No Fighting Back!

Text: Romans 12:9-21
Other texts: Matthew 16:21-28

To be holy means to be separate. That’s what holy is: a place, a people, a culture separate from the world around it. Holy does not mean religious.

A sanctuary is a holy place. That is what the word sanctuary means. A sanctuary is a place removed from the rest of the world. When people say in common speech that they seek sanctuary, they mean a place that is safe. A sanctuary is safe because it can and does abide by rules that might not conform to the rules of the surrounding world.

Holy means separate. It does not necessarily mean better. Though people might come to a holy place because it does seem better to them. But to say that someone is holy does not mean that he or she is more virtuous. Just different. By choice.

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people. I will be your God, said God, and you will be my people. They were thus made holy by their agreement, or covenant as church people like to say. The law given by God to Israel served, among many other things, to define and enforce the holiness of Israel, its separation.

When something is separate there is a boundary between the inside, so to speak, and the outside. The boundary can be a physical boundary, like a wall or national border, or a behavioral boundary, like the law. Or like the actions that Christians are supposed to follow according to the command of Christ. “If you do this,” Jesus said, “people will know you are my disciples.” They will see a difference. When Jesus said, “do this,” he explained, he meant “to love one another as I have loved you.” Which, among other things, is what the apostle Paul talks about in Romans.

Paul, who provided the passage we just heard from his letter to Romans, was really interested in boundaries. He didn’t like them much.

Though he did benefit from them. He was a devout Jew, and a leader, and he was a Roman citizen, which gave him special additional privileges. Yet in his letter to Rome, he tries to render those boundaries meaningless. And in these verses, he argues that the attitude we have and the actions we take cannot be much different toward the people on the inside—the people like us, our family and friends—from the people on the outside—them, the others, our enemies. There may be an actual difference, but when it comes to loving one another, there can be no difference. This is pretty radical. And it is central to Christianity. And it makes Christians different in theory.

Paul’s argument here has three parts. The first part is general: love for all people must be genuine, without hypocrisy. Evil is bad and you should hate and loathe and abhor it. Good is good, and you should hold tight to it. This sets the stage for the rest of the argument. Paul is saying in this first verse: I’m not kidding. These are not just nice words. Pay attention and really do what I say.

The second and third parts of the argument tell followers of Jesus how to implement this love with two groups. The first group are the insiders, family and friends. The second group are the outsiders, the enemies.

We might guess Paul’s argument. Be good to your friends. Be bad to your enemies. Right? I’m mean, works for me. That’s how we do it, mostly. Give our friends gifts, avoid our enemies. Forgive our friends, throw our enemies in jail. Protect our friends, beat up on our enemies. Party with our friends, keep our enemies on the other side of the wall.

So Paul’s first words are not a surprise: that you treat your friends with honor and respect. And that you have affection for them. That you like to do things with them. That you give them the benefit of the doubt. That you have high hopes for them, and rejoice in their successes. And that when problems arise, as they do in every relationship, you work things through with them, persevering in times of trouble. And that you support each other financially, and that you all party together. That is what Paul says, in so many words, in the first verses of this passage to the Romans, the verses that tell us what to do when it comes to friends and family.

But when it comes to enemies—we are in for a surprise. When it comes to enemies, Paul sounds just like Jesus.

Bless those who come after you and attack you. Have as much respect for them as you do for your friends. When they mourn, mourn with them (don’t despise them and don’t gloat over their problems or defeats). Don’t think you are better than they are. Help your enemies out: feed them when they are hungry.

And most of all, do not repay them for the evil they cause you. Do not pay them back. Do not take it upon yourself to avenge the wrongs done you. This is really hard.

Paul knows it is hard. In the verses about your friends, he uses no verbs, just adjectives. The good things that you do for and with your friends are just what family ties and friendship are all about. It almost goes without saying. But when he talks about enemies, he uses strong commanding verbs. Do this, and do this, and don’t ever do this.

We like to be in control. And violence is the most extreme technique for control. Someone does something you don’t like, you try to control his behavior. If talking and negotiating and bribing and reasoning don’t work, then you bop him on the head, or tie him up, or much more serious variations of bopping and tying. What Paul is saying is that we must—using those commanding verbs—we must give that all up. Relinquish that control and give the rest to God.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells Peter that his mind is on worldly things, on human things. But human things are the things Jesus mostly talks about in his ministry, and human things in the end bring him to trial and execution, which are human actions of violence.

Paul rarely quotes Jesus. But these words of Paul here in Romans mirror the words of Jesus. Who do you say that I am, Jesus asks his disciples earlier in Matthew. You are the Messiah, one of them answers. The Messiah is a world-changer. The words of Jesus could change the world. But they are hard to follow. The world remains much the same.

Paul is not naive. There is a difference between the inside and the outside. We are built to see the differences between people. But the difference between the people on the inside—us—and the people on the outside—them—is not in the way we should behave toward them, but in how hard it is to behave in the same way toward all.

Our part of the job is to be good. Our responsibility is to use all our energies to be peaceful. It takes a lot of energy. As far as it is in your power, Paul says, live in peace with all other people. He does not just mean “try to live peaceably.” He means that when it comes to things over which you have control, when it is up to you, decide for peace. With all other people. The word “all” is right there in the Bible.

Do not let evil overcome you by making you do what you should not do. You overcome evil with good.

This is pretty weird. To behave this way is not to behave as the world behaves. A people who behaved this way would be unlike the world around them. They would be separate from that world. A people who lived as Paul commands in this passage in Romans would be a holy people.

May God so guide us. Amen.

What is Church?

Text: Matthew 16:13-20
Other texts: Romans 12:1-8

The word “church” appears only two times in all the Gospels. The first time is in the passage we just heard. The second time is also in Matthew, two chapters later.

It is useful to point this out so that we church people do not get to feel too self-important. Jesus spends next to no time in his ministry establishing, concocting, or even discussing church. He spends a lot of time hanging around with people, gathering them together, healing them, teaching them, and calling them to follow him.

People who are interested in the institution of the church like this verse in Matthew, in which Jesus says to Peter, “on this rock I will build my church.” They like it because it makes the church seem reasonable. By this I mean it makes the church seem like any other human organization, with founders and foundations. It seems structured in a way that a lot of our world is already structured. It works in a fairly predictable, thought-out way. It also establishes a legitimacy to certain ways of organizing churches, Peter being the first of a long line of special people who become church rulers. If your assembly of Christians cannot trace itself through an order of succession back to Peter, well—some might say—then, you are not the church of Jesus. St Augustine, a favorite of our buddy Martin Luther, said this to be so, and he has not been the only one.

There have been times—and not so long ago—in which the church has acted a lot like everyone else. Faith Lutheran Church, for example, is a chartered corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have officers and a set of bylaws that are registered with the state. Our parent, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America talks about things like market share and church growth and demographics. I don’t think this is all bad, but it is not the essence of what it means to be a church.

In good times, this sort of reasonableness in the sense that I’m using is fine. We feel we can explain how and why things are happening. If a church is growing, we figure there is a reason. And we often think the reason is us—that we are doing something right. If we really think that it is something we are doing, we write a book about it, so that other churches can do it right, too. That’s good. It gives people ideas. Being a church is oddly hard, and ideas help.

But when times are not so great, explanations are not helpful. Rarely do people write books explaining what they did wrong. That may be partly because it is discouraging and embarrassing. But mostly it is because no one really knows what they did wrong. The church turns out not to be so reasonable after all.

On any Sunday in Boston and Cambridge, there are about 300 Lutherans altogether worshipping in churches. That’s a far cry from the way it was in the middle of the twentieth century, when there were lots of Lutheran churches here, and Faith alone had 1200 members. So, is the current situation good or bad? I know it has been a rough summer for some of the churches in the Boston area. There have been lost pastors, declining attendance, and turmoil. Is that good or bad? But in another church—Our Savior in Dorchester, which nearly closed its doors a couple of years ago—the church is being revitalized with new ideas and committed helpers. Is that good or bad? How should we judge these things? Should we judge these things at all?

Paul, unlike Peter, was not the rock on which the church stood. He was, however, the person who made the early church grow. Paul was a missionary, and planting churches was his business. Paul, unlike Jesus, used the word “church” a lot. He had ideas about what was right and what was wrong. He had no problem judging anything. But when Paul describes the church, he does not talk about reasonable things at all. He talks about the people who are gathered together, and what they are doing, and what they should do. Paul does not see the church as a place to which people come. The church is the people, not the place.

This passage we heard from Romans lists some things that people in the church do. Gifts they bring, as Paul says. The list is like similar lists in other letters of Paul, but it is not the same. All these letters list different gifts. Paul is not creating an organization chart with boxes for open requisitions. It is not that any one church needs a prophet, a giver, and a teacher, and that they had better go out and get one. It is that the church is a place in which prophets, givers, and teachers and all sorts of other people come together and when they do, their gifts are used. Every church is different. There is no way to write a book about how we did it because each church is a different gathering. Which is, I would say, a good thing. The church’s job is not to recruit people with special gifts, but to be a place in which people can put the gifts they have to great use.

The word “church” that Jesus uses hardly ever and that Paul uses all the time is in Greek “ekklesia.” It means a people called out to gather. So it means first a bunch of people, which we’ve just be talking about.

And second, a people called. No one is compelled to come to church anymore. People come because they feel drawn, or called, to gather.

And third, people who are called out. Out of their own individual existences. Out of one part of their lives into another. Or out of their own individual thoughts and patterns into others, new thoughts and patterns (and perhaps transformed, as Paul says).

And fourth, people who are called out to gather. People called out from one place to a particular place. A place of meeting with others, to relationships and interactions with particular others, people they engage with on purpose.

And finally, all this is in the service of God. People are called out to gather so that they might know, worship, and confront God. We are all here because in our many different ways—each according to the measure of faith God has assigned, Paul would say—we are here because we take God seriously.

The good news is that God, according to Paul, likes this. The word our Bible translates as “acceptable” is better translated “pleasing.” Worship pleases God. Our gathering here makes God feel good. A church is a place in which the gathering of people called out makes God feel good.

Peter’s name used to be Simon. Jesus in this passage called him Peter. But until that time there was no such name as “Peter.” People did not name their children Peter. Peter in Greek means “rock.” So Jesus is giving Peter not a new first name but a nickname. Jesus is calling Simon “Rocky.” Jesus says, I tell you, Rocky, on this rock I’ll build my church.

Peter, who is so flattered here in this passage, is the same Peter who a couple of verses later is called a stumbling block like a rock on a path, and the same Peter who denies Jesus at his trial. Peter is a man of enthusiasms, strengths, weaknesses, second thoughts, craziness, cowardice and bravery. Just like us. Just like all the people who are called out to gather.

The foundation of the church is not like granite blocks or poured concrete, firm, unshakeable, boring. If Peter is Rocky, then the foundation of the church is a bunch of pebbles and sand, shifting, unpredictable, flexible, and exciting.

And our job here is to be a place to hang out. A place that makes use of God’s gifts in people. A place to engage in serous conversation with God. A place to do that with others. And a place to hear God’s call.

Little Faith

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

How much faith, exactly, is a little faith? Is a little faith too little? Or is it just little enough? A little faith the size of a mustard seed, Jesus tells us earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, is enough to command a mountain to go from here to there. How much faith is there in this story of Jesus and Peter and the stormy sea? Half a seed, maybe. Or was it more like two seeds.

It was a dark and stormy night, so the story goes. About three in the morning, that time when people get the creeps, when their energy is lowest, when their thoughts turn dismal. Jesus has sent them out into a storm. He commanded—made them, our translation says—had made the disciples to get into the boat, but he had not gone with them, preferring some quiet time alone, at last, after healing and feeding many many people. Meanwhile, the disciples were being bashed about by an opposing wind and the waves were threatening. It would not have been so odd if they wondered at that moment about Jesus. That they might have some doubts at this dark moment about this whole venture.

When Jesus shows up, he says to them: Cheer up! Which seems a little inappropriate. They are not sure it is Jesus. First of all, it is dark. Second of all, there are big waves. And third of all, the person they see is walking on the sea. Unusual. It’s me! says Jesus. But they wonder, even so. Do not be afraid, says Jesus. But it seems they are.

Peter, Jesus’ friend and follower, is like the transparent man. Whatever is happening inside of him you can see on the outside of him, in his actions and speech. Peter is a man of passion and impulse. So when Peter calls out to Jesus: “If it is you, command me to come to you,” we know that Peter already knows it is Jesus. What kind of proof is that, to be called? It is not the sign I would ask for. This is a kind of goof between Peter and Jesus. Jesus plays along. Come, Peter, Jesus says.

Peter has put himself in a tough spot. You can imagine the other disciples laughing at him, at what he has done. He challenged Jesus, Jesus challenged him back. He has no choice. He steps from the boat into the waves. And amazingly does not sink.

Where exactly is the faith of Peter here? The little faith that Jesus talks about. Is it on the one hand something that Peter has to start with, even though it is little? Is it that faith that somehow, as if by magic, keeps him afloat. Or on the other hand does Peter become faithful when he does not sink, even though he expected to? Is Peter surprised into faith? Is a little faith given to Peter by his actions?

Is faith something we have to have before we can do as Jesus calls us to do? Or is faith something we get by doing what Jesus calls us to do? Which comes first: empowering faith or courageous—or even goofy—action?

If Peter already has some reserve of faith, then where does he show it? And if instead he gets faith from his actions, when does that happen? Is there some special ”faith moment“ when his faith and action meet? If so, where is it? Is it when Jesus calls out to him? Is it when he doesn’t sink? Or when he starts to sink? Or when Jesus saves him? Or even when Jesus calls him a person of little faith? Do we have faith moments, and if so do they come for us in miracles or do they come when miracles fail us? Or do they come when, in our hardest times, it seems to us that Jesus reaches out to us?

In this story the turning point—and maybe the faith moment—is when Peter first challenges Jesus to call to him, Peter, to walk over the water. A better word for faith—as you have heard me say many times already—a better word for faith is “trust.” When Peter first speaks to Jesus, he already trusts in Jesus. He challenges Jesus because he knows that Jesus is trustworthy. That no matter what Jesus does, Peter will be safe. Peter’s belief is not changed by anything in the story. Peter learns no new facts about God and God’s ways. Instead, Peter acts on the basis of his trust in Jesus, and that trust is confirmed and strengthened by what happens next. Peter does as Jesus commands. Peter gets into trouble. Jesus saves Peter.

Today we celebrate [a worshipper's] confirmation. The celebration is more formally known in the Lutheran church as the affirmation of baptism. There are two things about this.

First, it is not called the “completion of baptism” or the “finishing touches of baptism” or even “the commencement of life after baptism” (as if it were a graduation ceremony). In one sense, nothing will be accomplished today that wasn’t already happening.

And second, it is not called the “affirmation of strong beliefs” or “the affirmation of knowing all there is to know about Christianity.” Today is a reminder to J___ that she has been baptized into the community of Christ and that, as an adult, she has a chance to say, “Yes, that’s right. I’m good with that.”

So today is a time of recognition and gratitude and hope. And it is part of an ongoing and surprising life of faith.

Faith is not a thing of the moment. So in the story of Jesus and Peter there is not any special faith moment. Faith and trust develop over time. And rarely smoothly. So in the story Peter is not sure of Jesus, then believes Jesus, then has doubts about Jesus, then trusts Jesus again. That is how faith goes in real life. It like in that Dr. Suess book, On Beyond Zebra. There is no series of steps A to Z in the story of one’s faith. It goes way past Z. Or like in my favorite Suess, McElligott’s Pool. There are events in the future of our relationship with God that are beyond imagining.

Like ours, Peter’s life is a whole bunch of little faiths interspersed with a whole bunch of little doubts.

Why did you doubt, you of little faith. So Jesus asks Peter. What do you hear in Jesus’ voice? Do you hear complaint and judgment? Or do you hear, as I do, affection for Peter. And for his enthusiasm and his struggles and the seriousness with which he takes the questions of life and God.

Why did you doubt? asks Jesus. The word here means “have second thoughts.” But Jesus knows why. We all have second and third and on-beyond thoughts. That is the nature of a life with God.

Jesus knows that faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin. They are in the same realm. In the realm of one’s relationship with God. In that realm we walk with humility, trusting not so much in our own convictions and conclusions as in God’s good wishes for us, And trusting God’s eagerness to call us as Jesus called Peter: Come!

I'm Your Waiter for Tonight

Text: Matthew 14:13-21

It was no picnic.

The 5000 men and who knows how many women and children had gathered not to have a good time. They had not come for a meal. They had come to be healed.

Often when we gather with others to eat it is a time of celebration. To remember anniversaries, to celebrate birthdays (as we will today after worship), to mark momentous beginnings like weddings or baptisms. Or we gather in fellowship, to share conversation and food, as we do every week here at coffee hour, or as you might when you meet for dinner with friends. At times like these, food provides the context and adds richness to our relationships with one another. It is not the point. It is not the reason.

But for many people and at many times food is the point. The people who came to Jesus came to be healed. It is why they were there, in this version of the story, and it is why Jesus was there, too. Even though he was upset at hearing about the death of his colleague and friend John the baptist. He wanted to have some time alone, to be by himself. But people were sick and needed him. So he had compassion for them, it says, and cured them.

It takes a long time, evidently, to cure 5000-plus people. It got late. People were hungry. Really hungry, not just something to eat while they were socializing. In the same way they were sick, they were hungry. They just needed food. They were creatures needing food to live.

When we have plenty to eat, it is hard to imagine what it is like to not have enough. I cannot pretend to imagine it. I never see people who are starving. Some of you do, I know. I do see people—such as some who come to Faith Kitchen—who are hungry.

It is obvious and therefore seems silly to say that food is basic. We are beings who cannot create our own energy and materials to exist. So we eat other living things and take the energy and materials that they have made. There is no other way for us to live. This is self-evident, but strangely we don’t always remember it when it comes to others. “Send them away,” say the disciples to Jesus, so that they may fend for themselves.

This is not a good time for eating for a lot of the people of the world. No matter what you think is the problem or the solution, you can see that many people are hungry. Poor people in developing countries spend 50 to 70 percent of their budgets, says one report, on food. To use the word “budgets” as this report does is to sanitize this amazing number. It means that people spend half to over two thirds of all they have or earn in order to eat. The rising price of food, the same report says, is falling most heavily on the bottom billion people. Bottom billion. That’s another amazing number.

There are five steps in this story.

First, Jesus points that something is not nothing. The disciples say “we have nothing here.” Then they say “we have five loaves and two fish.” Bring them here, says Jesus. We start with what we are given.

Second, Jesus looks up to heaven. The food we eat comes from God, not from ourselves. The fish are God’s creatures, the bread God’s grain. We are not self-sufficient.

Third, Jesus blesses the bread. Or asked for blessing. A blessing is a favor, or a favorable look, or a request for a favorable outcome. A blessing acknowledges that not only is God the source of all things, but also that God’s hand is in all that we do with those things. We ask God to help us have goodness.

Fourth, Jesus breaks the loaves. A meal is a common endeavor, served from a common pot. Home made meals are always family style. Wine comes from a cask, bread from bushels. We all eat the same food, divided among us.

And last but not least, Jesus gives the bread to the disciples, who in turn give it to the crowd. There is no miracle without this step. Jesus prepares the meal, but the disciples—and that always means us—distribute the food.

It is God who makes this miracle possible, but it is the people who make it happen. It is Jesus who blesses the gifts of God, but it is the disciples who serve them. God provides food for all of us, but it is we who must see that people are fed. The miracle of food on this planet is not that food is given us. There would never have been life without food. The miracle is that we as people work together to make sure that all people can eat.

We are in a food crisis. There are many people who are hungry and waiting to be served. The prices of basic foods like grain and oil are rising fast and high. In the last year or so the price of cooking oils and the price of rice have nearly tripled, and the price of grains like wheat has doubled. Relief agencies like the Boston Food Bank, which supplies Faith Kitchen with food, are getting less food and seeing much more demand.

A scholar named Heschel once said that the Bible is much less often a story of God’s miraculous work and much more often a story of God’s waiting for people to get to work. Jesus passes out the bread and, I imagine, waits to see what the disciples—us—will do.

Will they hoard it, keeping it for themselves? Will they sell at high prices? Will they burn it for fuel (though how could they do that: it is unconscionable to burn food for fuel)? Will they distribute it through places like food banks? Will they serve others through places like Faith Kitchen?

How we deal with food and hunger reveals much about our souls. In the passage just before this one in Matthew, King Herod has a huge banquet which is known for pride, arrogance, scheming, and murder And in the desert, Jesus prepares a huge meal which is known for healing, compassion, and sharing. And us in our time? For what will we be known?

Send them away. That’s what the disciples want to do. No, said Jesus, you give them something to eat.