.

When Jesus dismisses the tempter: Away with you, Satan!—he uses the same words he uses later to dismiss Peter. Get behind me, Satan! Peter offers what the tempter offers. Human living. Peter and the tempter hold out to Jesus what only he cannot have: a mortal and flawed life just like ours. Jesus, like earthly leaders, only more so, is alone.

The desire to be perfect is Satan’s call. He tempts Jesus and us with the prospect of ignoring, escaping, or dismissing the world. His call appears in many voices of the world suggesting that we can be perfect. They are, as we say in baptism, the devil’s empty promises. They call to us. But God’s voice is not one of them.

Ups and Downs

2011-03-06T08:43:00.000-05:00

Text: Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration)

Life has its ups and downs.

On the upside is upbeat. Things are looking up. It’s uplifting because we’re flying high. Up is where the penthouses are and the desks of the big-shots. Upgraded.

And up is where the heavens are. Up is where Jesus went when he ascended, and Elijah went up, too. Jesus rose from the dead and now Jesus is up there, sitting at the right hand of the father. Up on the mountain is where Moses went to get the law. And up on the mountain is where Jesus went with a couple of his disciples to meet with Moses and Elijah. Up is where the word of God came from: up is where God spoke from the cloud and up is where the Spirit came from like a dove. Up is the direction in which we lift our hearts in thanksgiving and hands and voices in praise. Up is where God lives.

On the downside is downtrodden. In the dumps. Where we hit bottom before we turn up again. Down is a downer. Down is where the mailroom is and the basement apartments. Down is the dark underground. Down is where we get down to work and down and dirty.

And down is the place of death. Down is where Jesus went after being crucified. It is where he went when, as we say in the creed, he descended into hell. Down is where the story goes after the mountaintop. Back down to the world of flesh and suffering and joyful desire. Down is where Moses came to find his people worshipping a golden calf idol. Down is where Jesus came to walk to his death. Down is where we live.

Matthew, the Gospel writer, is interested in high places and highfalutin ideas. In Matthew, Jesus’ great sermon is made from a mountain—known therefore as the sermon on the mount. In contrast, in Luke’s version, Jesus preaches down on the plain. In Luke, the ones who are blessed are poor and the hungry. In Matthew, they are poor in spirit and hunger for righteousness. In Luke and in Mark, the followers of Jesus call him master or rabbi, meaning teacher. In Matthew, they call Jesus Lord.

Is Jesus an up kind of person or a down kind of one? Is he mostly a divine creature who lives in the clouds, one who even in his lifetime hung around with the likes of a timeless Moses and Elijah? Or is he mostly immanuel, God with us, down here in an earthly and earthy way? Which is primary?

The dogmatic answer to this is that Jesus is 100% divine and 100% human; that is what we teach. But the dogma is a knife edge from which people—who are not easy with mysterious paradox—tend to fall to one side or the other. As even the early writings—the Gospels—demonstrate.

The centuries have not settled the issue. Five hundred years ago Martin Luther and his contemporaries were arguing about where Jesus was now that he had ascended to the right hand of God. The context was a debate about whether or not Jesus was in the bread that we eat in Holy Communion. There were those who said that if Jesus was sitting next to God, then he was up in heaven and could not be down here on earth, in the bread. But Luther said, first, that Jesus could be anywhere he felt like, as often as he felt like it, even if it meant two places at once. But more, Luther had a very down to earth view of Jesus. Jesus was a friend of the earth, of us, poor earthy creatures, and was glad to continue to be with us down here, in whatever form.

This up and down business about Jesus and God is not inevitable. That is, the position of God and us does not have to be along a vertical axis, God high and we low. This notion is not something that is in the nature of things human and divine. It is just the way our imaginations picture it. The home of God could just have easily been off to the unreachable left or right. At the end of the earth, for example, beyond the edge of the sea, as gods sit in some other faiths. Or in a secret cave. Or in the middle of the earth, or an emerald city, or in an alternate reality.

What we think about God is that God is hard to reach in normal life by normal methods of travel. God is separate. Up in the heavens is a good spot because we cannot travel up by our own means. We cannot fly. Gravity pulls us down again. When we try to fly, as Icarus did, we are destined to fail, as Icarus did, a sign of hubris, thinking himself to be above the life of mortals. We cannot fly to heaven on our own.

You may wonder why today’s Gospel story—called the Transfiguration—should merit a Sunday of its own. In the three-year cycle of readings, it appears every year, along with only a handful of other special days like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost. Every other story has to wait three years before it returns. The Transfiguration does appear in each of the three first Gospels, which means that in the earliest Christian tradition the story was considered important and widespread.

The story doesn’t really add much to our or the disciple’s knowledge of Jesus. They already have decided and declared that he is the Son of God. It does not provide decisive new evidence. It does not advance the plot. Jesus has already established that he comes from the spiritual line of the Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets). At best, it confirms Jesus’ provenance, his pedigree, his class of people. So maybe evidence is not the purpose or the point.

People find the transfiguration story to be disturbing and confusing. That is because it seems magical and mystical. It has ghosts in it, and clouds, and bright lights, and voices from God that speak directly to some humans. And Jesus seems comfortable with that. It’s the disciples who are freaked out.

It is not that Jesus does something extraordinary. In all the Gospels he has already presided over some major miracles, healing people, feeding multitudes, raising people from the dead. The transfiguration is not more miraculous.

But it is less earthy. This is not a man of the people doing things with divine assist. What happens is way beyond people-things. It makes Jesus, who seemed to be down here, up there. That’s one reason that Peter wants to build those booths: he wants this experience to be made more mundane, daily, attached. And in the end, Jesus does come back down here. Not only is it not his time to stay on the mountain, as some argue, it is not his job.

The story of the transfiguration says: there are parts of Jesus that are not human, in a major way. We cannot elide this or ignore it. The story of the transfiguration is put right smack in the middle of the Gospels, up on a mountain. It is in the way. We cannot get from the ministry of Jesus to his passion without going through the transfiguration.

There are many who see Jesus in daily things. Luther did, and likewise Lutherans do by tradition and teaching. Jesus is earthy, a person of the earth, as we are. People discover Jesus in events of their lives, in compassion, in stories, in teachings.

But many discover Jesus in a moment that cannot be explained easily, not connected to daily events. Mysterious moments. Those discoveries are powerful. They can support one’s faith life for a long time. Sometimes, when things get rough and dubious, the memory of that moment is all that keeps one faithful and true. It can be all that one has to keep one trying to know God and to praise and thank God. It can sustain us when the life of this earth is too hard, or vicious, or disappointing, or crazy.

We are creatures of the earth, down here. But we need the food of the heavens, up there. We made in God’s image are persons, as Jesus was, of divine and mortal ancestry. Mystery is as essential to us as pragmatism.

We, like the disciples, abide in two worlds. After hearing the voice in the cloud, the disciples fall down in fear. But Jesus touches them. Rise up, he says. And then he says, come back down with me.

Pulled This Way and That Way

2011-02-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

Text: Matthew 6:24-34
Other texts: Psalm 131

The season of Lent is nearly upon us. Ash Wednesday is ten days away. On that day we are reminded of our humble origins in the dust of the earth, given life breathed into us by God. It is a day of humility that begins a season of humility.

Lent, like Advent, is a time reserved in the church year for soul-searching contemplation. It is a time to look hard at ourselves, at how things are going, at how we are doing. And it is a time to pray and think about how we would like things to be, how, maybe we would like things to be different. It is a time to get back in sync if we are out of sync, to be restored if we are bone-weary, to be quiet if we live in a cacophony. It is a time to be sane if things seem insane.

A longing to be at peace is an ancient longing. So there are disciplines, actions, that people perform during Lent that help them come to peace. Some of them—alms-giving, for example—have fallen into disuse. But “giving up” something for Lent remains. People give things up during Lent.

You might think of this as a chore. Or you might think of it as a great relief. An opportunity to lay down some of the burdens, obligations, and desires that you always carry with you. These burdens can be a distraction, making it impossible for us to think as clearly as the season of Lent asks us to. They are like little buzzing bugs that keep us from being mindful of ourselves and of God, keep us from loving those we love, from seeing the gifts and beauty in the world and in people around us.

We are invited by today’s readings to think about the things that rule us, that rule our lives. Perhaps you think that there are no such things. That you are not ruled by anything other than yourself. That you are the boss of you. Perhaps that is so for you. Perhaps you never feel the need for comforting by someone outside yourself. Perhaps you never look for direction outside of yourself. Perhaps you are self-assured; you never need reassuring.

Or perhaps instead you feel that you are small and the world is big, and that there are forces that draw you and push you—more or less—and that you are subject to them.

Last week Katie reminded us in her sermon that it is not our job to judge. We were invited to give up judging (and not just for Lent). It is God’s job. This week the Bible reminds us that it is not our job to provide for ourselves. It is God’s job. This seems harder. We can imagine that we can go without judging (though I doubt we can). It is harder to imagine that we can go without toiling and reaping.

Jesus in the Gospel is not suggesting that we do not need to eat and drink and be sheltered. God knows you need these things, Jesus says. These very things are the things God says we must provide for one another in the “goats and sheep” last judgment episode later in Matthew. We are animals; we need sustenance and security. But are we to let our striving for them rule us? And if not, what will? Which is the master, Jesus asks, that we serve?

Psalm 131 captures our deep longing for Home with a capital “H.” A place of total peace. Of safety. Of soft embrace. Like a child with its mother. Still, my soul, and make it quiet. Put aside pride, haughtiness, overwhelming matters, things too hard. Let my soul be still.

But in the psalm the child on its mother’s breast is not nursing, but is weaned, no longer totally dependent. It is not naive in the ways of the world. It is experienced. It has, we can imagine, come back to its mother after having been away on adventures, discovery, and struggles.

That’s what children do (it is built in; even monkeys do it). That’s what people do. We march out confident, curious, eager. Later, maybe frightened, maybe confused, maybe just tired, we hope to come back to a source of life for us. We need a base camp, a home base. An “all in free” safe spot. The place in which our souls can rest quietly.

But what if there are two such places? Competing places. Two masters, as Jesus calls them. Two mothers to which we might return. What then? Can there be two rocks on which our lives stand? Can there be two foundations? Can there be two mothers? In particular, can one of them be God and the other of them be money (and the stuff that money is good for)? Can we hang precariously balanced between the two, like between two poles of a magnet? No, Jesus says. You will hate one and love the other, Jesus says. They make different demands for the same you. They provide different comforts, different hopes, different guidance.

How will we know which to choose? For it seems that Jesus is giving us a choice to be made. We know in our brains, since we are faithful people, we should choose God. But in our hearts? What does our heart tell us?

Imagine you have two sweethearts vying for your affection and that you must choose only one. You ask yourself: to which are you more attracted? Or which would you rather please? To which do you turn when afraid? Or which are you most afraid of losing? What if the two are God and money?

Which is home to you, with a capital “H”?

If this were an easy question to answer, they wouldn’t be talking about it in the Bible like they do. If it were easy to trust in God instead of money, Jesus wouldn’t be telling us so energetically to choose God. He wouldn’t be making elaborate arguments about lilies and birds. He wouldn’t tell us as frequently as he does not to worry (the most frequently stated of all the commands of Jesus).

If this is a good time for soul-searching, as it might be for you, it is a good time to ask ourselves: what draws us most strongly? For you, which makes a better mother? If this is a time to get back in sync and to restore our weary bones, which master best shows us the way?

Which has brought you life and sanity? Which has brought you comfort? Which has been more reliable? Which stills your soul and brings you peace? Which, when you go there, feels like you are home?

Open Hands

2011-02-20T13:23:00.000-05:00

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

Preacher: Katie Wilson, vicar at Faith.

Thank you all for having me here. Thank you All for being here.

Today I would like to speak about equality, and inclusivity, and what those words mean to me in light of our gospel reading: to “give to everyone” and to “Love your enemies.”

I have preached before about the work we do in Faith Kitchen, providing hot meals and a shared community, and the way that the doors of Faith Lutheran are “metaphorically thrown wide open, and all are welcome.” In a way, on these meal nights, we are trying to put into practice the words of the Gospel, the words we have read today in Matthew: “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow.”

Give to Everyone. Do not refuse Anyone. This is a Big task that we have at hand.

When we make the statement at Faith Kitchen, or in worship at Faith Lutheran, that All are Welcome, we are aligning ourselves with this same sense of radical equality that Jesus exhorts us to in the gospel. We will not refuse anyone. Every Sunday, you will find printed in your bulletin these words: “All are welcome. Christ invites all to share in his holy supper. None will be turned away from God’s table.” These words, printed again and again, do more than communicate to a new visitor the inclusivity that Faith offers. While some might gloss these words over or simply expect them and take them for granted, for others—those who have been marginalized or turned away in the past—those words “All are Welcome” might be the hinge on which their whole world swings. Yet these words do more than inform the new comers, these words, if we let them, can inform us again and again of our commitment to equality.

I have been reflecting, though, on this notion of “equality;” on what assumptions we carry along when engaging it as a concept, and on how far we are willing to extend it to others. It is easy enough to say that All are Welcome. Or to say that every human being on earth deserves equal rights, human rights, equal treatment, God’s love. I think it is even easy enough to believe in this wholeheartedly.

My question, then, is about the specifics of putting it into practice: day by day, minute by minute, and keeping it in practice even when facing people who do not make it easy, even when facing people that make it very, very hard. When we say or believe that everyone deserves equality and that everyone is included in the spectrum of the Gospel’s commandment to give and to love, then that means we must maintain that commitment throughout the myriad challenges of our lives. It means that we must include the disruptive and threatening guests in our picture of who is welcome at our table. It means, on a communal and global level, that we must include even the people that make it excruciatingly Hard to do this practice: because total inclusivity includes the violent, and the cruel, it includes the worst things we can imagine inhabiting our world.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. This means to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute others, who wound others, this means to pray for the ones who make hate and fear boil up in your throat like black tar. Pray for them, and meanwhile, ask yourself if they are Welcome. Are they included in your vision of God’s table? Do they have the equal right to God’s love?

We are running up now against the edge of “equality” that’s been troubling me. When we say “All are Welcome” it is not just an invitation to others. It is not a performative act with lines of small print hidden at the bottom saying “All are Welcome—unless you are angry, mean, scary, hateful, hurtful, of this race or that sex, wearing an atrocious coat, or too noisy when everyone else is quiet.” When we contemplate deeply the notion of equality, or the statement “All are Welcome,” it is a challenge to ourselves to examine our innermost landscapes, our own most subtle aversions, our deepest beliefs. It can be a call to put these beliefs into action, to practice what we think we believe.

Because—obviously—it is extremely difficult to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is entirely appropriate that as we ponder these words and contemplate this type of complete inclusivity, that we ask ask of ourselves: How? How do I practice this, how could I refuse no one, how would I love and pray for someone who persecutes, who hurts my family? This is a never ending question and I do not propose to answer it definitively. In contemplating it, I recalled a poem I have long loved that doesn’t answer this question either—but it helps to keep me asking. It was written by the 16th century Spanish Carmelite Nun, Teresa of Avila:

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

There are many venues in which we can practice letting our hands become the hands of Christ. Giving to those who beg from us, turning the left cheek if someone strikes the right, offering our cloak to one who takes our coat—these are actions that keep Christ’s actions alive in our world. And we can practice such awareness while serving meals, sweeping floors, while watching the violent news of war and protest in distant lands and close to home, while bearing the burden of our own deepest wounds, fears, and concerns. We have been told that the sun rises on the evil and on the good; the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike. It is not that there is no difference between evil and good: just that We are not the ones to judge it. That is not our work. That is not our job. And speaking for myself—the realization that I cannot judge another comes as a huge relief. My work, then, is to welcome, to include, from my highest theory to my smallest moments; in the times it is easy and the times it is very, very hard.

It is helpful for me to remember this poem in moments when my hands are struggling to give, when there is a shadow over the ability of my eyes to shine compassion on the world. I remember that Christ has no hands to do this work, but mine; but then I catch myself, and remember that it’s not about my hands, my body, “mine.”

What I want to say is that Christ has no body now but OURS.

So not only can I allow myself to see my hands as the hands of Christ, I can re-affirm my commitment to equality, and inclusivity, every time I see your hands and your feet as the hands and feet that Christ has to work with now. We do this any time we look into the eyes of a stranger and know that somehow Christ is looking back at us, shining compassion on the world.

To be egalitarian and radically inclusive is not about me deciding that I am kind and good and educated enough to accept the equality of everyone around me. It is about acknowledging that everyone around me is Already Inherently Included in God’s love. Just as it is not my job to make the sun shine or the rain fall, I have no ability to determine who is good or evil, righteous or unrighteous. Where would I draw that line? Equality and inclusivity is about deciding that I have no right to judge who is, or who isn’t, who might be or who might not be, doing Christ’s work in the world.

We are all flawed as humans, we are complicated and moody and we frequently fall far short of our highest ideals and goals. The point is that we are In Process, we are moving towards the self that we would like to be. When we move towards the inclusivity, the compassion of our own heart and when we shine that back to others, we move towards “God.” It is not alone that we do this, but with a community: our community is what reflects God to us, what shows us that Christ is moving through our own flawed and tired hands.

And Here—right here—is just such an opportunity.

Every Sunday, as part of the service, we greet each other in fellowship; we look into each other’s eyes, take each other’s hands and with all the presence and the sincerity we can muster, we wish each other Peace, Peace be with you. You may not know every person whose hand you have taken or whose eyes you have looked into. You may, in fact, three days from now be stuck behind them in line at the grocery store as they slowly unload 12 items in the 10 item express lane; you might be cut off in traffic by them later this afternoon. But you have looked into their eyes in presence, you have wished them well. You have transformed them, and they, in turn, transformed you. These are the eyes of Christ that Teresa of Avila refers to: your own eyes.

Perhaps it feels like a big leap from transforming the frustration we feel in traffic to my attempt at a theological inclusion of those who wreck violence into our vision of who is welcome at God’s table. But I believe that the seed is the same and that it is important to make the connection between them: to reflect on equality not as an distant status but as an intimate and constant process, to acknowledge the unending and difficult inner work that a commitment to inclusivity asks of us, to honor our not-knowing and our inability to judge or draw the deciding line between good and evil, even as we strive to see ourselves, and everyone we meet, as the hands and eyes and body of Christ working compassion on the world.

So if I ask Who am I to judge? Who are we to judge? Then of course I also have to ask of myself “who am I to preach this to any of you?” I have no connection that you do not have. I have no purchase on this text, or on these words, which is not also right here, waiting, and available to you. This is an invitation to practice the words of the Gospel, to participate in Teresa of Avila’s poem. We are all invited, we are all essential; we are all included.

Getting in the Way of Life

2011-02-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

Text: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I set before you life and death, says Moses, blessings and curses. Choose life.

I should carry those words of Moses on a card in my wallet. I should have them as my screen saver. I should tattoo them on my arm. At some of the most important decisions of my life, these words have been a guide, a prod, a test of motivation and validity. They are like the room with two doors. Which door to take? Which way is life, life-giving, listens to life calling? Which way is death, life-draining, listens to fear?

These words were not written to be used like that. They were not proclaimed by Moses so that I could make better personal decisions. They were made for bigger things. They were made for Israel. They were an exhortation disguised as an option. Moses stood before all the Israelites, freed from Egypt, having been given the gift of law, chosen by God, promised land. Moses speaks to them. This speech is his last will and testament. It is a summary of all that his life has been and all that Israel has seen. Now the people are on the threshold of a new land. Moses is near his death. He will not see the land that God has sworn to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I have led you by God’s will out of slavery, Moses tells them. I have given you the law from God, he says. I have brought you with God’s guidance to this land. Before you now you may go this way or that. The doors are clearly marked. There is no guessing. This way is the way of God, doing what God commands, keeping God your God. This way is the way of life. Land, prosperity. That way is turning your back on God, choosing others. That way is the way of death. Wandering, adversity. Choose one, Moses says. No, he corrects himself. Choose this one! Choose life!

So on they go, into the land, choosing to follow the commandments, to be God’s people. But like the book of Deuteronomy itself, the future is open ended. There is not one choice made once and for all. The story of the rest of the Bible is the story of a people who betray and abandon God over and over, choosing death as often as life. And then being—thank God—reconciled, restored, redeemed—forgiven—over and over.

Set before each of us is the same choice set before all Israel. Choose life. And in the end the buck stops here. It stops with each of us. And so the grand choice of Israel turns out to be implemented over the centuries in the humble and routine choices of you and me. Maybe we need those cards and screen savers to remind us of what we are doing.

These bigs words of Moses—life and death—have appeared in the lives of many, including mine, in smaller words. Is what I’m about to do generous or greedy? Am I acting out of love or out of fear? Is it brave or cowardly? For me only or for others? Is it moving forward or retreating? Is it playful or grim?

But perhaps I am misleading you into thinking that this passage in Deuteronomy is mostly about choosing things. Though the effect comes down to that. This passage is a warning. The warning is this: There are things that are deadly. God is not. You’ll stick with God, if you know what’s good for you.

Rather than list a whole bunch of deadly things, I want to mention two things in particular today. I want to talk about worry and about regret. I want to do that because it seems to me that it is possible that worry and regret squeeze God right out of our lives, and in the end there is no life left to choose.

Worry is an attempt to control the future. When we awake at 4:30 in the morning—or whatever that time is for you—when we awake before the sun is up, it’s because we are trying to figure out how to make things work that might not. We imagine conversations and how they might go our way. We imagine tactics that can foil our detractors. We imagine ways to protect things that are ours. We imagine scary scenarios and wonder how we might prevent them.

Regret is an attempt to control the past. We think as if we could relive that shameful event, or undo the hurt, or to seize the opportunity. To say the words or to unsay them. We imagine that those conversations did go differently, we imagine that those scary scenarios we did prevent.

Worry and regret are the same thing. We know that to be so because they make us feel the same way. Helpless. Powerless. Anxious. In our hearts and insides, our guts. They lead our thoughts into little unfulfilling circles.

We cannot control the past and we cannot control the future. We can remember the past. And we do hope for and plan for the future. But in the end, the past and the future are not in our hands. We need to let them go.

We are taught by our faith to trust God. What good is worry? the Bible asks us. Consider the lilies of the field, it suggests. Give away all that you have, Jesus tells us. Do not set up treasures for yourself on earth. Expect the unexpected. Worry fights trust.

We are taught by our faith that God forgives us our sins. God frees us from our shameful past, the hurts we have caused, the good left undone. We are promised forgiveness for all our misdeeds. Regret fights forgiveness.

In our worry, we shove God out of the future. In our regret, we shove God out of the past. We squeeze God out of all the hours of our lives. All we are left with is ourselves.

In choosing life we choose, Moses says, to listen to God. To not hear is to choose death. Worry and regret are too noisy in our brains. They make us deaf to God’s voice. You do not hear, Moses says. God seems silent to us. If to choose if is to walk with God, as the Bible says, how will we know what is life and what is death if our own anxious voices drown out God’s.

Quiet those anxious voices. Stop a moment. Listen for God who forgives your past and steps with you into the future. Choose life.

A Practical Guide to Happiness

2011-02-06T08:06:00.000-05:00

Text: Psalm 112
Other texts: Isaiah 58:1-12

A couple of weeks ago social observer David Brooks wrote about happiness. Happiness has been in the news a lot these days. It is trendy to talk about happiness. This is new. Though happiness may have been a goal for people, it was not considered polite to talk about it. Maybe people thought that happiness was not a worthy pursuit. Too self-centered sounding, maybe. Or maybe happiness was supposed to be a side effect of something else: accomplishment, say, or wealth, or a good marriage.

But it turns out that people are not very happy and they are not very happy about not being happy. They are supposed to be happy, but they are not. What’s up with that? It is disappointing. And we do like to talk about what’s disappointing.

Another thing: times are tough. But we have lost the sense that if times were better we’d be happier. Being better off has not made us happy. Our values have betrayed us. We do like to talk about betrayal, too.

Brooks writes about this. He says, “many Americans have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant cultural bias. They live in a society that prized the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it comes to things that matter most. … When it comes to their most important decisions—whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise—they are on their own.” And he says they don’t know to whom to turn.

But help is on the way from science, who is now willing to talk about happiness. “Brain science,” he says, “helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy.”

I love brain science. And Brooks’s article is wonderful and funny and insightful. But I think he should read Psalm 112. Whose subject is how to be happy. A lot of the Bible is about happiness, which is, as I said last week, another word for blessed. We are suppose to be happy. And the Bible is not quiet about how to live a happy life. And it is not vague.

There are two sorts of ways the Bible talks about happiness. One is the crabby way. “If you don’t do things this way, you’ll be sorry.” You will not be happy, you’ll feel estranged from God, bad things will happen, you’ll be confused and feel empty. There is a little bit of that in today’s first reading from Isaiah. (And the prophets seem to like this mode in general). You, Isaiah tells his audience, are greedy, quarreling hypocrites. No wonder things are not working out. No wonder you are not happy.

The other way the Bible talks about happiness I’ll call the Praise the Lord! way. That’s the way of today’s psalm. “Praise the Lord!” is how it starts. And then it goes on to tell everyone how to be happy. The source of happiness is God. And the way to be happy is to do what God says. This should not be surprising if we think, as it says in Genesis, that God was pleased with creation and called it good. Implicit in this is that God knows what is good for us, that God hopes that we will be happy, and that God is unhappy when we are. If we think that God is happy when we are miserable and takes pleasure in our suffering, we probably are thinking of the wrong god.

The psalm is divided into three parts. But before I talk about them, you should know that this particular psalm, Psalm 112, like nine other psalms, is an acrostic. That means each line begins—in Hebrew—with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You can get the idea in English in this translation:

Alleluia! (A, right?)

Blessed (this line begins with “B”) are those who live in deep awe of God.

Con-tentment and delight in God’s commandments are theirs, and their

De-scendants will be mighty in the land.

And so forth. You get the idea.

Acrostic forms are good ways to remember things. They are a mnemonic, a memory aid. That this psalm is an acrostic means two things. It means first that the ideas in the psalm were important enough that people were expected to learn them. And it means second that everyone in the community shared these same words, word for word. In that sense it is like a prayer we all know—like the Lord’s prayer—or like the blessing after worship, or a well-known hymn.

The psalm has three parts: 1. Blessings for you. 2. Blessings for others. 3. How to live. And also an appendix: too bad for the wicked. (The lectionary suggests we might leave out that appendix, but I don’t think we can do that). All of this is in the context of the first line: God knows how you can be happy; pay attention to what God says.

Here are the ways you will be blessed if you do that. Your family will be strong and you children will be delightful. You will be surrounded by good things. You will find yourself close to God and will never be abandoned. Your life will feel firm under your feet, it will feel solid.

Here are the ways others will be blessed. You will be a light for others, who will be led by your example to be happy themselves. They will be the recipients of your generosity, and they will know they can trust you to be just and fair. They will know you to be honorable.

Here is what you need to do. You need to be generous. You need to be just. You need to give to those who need it. And to care for others and be compassionate. You need to not listen to gossip and slander. You need to be brave.

Here is what the wicked (or the foolish, another way of putting it) will do. They will be angry and upset. Partly that’s because you will be happy and they won’t. And mostly that’s because you’ll be doing things that God says will make you happy, while they will be trying to figure out how to be happy without doing those things. And it won’t work.

That is what the passage in Isaiah is really about. About people trying to live in ways that are not generous, compassionate, and so forth. Trying to fool God, really, or fool the nature of the world. To think that thinking about yourself first is the way to be happy. Then discovering that the world does not work that way.

Why aren’t we happy, the people ask? Because you are fighting me, God says, fighting the way things work. Because in particular you are trying to avoid sharing your bread with the hungry, housing the homeless, protecting the vulnerable. But if you do, Isaiah says, your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will be dispelled. God will guide you, and satisfy your needs, and make you strong. You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. You will be happy.

Matthew in his Gospel speaks of the law and prophets and the kingdom of heaven. This is the psalm all over again, but different language. Those who attend to the teaching of the law and the prophets are those who take delight in God’s commandments. The kingdom of heaven is by definition a place of profound happiness. Those who do as God instructs, who take delight in God’s commandments, have the greatest happiness. Those who do not will be the least happy.

If the Bible is a user’s manual—as I suggested last week—then it is pretty clear about this. The things that the world teaches us to do to be happy turn out to be bogus. They make promises, but they are liars. David Brooks and Isaiah and Matthew agree. Even brain science agrees. If it is happiness that you want, being generous, brave, and obedient to God works better than anything else.

Praise the Lord!

Call to Us

2011-01-23T19:43:00.001-05:00

Text: Matthew 4:12-23

Off the coast of Scotland is the small island of Iona. It has been known for centuries as a holy place. The monastery which dominates the landscape of Iona was founded in the year 563 by Saint Columba, who was responsible for the spread of Christianity throughout Scotland. On the grounds of Iona Abbey are buried the remains of Duncan, the king of Scotland made famous by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

There are not many people on Iona these days. Just the abbey and a small village, a few houses. But there are many many sheep. There are sheep everywhere. Every field that is not a swamp or a cliff is home to some flock of sheep. In the spring, the lambs are born. They wander freely about the island, learning to close-crop the grassy fields. They drift far from their mothers. But when something frightens them, as we did when walking across Iona, they call out. Baa says the lamb. Baa says the ewe. Baa, again, from the lamb. Another answering Baa from the mother. Closer and closer they come, drawn together by their signature sounds. How does the lamb know which of the many ewes are calling it? How does the mother know which lamb is lost?

The lambs and their mothers are imprinted at birth. They are joined from each lamb’s creation. Each pair of calls is different. Each call moves something deep inside the lamb and its mother. They are compelled to seek out one another, until they are finally joined, safe, ready for the next adventure.

Follow me, says Jesus to Peter and Andrew. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Follow me, says Jesus to James and John. Immediately they left their boat and their father, and followed him. They left their families. They left their livelihood. We read this story and wonder: how could they have done that? Immediately, it says. With urgency. As if they were compelled.

The disciples are called as if they and Jesus were imprinted at birth. Jesus calls, and the now-former fishers follow. It is as if they had been waiting all their lives to hear this call. Something inside them pulls them forward into a new life, a new adventure, a new calling as followers of Jesus.

At my mother’s funeral a couple of weeks ago, a women, a contemporary of my mother, in I guess her late 80s, spoke. She said that all her life she had been looking for a soulmate. After 80 years, she had found that soulmate in my mother. I wonder if she didn’t feel like the lamb and the ewe. I wonder if Simon and Andrew and James and John didn’t feel like that.

The call of Jesus to Christians, to his followers, is a powerful part of our faith. It is more than an invitation, which one may carelessly ignore or accept as one pleases. “Come and see” and “follow me” are imperatives and prophecies. In them is the possibility of a new life.

These kinds of calls are less calls to belief and more calls to a new beginning. It is not an accident that the story in Matthew ends with a summary of new life for Jesus and his crew. This should not sound odd to us. Jesus is assembling a startup operation here. He calls a team of people who are without resume and seem unqualified: they are fishers, not religious leaders. He tells them straight away what the strategic plan is: I’ll make you fishers of people. He insists that they be able to start right this minute: they are going to begin work immediately. And he asks them to leave behind their former commitments. No competing entanglements.

A choice to abandon one kind of life and take up another is not easy to make. It is for us usually more complicated than Matthew makes it seem. Not all people want to change their lives in an instant. How you hear Jesus’ call depends a lot on where you stand in life and what your hopes are for it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life we honored this Monday, thought he had a good plan in mind. He had gone to seminary, he was married, he had just received his Ph.D. from B.U. He expected to teach and be a pastor and have a family. He was a reluctant speaker at an early rally for Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, he knew that he was being called and was as compelled as the four fishers to respond. He later said:

People follow the call of God—as King did, as I’m sure the disciples did—because they feel that to do so will make a difference. It will make a difference in their own lives. And it will make a difference in the world. Both are necessary. It is neither just about personal self-actualization nor just about service to others. They hope for a new life and a new world.

They know for sure it will not be easy. That they will leave behind things that are important to them. That the odds are long. Someone once wrote that a call to a new life, in the way we are talking about here, was a call to “move our spiritual center of gravity to a zone unknown.” That captures the significance of it. It is a weighty moment. But although the zone may be unknown, it is not unimagined.

When people are called—to a campaign for justice, to a startup venture, to be fishers of people—they follow because they hope that in some ways both the world and their lives will change for the good. It is like a quest, with some great and good goal, and obstacles to overcome, and rewards of fellowship and transformation.

We are all like the lambs of Iona. Some of us are contentedly munching away. But many are wondering whether they hear a call, or hope to hear, or have heard and are wondering what to do next. We gather together into this church to help one another listen for God’s voice.

The job of the church—through scripture, sacrament, prayer, and fellowship—is to help people hear the call of God. But the church itself listens for God’s call, too. And it is the job of we who gather here to help the church hear that call.

What does God call you to do? What does God call Faith to do? And are those two calls aligned? When we pray each Sunday that the church nourish and be nourished by those who are called to be here, that’s what we pray for.

When we are lost and feel far away from God, then we are as relieved as the lambs of Iona. We call for God, and God calls to us. We seek one another, step by step, call by call, until we, like the lambs and their sheep, are finally joined, safe, ready for the next adventure.

As I Live and See

2011-01-17T09:20:00.001-05:00

Text: John 1:29-42

The Gospel of John is like a cloth, woven in complex patterns from a few simple threads. Light and darkness, love and truth, belief, revelation. These threads cross over and under each other, creating for John a convincing image of the Word of God incarnate, dwelling here with us. The divinity of Jesus, and the notion that he has existed for all time and will for all time to come, is strongest in John of all the Gospels. For John, everything Jesus does is a pointer and witness to this man’s divine DNA.

Two of these threads in John’s theological colors appear strongly in the reading we just heard. Where do you live, asks the disciples of Jesus. Come and see, Jesus responds. Where Jesus lives and what he sees, and where as a result we live and what we see are important to John.

The word in John for “live” also appears in the Bible as reside, remain, abide, stay, dwell. The disciples ask Jesus, where are you staying? Do they mean: where do you bunk down for the night? Do they mean: where do your journeys take you? Do they mean: what is your stance on important issues of the day, like the politics of Rome and prospects for the coming Messiah?

The disciples expect an answer that will help them to know Jesus. It makes a difference whether Jesus is staying in a big fancy hotel, or with some friends in the bad part of town, or with his parents, or on the street. Or whether he is just passing through. Where you live tells people about you. What do you want? Jesus has asked them. They are not sure what to answer, because they are not sure what they can ask of Jesus until they know more about him. But Jesus does not say.

John the Baptist has told these disciples of his: That’s the guy I was telling you about. They were John’s disciples then, not yet the disciples of Jesus. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. As if they knew what that meant. He ranks ahead of me, John tells them, because he came before me. Does that help? There’s more: the Spirit descended on him and lives—remain, abides, dwells; it’s that word again—in him. Is that enough? They’d like to know for certain before they commit.

How much about Jesus do we need to know? What does it mean, as we are taught, that he is both divine and human? What does it mean that he comes to save the world? That he is the Messiah, not king of Israel but ruler of this earthly kingdom of God? Where is Jesus at? Can anyone tell us in words, by clever persuasion, by forceful argument, by coercion, by scripture, by personal story, for certain who Jesus is? We wish to do due diligence before we join up, invest, and give up our hearts and wills to this man.

Where do you stand, ask John’s disciples and potential disciples of Jesus. And Jesus in response says this: Come and see.

This is a declaration of fact: If you want to know what’s going on with me, you must come and see. And also a test of purpose: if I call you, do you have the heart to follow? But most of all it is an invitation: join your life with mine. Let me lead you, guide you. Teach you. Spend some time listening to me.

Come and see. Seeing is the second theological thread in this passage. Words for sight and seeing appear more in the Gospel of John than in the whole rest of the New Testament combined. In today’s passage they appear ten times. There is no blind faith in the Gospel of John. Faith comes from sight. Behold—see—says John the Baptist. I saw the Spirit. What are you looking for? Jesus is revealed to—is seen by—Israel. Some of these words mean seen in an instant—recognized. Some mean seen over time—revealed.

For some, the important part is what is seen. Watch Jesus, see what he does in the world, whom he meets with, how he heals. But for others, the important part is who is doing the seeing. Come see not what Jesus does, but come see as Jesus sees. Come and see the injustice, see the hypocrisy, see the suffering, see the hunger. Come and see the love of God, the healing of God, the compassion of God for all people. See with the eyes of Jesus. We are called not only to watch Jesus, even as passionate believing spectators. We are called to see the world in a new way, the way Jesus sees it.

The disciples ask for Jesus’ position and what they get is an invitation to be transformed. Come and see is an invitation to live a different kind of life because we see the world differently. That is why “come and see” is a good answer to “where are you staying?” Jesus is not evading the question. He is answering in the most direct way possible: I live in a world that I see in a certain way, and you can too. The disciples follow Jesus, I’m convinced, not because they want to wander around with this man, but because they want to see the world that will be revealed to them in a new true way.

It is common to think of evangelism as an activity of explaining. If I only explain things to you in the right way, you’ll believe as I do. But evangelism is more like a calling card, an address card, an online profile. It is a statement about you. Here is where I live, here is how I see the world. It is not persuasion. It is not even an invitation. It is an announcement about yourself. It is Christian evangelism when part of the announcement includes Jesus. Not symbols and signs of Jesus everywhere on your body and in your life, but in the way you are. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, once said “you cannot know me unless you understand how I stand with Jesus.” Being Christian means that the way you see things is affected by Jesus. The evangelism part is that when people understand how you see things, they will then know something about Jesus.

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century mystic, once wrote that “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. … Yours are the hands with which he is to bless [people] now.” Meaning that we are to be Christ in the world. But we are not Christ. Christ abides in us, says John the Gospel writer, and we in him. This mutual abiding, Christ in us and we in Christ, is key to Luther’s view of forgiveness and the power of Holy Communion.

Where does Christ live? When we see as Christ does, then Christ lives in us. When we see as Christ does, then Christ lives in the world.

Numbered Blessings

2011-01-03T09:35:00.001-05:00

Text: Numbers 6:22-27

Near the end of the story of the foundation of Israel, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the Israelites. They have escaped from slavery in Egypt and are about to enter the land promised to them by God. Moses has given them the gift of the law. He is about to die. He says to the Israelites: I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

The distinction between blessing and curse is as fundamental as the one between life and death. The two opposites seem to be part of the nature of the world rather than something we can choose. How can one choose to live? How can one choose to be blessed?

In the study of theology, the first question theorists ask is: What does it mean to be human? What is the essence of being a person? What is the nature of humanity? Are we by nature good or evil? Or to put in another way, are we mostly blessed or mostly cursed? Are we at heart good people who are blessed, but often mess up and occasionally are corrupted? Or are we at heart bad creatures and cursed, but by discipline and redemption able to do much good?

For each of us, this is not an academic question. The answer determines how we think of our own lives, what our relationship with God is, how we live day to day, how we think about order and justice, how we vote, how we treat the people we love, and those we fear. Do we pray: God, free me from the things that keep me from being the good person you made? Or do we pray: God, restrain me from doing the evil I am inclined to do? And which of these prayers do we say for others?

It is an old question. Answered ambiguously by religion. I would answer that we are blessed but flawed, and that Lutherans teach the same. But many Lutherans and other Christians over many centuries have argued the opposite. But all agree that we do pray to God that we may do good and have good lives.

Today’s first reading, which is from the book of Numbers (the fourth book of the Bible), should be familiar to you. It is the basis of the blessing that we say at the end of every Sunday worship. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord’s face shine on you with grace and mercy, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. These verses are called the Aaronic Blessing, because Moses’s brother Aaron was first charged with saying them. They are also called the Priestly Blessing, because the line of Aaron was the priestly line in Israel. Even now, in some faiths and in some Christian traditions (even among some Lutherans), only ordained clergy may recite them in worship. They are words given by God to Moses and then to Aaron and then to all others. Me, you. These words are very old; some think this blessing is one of the oldest passages in the Bible. The notion of God’s blessing is for many the beginning of faith.

The formal word for the blessing we say after worship is “benediction.” That means “good words,” so it is a little like the word Gospel, which means “good news.” A blessing is good news. Good for us. But not just good news in general. Good news that comes from God. And not just good words, really. For the blessings of God include all the gifts of God—life, food, love, beauty, courage, pleasures—good things that God gives. Things that come from God.

In the benediction the motion of the blessing is unclear. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” Is that a hope, a plea, a declaration? The blessing is always God’s doing, but when we say these words, what are we doing?

For one thing, we are asking for God’s favor. When we ask for a blessing for someone’s house, we are asking that God bring happiness and comfort and joy to the people who will live in it. When we ask for a blessing on a meal, we are asking that the food provide good nourishment and flavor. Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to your service, we pray before we eat at Faith Kitchen. We are asking that God will move things so that our lives and endeavors work out well and good. Favor us means make it easier and better for us. The blessing pleads with God.

For another, we are holding God to God’s promises. God, our creator, has called all things good. God favored Sarah and Abraham, whose children became Israel. God has promised through Jesus to restore and repair the broken world. God has promised to be with us. When we ask for a blessing, we are not doing something new. We are reminding God of earlier and eternal promises. We are calling on God. The blessing holds God accountable.

For a third thing, we are reminding ourselves of what God has already done. The Lord has blessed us. Our lives have been blessed. We do find joy in living. We do take pleasure in things. We are prosperous. We have known love. Not all of us all the time, but all of us sometime. And we have known God’s grace and mercy. We have been given more than we have earned. We have been let off the hook. The blessing thanks God.

And finally, and mysteriously, we are hearing God’s words. These words in Numbers are spoken by God through Moses and priests to us. This Priestly Blessing is a pronouncement. “Say this,” God tells Moses. Say this to the people. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” the blessing begins. By doing this, God tells Moses, “I will bless them.” God has put power into the words of this blessing. God has agreed to bind God’s self when these words are spoken. The blessing, therefore, at the end of worship is more than prayer, reminder, and thanksgiving. The words, God’s words in Numbers, bring blessings to those who hear them. We are commanded to say them. God is obligated to obey them.

In some way, these words of blessing reunite us with God. In the way that we are reunited with a friend we haven’t seen for a long time, a spouse greeting his or her returning soldier, a child coming home from away at school. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you,” it says in Numbers. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you,” it says. Unlike the way we say this in worship, the verses here make clear that God is doing something active. God is turning to us. We look for God from afar, as we might look for a friend, spouse, child in a crowd. They turn, we recognize them, they recognize us. We are happy. We are joined. God turns God’s face to us, we recognize God, recognizing us. We are blessed.

The book of Numbers is a story of a people in the midst of making a decision. The Israelites are in the desert. They have wandered about confused, uncertain, and deprived for a long time. It has not been easy. It will not be easy. What is this moment for them? Is it the final straw that turns them in retreat? Or is it the dark before the dawn, the labor pains, as Paul says, before the birth? Has God abandoned them, as some complain, or has God been with them all along?

They are presented with two ways of seeing things. One generation wishes to remain focused on the past. They see sorrow and death. The other looks to a new future. They see hope and life. The people have a choice. Go back to slavery, go forward to freedom. Go back to what is known, go forward to new possibility.

Moses does ask the people of Israel to do something. To listen to the law, to obey it, to follow Moses. But he is also asking them to see things differently. Tell them, God says, to see the world in a blessing way.

These words in Numbers are themselves are a blessing. In these words of blessing, God has given us the power to be blessed. In these words, God has taken a stand. You are blessed. Choose life.

Carry You!

2010-12-26T15:57:00.000-05:00

Text: Isaiah 63:7-9, Matthew 2:13-23

The scholars who through their books guide poor parish preachers advise us to put aside sentimentality this Sunday. Christmas joy is so yesterday. “Hollow theology,” one said. They berate us because, while the Christmas story is nice and heartwarming, the real world is out there, and we are in it. One scholar says, “‘Be of good cheer’ masks the reality that much of the time life is anything but cheery.” In their argument, they cite the readings for today. They remind us to put things in context.

They remind us about Isaiah. These three verses are full of exuberance. It recounts the fine deeds of God, and sings God’s praises. But the verses have been quoted out of context, they say. “Airlifted,” one says, “out of a chapter thick with divine wrath and human despair.” In Isaiah, chapter 63, from which these verses were picked, we hear about God who is angry, tired, and disillusioned, and a world that fits that mood. We should, we are advised, not be tempted to focus on verses 7, 8, and 9. Lest, I supposed, we are tricked into finding pleasure in God, the world, and God’s works.

They remind us about Herod, the evil king in Matthew’s story of young Jesus and his family. “Nothing sentimental about Matthew’s ‘Christmas story’”—the writer puts that in quotes to reinforce his point. It is set in times—its context—set in times of turbulence and terror. Herod was certainly and truly a bad person. He killed his rivals. He built fortresses all around Israel because he was afraid of being deposed. He murdered his wife and one of his sons. As he was dying, he ordered the execution of all political prisoners so that all the people would mourn. There is no historical record of the slaughter of the innocents that Matthew writes about, but it would have been in character for him. He could and would have done it. The times were wicked.

We give thanks for these scholars. But really, we don’t need any reminders about how the world is. We have our own context. It is more or less the same as the world has always been. We are not ignorant of times of terror and turbulence. We are not strangers to human despair and surprising sorrow, or to unfairness and stupidity and evils. We know too much of cruelty already. We don’t need to be reminded that the peace of the child in the manger, shepherds all around, is not normal. It is extraordinary.

That is the point.

The verses from Isaiah and the “Christmas story” are signs that in the midst of trouble and sorrow, God is still good. Though Herod is as horrible as bad kings can be, the idea of the story in Matthew is that some escape. Though the Israelites may have had a rough go of it in the previous few centuries, they praise God for what God has already done: freed them from slavery, returned them from exile. “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us,” Isaiah sings. Israel reminds itself of the God who was there, who adopted and cared for them, raised them and taught them. The God who is their God. “These are my people,” God says. “These are my children.” In their distress, it says, God, too was distressed.

My niece, when she was a toddler, used to raise her arms to her parents and say “carry you!” Do you want me to carry you? they had asked her so many times. When she was tired. Or when she was frightened. Or when she was surrounded by lots of big adults in crowds. When the forces of her world bore down on her or her own resources were weakened. So it is with us, God’s children. “In his love and in his mercy God lifted them up and carried them,” Isaiah says. Carry you.

It is misleading to call the “Christmas story” sentimental. The context for Matthew is not the evils of the world—though he would agree that are certainly in the world—the context for Matthew is the prophetic history of God’s goodness and hope for the world. The point is not that Herod was a cruel genocidal king. Everyone knew that. The point is the God intervened to save one. Matthew puts the story in context, in the context of God’s work, God’s history, God’s promise, God’s reign. And especially God’s challenge to the other forces of the world which otherwise seem so unstoppable.

We can respond to things of the world with weeping and complaining and being discouraged. And there are plenty of times for that. But not today. Today we remember and respond with praise for all things God has given us. We sing with all the world, following the words of the psalm. Praise God. The sun and moon and stars, the heavens and the seas praise God. The monsters, fog, fire, hail, and wind praise God. The mountains, the trees, the beasts, the birds praise God. The kings and rulers, men and maids. Let us all praise God, for he has raised up strength for his people. Carry you!

If that is sentimental, if that is hollow theology, well then: hooray for that. Praise God and be thankful.

Wandering Brings Us Home

2010-12-19T10:50:00.000-05:00

Text: Matthew 1:1-25

We humans are built for wandering. It is no wonder that Moses wandered around in the desert for 40 years. I imagine that when Adam and Eve were ejected out of the garden of Eden, they said “wow! look at all that open space; we can go wandering about in it.” The good news about wandering is that you cover a lot of territory pretty thoroughly. It is good for finding new things and having new experiences. The bad news is that life of wandering can seem a little aimless. The question is, are we getting anywhere?

This is the question of Advent. The season seems at first to be a transition between the past and the future. It is a time of equal parts reflection and anticipation. Where do we come from? Where are we going? We review the past, with its regrets and sorrows, and also its accomplishments and pleasures. And we are pulled forward, hoping for guidance and fulfillment, delight and contentment. In our theological life, Advent lies between Pentecost and Christmas, between the daily and the divine.

Yet in that way, more than in any other season of the church, Advent is a season of the immediate present. It sits looking equally at the past and at the beyond, which is where most of the time most of us sit. Our brains tell us constantly of the stories we have just lived and just as constantly writing new ones, in which we are the hero, or the villain.

That’s where the passage from Matthew sits, too, as long as you remember that the Gospel begins with the “begats.” That’s the word that the old King James version used to tie together the generations: “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob, …” and so forth. “Begat” is the old word. Our pew Bibles say “Abraham was the father of Issac” and a modern popular Bible says “Abraham had Issac.” But the word in the Bible means more like “Is the origin of” or “Is the bringing forth of.” It is the same root as the words generation, genealogy, and—more significantly—the word genesis, the book of creation.

These men and women that Matthew lists are not just like beads on a string. Each gives rise to the next. The whole process is organic, to say the least. For Matthew, this long rope of generations is a path of constant unfolding and revelation. They are connected by their divine origin. Abraham is miraculously the father of all Israel. And connected by their divine purpose. Jesus is miraculously the point of all this childbearing.

Matthew looks backward, and what he sees is an inevitability. A direct and designed path from the past to now. Abraham to Joseph and then Jesus. Yet even Matthew must have noticed that his list is not just Hebrew father to son, father to son, like a Jacob’s ladder, step by step. There are some side steps through gentile women, and some pieces are missing and names that don’t appear elsewhere in the Bible. But Matthew saw it a perfect. And so did Martin Luther, our denominational namesake. They both see the present giving meaning to the events of the past and linking them together in purpose.

This is, we can no doubt safely say, not how it appeared to those who lived these lives each so concisely encapsulated into a single “begat.” It is difficult to judge the present by its future outcome, almost impossible in even our own lives and never spanning forty-two generations and nine hundred years. There is no way that the meaning that Matthew and Luther gave to these men and women was visible to them.

They, like us, looked back a little and forward a little less. If anything, I suspect they looked back to their immediate forbears with admiration, anger, and grief, just as we do. They looked forward with uncertainly, just as we do.

The mountains of Colorado descend abruptly to the plains of the midwest. The foothills aren’t much to talk about. The mountains are tall, and in a minute they are nothing at all. You travel in the mountains in narrow valleys and over passes. There are just not that many places to go. You are hemmed in by circumstance. But when you come down from the mountain, you are spit out onto vast possibility. You can go anywhere. It can be scary.

More of our lives is lived, it seems to me, on the plains than in the mountains. The plains are made for wandering, and that’s what mostly we do. Not necessarily vaguely or lost, like the wandering Israelites, but without a clear destination. Gradually our purpose—our destination—becomes clearer. But that is only because the time of our lives ahead of us is less and the possible routes become more limited. Until we find ourselves where we find ourselves. How did I get here? I can trace back the path. But how the heck did I get here? How did Pastor Seitz get to Boston, he asked in his sermon a couple of weeks ago. He never thought he’d live here. I once declared that I’d settle anywhere but in Massachusetts. I’ve been here forty years now. So much for declaiming. People’s stories are strange.

There are three histories in the Bible. One is the personal history of each character. People’s stories. Each of those people in Matthew’s genealogy. And by extension, our stories, each of us. Stories that get revealed by our living them. Pointing nowhere, though going somewhere. And the second is the history of creation, starting with Genesis, ending in our Bible with Revelation and in our theology with the end of time. And the third is what people call salvation history. The story of God’s involvement with people, starting with the covenant with Abraham and extending to Jesus and beyond. This is the history that Matthew presents. The story of Mary and Joseph and the coming child is part of all three histories.

For Christians, in fact, the histories are combined in Jesus. The meaning of the three histories are merged. We say that the meaning of the life of Jesus comes out of creation and salvation history, and the point of those histories in turn comes from Jesus. So Paul can write that we are in God and God is in us. And that by living in Jesus we are transformed. And that the death of Jesus changes ours.

We see in short times. We see back more clearly than forward. But God sees differently. God sees the whole of which we see only a part. The sense that Matthew makes of the chain of ancestors, God makes with all of us. It is not that God knows the unknowable, not that God knows the future—I can’t speak to that—but that God sees the whole story as a story producing life and holiness. The whole story, past and future, is to God, I think, ever blooming, blossoming, ever generating life. Whether or not we see how it could be, we are a part of that.

We can see that way—God’s way—too. The God in us, the God in whose image we are said to be made, lets us see that way, too. In days such as Advent, in the rites and meditations and reflections and songs, in the contemplation of the past and in the hopes for Jesus, we are taught how to see that way and we are reminded that we can see that way.

Our paths combine with and become part of the story of God in the world. We are not alone. Immanuel, God with us. We are able to see a little as God must see. To see the intensity of life even in the face of death, to see the combination of the secular and the divine, to know the presence of God among us.

We wander, but not aimlessly, even if our aim is unclear to us. We are in God’s story. God is in ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Waiting

2010-12-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

This sermon was preached by Craig Simenson

Isaiah 35:1-10 and Matthew 11:2-11

Puddles this morning, but no snow and ice yet. Still, things are changing underneath our feet these days. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight! This is more or less John the prophet’s refrain. We heard the words last Sunday: One who is more powerful than I is coming after me. The one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

And, it’s true… looking around recently, in only the past couple weeks, some things in our everyday worlds already seem to be changing. Maybe not with the intensity of John’s fire, but there are little colored lights already strung, “burning,” in the windows and along fence lines. Right in front of us and by our side – and maybe within us, too – there are preparations being made for what is to come in the weeks ahead.

But… we are not quite there yet.

Interestingly, this is exactly where the church calendar begins. Not with a ball dropping or champagne bubbling and a toast, not with noisemakers or the party hats with those little elastic strings, not with a shower of confetti or a college football extravaganza. But with Advent, a season marked more by waiting than by celebration of a new year. A season where the party is not quite here yet. Where instead we’re left to prepare ourselves for what is still to come.

Quite naturally it seems, our rituals this time of year most often revolve around our sense of expectation. Where we’re left waiting for the next candle to be lit on the Advent wreath: Hope, Peace, Joy… Waiting for the next line of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” or maybe “Come now. Come, O Lord Jesus,” whatever the case might be. Waiting for the next little door to be opened on the Advent calendar (hopefully, to some really good chocolate). Left waiting for the day that is close enough but still far away.

And yet, this church season of waiting—this season of what is still to come is, in many ways, a different kind of experience than much of what is collecting around us in our everyday worlds now. Like those songs already playing in the supermarket that we can’t help but sing along to (even if only in our heads, even if we don’t want to). Personally, I so very much look forward to “rockin’ around the Christmas tree.” I just don’t think I’m quite ready yet.

Yes, it’s true… our world, like us, has a hard time waiting. Maybe, it’s because, at its heart, waiting is a somewhat risky practice. After all, we may well be waiting for something that will not come. And if one waits long enough, we might even start questioning what it is we were getting ready for in the first place.

So the disciples of John the prophet, John the baptizer, come to ask Jesus their question:

Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

Jesus turns their question around though. With the answers that apparently barely need to be spoken, with answers that they apparently already know: Go and tell [about]… what you hear and see.

Jesus turns our questions around, and keeps turning them—so that we might see ourselves more clearly: Who are you waiting for anyway? And what did you go out into the wilderness to look at?

Are you the one who is to come?, they ask him. As if the one they are speaking to, this Jesus, is not already there in front of them.

Perhaps it barely needs to be said by me. More than likely, you already know – that in all of our preparations of this season – in the planning and plane tickets, in the searching and shopping for those perfect gifts – we’re likely to be carried away into the season that isn’t quite here yet. And, in this, it seems that we are in real danger of losing sight of the wonders of this waiting season. In this, it seems we risk forgetting not only what set us out into this wilderness to begin with, but also the holy highway unfurling out before us in everything we hear and see and touch in these waiting moments. We risk losing the chance to truly hold our expectations, aspirations and intentions up for examination:

Who are we waiting for anyway? Year after year, who are we looking for out in this Advent wilderness? And will we know it when it is standing right here in front of us already?

To recognize the way, we not only need to look to where it leads, but also pay attention to the steps as we walk them. And we need to remain present to the ones who are walking beside us—in a wilderness changing underneath our feet.

The one who is still yet to come may very well already be right here in front of us. Waiting with us for the light and new birth to come. Traveling this same highway. Wide open to hear and see and touch all that is already present on this still-darkening road. Waiting in wonder for the illumination of fire and Spirit that is still yet to come.

Letter to Faith

2010-12-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

This sermon was preached by Pastor Seitz

Text: Matthew 3:1–12

Dear Congregation of Faith Lutheran Church,

It is under uncomfortable circumstances that I bring this message to you today. The discomfort stems from the fact that this is my last message to you as your Assistant Pastor.

And although it is sad—it is also reason to rejoice. Because although discomfort is unpleasant, it is also a blessing.

I came here under uncomfortable circumstances. I sent here—driven here by the Holy Spirit—really. The proof that I was called to come is in the fact that while I was in college I took a year off to build houses. I decided if I was going to learn a trade in order to earn some money, Carpenter seemed a good way to go. I saved all the money I could for 9 months and I took my earnings and traveled across the country. I had lived in Washington State my whole life and I wanted to drive across the country to explore the West Coast. Being from the Pacific Northwest I decided to head for New England.

In retrospect I think my experience was due, in part, to the liberated attitude I possessed by the time I reached the East Coast. The kind of attitude that comes from taking a risk in order to go exploring and finding that mile after mile and state after state you are more capable than you had previously known.

To make a long story short—Amherst Massachusetts and I did not get along. Upon returning safely to Washington State a few months older and countless experiences wiser, I swore an oath that I would never live on the East Coast. I had a few rowing buddies who lived in Boston and whenever we talked and they shared how great Boston was, I was happy to remind them that although Boston is cool—I will never live on the East Coast. Never.

Had I not broken that oath and lived with the complete and utter discomfort of living someplace I swore an oath I would never live, without a Call in any church lined-up before I moved out here, without knowing whether it would work out or not—had I not through that—I would not know how to rely on Jesus and trust in God the way that I do now.

I would not have the countless blessings of an amazing wife and partner or a beautiful son who has been cared for and nurtured by this community so that church is one of his favorite places to be.

I would not know what it means to put all my trust in God and to know that God is even more present to us when we are uncomfortable. Had I not followed the Spirit into someplace uncomfortable.

In the story of John, when John is baptizing everyone—from Jerusalem to all of Judea and all along the river Jordan—when John is baptizing the masses, it says in today’s Gospel, they were confessing their sins.

It is culturally so radically different from today that it’s virtually impossible to appreciate how different it was in John’s time from today—but just consider life in John’s region as a Jew. A culture and a region where both daily life and religious life were directed by the Law of the Covenant.

John father was a Priest. The Gospel of Luke tells us the story of Zachariah and Elizabeth as one of tremendous faith and obedience to God when God calls us to do things that make us uncomfortable. John was raised in a family that holds the Law of the Covenant up as the highest Law and obedience to the Law as the most effective means of having a relationship with God. The Law would have been the very building blocks of language for John.

The entire Jewish community was focused on the Law of the Covenant and on obedience to the Law. The Law directed not only religious observances but the government and the pulse of daily life. The Law was so strict that just touching an unclean person on the same day you were going to Synogogue made you unfit for the Synagogue. How much more so to commit a sin.

The reality of constant pressure and constant scrutiny is a daily reality in John’s world. The reality of knowing that any sin confessed would require an act of penance, a sacrifice, an offering in order to receive YAHWEH’s pardon.

The act of confessing one’s sins to another person is challenging under the best of circumstances, but in John’s time the act of confessing one’s sins in front of a wild man and one’s entire community would have been painful to point of excruciating. It would have been unheard of, radical, and extremely uncomfortable.

But without the discomfort of going against everything they had been taught and everything that their instincts tell them—without the risk of confessing their sins aloud before God and man and being washed by a wild man in a baptism of repentance—they would not have been transformed by baptism. They would not have known acceptance by God as clean and blameless before the Lord, they would not have known God’s mercy as God’s love.

The Gospel of John the Baptizer is the original Gospel. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the same message Jesus started his ministry with, his first words when he began preaching—word for word. Jesus preached it and it came from John. The Holy Spirit to me more specific.

Challenge and Acceptance. Repentance means turn away from whatever distracts you from God and turn towards God. Change your life in a way that requires you to rely on God and in turn experience the presence of God. Repent, take a step away from your comfort and be uncomfortable, and receive the blessing of God’s comfort.

Repent, be Uncomfortable, and receive the blessing of God’s support.

The reason the masses came to John is that he preached a Gospel of acceptance. A message of forgiveness. He preached the Spirit of Welcoming.

If someone was in this church 5 years ago and they came back today, they might not recognize too many faces, and they would not recognize the area under the balcony, but I l know they would recognize this congregation.

Because even though many things have changed—the Spirit of Welcoming here at Faith Lutheran Church is the same.

People underestimate the power of being a welcoming church, but have you ever visited a congregation that failed to be welcoming?

And hospitality is one of the most important aspects of Christianity, it is one of the central precepts taught throughout scripture and the throughout the church, and it is a focal point of Jesus throughout his teachings and his direction to his followers.

The reason for this being that hospitality is not always comfortable. Which is good because, in truth, being uncomfortable is necessary for growth.

So even though it is under uncomfortable circumstances that I share this message with you today, the circumstances are also a blessing.

Pursuing a full time call at MIT is a move in response to the Holy Spirit. I am following where the Lord is Calling me. It is uncertain how long it will take to raise the money to sustain a full time call but I am moving forward with the knowledge and the reassurance that the Lord will be with me and once again show me His comfort, His presence, and His blessing.

And although there are uncertainties in life and in our journey with Christ, I am certain of one thing. I know that I could come back in another 5 years and even though I may not recognize many faces, but I would still recognize this congregation. Anyone could recognize it once they have experienced it, the Spirit of Welcoming.

Regardless of where we are we share the connection in His blessing.

Regardless of where we are we share the connection in the Body of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that taught the original Gospel to John, then to Jesus, and to us.

We will all grow as a result of this discomfort. I will grow and so will this congregation. Not because of the discomfort itself; but rather, because this is the kind of risk that invites us and calls us to rely upon God—calls us to trust in God for the unknown future.

Repent the Kingdom of God is at hand. Take risks that make you rely on God and know God’s blessing.

When we cease being able to risk we cease being able to grow.

If my first 5 years here in Cambridge are any kind of indicator, I can’t wait to see what the next 5 years will bring.

My Peace I brought to this congregation when I arrived here and first experienced its Spirit of Welcoming, as uncomfortable and uncertain I may have been. My Peace I leave with you—this congregation of Faith Lutheran Church. Serving you has been a blessing.

Father forgive us, Spirit Guide us, In the name of Jesus, Amen

It Is Not What You Know

2010-11-28T19:08:00.001-05:00

Text: Romans 13:8-14
Other texts: Matthew 24:36-44

Paul writes that we know what time it is. Matthew writes that we will never know when the time will come.

Paul writes that we know it is the end of the long dark night and the glimpse of a new day. The time is now to gather up the lose ends, to make amends to those we have harmed—willfully or not. That in light of the coming light, it is time to attend to the commandments God has given us: love one another, do no harm to others. The time is now.

Matthew writes that we—in good company with the angels and the Son of God—we cannot know when the new day will dawn. As with those caught in the waves of the flood that Noah escaped, our world might be changed in an instant. The message is the same as Paul’s: love one another, do no harm to others. The time might be now.

Paul and Matthew speak with the same urgency. Whether we know nothing of the time or know exactly what time it is. And if that is so, does what we know make a difference? What does it matter what we know? Does it matter at all?

The first reading today is from Paul’s letter to Romans. We are reading this book in Bible study after coffee hour, but we are not up to chapter 13 yet. The passage we heard is from verses 11 to 14. But these verses are a little out of context. They are the tail end of an argument that Paul makes about how to live a Christian life. The argument starts at verse 8. Here’s how it goes:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Then it goes on with the verses we heard: Besides this, you know what time it is, and so forth.

What Paul is saying is that the breaking dawn of a new age forcefully reminds us of the importance of the commandments—in the law and reinforced by Jesus—to love one another as oneself. And what that entails is to do no wrong to others. We are not doing what God said to do. We harm other people all the time, intentionally or more often otherwise, mindlessly. We should not. That’s what God said. Remember that that’s what God said. The urgency that Paul feels is not about what is going to happen next. The urgency is about what we should be doing right now. The end of the darkness means that there is not much time, in Paul’s thinking. But whether there is little time or a lot of time, our job is the same. Love our neighbors. Do no harm.

We don’t know, in spite of Paul’s energetic arguments, about the future. Being faithful Christians does not instantly make everything precisely clear. But what we do know about is now. We know how we are behaving right now. And we know how we should be behaving. Nothing is changed about that. That is not new. It is old. We do know what is right. That is something we are very good at. Not that we listen to what we know all the time. We are also good at denying things and excusing things. But that does not mean we don’t know better.

There are voices that advise us to do what is legal, or expedient, or prudent, even. Good for ourselves, our families, our companies. As if that were enough. Yet we know what is right. We are advised not to pay attention to what we know. We are told that as long as it is official and well-considered and does not hurt anyone directly, that it does not matter.

But it does. We are advised to lie to ourselves. It makes us sick. Lying to yourself about whether you are doing what is right makes you sick. Sick at heart. It is a corruption, a wound of sorts. Something ill and malfunctioning. Our bodies and our souls know this. It is another thing we know.

The word salvation means to heal. One purpose of the law—the commandments that Paul quotes from—one purpose of the law is to heal that sickness of heart. It is like a medicine, or an antidote. Loving one another, doing no harm to others, is a way to keep us from getting sick. And to make us better when we are sick. In the metaphoric darkness that Paul likes to write about, we are sick. He reminds us that we know what is right. It is written down in this book, the Bible, and, as Jeremiah later said, in our hearts.

Paul then summarizes the commandments the same way Jesus did: love one another. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul writes, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. It fulfills the law because it is identical to the law. That is, people who follow the law and people who love one another do the same thing. Exactly the same thing. There is no detectable difference.

What we do matters. When we do what is right—defined as we are talking about as loving one another and therefore doing no harm—it matters. It matters to the world. It matters to us. I’m not making this up. It is what Jesus taught. When you say to yourself, it doesn’t matter what I do, you are lying to yourself. When others tell you that it doesn’t matter, they are mistaken.

That what we do matters is a gift; it is not a burden. What could be worse than living a life in which what you did, did not matter. What kind of life would that be? Not a good one, I think.

Paul and Matthew talk about a new dawn, a new day, a new age. It sounds so sudden, but it is not. The day dawns slowly. Until that moment, we are in the dark. Until that moment, our faith gives us a way to measure a good life. Do we love one another? Do we do no harm?

Matthew is right. About that day, when all is resolved, about that hour, no one knows. And Paul is right too. We know what time it is now. And though we are in the night, let us lay aside the things of darkness. Let us put on the ways of the light. Let us live as if it were the day.

We Want a King

2010-11-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46

The people wanted a king.

Some time after the Israelites had settled into the promised land, they began to long for a king. You can read about this in the first book of Samuel. God sees this as an issue, and God says to the prophet Samuel, “they have rejected me [God], from being king over them.” Samuel speaks the word of God to the people and tells them all the bad things that kings do. Raise taxes from you, send your children off to war, abuse their power, favor their cronies. The usual list. But the people want a king. “We are determined to have a king over us so that we might be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And so in the end they get what they want, and Saul, the first king of Israel, is crowned.

In time Saul gives way to David, Israel’s greatest king, loved and feared. Solomon follows David. And shortly thereafter Israel splits into two nations, and a series of kings rule them, each king worse than the last. The final king is Zedekiah—ending a long line of poor and ineffective leaders—who the Bible says “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” as his predecessors before him did. It was just as Samuel had told them it would be. But the lesson the Israelites learned from this was not, as you might think, to get rid of kings and rulers. Instead, they longed not for no king, but for a better king. They longed for a king, in particular, who was like David. Wise and powerful.

Today is the feast of Christ the King. Recently some have started to call it the Realm of Christ Sunday. I’m sympathetic with that. Kings are a little monarchical, anti-democratic, paternalistic, and old fashioned. Plus sometimes abusive, corrupt, and war-loving. That’s not how we want to see Jesus. Maybe “realm” is better. We would like Jesus to be more modern. “The reign of Christ is a reign of peace,” as one commentator wrote. Jesus, this guy goes on, “is a model of radical inclusivity. Someone who sees the value God has bestowed on every human being.” Now you know I think all that is mostly true. But that it is not the whole story. And it is not what the people of the Gospels thought when they thought of Jesus as a king. And it is not what many Christians in history have thought. What they wanted from Jesus is what the Israelites wanted. A powerful king like David, strong, good, and mighty. Christ the King.

People want a leader. That’s because our world seems always to be unraveling. Things fall apart. Martin Luther took today’s psalm, Psalm 46, as his inspiration for the fight song of the Reformation, A Mighty Fortress. In the translation we sing, it says that the forces of the world threaten to devour us. Another version, which seems to me to be more like it feels, says that those forces threaten to undo us. It is the struggle of life over death, meaning over chaos, growth over decay. Information over entropy, if you like.

John Calvin, a reformer like Luther, but a lot more gloomy, thought that in his time the cosmos was disintegrating. It does feel like that sometimes. It is the unfortunate way of things. The psalm compares the wobbliness of nations and kingdoms to the upheaval of earthquakes and hurricanes. The verbs it uses are the same for both. In times like his, in times like ours: What can we count on? To whom do we turn?

People want peace and prosperity. And justice. We hope for those things from our leaders, and when we go without those things it is the leaders that we blame. A leader is supposed to be like a shepherd to us. In the time of prophets like Jeremiah, that is what being a king meant. A shepherd guardian.

Leaders—any leader, in the church, commerce, politics, the academy—leaders are not supposed to be in it for themselves. They are not supposed to line their own pockets. They are not supposed to own everything. They are not supposed to disdain the sheep. They are not supposed to favor their buddies. They are not supposed to risk the lives of the sheep recklessly.

Yet that is what they too often do. Jeremiah’s rant in today’s reading is about bad shepherds, bad leaders. Jeremiah condemns Zedekiah and his predecessors. Under their so-called leadership, the nation falters and the people are aimless. You have not attended to my sheep, God says in the reading. I’ll do it myself, God says.

God in Jeremiah promises a king like David, from David’s line, wise and just.Those who heard Jeremiah prophesy imagined a forceful, fine-looking, valiant king as they imagined David to be. A king of all Israel who would restore it and its people.

And a few centuries later there were those who hoped Jesus might be that king. But it did not turn out the way they hoped. They were disappointed.

When Christians speak of Christ the King, they see in Jesus a hint of Jeremiah’s promise. But our hope is no longer for a new and redeeming king of Israel but of a king for the world.

We expect that kings of our nations will be good (not corrupt, cowardly, and so forth). But we do not want our own kings to be nice. Or rather, we want them to be nice to us sheep, but not nice to the wolves. We are not all one flock, we are scattered into nations, and we see other nations as wolves in disguise. As they no doubt see us. So it will not be by our own devices that the realm of Christ will happen. Not by kings of nations.

Nations make much ado, it says in the psalm. God seems uninterested in all that. God in the psalm brings desolations on the earth—[that’s how the pew Bibles put it]—but what gets dissolved are things long overdue for it. Arrows and spears and shields. War. And weapons. All gone.

Luther, writing A Mighty Fortress, saw a battle, a struggle between forces. But for Luther, the enemy was not us, other sheep. For Luther, the enemy was Satan, or evil, or “this world’s tyrant.” The devil and all his empty promises. Luther, who always spoke in earthy terms, was said to wish to spit in the Devil’s eye, and said that the Lord’s Supper gave us sustenance to fight the Devil. He gave evil personality. That feeling we have that the world is coming unravelled, Luther described as the result of a divine agent.

The people want a king. But not for the same reasons that the Israelites badgered Samuel. We want a king to heal the world, to knit up the unravelling. To fight the evil one. To redo what chaos undoes. To lead us. To teach us and to guide us and to make us courageous. To be a model for us. We want peace and prosperity and justice for all of us. We want protection against the corrosion that fear creates. We cannot do this ourselves. We turn to Christ to be our king.

By honoring Christ as King this day, we remind, comfort, and encourage ourselves that the future of the world is not finally in our hands. That God continues to be intimately concerned with the world and us. We are not alone. God is in the midst of us. The lord of hosts is with us.

Working and Eating

2010-11-14T11:11:00.000-05:00

Text: 2 Thessalonians 3:6–13

This sermon preached by Katie Wilson, vicar this year at Faith

I would like to begin by thanking Pastor Stein and the community of Faith for the opportunity to stand before you all and share with you from my heart. The honor and the privilege of standing here, today, is an honor and privilege that I never expected to have; I am deeply grateful.

Today I would like to speak about food, and community, and what it means to work and to eat.

I am a new face here at Faith Lutheran, and I have come to stand here in church because of the work I do with Faith Kitchen. Twice a month, beneath the very floor beams on which your feet currently rest, the basement of this building is transformed into a hub of energy and exchange. Food that would have been thrown away has been reclaimed, processed, and redistributed by a fantastic entity that deserves our great respect: the Greater Boston Food Bank. Hundreds of pounds of food come to us: frozen fish, canned fruits, dry goods, meat, pasta, ice cream. This food is overflow or overstock from the FDA, from the co-op, from grocery stores. It was unneeded or unwanted in the eyes of its previous owners and thus was designated as a donation.

Our work in Faith Kitchen begins with this food: we defrost fillets of fish and slice pungent onions, we boil rice and simmer soup, sometimes we peel and chop individual potatoes like precious jewels before they are boiled and drained and mashed by hand—sometimes we open a cardboard box and mix flakes of dehydrated potato product with enough hot water to reconstitute it, to make it food. Sometimes the minestrone is made from scratch with garden grown greens floating in a savory broth coaxed from onions, garlic, tomatoes, oil, and time spent simmering slowly on the stove—sometimes my job is to open one prepackaged box after another and pour the standardized contents into a pot to heat. In either case, whether we are cooking from scratch or embracing convenient shortcuts, cooking is an alchemical process. When we are in the kitchen our business is the transformation of raw material into caloric value that not only satiates hunger and fulfills nutritional needs, but also satisfies the human need for love, attention, care and a place within community.

So now we are getting into the real business of Faith Kitchen. While food is the bedrock of this program it is the people participating that make it what it is. I am not speaking only of those who come week after week to volunteer their time and energy cooking and cleaning and serving, though they of course are essential. At every meal the doors of Faith Kitchen are metaphorically thrown wide open and all are welcome to join us and eat. All are invited to the table. It is reasonable to assume that our demographics reflect a portion of the local homeless population, the disadvantaged and the underserved. Many guests do have homes and jobs, however, and yet are living on a budget that is getting tighter and tighter—so tight they cannot afford the nutrition they and their families need, despite their work and effort. Ever increasing numbers of people who never expected to find themselves hungry may find themselves short this month, and might find respite in a free hot meal. But there is no doorman at the entryway to Faith Kitchen checking off a list of qualifications. There is no judgment, no requirement to be there. All are welcome. All are welcome.

What then do we do with a passage such as the one we read today in Thessalonians, a passage that states “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”? Reading this passage literally we hear a voice of unequivocal judgment: those living in idleness, those busybodies, and those unwilling to work should not eat. Reflecting on this passage, however, I am called to ask of myself, and of us: What does it mean to work? And what does it mean to eat?

I can say that my work at Faith Kitchen is to cook and to clean, to order food, plan menus, set up tables, even lead the community in prayer. In the other aspects of my life my work is to read, to attend lectures, to write intelligent papers that may or may not have any relevance to my daily life. Perhaps you are a teacher, an accountant, a waste disposal expert. Perhaps you are a musician, a mother or father, the director of an organization, a gardener, or a sales clerk. What I would like to suggest is that however you earn your living, whatever work you do, there is another strain of work that we are constantly presented with. Each and every one of us is presented with the opportunity to do this work every day of our lives. No matter how much or how little money we make, no matter how prestigious or not our title or description or lack thereof may be, I suggest that each day we are faced with the work of bringing attention, and integrity, into every one of our mundane and individual interactions.

What does it mean to work? The work that I am speaking of is paying attention to the attention that we are giving to the task at hand, to the person in front of us, to the prayer being spoken in our hearts. Paying attention to how we pay attention helps us uncover the motives underneath the actions that we take—we may find, for example, that we are peeling potatoes with resentment for being stuck with the dinner shift or with envy for the person making chocolate cake and licking batter off the spoon. Pay attention to how you listen in your next conversation with a family member, close friend, or co-worker: to what extent are you able to purely listen? What does it mean to listen without injecting your own judgment even silently, to listen without interruption, without planning the next thing that you want to say, without waiting until it is your own turn to talk? Pay attention to this.

It is not attention alone that is the work, however. I am often extremely aware that I am making a fool of myself or acting with my own self-interest at heart. Cultivating awareness of intentions and actions is a crucial practice but it is an empty practice if we are not also cultivating integrity and compassion to match this attentive awareness.

What I am most interested in is the way that every minute interaction, every mundane chore and event and relationship, every choice made and word spoken is what constantly creates the world and the community that we inhabit. The means that we employ to bring about our ends are, in fact, constantly creating further means and ends. We are constantly engendering the world around us, and that creation is enacted for better or worse based on each interaction we have. Our work is to make the world around us a better and more beautiful place, and I believe that we do so every time we bring our full attention and full integrity into a relationship, an interaction, a project, a meal, or even a brief and fleeting moment of prayer. This is what it means to work.

But what does it mean to eat? When we eat we are feeding our body fuel, we are giving it the calories it needs to physiologically propel ourselves through the world. But eating is also nourishment, and nourishment happens on many levels. Our hearts and souls and minds must be at rest to enjoy a good meal. The company will hopefully be good or the silence pure and sweet. Pausing for a moment of prayer before beginning helps us to appreciate the food, to take it in more mindfully and gratefully. Pausing for prayer in this way is a means of bringing intention, and attention, to the act of eating, and is a way to acknowledge that the act of consuming food is far more significant than simply loading up on calories as a means to an end. In a communal space, such as the bustling and boisterous basement of Faith Lutheran on meal nights, this act of communal prayer acts as much to unite the community as it does to quiet and center the individual mind. When we pray together, even in silence, and then eat together, we are sending the message to ourselves and to each other: we are in this together. We are not alone. Knowing this is nourishment. Sharing this is nourishment.

When we eat we are nourished by the gifts the earth has heaped upon us. Our attention to the food and our intentions to nourish the community indeed do transform donations that were once considered waste into vital nourishment for many people. But more importantly, it is the intention and integrity of the individuals at Faith Kitchen—volunteers and guests alike—that transform the space from a basement into a community. This community is what enables us to eat, to truly eat, to be truly nourished.

When Thessalonians states that “those who do not work should not eat,” I do not believe this is a condemnation of those guests that we so happily open our doors to each month, and invite in for a free meal. Rather, I would ask if it is possible to be nourished without doing the work of showing up in presence and attention. If one is not able to work—to be present and compassionate with others, to bring attention and integrity to their most mundane actions—is it even possible to be nourished by mundane meals or by the community that surrounds us?

The passage we read from Thessalonians closes with the words: “now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” Likewise I would like to exhort all of us to do this work, quietly and constantly, in each relationship and friendship and task at hand. Lest I sound too much like a “preacher in a pulpit” I would also like to say that these are goals that I aspire towards and to which I constantly fail. Our work is not to be perfect, but to remember the kind of person we would like to be, the kind of world we would like to live in, and to help create it. Each interaction, each meal, each moment, presents us with the opportunity to do this work, and thus to eat, and to be nourished. May we all work. May we all eat. And may we “not be weary in doing what is right,” little by little, step by step, word by word, and meal by meal.

How Will I Look in Heaven

2010-11-07T15:28:00.000-05:00

Text: Luke 20:27-38

At the center of Christianity is renewal. Jesus brings renewal to the world and to each of us. Things that are bad will become good. What is broken will be fixed. Jesus teaches about living a good life, about being a good person. But those teachings guide us to change ourselves and thus the world for the better. Through Jesus, things will be different. That difference is a cause of and also a result of our trust in God and in Jesus. Jesus saves the world and saves us by changing us.

When people talk about the effect of being Christian, their sentences are full of words that mean renewal: return, reborn, refresh, repair, restore. And resurrection. These words are so full of life and joy and hope that they seem about to pop. All those “re-“ words inspire us for two reasons.

First, they make us realize that we are made for better things. We are not created broken and needing to be whipped into goodness (as if that were possible). We were created good and became broken. Inside the potential of the world and inside the potential of our souls is God’s goodness. But it has somehow been corrupted, become cloudy, distorted. So the evil in the world is a mistake, not fundamental. Or if you were to speak like Martin Luther, done to us by Satan, the Evil One, the Lord of Darkness. Or like the apostle Paul—who taught much to Luther—by the power of Sin. Paul and Luther are trying to describe the same thing: innate goodness perverted. We are not designed to suffer, but to live contentedly and joyfully. That is what God intended and does intend.

And second, these words give us hope that what we were designed to be can in fact someday be. We can be renewed—made as intended again. We can be restored—made whole again. We can be refreshed—made vital again. We can reborn—start again.

Things sometimes do not go so well for us. Circumstances, chemistry, poor choices, natural events, forces in and out of our control—for whatever reason, our lives are sometimes not so great. Something happens that shouldn’t; something does not happen that should. We feel beaten down for a moment, or for much longer, and cannot escape. Sometimes things look bleak. In these moments, it is easy to think that the way we are now will be the way we are going to be forever. That the future will be today all over again. In those times, renewal seems to be a bad joke. Rebirth, longed for, seems unattainable. No joy. We imagine God to be powerless to restore us, or maybe just uninterested.

In today’s Gospel story, the Sadducees try to make a fool of Jesus. They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead (unlike the Pharisees, as I said earlier, who do). They want to trip Jesus up, so they invent this far-fetched story of a woman marrying seven brothers in a row. If they are all resurrected when they die, then to whom will she be married, they ask Jesus. This is a joke. You can imagine them congratulating themselves on their sneaky, clever example. High fives all around. That’s a good one, they all say. They are laughing at Jesus.

But Jesus takes them seriously. Their question is a variant on a more modern version: What will I look like in heaven? Heaven being, in this view (as in the Sadducees’), like earth only better. Which of the many ways I’ve been and seen in my life will I be in heaven? Will I be old and creaky? Young and foolish? Will the extravagant part of me, that I like, be diminished? Will my rough edges, only some of which I don’t like, be ground away? What clothes will I wear, if any?

What Jesus says to the Sadducees—and what we hear for ourselves in this story—is that they are thinking that resurrection is just like here and now, only longer. That the eternal future is just like today—more or less—over and over again. But Jesus says it is not. It is different. The Sadducees think of God in a tiny, constricted sort of way. They see God’s options as limited. They lack imagination.

The strange thinking of the Sadducees is not that different from ours when we feel stuck in the present, when we are out of hope, and see the future as an extension of the present. It represents a kind of cosmic discouragement. The Sadducees’ absurd story of the brothers and the widow is designed to shut out the future. They are doing what we do when we tell ourselves that forces in the world or in ourselves make a different future unlikely, impossible.

Jesus teachings, and especially in the Gospel of Luke, counter that discouragement. Jesus teaches that the last shall be first, that the lowly shall stand, that the hungry will be filled, that the poor will be satisfied. These are stories of new futures. Captivity will be freedom, enemies will be as family, greed will be generosity. Sadness will be happiness.

Jesus encourages us—as he did the Sadducees—to expect more, to expect much, from God. Christianity teaches hope for a transformed world. A world not in which the poor get riches, but one in which there are no poor and rich. Not one in which the wounds of war are healed, but one in which there is no war. Not one in which the hungry are given food, but in which no one goes hungry. The goal of the ministry of Jesus is to transform the world. The effect of the ministry of Jesus is to transform each of us, and thereby transform the world.

It does not require magical thinking to trust we can be renewed, restored, refreshed, reborn. Resurrected. On the contrary, to think that anything is static goes against our knowledge of the way things work in the universe and of our own experience. A member of Faith once said that you never know what this church will be like six months from now. The spirit moves this place. And moves in our lives. Even death does not change that. The world is dynamic. We know that the stars in the heaven are not fixed, that all things are in motion, that movement in time is the rule of creation. And we know that is true in our lives.

We do not need to be like the Sadducees. We do not need to let our inability to see how the future will unfold hem in our hopes for new life.

Coming Down

2010-10-24T21:26:00.001-04:00

Text: Luke 18:9-14

This parable is not for everyone. Jesus did not tell this parable for all to hear. He told the parable to some, it says. Some who trusted in themselves and regarded others with contempt. Perhaps a small group. Perhaps not.

This story is about two sinners. Two men who sin. And two who are favored by God. Two men who are blessed. The same two men. A Pharisee and a tax collector.

The Pharisee is blessed by being good. The Pharisees were a bunch of liberal, pretty inclusive, religiously observant faithful people. They had the blessings of living a life a faith, the confidence that comes from knowing that you are known by God. The joy of the discipline of a faithful life and the strength that living a life founded on faith can be. The Pharisee is thankful, generous, nearly always mindful of God and God’s ethics. He seems in this story to be content and happy. What we hope for in our own lives of faith.

Yet the Pharisee is a sinner. He personifies the problem in the story. He is the one, we soon figure out, who embodies the two sins that are the point of this parable.

The first sin is that he trusts in himself to be righteous. Which means that he believes his many blessings are a result of his own effort. He is good because of the person he is, the work he has done, his generosity, his careful living. The Pharisee is like us when we think that gifts of body, mind, or character—being smart, or healthy, or kindly—are something that we have been responsible for on our own. God favors the Pharisee, he thinks, because of the way he acts. His blessings in life are proof of that. And in his arrogance he sees—his second sin—he concludes that those who are not blessed are condemned by God. And so rightly—by his own judgment—he despises those not like him. “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people.” People like that tax collector over there.

The tax collector is a sinner. Tax collectors at that time were in general not nice people. They were not government employees, but independent contractors given a license or concession by Rome. They paid an upfront fee to Rome. Their business was to make a profit beyond that fee in any way they could. They were known as greedy, nasty, extortionists. Rogues and thieves, as the Pharisee calls them.

Yet the tax collector is blessed. He is justified, as it says in Luke, meaning that he has it right. He is humble before God. He knows in his heart that it is God to whom he must answer. He acknowledges, unlike the Pharisee, that he has made a mess of things, and he desires for God’s blessing in spite of his deeds, not because of them.

Both of these men seek to be righteous. Righteous is a strange sort of word. It means “fine,” as in “what a fine day.” Or “what a perfect day,” but not “a perfect score.” It does not mean “good,” as in “be a good boy,” but it does mean “good” as in “it is good to be here.” Or “good” as God said when God created the world. It means to be right with God. In that way, it stands for all the ways there are to be at peace, content, “actualized” as people used to say. To be righteous is to be as God created us to be and as we each of us always wanted to be. To be good, to be fine, to be happy.

Most of our lives are a little gritty, and little out of sorts. Things are a little out of key, off color, clumsy. We get tripped up and trip over ourselves. This kind of minor daily suffering is the opposite of righteousness.

Justice, which comes from the same word as righteousness in the Bible, is the setting of things right. To right what is askew, or off kilter. So we have social justice, economic justice, ecological justice. God is righteous because it seems that God’s deeds match what we imagine God’s nature to be. God is just because God’s intent is that things will be made fine.

The tax collector goes home justified because he has given himself up to the way of things as they should be, to the way of God. For the moment, at least. Who knows what he did later. It does not say. It does not matter. The Pharisee, for all his claims of righteousness, is not. Because he has given himself up to nothing. He goes his own way. And we who hear this story feel it to be so. In spite of our knowing that the Pharisee is a good man and the tax collector a nasty one, we can see that in this story, at least, it is the tax collector who is blessed and leaves the story in peace. But the Pharisee just leaves.

In the parable the Pharisee looks up and the tax collector looks down. The Pharisee looks to heaven (though it does not for sure say so), and the tax collector looks to the earth. In our Sunday worship, in the dialog (the beginning of the eucharistic prayer), the minister says “lift up your hearts,” and the congregation responds, “we lift them to the Lord.” A scholarly colleague said last week at a clergy gathering that this is unfortunate wording. He prefers “open your hearts,” and “we open them to the Lord.” So we are going to try that today. His point is that, especially for Lutherans, our job is not to lift ourselves up to God, ascending, sort of, to the heavens. To become divine. Our job is to be creatures of the earth, opening ourselves to the God who comes to be with us. This being with us is what Jesus did. This is what God does in almost all the stories in the Bible. We are on an adventure with God, but the instigator and guide of this divine journey is God, not us.

The Pharisee in his arrogance wants—expects, maybe?—to be exalted. To be made more heavenly and pure. The tax collector knows that he is always a sinner, but that God is always with him nonetheless. It is not helpful in prayer to prove ourselves to God, to impress God. God is already impressed. Or not. But to call on God to be present in us.

We come here hoping for something. You might say we come hoping for righteousness. We come for some transformation, some new thing, new way to live and to be. Not to be immaculate. But to be as earthy as God made us and at peace with all things, ourselves, and others. That is a big hope. As in all transformations of this sort, we start by acknowledging that we live in sin and suffering—what the tax collector did and the Pharisee did not—and that it is beyond us by ourselves to transform ourselves—as the tax collector realized and the Pharisee did not. To open ourselves, asking God to transform us, and not to leave as we arrived, unchanged.

This parable is not for everyone. Not all will hear this parable. For those who do trust in themselves that they are righteous, who trust that they can right themselves, this parable is empty of meaning. For those who do not suffer, for those who not sin, for those who are content, this parable offers nothing. But for the rest of us sinners, it reminds us that we may open our hearts to God in expectation of new life.

Striving with God

2010-10-17T21:27:00.000-04:00

This sermon preached by Craig Simenson, a leader at Faith Kitchen and vicar at Faith last year.

What does it mean to strive with God? Where does it happen, and who can we expect to be when it’s all over?

Jacob, “the swindler.” Jacob, the one wrestling all his life. Struggling with his brother even within their mother’s womb. Jacob, the one tumbling out at birth, still holding on to Esau’s heel.

Jacob, the one left all alone now on the banks of the river Jabbok. Undoubtedly, agonizing over what daybreak will bring to him, and how he will ever face his twice-swindled brother and live. Jacob, left only with himself. Left only to wrestle in the dark, against the one who refuses to tell us his name. Jacob, the one who will not let go, who will not give up.

The one who prevails and yet cannot walk away from this so-called victory whole. Jacob, who sees the face of God and lives—A better man for the encounter, maybe. But, most certainly, a man who is only able to walk away limping as he goes.

This wounded Jacob, this one now known to us as Israel, offers us a different vision of what it means to strive with God and prevail. A vision that might look very different from how we imagine our lives should go. A vision for ourselves and what it means to not give up—for what it means to be faithful—that might look very different from the way we hope it will work out for us in the end. A different vision that perhaps challenges us to let go of the idea that if we keep on working at what’s wrong in our lives, that if we hold on in the struggle, we will finally win unscathed and completely changed. That we’ll finally become the people we always thought we should be, the kind of people that we thought God always wanted us to be. That, if we’re faithful and don’t give up hope, we’ll finally be able to fix everything that is wrong in our lives—that we’ll be healthy again, that our loved ones won’t be sick anymore, that our once-happy relationships will be just the way they were before, that we’ll be able to leave our nagging doubts behind us, that we can finally just shut all of our problems up and shut them out of our lives.

In Jacob, we are called to let go of the idea that striving with God and prevailing means that our fears and doubts, our grief, hurts and disappointments in life will suddenly vanish. Called to let go of the idea that prevailing in the trials of our lives always means walking stridently forward. Called to let go of the expectation that getting it right will finally mean getting our feet back under us again.

All of this is not to say that transformation and healing does not happen. All of this is not to say that hope does not matter in our lives. But it is to say that, at a fundamental level, transformation does not change our woundedness. We cannot wrestle with God and ourselves, and expect that our victory will mean an end to the struggle and suffering in our lives. We cannot expect that we will endure the trials of our lives to one day find that all of our hurting has finally left us alone.

Rather, Jacob shows us that being faithful, that not giving up in our struggling and striving, finally means finding that we are forever marked by the wounds of that great struggle. Seeing the face of God and living to walk away from it means that our woundedness will most often be more evident than it ever was before. Seeing the face of God is to see that we have always been limping, that we come to victory in life and death already beaten.

This is what it often means to live from day to day. This is what it means to journey with God. For Christians, this, too, is what it means to pray. For we come to our prayers limping as we go. Alongside our joys and celebrations, we pray listening to what cries out in our lives. We pray paying attention to our wounds, to what is hurting, to what is broken inside of us and around us beyond repair. Wrestling with them as we go. Holding onto them even in the dark, even when we cannot name them. Embracing them, holding onto them in love even when they break us.

We pray faithfully limping. In faith, trusting that God’s justice will somehow prevail. Somehow trusting in a love that runs to meet us even as we limp ahead.

Trusting in a victorious God who comes to us already beaten, a God forever marked by the wounds of our great struggle. Christ lifted up before us not on the throne of judgment but on the bloodied tree, a body broken, with wounds that not even resurrection could erase. A God—holes in his hands, wound at his side—limping to meet us, too.

Alleluia.

It Starts with Thanks and Praise

2010-10-10T15:39:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 17:11-19 and 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c

In most Lutheran churches the readings for the day are listed in a lectionary. The first reading and the Gospel reading are supposed to be related in some way. Sometimes the connection is obvious. But sometimes it seems they are hardly related at all. And sometimes it seems like they are related by only trivially, by some common word. And sometimes, like today, they are related in a deep way.

The first story is about Naaman, commander of the army of King Aram, who defeated the Israelites in battle. But Naaman is sick. He is sent to Elijah the Israelite prophet. He has what is described as leprosy, which is probably some skin disease, but not what we’d call leprosy today. The second story is similar. Some men who come to Jesus because they are sick; they have leprosy, too, another skin disease that is also not what we’d call leprosy. In both stories, the sick are cured. In both stories the healing is done at a distance.

But that is not what connects these two passages. There are lots of stories in the Bible about sick people getting cures. What strikes us in both these two particular stories is that they both reveal moral defects. We are shocked at the behavior of Naaman in the first story and the nine men who walked away in the second. They seem to be arrogant and entitled. They are oblivious to what is going on. And, at least for a time or at least for some, they are ungrateful.

There is a persuasive power to ideas. That’s sort of by definition. Any idea worth its salt changes things in people. But some thoughts, some of the time, in some people, cause a kind of blindness. We do things based on what we think things should be instead of what they are. Prejudice is a common example. Our thoughts about people blind us to the real people in front of us. Disappointment is another, where our thoughts about how things should go turn out blind us to the gifts that we are receiving. This idea-blindness influences everything from what we do and say in relationships, to how we vote, to how we do our jobs, to how we walk down a city street, to what we wear, to how we view God.

Naaman comes to Elijah the prophet with expectations—which is an idea in which “what should be” replaces “what is.” Naaman expects that because of his stature, his rank, his value to the king who is in power over Israel, and probably even his character and goodness—Naaman expects something appropriate will happen when he visits this Hebrew prophet. He expects deference. But Elijah does not even greet the great commander. Instead, he sends Naaman some stupid instructions by messenger, the email of his day. Naaman gets angry. “I thought,” he says, “I thought at least Elijah would come out and stand and call on the name of God and wave his hand over the spot and cure me.” Very particular and detailed expectations. Though Naaman is offered the gift of health, he nearly refuses it.

Naaman is not alone. In the portion of the passage that the lectionary skips, Aram sends the king of Israel a gift of 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and some fine clothing. Rather than pleasing the king, it makes him frantic. He has an idea that Aram is making demands on him and he is afraid he will fail. “Look” he says, “Aram is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” Though the king is offered the gift of a fortune, he nearly refuses it.

Our expectations of the way things should be blind us to the gifts that God has given us. Rather than feel blessed we feel deprived. Rather than feel surrounded by much good, we feel shortchanged. Rather than feeling joy, we feel fear. And because we do not see the gifts, we do not see the giver. All we see are situations and transactions and conditions—all lacking somehow. God becomes invisible.

Ten people come to Jesus for a cure. Jesus sends them all away. And as they go, they are in fact cured. What a scene that must have been on the road. We do not know what nine of them did. But we do know what one of them did. He comes back. He throws himself at the feet of Jesus and thanks him. This is not mostly a story about a miracle cure. The cure itself takes place off-stage. We do not see it. But we do see the man returning. As we see Naaman returning. Both men are transformed. Not only transformed in health but also transformed in sight. They both see God where they did not before. God has become visible to them. They return in thanksgiving. And being thankful, they see God.

Thanksgiving is the foundation of faith. Hallelujah—hooray!—says the psalm. I give thanks with my whole heart and mind. Thanksgiving is the fruit of the creation story in Genesis, whose story line is essentially: what a great world God has made! Thank you, God. God’s work, says the psalm, is full of splendor and majesty and marvels. This sense of awe and wonder and mystery is a form of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God creator and provider of all things. God who gives us life—amazing in itself—and that we are able to take pleasure in it. Even more amazing.

To be thankful is not a chore, but a joy. Not law, but grace, Lutherans might say. Naaman and the man come back to Elijah and Jesus not because of social obligation or guilty consciences, but because they are overwhelmed with gratitude. Praise God! they say.

Writing about the story in Luke, one scholar asks “Who actually would enjoy the thought of owing everything good and worthy in his or her life, indeed life itself, to someone else, to confess that we are definitely not self-made but—quite the opposite—created beings? Who would claim that leading a life of thanksgiving is the reason for and foundation of personal and communal joy?”

Wow. I read this and thought: I would. And I think that many of you here would, too.

Thanksgiving is the center of Christian worship. What we do here is by and large gratitude expressed in ritual. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, begins the Great Thanksgiving of the Lord’s Supper. The word for the Lord’s Supper, for Holy Communion, is Eucharist. That word, letter for letter direct from the Greek, means thank you. It is the word the leper uses to thank Jesus. The church and worship is like a workshop for thanksgiving, a bench, tools, instructions for living a grateful life. What would worship be like without thanksgiving? A dismal expression of sacrifice and fear.

I am a little concerned for the world these days. What I see is a stinginess of character. Rather than generosity of spirit. A sense among many people that they are not getting what they expected. That they are deprived. It makes people sour. Gratitude is a basic human need. We need to be grateful much as we need to eat. Naaman and the man get a double gift: they get health and they get to be grateful. But we are starving for gratitude.

C. S. Lewis wrote that gratitude and praise—its verbal expression—seems almost to be inner health made audible. But more often it works the other way around. Expressing thanks promotes inner health. When we are feeling hungry, we need to eat. Likewise, when we are feeling deprived, we need to give thanks.

The psalm says: God calls God’s wonders to be remembered. Therefore we pray: Remember when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. It is good to give God thanks and praise.

Being Faithful

2010-10-03T17:04:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 17:5-10
Other texts: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

You cannot plant a bush in the sea. Jesus does not suggest you can. Or that you should. This is a not a story about super powers and impossible feats. The disciples asked a silly question. Jesus gave them a silly answer in return. Disciples are students. Jesus is the teacher. This is a way he teaches. He is mocking them. Just a little. In a nice way.

The disciples want more faith. What does that mean? Faith is not something you can put in your pocket. Faith is not something you can store in a drawer. Faith is a gift, as it says in the Second Letter to Timothy that we just heard. But it is not something you would get in a package. It is not an infusion you can put in your tea or a coat you can wear on your back. It is not a thing at all. You cannot get more of it. As one Bible translation says of this passage: “the Master said, ‘You don't need more faith. There is no “more” or “less” in faith.’ Faith is not something you have. It is something you do. People say of their especially faithful friends: you have so much faith. They mean: I see by what you do that you have a close relationship with God. I see that you are tight with God.

The disciples asked a silly question. But it was not a stupid question. The disciples need something from Jesus. There is something missing in them that they ask Jesus to supply. There is some void in them that they are asking Jesus to fill. Jesus, help us!

What do they want? What is it we want in a faithful relationship. What do we mean when we say someone is faithful? A faithful spouse, say. Or a faithful friend. Or a faithful employee.With people we can say what a faithful relationship means. What being in a faithful relationship gives us, why it is valuable, and why we seek it out, and even why it is so tragic when it falls apart. Or feels like it is about to. And when, in that case, we cry out: Give us more faith. Something is not working. Help us. That’s how it is with God, too.

A faithful relationship gives us at least three things. First, it gives us courage in the face of an uncertain future. The future is both exciting and scary. We both rush into it and we hesitate. No one knows what is going to happen. The disciples have hooked their wagon to this star that is Jesus. What an adventure! What a risk! God did not give you cowardice, it says in Timothy. But we are all cowards. Another translation says: God did not give you timidity. That’s easier to take. We are all timid. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us courage.

And second, it gives us the humility not to feel we have to do everything ourselves. We need partners in life that we can count on. We do not have enough time, energy, or even skills to do all the important things we have to do. In the world, in our families, our jobs, in our selves. Who can give us a hand? Someone who knows us well enough to do what we hope for. Someone who loves us well enough not to intentionally hurt us or betray us or let us down. Someone who will let us put aside our protective pride and to whom we are willing to hand things over a bit. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us humility.

And third, it gives us the satisfaction of wholehearted engagement with someone else besides us. We are often alone, tentative, private, and careful. We have to do that, but it does not mean we like to. We long to be totally present for another, to be present for them. Probably satisfaction is too weak a word. Maybe thrill plus contentment would be a better way to describe it. Fulfillment would work. And engagement: maybe entanglement would be better. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives the thrill plus contentment of wholehearted entanglement.

These gifts of a faithful relationship are ours because we count on the faithfulness of another and have in turn promised our own. The word for that counting-on is trust. It is not a coincidence that the word for faith in the Bible is exactly the word for trust. What the disciples want to know is whether they can trust Jesus. They want to know—in the face of all the hardships and hard work that following Jesus entails—whether they should stay with Jesus or leave him. They see the gifts of faith. They are asking Jesus whether they can trust him to be faithful. And they are asking themselves whether they can be faithful to Jesus.

The Second Letter to Timothy has been called practical ecclesiology. That is, a letter about what churches and church goers should do. It is unlikely that the letter was written by Paul, but it certainly shares some of Paul’s concerns. And one of Paul’s most pressing concerns was the health and future of the churches that he started. You can detect in this passage a worry about whether Timothy is going to hang in there. So it, like the passage in Luke, is not so much about theology as about how to live. Timothy and the disciples know what to believe—they no doubt believe the right things—they are just not sure they can do the right things. The writer says to them: You can.

In Luke, the disciples ask for more faith and Jesus tells them about service. Our doubts, questions, and demands do not diminish our faithful relationship with God. They strengthen it as much as our prayers and praises and song and thanksgivings do. Just as in relationships with people. Our call as Christians is not to win arguments with others or even with ourselves. It is, as Jesus taught in a few verses earlier in Luke, to forgive others seventy times seven times. To love our neighbors and our enemies as ourselves. To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

Help us! cry the students of Jesus. They—we—are advised in Timothy to rekindle the gift of God which is within you. To rekindle the flame. That’s a good word for relationships. Rekindling the flame is a modest task that keeps relationships faithful in times of trouble and doubt. With God and with those you love. It is task that requires only patience, delicacy, and attention. Not even belief or hope. Start small, protect the flame and nurture it, give it space and air, fan it when it becomes more robust. That’s how it goes with God and with people.

There is no need for superpowers. Instead, remember, it says in Timothy. Remember what it means to be faithful. Remember the one in whom you trust. And who trusts you. And keep up the good work.

A Land of Two Stories

2010-09-27T17:04:00.000-04:00

Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
Other texts: Luke 16:19-31

There is a struggle going on in our hearts. It is a struggle of beliefs, of convictions, of trust, of the source of our hope. It is a struggle of two stories fighting for our souls.

On one side is the story of abundance. This is the story of the first chapter of Genesis, in which God gave us the world and all things in it. It is good, it is good, it is good, God says in Genesis. It is the story of God’s care for us revealed in creation and in beauty and in the pleasure we take in things. It is a story of God’s compassion for us and God’s provision for God’s creatures. It is the story of Psalm 104: God opens God’s hand and the world is full of good things. And it is the story of the psalm for today: God who brings freedom, and food, sustenance. It is the story that Jesus is—generously coming here—and the story that Jesus tells. Do not worry, you can trust God, he says. It is good.

But on the other side is the story of scarcity. This story is in Genesis, also. It is the story of famine in Egypt, of being prudent, cautious, and storing things up for the future. It is the story of being hungry in the desert, when the Israelites longed for the cook pots filled with food they no longer had. It is the other story in Pslam 104: God hides God’s face and creation withers and dies. And in today’s psalm: in the end we perish, and our thoughts go with us.

These stories are in us, competing to guide us and to be the story that we use to make sense of the world. Oddly, both stories describe the world. But they are not equal. The story of abundance is the foundation of generosity and satisfaction and hope. The story of scarcity is the foundation of fear and worry and isolation. The question is: are we blessed or are we deprived? Thankful or wretched?Which story do we believe most?

All of us know which is better. It is better to feel satisfied by abundance than to feel harassed by scarcity. But I look at myself and I look at people I know, and I know that we feel harassed at least as often as we feel satisfied. I do not like it.

Luke, the writer of today’s Gospel reading and also of the book of Acts, spends a lot of time talking about money. How we think about money has exactly to do with which story we most believe. That is one reason why we talk about it so much. That is the reason Jesus talks about it so much, too. More so that any other single topic. That’s because it reveals to us how we feel about God and about our relationship with God and mostly about whether we trust God or not.

The early Christian church—just like the modern church—worried a lot about money, too. The first letter to Timothy, today’s second reading, is a guide to Christian behavior. And in today’s passage, which concludes this letter, we learn about how to behave with money. Or at least get a critique about it.

The writer of this letter warns against people who love money. Lovers of money, Luke calls them in the Gospel reading. This word (it is just one word in Greek)—this word, lovers of money, appears only in this passage in Luke and in the letter to Timothy. It could mean just people who love money—like it a lot. But it would be more useful and more accurate to think of it as people who are having a love affair with money. They are money’s lovers. Because it is being money’s lovers that gets us all in trouble, in both Luke and in Timothy. Having an affair with money.

Our relationship with money can be exciting, energizing, transforming. But like an affair, loving money is a betrayal of our love for another—God in this case, and other human beings—and a promise that we formally made, not coincidently, in baptism. And it plunges, as it says in Timothy, it plunges people into ruin and destruction. “People” meaning not only the lover, but the many who are harmed by the action of the lover. As Lazarus, for example, was, by the rich man’s inattention. And as many in the world today likewise are.

Money is like any addiction. One person described the process of addiction as: First, fun; then, fun plus problems; and finally, just problems. The love of money is like that. What we hope from money is what we hope from love. Strength for life, wholehearted trust, and partnership. What we get as money’s lover, however, is the opposite. Futility, betrayal, and a cruel master. Money is not effective or reliable, and it demands more from us than it gives.

What we seem to want from life, it says in Timothy, is godliness and contentment. Contentment and abundance are cousins of each other. The word contentment here means satisfaction. Having a sufficient amount. It means having enough. Not a skimpy amount, but sufficient to be strong enough to prosper as creatures. If we have food and shelter, it says, then that will be sufficient. This letter is not a call to poverty. It is an encouragement to find what is enough. And enough, in this meaning, is not just enough for each of us. It includes enough for helping others, too. Enough to protect us against the elements and to help others. And also from Genesis: enough for sabbath, enough for rest.

Nonetheless, we fall into temptation, it says in Timothy (and as we know it to be true). It is easy to get trapped, it says, by many senseless and harmful desires. Having more than enough. We can call this greed, but it comes from fear. It comes from listening too much to that story of scarcity. From thinking that we must rely on ourselves to get enough. From having to control all the world, as the rich man tries to do, even in death.

We in this country and everywhere are telling the story of scarcity more and more. That scares me.

There is not much room for God in our lives in that story of scarcity. If there is nothing given—if we are not the recipients of graceful abundance—then perhaps there is no giver. Or maybe it is the other way around. If we are not sure there is a giver, then we cannot trust that we will be given what we need. If we cannot rely on God, then we are right to turn to money, to ourselves. But the end of that way is sadness. For experience teaches us that neither money nor our own efforts are reliable. Nor do they work. And if we cannot trust money and we cannot trust ourselves and we cannot trust God, then we are in the soup.

How can we be sure that God will provide for us? For one thing, we have scripture—Moses and the prophets, it says in Luke. And the teachings of Jesus, who tells us over and over not to be afraid and not to worry. But that was not enough for the rich man. He wanted a more certain sign. Something 100% believable. He thinks a visit from dead Lazarus would do it for his brothers. But of course, they’d just say it was not really Lazarus, or that he hadn’t really died, or that it wasn’t really a message from their brother, or that it was, but who cares? There is no certain sign.

We trust God because we when we do—amazingly, when we are very generous and forgiving and easy-going—good things happen to us and our friends and our world. Strange, but true. And even stranger, the reverse is also true: when we act as if we trust God—acting as if we were generous and forgiving—then we find we trust God. Trusting God is a consequence more than a cause of how we live our lives. Trust, like love, takes practice.

This story in Luke and this exhortation in Timothy are not moralizing tales. That is, they are not telling us that we had better shape up because God wants us to. When the rich man is being tormented in Hades, Abraham takes no pleasure in his fate. Even in this “I told you so” story, Abraham seems sad and moved with compassion.

Being in love with money is a trap, it says in Timothy. In the trap is a life of many piercing pains. The words of the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus help us escape the trap. Be generous, be forgiving, be ready to share, love people more than you love money.

When we are baptized, two things happen. First, we resolve—or someone does on our behalf, as they did today for [child baptized today]—we resolve to take a side in the struggle of our hearts. To listen hard for the story of abundance (and to retell it) and as much as we are able, to cover our ears and shut out the story of scarcity. And second, we are given some necessary help, in the form of the Holy Spirit and in the support of the community of Christians. And when people affirm their baptism, as folks did today, both they and the community renew that resolve and reliance.

Quiet the story of scarcity that brings you fear. Repeat to yourselves every day the story of abundance that brings you contentment. Baptism is the symbol of a new life. Take hold, as it says in Timothy, of the life that really is life.

Jesus, the one, and the many

2010-09-12T17:31:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 15:1-10

As he often does in the Gospels, Jesus makes a little joke.

The Pharisees are unhappy with Jesus because he eats with the riffraff. He also eats with the Pharisees, but we don’t hear from the people who don’t think Jesus should do that. I’m sure there were some. “How come you, Jesus, a man of the people, consort with those fancy snobs?” But the voices of the tax collectors and sinners are rarely heard, in the Gospels as in real life.

I sometimes have a feeling that the Pharisees amuse Jesus. He is always getting their goat. And when they make stupid pronouncements, he embarrasses them. When they try to catch him making a mistake, they find that it was they who erred. You would think that after a while, they’d give up.

The Pharisees really don’t like it that Jesus stretches the bounds of what is permissible. There is a way you are supposed to act, and many times Jesus does not act that way. Some of their objections are social and some legal. Tax collectors were scum, working for the man, meaning Rome. Sinners were law-violators. They did what God said not to, or did not do what God said to. Neither were, in the Pharisees’ eyes, fit company for a rabbi, a teacher, like Jesus. Jesus did the wrong thing, set a bad example, and was rousing the rabble by his teachings.

To answer their complaint, Jesus, as he often does, tells a parable. A parable is a wicked little story that makes you think. He tells two. The first one is about some sheep. “Which of you,” he asks them, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

Would you leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness? All you who would leave those ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves, those good and faithful and wise sheep who did not wander off recklessly, to search for that idiot sheep who seems clueless and endangers all the rest, all you who would do that, raise your hands.

The answer to Jesus’ question is: no one. It makes no sense. That’s the joke. No one would. To risk the many for the sake of one. It goes against the theory of the greater good. Which says that better for one to suffer so that the many might not. It it the reason behind much of the way societies work, from things as diverse as torture and triage and scapegoating.

It is the way we work, but it is not the way Jesus works. Jesus seems much more concerned—and it gets him into trouble all the time—more concerned about the particular than the general. The theory of the greater good compares the actual, present, and particular suffering with a hypothetical, future, and general good. An individual suffers now for some predicted suffering of many. Jesus seems to care more for the person who is really suffering now than he cares for the potential or even likely future.

The Pharisees are rightly worried about the rule of law and the stability of culture. So when Jesus does what he does—heals on the Sabbath in the face of a law against it, or lets his disciples glean food then, or touches and cures the hemorrhaging woman, or hangs around with the illegals—he acts in favor of persons over principles. And also, he seems to see the particular person and his or her particular situation instead of what that person represents. Some real person that you can sit down and share a meal with, not a drunk or an illegal or an alien or a tax collector or a sinner. So in the parable, the shepherd seeks to find the one sheep that at the moment is actually lost at the risk of a possible, but not actual, danger to the many others.

What makes things lost is that someone misses them. People can feel lost emotionally, of course, but what makes the lost sheep and, in the second parable, the lost coin be lost is that someone wants to find them. Even when people say that they feel lost, they mean that they are searching for some other version of themselves that they once knew or hope to know. The shepherd wants to know: where is my sheep? The woman wants to know: where is my coin? What makes the single coin and the single sheep special is that they are desired, wanted, sought out.

The Pharisees grumble that Jesus welcomes the sinners, the reading says. But the word the Pharisees use really means to seek out. To go looking for. The action is on the part of Jesus, not the sinners. The action in the parables is on the part of the seeker, not the sheep or coin that is sought. God looks for each of us. We are looked for by God. God comes and gets us.

Sometimes we say we lose our faith. When people say that, they mean that they have lost the conviction that they have been found. That is, that they are like the sheep and the coin, apart from God and apart from any center in which their souls may take rest. But worse, it also means that they have lost the conviction that anyone is even searching for them. They feel not only separated but abandoned, which is a whole other thing. They feel like people who have suddenly fallen out of love, or children who are estranged from their parents or someone who has lost another to death. Not even missing, because they feel that no one even seeks them.

The Pharisees complain that Jesus eats with sinners. These people are not lost to the Pharisees, who are not seeking them but rather wish they were gone. How much better, they think, if the people who annoy or threaten us were just to disappear. But the sinners no doubt see things very differently. Jesus makes them appear. He seeks them out, making them not invisible but missing. That is, they are longed for.

Jesus writes that there is more joy when a sinner repents than when ninety-nine righteous persons do. But this is the second joke Jesus tells in this passage. For it would be hard to find even one sinless person much less ninety-nine in a crowd of one hundred. As Lutherans are taught, we are all saints and sinners. We are all in this sense separate from the source of our being and life. We are all missing; God is seeking out each one of us. We are not the ninety-nine virtuous souls who never wander. It is good for us that God is unreasonably looking for us.

When the Pharisees are unable or refuse or are too timid to see the sufferings of flesh-and-blood individual people, when they are willing to sacrifice them for the vague and the general, when they wish to wish them away—when the Pharisees do that, they turn their backs on the pleasure of a divine grace. They deny themselves the joy that concludes both these parables of Jesus. For these parables are less about repentance and more about joy. That is the direction in which their plots move. The high point of these stories is the joy of the finder. A joy even angels in heaven share, says Jesus. These stories do not call us sinners to repent. They invite those of us who think we are righteous to join the sinners, who are also us.

The Pharisees evidently think that they are favorites of God and that the sinners are not. And the sinners—well, we don’t know what they think. Some probably agree with the Pharisees and others think the opposite.

All have hopes and fears. Jesus says that ninety-nine were left. We like to imagine—it suits us to imagine—that they are a bunch of well-organized, well-balanced, good sheep. But Jesus does not say that.

It is more likely that all one hundred sheep are wandering around. It is a big mess. No one knows what’s going on. Some feel secure and some feel condemned. But each one is lost. The most arrogant Pharisee and the most humble sinner are all lost. Each one is frightened and clueless. And walking in our wilderness, there is Jesus, the shepherd. Missing every one of us, wanting each one of us, seeking us out.

The Worth of It

2010-09-07T08:08:00.001-04:00

Text: Luke 14:25-33
Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Here is our story up to now. This is what Jesus has done so far in this one chapter—chapter 14—in Luke.

First he tells some fancy dinner guests that the last will be first and the first—meaning them—will be last. Then he tells them that instead of inviting their family and friends to dinner, they should have invited poor and sick people. Then he tells a parable of another feast in which the original guests offer lame excuses and so the are replaced by street people. Then, today, he tells us who can and cannot be his disciples, and it seems a little rough. His followers might have wondered what they were getting into.

You might find Jesus to be a little cranky in these stories. Or at least forceful. But I hear in the voice of Jesus and in the stories he tells in this section of Luke a deep sadness. The things that go with being a disciple of Jesus are hard and upsetting sometimes. And he knows, I’m sure, that most people will find them so.

You cannot be my disciple, he says three times. These verses are littered with negatives. There are thirteen occurrences in the Greek of the word “no” in these eight verses. These are not happy sayings, and they are not encouraging ones. Jesus knows that being a disciple, a follower, is hard. He is not commanding us here, or threatening us, or laying down admission requirements. He is telling us how it is, how it will be.

In today’s reading Jesus presents three choices. Or better to say, Jesus makes three offers. He presents to us three attributes of the life of a follower of Jesus. They are allegiance, risk, and poverty. It is as if—as he teaches us in the two parables—the one about the tower and the one about the king—as if he wants us to know what’s up before we sign up.

First, allegiance. To whom do we turn for blessings? To whom do we turn for safety? And who calls us to responsibility? In other words, what is the source of a life that is prosperous, secure, and good? Those things to which, or to whom, we turn are the things that command our allegiance. The list is long for most of us, and includes things like our own skills, our close friends, our loving families, our possessions, the rules of our culture. When we say that we must attend to these things, then they have our allegiance. Sometimes these things deserve it, and other times not. But no matter what, Jesus says, they are secondary to what God calls us to be and do.

If you do not hate your parents, your spouse, your family, Jesus says, you cannot become his disciple. And not only that, but if you do not hate life itself, you cannot become his disciple. Jesus is not talking about degrees of love here. He is not mostly talking about emotion. The word “hate” is the opposite of the kind of love that we have for our neighbors and our enemies. We don’t have to like our enemies and we don’t have to dislike our family and friends and life.

But we should not soften what he says too much. He is saying that his followers disavow the things that—in the time of Jesus and in our time—command their allegiance. He is saying that his followers put all those other people on notice. If there is a choice between God and them, the choice goes to God. Not to their families, not even to the preservation of their own lives.

Jesus is describing a way of life. That’s what makes this so shocking, so hard, and so potentially rewarding. He is not describing a way to slightly adjust things. He is saying that to be his disciple one must live with God always in mind. We must ask when taking some action: does this action I’m taking align me with God or not? When making some decision: in this decision that I am making, am I thinking about God or not? And, practically, if not then is there some other way I can act or other decision I can make?

Second, risk. Jesus was tried and executed for his teachings and his actions. All this about making the first people be the last, about disavowing your family, about not honoring the sabbath, about loving your enemies, about turning the other cheek—that made people angry. And if the followers of Jesus do what he did and do what he said to do, people will be angry at them, too. And disown them, and imprison or exile them, and maybe harm them.

Jesus proposes a new way of living, but to proclaim that and then to actually do it is a risky endeavor. The cross is not a pleasant symbol. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in spite of the cross, not because of it. The cross was a means of violent and hateful death. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple, Jesus tells the crowd. It is a risk-filled path. Jesus warns his followers.

And third, poverty. In our culture, we are at least as distracted by possessions as we are by relations. To acquire and protect our possessions, to house and maintain them, distracts us from God’s call to us to love God and to love our neighbor. We are tempted to love God and neighbor less than we love our stuff. We are willing to harm our neighbor and ignore God’s commands for the sake of our stuff.

This is not news. In the parable of the feast in Luke, the invited guests fail to show up because they have been diverted by what they own or wish to own. I’m sorry, one says, I just bought a new house (he really says land, but it’s the same thing) and have to go look at it. I’m sorry, the other says, I just bought a new car (he really says oxen), and I want to try it out. People like stuff and are unwilling to let it go. It was just reported that the wealthiest top 1% of people in this country receive 23% of the all the income. They are holding on to that money. Thirty years ago it was 9%.

Jesus says that none can become his disciples unless they say farewell to all their possessions. Not give up, as the words in our Bible have it. But: say farewell to. Not a loss, but a separation from possessions. A dis-attachment.

The things that Jesus places in opposition to being a disciple of his are all entanglements. They are things that we get stuck to. Family. Safety. Possessions. They take effort and energy away from God. That is, we are unable to respond to God’s calls—calls to care for all others, to refrain from violence, to give freely, and to be grateful.

There are always multiple calls on our time and work. We are always managing our attention and care. A parent caring for a difficult child might shortchange his other children. A person caring for a sick parent might shortchange the rest of her family. A doctor spending hours caring for his patients might shortchange his spouse. It is harder to turn our backs on our responsibilities than it is on our possessions. But if something has to be shortchanged, Jesus says, it is our entanglements, not God.

When Jesus says that people cannot be his disciples, he is not judging them. He is not condemning them for their ineptitude or their inabilities. He is talking physics here, not morality. To lose weight, eat less or exercise more. To move an object at rest, apply a force in the direction you hope for. There is no should here. It is the way things are.

Now, this all seems pretty grim. The things Jesus wants us to let go, to say farewell to, are things we like. Things that sustain us, even, like our network of family and friends. If that’s what disciples of Jesus do, is it worth it?

It is a hard question to answer. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be hearing about it in Luke’s Gospel. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be upsetting to contemplate. A rule of thumb in reading scripture says that if someone in the Bible talks about how people should do something, it means that they were not doing it. Moses tells the people of Israel to obey the law of God, to choose life over death, because they have not been and probably don’t want to. If it were easy to choose life over death, Moses wouldn’t be talking so much about it. When Paul tells the people of Corinth not to be so snooty about sharing the Lord’s Supper, it is because they have been. When Jesus tells the crowd that they must carry their cross, it is because they are reluctant to. For many in that crowd the consequences of discipleship are just not worth it.

But for others … What the crowd—a large crowd, Luke says—what the crowd sought from Jesus was a new life. For one reason or another—it doesn’t say—they were lost or tired or confused or unable to cope or unsatisfied. They listened to Jesus—people listen to Jesus now—because they—because we—hope to hear about a new way to live. They need to get out of themselves and the patterns of their lives. Patterns that are tiring, boring, dangerous. They need to be freed from what John Calvin called “the deadly pestilence of love of strife and love of self.” It goes beyond being a good and responsible person—they want to be a new person. That’s what Jesus is talking about. That’s is why people are willing to consider what he has to say, as hard as it is to hear. That is why they are willing to follow Jesus.

This transformation of our being is, for most of us (but not all of us), a long process. It happens in a lifetime rather than in a moment. And, for most of us, it requires the support of a community of other people looking for something similar. Moses was speaking to all of the Israelites, but what happened did happen because of what each person did. Discipleship is a communal activity that is implemented in the decisions that each one of us makes over time.

I have set before you life and death, Moses says. He is asking them to love God with all their hearts and souls and minds and to love their neighbors as themselves. This is not about emotions and feelings, even though emotions and feelings come from it. To follow God, to follow Jesus, is a rational and decisive act. Or better: many rational and decisive acts, one after the other, in different circumstances and over time. In those places and times, as much as you are able, choose life.

I set before you life and death, says Jesus. Choose life that you may live.

Pride was not made for humankind

2010-08-29T09:16:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

I’d like to talk today about quantum mechanics and Ramadan and how they help us think about discipline and humility. Which is what Jesus talks about in this parable today in Luke. These four things are both familiar and odd to us. And that’s how it is with parables, too. When Jesus tells a parable, he uses familiar situations to present what are, to his listeners at least, odd conclusions.

So, for example, the familiar notion of a meal shared with friends and neighbors. You invite the people you like. If it is a formal meal, you also invite the people who count. If it is a very formal meal, you make sure that the people who count sit in the right spots. In a wedding, who sits with the bride and groom. Who with the parents. Who has to sit with all the old folks. Being at the head table was then and is now an honor to be valued and coveted. No one wants to sit at the last table.

But Jesus makes this odd by telling folks not to rush for table number one. To hold back, to be humble, to ask for less, to expect little. Why does he say that?

What is odd is that we mostly don’t find this parable to be odd. It is the kind of thing Jesus says all the time. You know, the last shall be first kind of stuff. The one who loses his or her life will save it. We are so accustomed to hearing this kind of talk from Jesus that it is not shocking. But it should be. Jesus intended it to be.

Partly what has happened is that we are no longer disturbed by what Jesus says. There is a little rule in our heads: Jesus is good and kind. We follow Jesus. We therefore approve of what Jesus says. Sometimes without paying too close attention. Or feeling under any obligation to do what he says. It doesn’t shock us because, you know, it is our Jesus. Doing his Jesus thing.

And partly what is happening in this story is that we modern western people have ambivalent feelings about social and financial inequality and stratification. We admire the poor but don’t want to be poor. We approve of the people who sit at the lowest place but we ourselves neither want to nor expect to sit there. People who are wealthy have too much power, money, and arrogance. But we would love to have that much ourselves. We want to be ordinary but special.

The role model for many is the underprivileged and passed over person who gets lucky or who is discovered and becomes famous and wealthy. A kind of American Idol or Slumdog Millionaire or Sarah Palin variant. We like ordinary people who become celebrities. So when we hear this parable, we think: right. The ordinary person who is assigned the lowest table is discovered by the host and brought forward to sit at the head table in a place of honor. It is the American dream, and right there in scripture.

One problem with this is that we know it hardly ever really happens. In the world, most poor people stay really poor. The last stay last and the first stay first. Or more so. It is a joke when Garrison Keillor says “all are above average” because we know that that is as socially unlikely as it is mathematically impossible. There is only room for one number one.

So if we want to sit at the top table, we had better go for it. Waiting around for someone, for the host, to see us languishing and to come invite us forward—it’s just not going to happen. We believe in competition. We think it is natural. We think it is inevitable. And we think it is admirable. We might resent those who in the banquet rush to be seated in the best spots. But at least we understand them and give them credit. As for those who sit meekly, who stand about, who accept less—they are pitiful. This parable of Jesus—it’s not realistic. That’s not how things work around here.

But it is how God works.

When we say that all are saints and sinners, when we say that God forgives us our sins, when we say that Jesus loves you, when we say we are all God’s children, we are obliterating the distinctions that normally seem so active and obvious. One of us does not have to crowd out another. It is like quantum mechanics, an equally unintuitive and odd way of thinking about the world that allows, if I understand it right, for many things to occupy the same spot at the same time. The advances of some of us do not undo the position of others. Someone else’s gain does not have to be matched by your loss.

It is not easy to believe this in our hearts. It seems unnatural. It goes against our fears. To not push forward is therefore a discipline. That is, it is something that we have to practice. It is a spiritual practice. Spiritual practices are things that turn out to be good for you to do but that are often difficult to do.

As you know, we are in the middle of Ramadan, for Muslims a month-long time of fasting and alms-giving or acts of charity. It is a spiritual discipline similar to what Christians used to practice and sometimes still practice during Lent. No one thinks it is fun to skip food and drink all day and few people think it is fun to give away money and time to others.

Disciplines like those of Ramadan and Lent are exercises in humility. In being humble. In doing exactly what Jesus talks about in this parable. Of standing back, not pushing up to the front. Of being little, of not trying to be so grand.

Krista Tibbet is a radio interviewer who gets people to speak about matters of faith, and usually about their own faith. In a recent interview with newly-converted young American Muslims, she asked about their experiences with the discipline of fasting and charity. What was remarkable was that they rarely spoke about the difficulty of the discipline. What they spoke about was their joy. The joy of being humble. They used words like: mindfulness, peace, surrender, trust, contentment, holiness.

This is what we seek as Christians and as humans. To be present in our surroundings and to others. To be at peace. To give up our worries to God. To know contentment. To feel blessed.

The benefits claimed of a competitive life, a competitive culture, are wealth and security and power. Are these what we really most want? Is this what we were made for? Is what we hope from life? Don’t we long instead for the blessings that seem to come with humility? As often, Jesus is not commanding us. He is making us an offer.

At the end of this parable, Jesus gives us some advice. He speaks to us as hosts this time, not as guests. Our roles are reversed from before, and we are doing the inviting. But as before, the scene is familiar and the conclusion odd. Invite the most unlikely and perhaps unlikeable people to your house for dinner. People you don’t want to see. Who maybe make you nervous. Whom you don’t want to be seen with, either. You will be blessed, says Jesus. The message is similar to the parable: taking pride in yourself, in this case because of your nice friends, is not what Jesus is talking about.

One of the suggested alternative readings for today is from Sirach, a book from the apocrypha. (These are books in some Bibles that Martin Luther said were not “equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read.”) The reading speaks about pride as the beginning of sin. And at the end, it says “Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.” [We should put those words on a plaque and hang it in our houses.]

There is a lot of pride, anger, and general self-aggrandizement going around in the world. I cannot see this stuff fitting into the teachings of Jesus, who walked, after all, humbly to the cross. We are not designed for it. It does not suit us. It is making us ill, and it is making us crazy.

Jesus is a healer. He says odd things—like the blessings of being humble in an arrogant and self-centered world—he says odd things that shock the world. By this, he offers the world another way to be and think and live. By this, he offers a healing way.

Good Matters

2010-08-01T17:32:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 12:13-21
Other texts: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

On the one hand: what is this guy’s problem? He has so much stuff that his barn is bursting. His garage is full of junk, power tools, and yard furniture. His house is full of art, books, and electronic gear. His barn is full of food from years of fortunate harvests. Rather than sending some to Goodwill, or putting it out on the street like good Cambridge people would do, or selling it on Craigslist or posting it on Freecycle, or sending it to the Food Bank, he thinks he’ll tear down his barn and build a bigger one. That way he can keep all that is his, safe and ready.

On the other hand: what is the problem with this guy? It is prudent to save for the future. It is always good to have a nest egg, something to fall back on. In the Bible, Joseph saved the Egyptians from starvation by storing excess grain, just as the man is doing, for years. You can’t depend on Social Security. Save what you make and put it into a retirement account. Don’t be a burden to your children.

There is no question that there is a problem here. There is no question that the man is supposed to be an example of something bad and wrong-headed. Even to Lutherans, who value planning and prudence, who are save-for-a-rainy day kind of people, the man seems a glutton and cold-hearted. Jesus uses him as an example of greediness, not thriftiness. Is it just a question of balance? If he had been a little more generous, would it have been okay? If seemed less gleeful, more humble, more thankful, would it have been okay? Is there no room, as someone asked, in God’s economy for building bigger barns? Or are these even the right questions to ask of this passage?

The narrator in the first reading from Ecclesiastes and the man with barns have some things in common. For one thing, they spend a lot of time talking to themselves. And for another, as a consequence, they spend a lot of time thinking about themselves.

And what they are thinking about and talking about is this: how should a person live in the face of certain death? How should a person live knowing that we are mortal and that our years are numbered (we just do not know what the number is)?

For the Teacher (the narrator) in Ecclesiastes, the answer is: why bother? Nothing we do lives beyond us, so in the end our work is trivial and meaningless. “It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with,” he says. It is a lot of chasing the wind. And whatever you gather, it is not yours to keep; it goes to fools and villains to squander or ruin. Or even to wise persons, who might still do the same. Or to anyone, who will enjoy the fruits that you so labored for. For the Teacher, mortality invalidates the days of our lives.

For the rich man with barns, the answer is: why not? The hour of our death is in the unknown future. We will not live forever, but we might live a long time more. We must be cautious that we will have enough to last. Though mortal, what matters is the life we are now living and that we are able to live it well.

Eat, drink, and be merry, says the rich man with barns. Celebrate life while you have it. But the Teacher says: you quoted that verse from Isaiah wrongly. It goes: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. All we do is in vain.

We do not live forever. In almost every scheme of things, by almost every measure, our time is short. In the two millennia between us and Jesus, there have been about 100 generations. In that time, cities and nations and peoples have risen and fallen. All of human history spans an amount of time equal to 100th of 1 percent of the age of the dinosaurs. The universe is vast and old. In its lifetime planets, suns, and galaxies have come and gone. We are not much more than nothing at all.

And yet our actions matter. We are not alone. We are entwined with others in a way that Luke could never have guessed possible. Not only do we share language, culture, dreams with other people; not only do we share creaturely behaviors and desires and stories with other people; we share parts.We are beginning to realize that we are made up just as much—if not more—of other organisms, bacteria and virus, as we are of human cells. Our DNA contains pieces of ancient viruses. Our lives are part of the lives of the history, present, and future of this world.

On the larger scale of spirit and thought, what we do makes a difference. When Jesus tells the story of the man with barns, his audience knows that the man’s riches come at the expense of others who are poorer than he is. Our modern notion that a rising sea raises all boats—that wealth is elastic and indefinitely expandable—would have been thought ludicrous in the time of Jesus. Wealth was fixed and limited. Among the followers of Jesus, being rich was a form—even if culturally okay—being rich was a form of stealing.

The man with barns and the Teacher and we all share a vain myth. The myth is that our good legacy lives on and benefits the world and that our bad legacy dies with us, without fault to the world. The Teacher whines that the good he does is enjoyed by others. But he does not mourn—or even acknowledge—the evil he might do and the effects it might have after him. And the man with barns has not a clue.

For whatever reason—the economic doldrums, environmental disasters, the creation of nuclear waste that lasts longer than history, rafts of trash in the oceans, the destruction of species—whatever, we have begun to wonder about what we are leaving to our children. Not the riches of the Teacher and the man with barns, but with the stuff we have denied. Is progress real? We are suddenly not so sure. And if it is, can we control and sustain it? For the first time in a long time in this country, people say their children will have a harder time of it than they have had.

There is a symbiosis in Christianity—some call it a tension—between the individual and the community. For some, the point of Christianity is personal piety. A relationship one on one with God. For others, the point is sanctification, living a holy life. And for still others, the point is to guide the community of the world into being more like the kingdom of God. Thus we have monasteries and missions and churches and soup kitchens. Thus: spirit, joy, reverence, and service—the motto of this congregation. Christians have always known that reverence leads to service. And the other way around, too. Individual lives of faith are nurtured in and nurture the community of humans.

Christians are not like the Teacher or the man with barns. We do not embrace any kind of notion that we are alone in the world. Or that we can act as if we were, leaving it to some other persons or some other force, some invisible hand, to correct imbalances or inequities. Or to some future technologies to make up for our dispassion.

We as Christians do not embrace any kind of notion that what we do does not matter. It is true that we are all saints and sinners both. And it is true that we depend on the grace of God to smooth the rough edges of our sins. But these two theological foundations of our faith do not let us off the hook. We cannot say that God will fix things all up, so why should we. Nor can we say that God knows all things, so what difference does it make.

We follow Jesus, who spent a lot of time telling people how to live. Telling us how to be good. It matters that we be good.

Praying Shamelessly

2010-07-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 11:1-13

This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in.* So says Jesus in Luke, as he helps his disciples understand the prayer he just taught them. This is not a little formal dance we go through with God. Prayer is not a contrivance, some convoluted religious contraption designed to deliver effective requests to heaven. There is not a special way to pray. Just as there is no special way to have a conversation. There are some models for prayer, just as there are some models for conversation. But the models for prayer, just as the models for conversation, are starter kits, ice breakers, and forms of art.

A friend tells me he sits and talks “to the man upstairs.” Maybe that is how you think of prayer, too. It is a nice way to describe a relationship we might have with God. Respectful, direct, and expecting something. There is not need in our prayer to beat around the bush, to begin with elaborate preambles, to apologize ahead of time for bothering God, as we sometimes do. “If you have a moment, God.” God always has a moment. When we pray to the one upstairs, we can expect that God is listening, paying attention to what we have to say in our words and in our hearts, taking an active role in the conversation.

Master, teach us to pray, the disciples ask. The disciples have seen Jesus pray. He prays a lot in Luke. In the desert, at night, before he feeds a crowd, near his death. In Luke (and in Acts, the other book that Luke wrote), prayer is the first Christian practice. The community of the followers of Jesus is a community of people who pray.

Maybe “ask” is too weak a word for what the disciples do. They seem to have an urgent need to pray. Their request is immediate and demanding. Teach us to pray. We need to pray. They are not really wondering how to pray, in what way, what stance or attitude to assume (and if so, Jesus does not really tell them). They need to pray. Jesus gives them a prayer.

They are direct. Jesus is direct. When you pray, say this. And what they are to say, talking to the one upstairs, is direct.

This foundation in Luke to the Lord’s Prayer is short and straightforward. So is the similar one in Matthew. You may find the words from our usual Bible more familiar than the ones we read this morning:

“Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

The prayer starts with a short salutation, a sort of respectful: “hello, how are you?” It identifies the person to whom we are speaking. We call that person “father.” I’ll talk some more about that at the end. Partly, this salutation is just polite. When you speak to someone, you get their attention first. Partly it clears up in our minds that person to whom this prayer is addressed. Not some vague deity, but the particular creator of the universe. A personality, so to speak. God, even if not the gray-haired old man in a white robe, is an entity, a person with whom we can talk. Who has a name. The one upstairs. God, I’m talking to you. It reminds both of us.

But God is more than a person. God is special somehow. Holy, formally meaning set apart. But more to the point, uncorrupted by the ways and things of the world. God is not just like a human, only more so, only bigger, longer lived, and more powerful. But God is actively interested in humans, not just cosmic, essential, and life-giving. God up there, but not just up there.

After this introduction, the prayer goes immediately into four petitions, four things we need. These sentences are demanding, pushy even, abrupt. Four imperatives: lead us, feed us, forgive us, save us. There is no begging, no “please,” no argument. There is no qualification, no “if it be your will.” (That part goes without saying. It is not our job to give God permission. And besides, Jesus seems to be telling us that it will be God’s will anyway.)

God the creator wishes to provide for creation. We get confused: we ask God to lead us rightly. We get hungry, we are dependent: we ask God to feed us every day. We do bad and stupid things: we ask God to let us off the hook. We live in a scary and demanding world: we ask God to protect us from evil circumstances. We are human. We get physically, mentally, and emotionally troubled. Jesus says to pray: God, you are God. We could use some help down here.

There are other kinds of prayer. Thanksgiving, for example, or praise. But this one, the prayer Jesus teaches his disciples, is a prayer for help. We are taught by Jesus to pray for what we want. Not to pray for something we think God wants, not to pray for polite things only, but things we actually want. Things that matter to us in the moment. I’m starving, please feed me. I’m confused, please show me what to do next. I feel like an idiot, please forgive me. I’m scared, please keep me safe.

Later, Jesus tells a story about an inhospitable friend. This story is an elaboration of the prayer he just taught his disciples. It is kind of a case study. One of the points of the story is that we can be persistent in prayer. That we can bother God about what we want. That it is OK.

A better word, though, than persistent, is shameless. We can pray and pray and pray shamelessly. We can ask for whatever we want shamelessly. This is the kind of God we pray to. In the first reading, Abraham negotiates with God to save Sodom. Abraham presents his argument, God agrees. Abraham presses his point, God gives ground. Abraham pushes beyond all civility. God relents. Abraham is shameless. He is not ashamed to speak to God this way, he is not ashamed to pray for the city, he is not ashamed to ask for more. Abraham knows his God. God expects shameless prayer.

The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. What Jesus teaches them, though, is what God is like. What kind of God they pray to. God is like this: God encourages prayer. God enjoys a good argument. God listens to people. God is interested in the day to day. You don’t have to do anything special to pray to God. God is, we might say, interactive.

“Here’s what I’m saying,” the reading says. I’m saying that though there are fathers who might torment their children, that’s not like God. Though there are fathers whom you have to approach cautiously, that’s not like God. Though there are fathers from whom you can ask only certain things, that’s not like God. God is like a father whom you can approach without fear, with words uncensored and raw, from whom you can demand much, and from whom you can expect much.

Not everybody thinks that God is like that. But Christians are a group of people who do. It is significant that in this prayer the people all pray together. Give us, forgive us, deliver us.

When we say this prayer in worship here, we acknowledge that we do so confidently and that we do in solidarity with the whole family of the followers of Jesus in every time and place. This prayer does more than give us words to recite. It defines what God is for us and what God is like for us. And it defines us. We are the ones who pray this way. It is what Jesus taught us to do.

*Reading today from The Message version of the Bible.

Distracted from Justice

2010-07-18T15:38:00.001-04:00

Text: Luke 10:38-42
Other texts: Amos 8:4-7

All of us get distracted from time to time. It is our human nature. People are designed to focus intently on one thing, but still let other things grab their attention. That mixture of single-mindedness and sensitivity to events is what makes us able to do complicated human things like drive a car or run a company or be a parent.

Martha is distracted. The narrator and Jesus both say it. She succumbs to distraction, a word that means to draw away from. It is as if she cannot help herself, as if there were two forces working on her: her love for Jesus and her desire to be with him; and her love for Jesus and her desire to feed and care for him, to offer him hospitality. Both Mary and Martha are distracted: pulled one way or the other, succumbing to one or the other love. Martha is distracted in a way that seems obvious, but Mary is distracted, too, called away from serving Jesus by her longing to be with him in this very moment.

The comment Jesus makes to Martha is often interpreted as judging her. Making a judgment about her choices (as, we sometimes, judge her character). But there is no judgment here. Jesus, is not telling Martha (or Mary, either) what to do. He is merely telling them what they are doing. Jesus’ comments, as they often are, are descriptive, not proscriptive.

This means that the purpose of this passage is not to place Mary and Martha in opposition to each other. The situation in the story is particular. Jesus was a friend of the household (at least we think so from John’s gospel, and it seems so here, too). In this story, it is Mary who has chosen the better part. But you can imagine that there were other times when the three friends met, and that in some of those times Martha chooses the better part, whatever that happens to be.

It also means that Jesus is not making a general comment about how one should live one’s life. This is not about how the contemplative life is better than a life of action, or a life of learning is better than a life of industry, or that a life of devotion is better than a life of service. Jesus is not saying that we should all be more mindful (though that might be a good idea). Jesus, at least here, is not saying we should be anything at all. There is no “should” in this passage.

What happens in the story is that Martha approaches Jesus and demands that he do something about her sister Mary. This is extremely odd. Martha and Mary are hosts. It was not good form then—and is not good form today—for the hosts to ask a guest to get involved with conflicts among them. It is a sort of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” moment. That Martha does pester Jesus is significant.

What does Martha want? Does she want Jesus to boss Mary around: tell Mary to get in there in the kitchen with her sister? Not likely. Does she want Mary to stand up and leave Jesus alone in the living room? Not likely that, either. If she were the king of the world, what would she have happen?

What Martha wants is justice. She sees injustice in the situation. She pesters Jesus because Jesus is a person of justice. Not that Jesus is just, though that may be so, but that justice flows from Jesus. The provider of justice, in the world of Mary and Martha, is God. Mary turns to Jesus not because he is her friend, and in spite of the fact that he is her guest at the moment, but because she recognizes and appeals to the divine in Jesus.

The prophet Amos, who provided us with today’s first reading, is known for his defense and definition of justice. It is in Amos that God calls on the world: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” And today, he gives examples of injustice. Cheating the poor (giving them smaller containers and charging them more); taking advantage of the fact that they need food so desperately that the merchants can sell them grain cut with the sweepings; making them slaves and servants and indentured employees because they have so little. You trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor, the prophet says.

Justice is not making everything the same. It is not an even allocation of resources. And it is not giving everyone the same chance. Some people need more help than others. Some people can do more with what they are given. A just distribution of food is not one in which everyone gets the same bag of groceries. It is one in which no one goes hungry. Equality and fairness are not the same as justice. In a just system, even if all do not have the same, no one goes wanting. If some do, even if all have the same, the system is unjust.

And justice is not the same as revenge or redress. A just system is not one that counters one evil with another. Two wrongs don’t make a right, children rightly say. Justice is not served when one pain is inflicted to compensate another. The balance scales we use to symbolize justice are there to remind us that a thumb on the scale is injustice. They do not encourage us in retribution to harm others who harm us.

To whom do we turn to see justice done? If to ourselves, the goal is to balance sorrow against sorrow. Doing justice is to make sure that all suffer equally. Justice is done if you pay for your crime. Justice is done when your hurt matches mine.

But if we turn to God’s way of justice, the goal is to heal the hurt. To restore what is broken. The goal of justice is in the end to restore humanity to Eden. Justice is done when none suffer and all have plenty.

The deeds listed by Amos directly cause suffering and deprivation. The prophet is rightly angered by the merchants and wants them punished, but justice will be restored only when the people have food and strength and peace.

When we think about what we do, as individuals and in groups, and if we hear God’s call to be just, then we have to ask: does this hurt or heal? Does this heal or does this hurt? Does this bring us closer to Eden or extend our exile from it?

This is not easy. It seems complicated. And we are easily distracted by ourselves and our own hurts. Jesus, can’t you do something about Mary? Don’t you care about me? It is not fair. Like Mary and Martha, we are pulled away from God by our concerns.

It is not easy because doing justice is not a political activity. We do not do justice because it is better practically, though I’d say it is. We do justice because we belong to God. Doing justice is an expression of faith. It comes from our faith. Justice is not an act of expediency but an act of devotion. We try to act justly—that is, to heal people—because we love God. We work to act justly because God tells us to. And because we are God’s, we listen.

Hard News

2010-07-11T13:48:00.000-04:00

Text: Luke 10:25-37

Purity rules, like taboos, exist for two reasons: for identity and for safety. People who obey the same cultural rules and agree on what is nice and what is disgusting are my people. My people are the ones who obey the law. The law they obey is the one that they established. Other people obey other laws. Those people are not my people. Their rules seem foolish or evil, sometimes.

We, my people, all obey the same rules because they separate the world into two kinds of things: Things that I know are safe and things that are maybe not safe. Things that we do or avoid because the law demands it are safe. Other things might or might not be safe. The point is: I don’t know. I don’t know if they are. Therefore I avoid them, for good reason.

The same thing applies to people as to things. People who are not my people might not be safe. They might be, but I don’t know. I do know, or suspect, they don’t follow the same, safety-proven, rules. People who are my people I call neighbors. People who are not my people I call aliens. Or foreigners. People who have foreign—different—rules. They are not exotic and desirable. They are potentially unsafe and scary.

Purity rules—sometimes called holiness codes—are therefore less an issue for a dominant, powerful, ruling culture. Such a culture is less fearful. An oppressed, weak, occupied culture is, rightly, more fearful. When something bad happens to a powerful culture—9/11, financial weakness, inability to control nature and nations—that culture too begins to wonder: who is the alien and who is my neighbor.

The man who approaches Jesus, who is described as a lawyer in our Bible, might be called a rule expert. The Bible makes him sound a little like a jerk. But if on the one hand we give him the benefit of the doubt, he has a legitimate concern. He wants to know who is safe, in the way I’ve been talking about. He knows that the rules say that everyone should love their neighbor (it is in Leviticus, chapter 18). Loving a neighbor is safe. But it sounds safer if there are fewer neighbors. And besides, it is less of a nuisance. So, Jesus, what does God have to say about this?

If on the other hand we don’t give the benefit of the doubt to the lawyer, then we might say he is trying to get Jesus to tell him how far he might go. He does not want to know so much whom he should love. He wants to know whom he does not need to love. Whom can he exploit, or ignore, or be excused from being kind to? In that way he is like a child who wants to know the exact letter of the law so that he can find a way to do what he wants without violating it. What he can get away with. Who exactly is it that I don’t have to love?

Jesus, being kind of a lawyer himself, and wily in the ways of argument, instead of answering tells a story.

There is a man by the side of the road, beaten and left for dead. Two guys walk by, see the man, and do nothing. The third man does something. That is the first point of the story. What God asks seems, in light of the story, to have nothing to do with what you think or believe or profess. It has to do with what you do. This story is about doing. What shall I do, asks the lawyer at the beginning. Do this, says Jesus. Go and do likewise. The two men who pass by don’t do anything bad. Their fault is that they don’t do anything at all. The man who does help sees the injured man, is moved with compassion, and goes to him.

If that were the whole story, it would be a moral tale, but kind of boring. Being nice is better than not. What makes it interesting is that the two men who do nothing are neighbors of the injured man. At least by the definition we are using. He is their people and they are his. But the other guy, the one who helps, is a Samaritan.

What is important to know here is that the Samaritans and the Jews—that’s who the others were—Samaritans and the Jews were really enemies. They hated and feared each other. They burned each other’s buildings. It was not safe for a Samaritan to walk in Judea or the other way around. This was not like Minnesotans and North Dakotans. Not a friendly rivalry. If you asked either one who was their neighbor, you’d get an answer like: Anybody but him. So the story that Jesus tells is very shocking. It is hard to imagine what the other Samaritans would have thought of the Good Samaritan, who was by their lights not good at all, if they had known.

For he cared for an enemy. And really cared for, spending about $400 equivalent on a hotel room, with promises of more. Aiding and abetting.

Who is your neighbor? I mean, actually. That person who lives next door or down the street. In our world, and especially in the city, neighbors are people who are close geographically. They live near each other. Saying that someone is your next-door neighbor conveys real information. People can imagine it. Your neighborhood is a special place. But neighbors also tend to be alike in ways that a random assortment of people might not be. They might be alike in income, or lack of it, or education, or whether they have children, or how much they can spend on housing. Brattle Street is not the same neighborhood as East Cambridge. So in some sense every neighborhood is an exclusive one. When people come into the neighborhood from outside the neighborhood, people can tell and are suspicious. Even modern neighborhoods in a diverse city have a sense of identity and safety.

Neighborliness can trump culture. There was a story in the paper last week about a neighborhood that was originally made up of Italian immigrants. But gradually people from Mexico moved in. This particular neighborhood was in New York; the same thing is happening in East Boston. But living side by side did not overcome people’s fear. The Italians and the Mexican were not each other’s people. They did not feel safe with one another. But during the World Cup four years ago, the Mexican team was defeated in an early round. When the Italian team won, the Mexican neighbors ran down the streets waving Italian flags, shouting “We won! We won!”

This is a happy story. But the point of Jesus’ story is that neighborliness is not sufficient. Shared values, even ones acquired by proximity, interest, and affection over time as with the Italians and Mexicans, are not the answer to the lawyer’s question. Who is your neighbor goes beyond the neighborhood.

Who was the neighbor, Jesus asks the lawyer. The one who showed mercy, the lawyer says. Scholars complain that the lawyer hates the Samaritans so much that he can’t even say the name. That may be so, but it seems to me that lawyer has found the general conclusion in the particular story. Neighbors are people who show kindness to each other, and who accept kindness from each other. If the lawyer wants to know whom he can pass by, this is bad news. Because if he is to follow this great commandment, the answer is that he can pass by no one. And that he must be kind to everyone. This is the second point of Jesus’ story.

This is not easy. It is much easier to know right from wrong, which in itself is not so easy. But knowing what is right and wrong has a lot to do with the codes and laws that we talked about.

Being kind does not. Doing kindness does not. For the men who passed by the man who was robbed and beaten, somehow their definition of what was good did not compel them to love another person as they loved themselves.

Do not do what those men did, says Jesus to the lawyer. You cannot pass by. Be kind to all people, even those who are not your people. Go, do as the story says.

This is not easy. The world is not safe. If we want safe, that’s OK, but that’s not a value that we’ll find in the Gospel, not something that we’ll find in the words of Jesus. Not a Christian value.

Perhaps the man should have asked: Who is my God? We are commanded by God to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we are taught by Jesus that that means everybody. If our God is the God of the Bible, and if we believe both our God and believe Jesus, we are in trouble. There is no one to whom we can deny kindness.

And if everybody is our neighbor, who can be our enemy? And if everybody is our neighbor, who will be the alien? And if everybody is our neighbor, who is the foreigner?