Reformation On-going

Text: John 8:31-35
October 29, 2006

This is a big day for Martin Luther. We sing hymns that he wrote, and we hear his words quoted. The Lutheran church worldwide is especially proud of Martin Luther on this day, and will celebrate the day more energetically than most other Protestant denominations. You would be forgiven if you thought that the name of this day was Martin Luther Sunday.

But it is not. This is Reformation Sunday. What we celebrate today is The Reformation. That period about 500 years ago when the unity of the formal Christian church was shattered. Though there had been major splits in the church before, in the Reformation the very idea of what the Christian church was made of changed. It wasn’t Luther who made this happen. Forces were already weakening the Roman church. Luther was just the right man in the right place.

Lutherans and other Protestant churches celebrate the Reformation because that was the time of their incubation. Without the Reformation there would be no Lutherans or Methodists or UCC or Disciples of Christ or Baptists or any of the hundreds and maybe thousands of Christian denominations.

Not everybody sees this as good news, all these little grouping of Christians, and during the Reformation most people thought the upheaval in the church was bad news. Luther himself was unhappy about how things went. He was not interested in breaking the church apart. He would have not been pleased to see a denomination named after him, as we Lutherans have done. “What is Luther,” he said, “After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone.”

Luther sought reform, not replacement. He was a “work in the system” kind of guy. The system was broken, he thought, and he had a few ideas about what was wrong and how to fix it. But he was surprised at what he helped cause. For a long time he thought that if the Pope were only made aware of the problems in the church, he would move to fix them and everything would be ok again. Luther’s early letters to the Pope are heartbreaking and naïve, saying essentially, “I think you are a great guy; why are you letting these bad things happen?”

When we see how the Christian churches are going at each other, we might join Luther in having mixed feelings. So what we celebrate today is not so much the period of the Reformation (capital R) but the idea of reformation (lower case r).

All organizations need reforming from time to time. Good starts and good intentions break down either because an organization forgets its mission or allows it to be corrupted, or because the mission is good but the implementation is not. So a hospital may begin to think that its mission is to make money for its shareholders instead of caring for people. Or a government may begin to think that its mission is to protect the holdings of the rich few instead of the well-being of the many. Or a church may begin to think that its mission is to keep things orderly, privileged, and successful instead of to bring about God’s realm of peace, healing, and justice.

Or the mission may be on track and the execution not. So the hospital may harm people through poor controls and standards, or the government through corruption and cowardice, or the church through greediness for power, success, and admiration.

The church exists so that people may know God. Worship and teaching and service and music and all the other things we do provide ways for people to know God, each person in his or her own way. There is no single path to knowing God, so the church’s most important task is to say what it knows and share what it experiences and teach what it has figured out so far and to nourish people in their faith, and then to get out of the way. The church’s most constant job is to remove barriers between people and God.

We are slaves, as Jesus says, to many things in this world. His audience takes him literally and protests. We are not and have never been slaves to anybody, they say. But Jesus knows that our masters are many. What are the things that boss you around? What are the things that keep you from doing what you know is right? What are the things that make you do what you know is wrong? Those are our masters. When fear is strong in us, we are not ourselves. We are someone else’s. We belong to someone, something else. “A slave to sin” is another way to say this. It feels sometimes is as if we were trying to get through a door, except there is this big guy in our way, blocking the passage. Or as if people have put up Jersey barriers, like they do in construction projects, and our way which seems like it should be short, direct, and pleasant winds all around in annoying detours.

The job of the church is to make those barriers ineffective. Either by removing them, or by showing us that they are not really substantial and permanent, just flimsy and fake. Margaret Payne, the bishop of the New England Synod, wrote about the job of the church this way: “By means of worship, courage, compassion, and teaching, to remove all barriers that resist God’s transforming power.”

All too often, though, the church does the opposite. It puts up barriers. You can’t come in, it says, because of the rules, because of the way you are, because of the way we are. So Paul writes in Romans about how the rules of the church in his should not be used to keep out the pagans who wish to follow Jesus. So Luther speaks out against a church that insisted on mediating between God and people. So Paul extends access to the church to gentiles so that all might follow Jesus. And Luther translates the Bible into the everyday language of the people so all might hear the word of God.

A theologian writes about the ongoing nature of faith. “Now, faith, is a living thing … It is not a once-for-all accomplishment. It is not a possession, like a Visa card, that some have and others don’t. It is an ongoing response to God, to the world, to life. It is therefore a matter of decision—taken not once, but over and over again.” So the church, grounded in faith, and renewed through trust in the ongoing and often surprising guidance of God, is formed over and over again.

In a moment [ ... ] will be installed as the vicar here at Faith. She will take on a role as a leader in the Lutheran church. And she will take another step on her path that, God willing, will lead her to ordained ministry.

[ ... ], there is no perfect church that calls you. There is no church known by human beings that is right now complete and true. There is only—as Luther and his friends wrote— there is only an assembly of those who gather to hear the gospel of Jesus and to share in his supper. There is only a church that works daily, over and over again, to free people from the barriers that keep us from God. There is only a church in constant reformation.

Where Do You Want to Sit, John?

October 22, 2006
Text: Mark 10:35-45

Last week the Greater Boston Food Bank held a luncheon for the people who work in what they call agencies. The Food Bank is where we get almost all our food for Faith Kitchen, and we are an agency. An agency is some organization that feeds people by giving them food or serving them meals, as Faith Kitchen does. Once a month someone from Faith goes down to the Food Bank in Boston, loads cases of fresh, canned, and frozen food into a van, and brings it back here so we can make meals for hungry people. Every month we pick up between 300 and 600 pounds of food. It costs us anywhere from nothing to $30 for all that food.

There are many agencies. We are one of the smaller ones. Last year through the agencies the Food Bank distributed 25 million pounds of food in the Boston area. That’s 70,000 pounds of food a day.

The luncheon was held on the 25th anniversary of the Food Bank, and it was held to honor the agencies. At the tables, about a thousand people sat, people who in one way or another worked to help people who were hungry get food to eat.

There were lots of congratulatory speeches, saying how great the agencies were. Tom Menino, the mayor of Boston was there, and so was Senator Ted Kennedy. The speeches and the bigwigs were there to make the agencies feel good about themselves, good about their work feeding hungry people.

The meal we ate was great. (Almost as good as a meal at Faith Kitchen.) And it was good to meet people from other agencies, just ordinary people. But I think all the praises made a lot of people queasy. It made us queasy because I bet there was not a person in that room who fed people in order to be praised. There was not a person in that room who fed people in order to get a pat on the back and a fancy meal. There was not a person in that room who fed people in order to sit next to a mayor or senator.

And it made us feel queasy because though there were lots of speeches telling us how good we were, we agencies were, there was not one speech about hungry people.

It is so easy to divide people into givers and getters. Between, in the jargon, providers and clients. In the hunger business it is especially easy. Some people serve other people. From there it is easy to say “people of a particular kind serve other people of a different kind.” At Faith Kitchen the structure tries to work against making those distinctions. People who come to eat help cook, and people who come to cook eat. That is happening more and more, but even so, differences appear to be evidence for judgment. Even people at the Food Bank seem to feel confident about who is the giver and who the getter.

James and John ask to sit next to Jesus. People see in this passage in the Gospel of Mark a power grab by the two disciples. We want to sit next to you, at your left and your right, they say to Jesus. And the other disciples get annoyed. Indignant, the passage says. We imagine them to be jealous. They wanted those seats themselves. Jesus tells them all, Sorry, those spots are not mine to grant.

Just before these verses, Jesus has told his disciples once again (for the third and last time), that he is on his way to Jerusalem, going to a certain and painful death. One way to look at the request of James and John is that they are looking beyond this prediction to a better time when their party will be in power, in glory, as they say. They are looking to escape the inevitable sorrows of this world. And they want Jesus to do something for them.

But perhaps not. Perhaps there is another way to read it. Perhaps their request is a sign of solidarity with Jesus. After hearing the horrible prediction, they say to Jesus, we are with you all the way. I’m on your right hand, says one. I’m on your left, says the other. We’ve got your back. They are willing to immerse themselves in the sorrows of the world. They want to do something for Jesus.

And when Jesus says to them, Do you know what you are getting yourselves into, do you know what you are asking, can you take it, they say, Yeah, we can. We are able.

Jesus makes it pretty clear to the disciples that being privileged is not what following him is all about. You don’t get special seats for being a Christian. You don’t get to hobnob with the mayor and the senator. What you get to do is to serve with Jesus. I’ve come not to be served but to serve, he says.

But we have got to be careful not to confuse service with authority, with goodness, with power. We have to be careful not to think that serving others is a way to establish our goodness, our righteousness. Do we think we are better for serving meals at Faith Kitchen than those who come to eat those meals? If so, I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, I’ve come to serve.

We are called to serve others not because we are good. It is not our greatness of character that drives us to serve others. It is not our special skill, it is not our super-compassion, it is not our education, it is not the expectation of our mentors and parents. It is not the prospect of a fancy meal in Boston, or the praises of politicians, or days in heaven.

We serve because others exist. It is the call for help, quiet or loud, subtle or obvious, that leads us to serve. We serve food because others are hungry, not because we are such great food-servers. You give to the beggar because he needs you to. You nurture your young children because they need you to. You take care of your aging parents because they need you to. You visit the prisoners and the home-bound because they need you to. You listen to your colleague go on and on about her spouse because she needs you to. Our sacrifices—for our friends, families, spouses, neighbors, country, co-workers, teammates, strangers—giving up our time, our leisure, our chances, our money, sometimes our lives—we make sacrifices because people need us to. Not because we are so great.

Which is good for us, because people sacrifice for us not because they are so great, either. But because we need them to.

Serving others is not a chore or an obligation. It is how we bind ourselves together. It is why the guests at the Food Bank luncheon felt unduly acclaimed. In his remarks, Mayor Menino said that though the Food Bank had done great things in Boston, it was his hope that in the next 25 years there would be no need for a Food Bank, because there would be no hunger. He got it right. The Food Bank and all those agencies exist because people need them. Though feeding people is great and praiseworthy, we do it because people are hungry.

We come asking for help and guidance and healing and new life from Christ, who responds not because he is good—though that certainly is true—and not because he is powerful. But we know that Christ will serve us because we need him to.

Today, Tobias is baptized. Just now, he was welcomed into the Lord’s family, a child of God, and a worker with all in the kingdom of God. Now a follower of Christ, he has been welcomed to be cared for by Christ and, as he promised through his adults, to care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace among all people.

Loving and following Jesus is not an escape from the world. Jesus is not some buffer, some insulation and isolation from a demanding, difficult, and needy world. Jesus comes to be in that world. Impatient with the ten who are thinking not of human things but of heavenly things, he tells them he comes to serve. And it is because the world needs him to. To follow Jesus is not to escape from the world, but to be in solidarity with it.

Babes in the Woods

October 8, 2006
Text: Mark 10:2-16
Preacher: Pastor Stein

The Pharisees were wise in the ways of the world. They knew what’s what. They weren’t babes in the woods. They had been around. They weren’t born yesterday.

So when they asked Jesus this question about divorce, they already knew the answer. They were not trying to get new information. They were trying to trip Jesus up. To catch him in making a political mistake. Maybe he’d say something stupid that would get him into trouble with the authorities. The authority in this case being King Herod, the guy who earlier had had John the Baptist’s head served on a platter because John had criticized Herod’s own peculiar marriage arrangements. Maybe the Pharisees could get Jesus into trouble. For they knew how things worked in the world.

Against the worldly wisdom of the Pharisees Jesus sets before us the little children. This is not the first time in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus has used children as an example to the disciples. Earlier (as we heard a few weeks ago here) he told them that they had to welcome even children, a radical statement in days when children were like property and not yet persons. They, the disciples (and us, of course), were being told: welcome even outcasts. It is a little different in today’s reading. Today, instead of telling them they should be nice to children, Jesus tells them they should be as children. Be like children. If anyone wants to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus says, he or she must receive it as a little child.

This is kind of a riddle. And the riddle goes like this: how is a child not like a Pharisee? We modern types might answer from a sentimental and romanticized picture of children. Children are portrayed as sweet and innocent, powerless and pliable, not mean or greedy,. Painted in pastels, so to speak. But as parents know, that is often as not wishful thinking. And that certainly was not the view people had of children when Jesus spoke these words to the disciples.

But one thing we can say about children and Pharisees is this: Pharisees are old and children are new. Pharisees are experienced and children are without experience.

Being new, children have three things that Pharisees seem to have lost.

First, being new, children have no past. (For a little while, anyway.) No past means no regrets. It also means no grudges, no revenge, no payback. No unrequited loves, no disrepute, no careers made or broken.

Second, being new, children live in wide adventure. I’m not sure it feels like an adventure to children, but all that we know was once unknown to us. Every fact was once a mystery, every conclusion once a question.

And third, being new, children seem to approach life with enthusiastic expectations. I don’t mean that children don’t know sorrow or think that everything is and will be great. I mean that their expectations of life are spirited and energetic and eager.

The rest of us, being old, know a little about life. We, like the Pharisees, are wise in the ways of the world. But our wisdom has not always come in pleasant packages. We have had too many experiences that, as they say, build character. Relationships do not always work out, futures do not always unfold as we hope they will. People we admired turn out to be jerks. People we depended on turn out to be untrustworthy. People have been mean, or stupid, or corrupt, or unfair, or just weak when we needed them to be strong. Our luck has been bad: the bus pulled away just as we arrived to catch it, the door closed, the opportunity snatched by another. Not that life is bleak, but that the path from there to here has had a few rocks on it, sometime pebbles, sometimes boulders.

The Pharisees come to Jesus with dumb questions and nasty motives. Who knows exactly what they were thinking? Maybe they were afraid that Jesus teachings would disrupt a way of life that they found comfortable. Or even found good and true and right. Or maybe they felt he was disrespecting their discipline and training. Or maybe someone whom they valued or depended on told them to. I don’t know. They were doing the kind of thing that people do based on their experience of the world and other people and their ideas about how things work and should work. But the Pharisees in this story don’t seem happy to me.

The promise of Christianity is new life. Another way to say this is a life healed. Another way to say this is a life restored. Another way to say this is a life saved. The aches and bruises that result from our stumbles on those rocky paths need no longer control us. Not that everybody and everything will treat us right, but that the wrongs will not be such overwhelming burdens.

When Jesus speaks about children and the kingdom of God, he is not making up rules and requirements. He is stating an observation. The promise of new life that he offers is relief and rest for those who hold so tight to those burdens. What we hope to find is a way for us to come to God and to life in exactly the way children are different from Pharisees. What we hope for in Jesus, what we pray for, what we trust he will do, is to enable us to be as new as children.

That our past will no longer control us. That, being as children, we may live without regret and not driven to revenge and retribution, or engulfed in guilt and clothed in shame, but that we may know that we are forgiven.

That we may no longer be indifferent, living withdrawn and insulated and isolated. That, being as children, we may see our lives ahead as an adventure, not being nonchalant but welcoming surprise.

And that we may no longer think ahead dispiritedly, anticipating disappointment and disillusionment. That, being as children, we may have enthusiastic expectations for this life and for a promised life to come.

Like the Pharisees, we know what’s what. We have been around. Yet we hope to be as ones born yesterday into a new life. We hope that as the children were by Jesus, we may be embraced by God and blessed.

Vital Mutants

October 1, 2006 Text: Mark 9:38-50

In institutions there is a tendency to favor structure over vitality. Even though, as in the body, it is the vitality of the parts that strengthens and preserves the whole. Our living, energetic cells, constantly moving and making, keep us intact and sturdy. The structure of an institution is a myth. Without vitality, there is no structure. Without vitality, structure is death, like a snail shell without the snail, a skeleton without breath.

I’m talking here about the church. Not this church in particular but the wider Christian church. The church is an institution, and it seems in constant battle about its bones and its boundaries. How is it defined, what are its fundamentals, what is central, who is in and who is excommunicated, who has the power to decide and who has the power to change things. God created the church, our theology says, but then we act as if God moved to Florida, like an absentee landlord, and left us alone in charge of the property.

And when we are alone, we build institutions. Not because we are perverse, but because there is no way we can run things unless we are organized. Any group larger than a couple of handfuls of people develops a bureaucracy. With officers and rules of authority and specialization.

The Bible is peppered with stories of the beginning of the church. The Bible is the story of people’s discovery of and relationship to God, but it is the story mostly of groups of people.

Both the first reading and the gospel reading today tell of moments of transition. One in the growth of Israel and the other in the growth of Christianity. The question is: If the church is to expand, who can speak for it? It is like the transition that happens in an entrepreneurial venture. Somebody has a vision and gets things going. A small group forms. In the early days there is little to organize. Everyone does everything, there are few specialists or experts, there are no traditions to honor. The people involved are not necessarily the best in their fields and are not necessarily smart or skillful. They are the people who are available and eager, a lot like the disciples of Jesus, who in Mark are clueless but persistent.

Moses was the leader of Israel. He made all the decisions. When things went well, Moses got the credit. When things went badly, he got the grief. As in today’s event in the desert. You brought us out here, says the Israelites—who, remember, Moses led out of slavery—you brought us here to eat nothing but manna. We hate manna. Remember how great it was in Egypt? Slaves or no, we got fresh fish for nothing, fresh vegetables, fruits, garlic. Give us meat to eat!

Moses sees this is a crisis not of provisioning but of organization. I’ve had enough, he tells God. I cannot do this by myself. I am not able to carry this people all alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way it is going to be, I’m out of here. Fire me before I quit.

But God sees that Moses needs some organizational help. Time for a little bureaucracy. Time for a little hierarchy. And God takes some of Moses authority and spreads it around. God “took some of the spirit [of Moses},” it says, “and put it on” seventy middle-managers,.

The middle managers, which by our time in the church means bishops and pastors and deacons, exist to preserve order. In particular, to preserve the orderly transmission of the message. The message of Jesus, in the case of the church. The word “ordination” comes from the word “to order.” Ordination does not convey special powers. Ordained ministers agree to maintain orderly theology. To keep the message as free from noise as possible. They are the fiber optics of the church, one way of connecting people to Jesus.

In the psalm today are beautiful verses telling how “one day tells its tale to another” and thus their message is carried to the whole world. The institution of the clergy is supposed to do the same sort of thing, each telling the ones following who in turn tell the ones after them. It is like DNA, passed on from one cell to another, creating beings in perfect copy.

But it doesn’t work. Not in biology or in the church. It doesn’t work not because the copy mechanism is imperfect. It doesn’t work because a perfect copy is not the right thing. Neither the church nor a species can survive if it remains unchanged over time. The environment changes and creatures change with it.

In biology, mutation introduces change, new and unpredicted elements. It’s part of the system.

In the church, also, a kind of mutation introduces change. People on the outside: prophets, iconoclasts, heretics, the unschooled, seers and mystics, doubters and skeptics, contrarians. When the seventy gathered with Moses, two were left out: Eldad and Medad. The others protested; Eldad and Medad were speaking without authorization. Joshua calls out in alarm: Moses, stop them. But Moses will not. He knows that they are necessary to the survival of Israel.

The disciples of Jesus complain in the same way. Teacher, someone was healing people in your name, but he was not one of us. We tried to stop him. But Jesus tells his disciples: Let them be.

The seamless transmission of doctrine and story from one generation to the next provides continuity that keeps the message alive. But the seamlessness of it makes it hard for God to get a word in edgewise. How can God affect the church when each generation is a perfect copy of the previous one? Those in the institution of the church have to be careful to listen for the voice of God in those who seem to be out of it.

No one knows in advance which mutations will be helpful and which not. Martin Luther was named a heretic and a contract put out on him. He survived, and his words and actions re-formed the church. He had a big impact, we can see, 500 years later.

Not every change is so radical. Who are the carriers of beneficial mutations now? Who is the Eldad or Medad of this day? Who is healing without authority? Whose words is God using to re-form our church now? Are they coming from the academy, the street, from the left or the right, from some Lutheran somewhere in Minnesota or some post-Christian poet? Are they coming from someone here in this gathering today?

The church is not the orderly parts of it. Not the seventy elders and the twelve disciples and the Synods and Assemblies and clergy. They are the staff, for convenience and order. The church is the body of Christ. Formed and re-formed everyday by the life and energy and wonder of all who gather. Formed and re-formed by you.

What's Wrong with Being Right?

September 24, 2006 Readings: Psalm 54 & Mark 9:30-37

The problem with claiming to be righteous is that we don’t know if we are righteous. Sometimes not. Probably not. The problem with claiming to be the greatest is that we have no idea how great we are. Sometimes not so great. Not very great.

The word “righteous” means that we are right with God. Aligned with God. Aligned also with God’s created universe. And aligned with what God’s wants. If we are righteous, things are smooth. No swimming against the stream. No splinters in the walkway. No squeaks. Being righteous is moving in parallel with God.

The problem with thinking we are righteous is that we think that we are right. Righter than most, in fact. So much righter that the others who are not right are in fact wrong. And the problem with that is this: that if we think we are right because we are doing exactly what God wants, then people who are wrong are against God and people who are right, like us, are with God. And so whatever we do, God is right behind us every step of the way. God is on our side and we know it for absolutely sure. And since God is in our corner—not, please note, that we are in God’s corner—then we can do pretty much what we think without restraint. We are the greatest. We come first.

Some of you may have noticed that the psalm that we recited today was missing a few verses at the end. That’s for two reasons. The first reason is that I wanted us to hear clearly the words of comfort in the psalm. The words of the last verse we read: “God is my helper. God alone guards my life.” God is committed to helping us. And only God guards us. That’s good to hear.

And the second reason is that I wanted to talk about the next verse here in the sermon. The next verse after these nice words in Psalm 54 goes like this: “Render evil to those who spy on me; in your faithfulness, destroy them.” The person who wrote this psalm is calling on God to destroy the person’s enemies. To render evil to them, which is perhaps worse. The writer is wishing evil on his enemies. You can tell that the writer of the psalm considers himself to be pretty much in the right and that he is confident that God agrees with him and that God will therefore kill his enemies and send evil their way. I wonder what makes him think that God would make evil happen. I thought that evil was someone else’s realm.

Jeremiah calls on God, too, in the first reading. “I was like a gentle lamb,” he writes. But not so gentle that he doesn’t hesitate to call on God to send retribution on those who have insulted him. Because the prophet has tried to be faithful.

The trouble with being right, the troubles I guess you have to say, the troubles with being right are two. The first trouble is that you can hurt people in your righteousness. You know what’s good for them, or if not for them then for the world. This is the sort of thing that ends with someone saying “no gains without pains,” or “this is hurting me more than it hurts you” or “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” or “the end justifies the means.” It leads almost inevitably to all sorts of sorrow.

The second trouble is that it is very tiring to be right. If you are right and others are wrong then you have to be vigilant. For your sake and the sake of the world. For if the others succeed, or win, or prevail, or take over, then, since you know they are wrong, things will be bad. Unlike if you win or prevail or what have you. So you have a moral obligation to watch out for the un-righteous, the un-right, and when you see them, to fight them. Maybe even to call up evil on them. For the good.

Now the alternative to all this is what Jesus said. First, he wasn’t very big on people who thought they were right or righteous. Second, he preached pretty much the opposite: turning the other cheek and all that stuff. Loving people. Loving your neighbor. Loving even your enemies. Not calling out evil on them. Not calling on the wrath of the Lord God to smite them or to bring vengeance or even to protect you. Some of what Jesus preached made people nervous. Still does.

The trouble with claiming that God is your particular powerful champion is that the other guy can just as easily say God is his particular powerful champion, instead. In fact, that happens all the time. And both of you claim to be right, to know the truth, to speak for God, and to know God’s private cell phone number. Who is to judge? So you fight it out in the usual way: through aggression and violence and intimidation and in oppression and pre-emption. You outdo each other in destruction and pain.

The other way, the way Jesus seems to talk about, is to outdo each other in love. That is a win-win situation. Because no matter who is right, you are competing, if you want to call it that, in being loving. Who can be the most loving. Who can be the most compassionate, the most forgiving, the most generous with your time and possessions; the most helpful. Who cares? It is all good.

The disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. They had the good grace to be embarrassed when Jesus asked them, what were you guys arguing about? That certainly shut them up. They knew it was stupid. Then Jesus tells them that to be first they have got to be last.

The fruits of trying to be first are sorrow and exhaustion. The fruits of trying to be last are joy and freedom. There is a kind of wisdom, writes James, that is earthly and devilish. But there is a kind of wisdom from above that peaceable, gentle, full of mercy, willing to yield. Such wisdom bears fruit, he says, and the harvest is peace.

The opposite of right is not wrong. The opposite of right is to be humble. To not be so darn sure you know what is going on, that you know just what God meant, that you are such a better interpreter of God’s signs and words than someone else. Your neighbor or your enemy or your fellow disciple.

Loving your neighbor and your enemy, praying for them even though you can’t stand them or are afraid of them, is not some sort of trick. Not some magic moral martial art thing. It is a way of being humble. It is also a way of acknowledging that maybe God knows a lot more than we do. Maybe we could admit we are wrong. Maybe we could stop and ask for directions. Maybe we could spend time, resources, and energy to outdo each other in love.

A Mind on Human Things

September 17, 2006 Text: Mark 8:27-38

Jesus had a lot on his mind.

Lutherans are adamant about the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus was God in the flesh. More than others, even, Lutherans insist that Jesus was 100% divine and 100% human at the same time. That balance is even. Not mostly divine and a little bit human. Not mostly human with a touch of the divine. Not a god in human disguise, walking incognito on the earth. Not a good teacher and radical blessed by God. But God and human both.

Not everyone likes this approach. You might think the hardest part would be claiming that Jesus was God. And for sure that was the issue during the life of Jesus, where people thought he was being blasphemous by claiming even a special connection—a family connection—with God. And maybe for you that is the hard part even now.

But after 2000 years of the teachings of church and tradition, the problem is often the opposite. In our liturgy and our classrooms we easily claim that Jesus was divine, son of God, sitting even now at the right hand of the Father, visiting us in our times of trouble and listening in heaven to our prayers. What often tempts modern Christians is to forget that Jesus was a person. That he did person things. Drink water, stub his toe, get annoyed, feel passionately, complain about the weather. Whatever it is that people do, Jesus must have done a lot of the same (in his time and circumstances).

There is nothing that Jesus skips over, nothing that he as God is too squeamish to do as unbecoming of a divine creature, nothing that he skips out on and avoids, even despair and death. We can say he knows us as we know ourselves and speaks for us as one of us and we let him advise us on our own lives and the state of the world.

These verses from Mark that we just heard are so full of hot topics of doctrine—Messiah, salvation, sin, for example—that it is especially easy to read them as pronouncements and theological truths. Sort of like a campaign speech, highlighting important points and issues. But I think we can just as easily read them as a story. A story about an important time and event in the life of Jesus, a man called to a mission. And that’s what I’d like to do today.

Jesus has reached a turning point in his ministry. Up until now he has been a teacher, a recruiter, and a healer. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that if things go on as they have so far, Jesus will be in big trouble. He speaks to his disciples, but it is almost as if throughout this passage he is really speaking to himself.

Who do they say that I am? he asks. Let’s not imagine this is a trick question posed by an all-knowing divinity, but an urgent need by a man wishing to know how he stands. They think I’m Elijah, they think I’m John the Baptist come back from the dead. They gather in big crowds around me and they talk about me even though I ask them not to. Jesus is famous, infamous, popular with the masses. He’s in demand.

And my disciples, what does this motley crew think? “Who do you say that I am,” Jesus asks them. “The Messiah,” Peter speaks for them all. You are the Messiah. They think I’m the king, the leader of Israel, the savior of the nation. In your imagination you can hear Jesus sigh. It is a good answer, but a hard answer.

The crowd thinks Jesus is a prophet, the disciples think he is a savior king. Either of these roles leads to almost certain death. Jesus knows he is going to be arrested and killed. And he tells the disciples so. Things are going to get bad.

But Peter can’t stand it. “Don’t let it happen,” he says in another account. Don’t do it. Jesus turns on Peter. Not very compassionate, here. He doesn’t say “there, there, Peter, what will be has to be.” He rebukes Peter, turning on him. And he calls to Satan, “get out of here.” Satan in the Gospels is the symbol for temptation, and it seems that Jesus is tempted. Is he tempted by those human things? Things like a long life with friends, perhaps, sitting on the porch with Peter years later, talking about their grandchildren, days at the beach and in business together. Things that people get to do, some of them.

There is a choice here, or at least Mark makes it sound that way. Jesus’ choice. And he puts it in those terms. “Those who want to save their life will lose it; those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it.” A or B. The left fork; the right fork. A fantasy of a long and pleasant life. A near-certain short and violent mission.

Yet what kind of life would it be if he abandoned his call? If he chose the rocking chair over the cross. If he ignored his mission. What would it profit, he wonders aloud, to gain the whole world and forfeit one’s life?

Jesus is called by God and by the world to a mission. He sees sure risks ahead. He is tempted to avoid his call. Yet in the end he comes to understand—or you might say he always understood—that if he were to embrace that pleasant life he would have no life worth living. And so off he goes, meeting with Moses and Elijah in the next passage in Mark, and then on to the cross.

What Jesus does is a human thing. To choose between the one life and another is a human thing. To be at a turning point. To be called (though maybe not as Messiah) and to take risks (though maybe not to be crucified), to see danger, to be tempted to turn aside. These are human things. Jesus’ story here is a human story. Our story.

You have a chance to work on improving infrastructure in a developing nation / it will be uncomfortable and unhealthful / you are tempted to stay home. You are approached by someone begging on the street / you’ll have to give up a little time and money and it will be awkward / you are tempted to walk on by. You long to set up a studio and be a photographer / it will mean a drastic cut-back in salary that will affect not only you but your spouse / you are tempted to keep your old job.

Jesus says Peter (or is it Jesus?) is setting his mind on human things. Of course he is! Peter (or is it Jesus?) is human. It is a human thing to avoid pain and trouble and sadness and loss. It makes sense to do so.

But it is also human to feel called by God. To feel that there is a life for us that feels in synch with the universe. We know in our bones that we can be at peace with ourselves and others. That there is a way to live in trust and fearlessness. That we are destined not to be like Gods but to belong to God and loved.

Jesus calls the people in the reading an adulterous generation, a word that in the Bible usually means idolatrous. And it is not just Jesus’ generation that turns to idols, but every generation. No generation has been free from idols. The biggies: power, wealth, security, relationships; and all the little other ones. They are energized by our fear. Idols offer to keep us well and satisfied. They offer to keep death away. But idols lie. They don’t give us life. They take away our lives in service to them. If we try to save our lives through idols we will surely lose our lives to them.

“If any would be my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This is not an invitation to suffer. Why would God hope you would suffer? It is an invitation to spit in the faces of our idols, to hear the call of God, and to follow it, come what may. To turn our backs on fear.

What God wants for us is what we mostly deeply want for ourselves. We and God are related; we are made in God’s image. We share the same genes, so to speak; we are related by blood. What God hopes for us is what we most urgently and truly hope for ourselves.

Our lives are full of little turning points, times of choice. I put before you life and death, says Moses, choose life. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, God asks in Isaiah, listen … to me, and [choose to] eat what is good. Follow me, invites Jesus, and claim your life.

Father of All Law, Mother of All Sin

September 10, 2006 Text: James 2:1-17

My neighbor tries to start his old, rickety truck, whose springs are shot and whose bed always is full of some kind of junk or other. The truck won’t start. Urrm, urrm. The starter turns. Urrm. Again. And again. Finally it catches. He backs up, just missing clobbering the car behind, then surges forward, just missing mine in front. I surprise myself by thinking: “what is wrong with that person?”

What is wrong is that he is poor, that he needs his truck for his work but can’t afford to fix it, that he has a bushy mustache, that he dresses oddly, that he looks strange. What is wrong with him is that he is not me, not like me. What is wrong is that he is different.

I have sinned. There is no sin in seeing this man. There is sin in judging him.

We are creatures blessed with sensitive detectors. The rods in our eyes can detect a single photon. Our ears if any more sensitive could hear the random motion of the molecules in the air. Our brains are pattern detectors. What impinges on our consciousness is change, motion, and edges. We are creatures designed to detect borders. To detect differences.

Isaiah promises sight to those who cannot see. Hearing to those who cannot hear. In the golden age, when those who are injured and wounded will walk, when those who cannot speak will speak, when the wilderness produces fruit, then perception will be restored to those whose eyes and ears are broken. It is occasion for rejoicing.

And yet, our abilities and propensities for distinguishing one thing from another get us in hot water. In the hottest water. We see other people as different than we are. We see them as “not people.” So we can buy and sell other people without seeing them as people, as real people. People, that is, like us. We can put other people in camps. We can bomb other people’s cites and kill them. We can keep other people in poverty, or not rescue them from poverty.

We can do this because something is broken in us, some other kind of detector, that would detect the anguish and despair that we know we would feel if we were them, those other people. We don’t see them as we see ourselves. We don’t see them as we see those whom we know well—our friends and family, for example—those whom we love.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” James reminds us, reciting this half of the basis of all law in scripture. You do well if you really fulfill this fundamental commandment, he says. “But,” he says, “if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” The emphasis here is on the second part of the commandment. “Neighbor as yourself.” The opposite of “love your neighbor as yourself” is not “hate your neighbor.” It is “see your neighbor as different than yourself.”

“Love the Lord your God will all your heart and soul and mind,” is the first half of the commandment. But the second half does not just say “and love your neighbor, too.” The prime commandment is not “Love God and your neighbor, too.” The second half has this kicker: “… as yourself.” “…as yourself” is the unexpected part and therefore the powerful part.

For James, loving one’s neighbor as oneself is the father of all law. And for James, partiality—judging some folks to be better than others, to treat some people differently than others, to show deference to some and to show others disrespect—for James this is the mother of all sin. From this all sin towards others flows: covetousness, murder, dishonor, theft, the human side of the Ten Commandments.

And this fundamental commandment is a necessary part of being a follower of Christ. “Do you,” he asks in his letter, “Do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” He cannot conceive how treating others in any way differently than we hope to be treated ourselves can be reconciled with Jesus for those who follow Jesus.

Maybe this is the original sin. In the garden, after eating the apple, Adam’s and Eve’s “eyes were opened, “it says in Genesis, “and they knew that they were naked,” and as a result, they put on some clothes. It is not their nakedness that is the issue. The sin, or maybe it was the result of the sin, was that they recognize a distinction that was not there before. It is not that they suddenly noticed a difference in each other than they had been blind to before. It is that the difference was suddenly important.

Ever since then, our difference detectors have been working overtime. A writer in New York, writing for tomorrow’s anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, wrote that in the days following the attacks, “a single source of solace emerged amid the dread and grief: a great upwelling of simple solidarity. Here in New York, and in … Washington, that solidarity took homely forms. Strangers connected as friends; … political and civic leaders of all parties and persuasions stood together [and, I should add, religious leaders, too], united in sorrow and defiance.” And he goes on to say that that solidarity was not confined to New York City but extended worldwide.

Yet within months all this unity, all this recognition of common humanity in suffering, vanished. It shattered into thousands of distinctions, between good and bad, east and west, Christian and Jew and Muslim, and between one kind of Christian and another and between one kind of Muslim and another. Now the world stands in splinters. It is if we cannot bear for long to be the brothers and sisters that God created. We have walked out of the garden.

We are really good at seeing differences, even where there is nothing to see. Catholics in Ireland detect Protestants, Shiites detect Sunnis. Lutherans used to detect Mormons but evidently have forgotten how. Thank God.

Do we see what God does not? Is God, all knowing, blind to things we see so clearly? Are God’s eyes less sharp than ours? Or is it that God chooses not to see? That through some kind of Godly moral strength God pretends not to see?

Or is it that we see and then we judge. “What is wrong with this guy?” I say. That’s a judgment. But when God sees God does not judge. That the differences that seem so big to us seem to be nothing of import to God. They are not important. They do not make a difference to God.

The psalm tells of the salvation of the world, an age—the kingdom of God, we would say—when the people who are oppressed and live in sorrow are restored. This is the same world that James writes about in hope. What kind of world is it, he asks, when someone can see a “brother or sister naked and lacking daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your full,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs”? What kind of world is it when the rich are respected for being rich and the poor despised for being poor? What kind of world is it where I mock my neighbor for his troubles? This is a world where we do not treat our neighbors as ourselves for we do not see them as like ourselves.

This is our world, but it is not God’s kingdom. It is not the kingdom that Jesus preaches. Or promises.

In God’s kingdom, the kingdom we hope and pray for, James says, mercy triumphs over justice. Our eyes are opened and our ears unstopped and our “neighbor as ourselves” detectors begin to work.

James saw in Jesus a constant reminder that we are all in this together, brothers and sisters. As we announce in the words of Paul each week: There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. We are all one in Christ Jesus. All neighbors, like ourselves.