In Our Place

Text: Hebrews 2:10-18

The Bible puts us humans in our place. But you might ask: which place is that?

In Genesis, the order of creation is from large and vague to small and specific. From light and dark, sky and earth, to plants and seeds, creatures that swim, and creatures that creep along the ground. And it was all good. And finally, on the sixth day, God created humans. Is it last but not least—or least and therefore last—in the scheme of things?

In Psalm 104, a creation story that parallels Genesis, the order is similar, but humans are not even included. In the book of Job, God berates Job, asking him where was he at the creation of the world. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks. And in the praise psalm we sang today, the action moves from heavens, through the cosmos, waters and hills, beasts and creatures, and finally to humans, young and old, young men and maids.

How shall we interpret this? Are humans the culmination of all creation, the end of eons of progress and the point of it all? Or are we instead nearly an afterthought, left to the end, relatively insignificant?

It is not a new question. The author of Hebrews, in the verses just before today’s reading, quotes Psalm 8, which asks: What are humans that God should be mindful of us? Made from dirt, God has made us just a little lower than the angels.

The author of Hebrews is amazed that God is so mindful of humans that God even became one. He interprets the psalm to be less about humankind and more about Jesus, whom, he says, God has made not only a little lower than angels (as the psalm says), but lower than angels for only a little while.

For Hebrews, Jesus is timeless, the creator of all: “the heir of all things,” the book starts out, “through whom also he created the world. He is the ... exact imprint of [God’s] nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Yet even so, in Jesus God was human—for a little while. Hebrews wants to make it clear: Jesus is the creator God. And also, Jesus was a human just like us. In every respect, it says. Jesus crossed some imaginary line in theological space, calibrated by the status of angels. Going from higher than they are—much superior to angels, it says—to lower. To us.

Hebrews is adamant. We are the brothers and sisters of Jesus. We all have the same father. We share flesh and blood—we have bodies, we are creatures made of stuff—and so does Jesus. Even though we are corruptible and weak—morally and physically—Jesus is not ashamed to call us sister and brother.

The season of Christmas is a 12-day celebration of the incarnation. Yet the concept is not easy, the notion of all God and all person all at once. In the first few centuries after Jesus, the heresies were mostly a result of people trying to think this through.

On one hand, it would be easier in some way if we worshipped a powerful and distant God. Someone who set the stars in their courses, perhaps, and then vanished. Or maybe one who capriciously tinkers with events and physics for God’s own amusement. One who does not care about us one way or the other. Divine but inhuman.

On the other hand, it would be easier in some other way if we followed and admired a good man, a wise prophet who inspired and moved us, who preached about a new and spiritual way to live. Who was perhaps guided by God without being God. Or one who was a charismatic political leader who roused the rabble to see justice done. Who was human but not divine.

Or maybe it would be easier if Jesus were a person who was human sometimes—doing corrupt human things—and God other times—doing perfect divine things.

But that is not how it worked out. We claim that Jesus combines God and human simultaneously. That there is nothing that people do that Jesus does not. That there is nothing Jesus does that people cannot. Because if there were even one thing, in that one thing Jesus would be only human or only divine.

Jesus suffers as a person would suffer. This does not mean that suffering is good, just that it is the way of the world. When Hebrews says that suffering perfects Jesus, it does not mean that suffering is necessary to somehow make Jesus whole and complete. It means that people suffer, and that since Jesus is a person, Jesus will suffer. An incarnate God who does not suffer is not human and therefore not incarnated, not of flesh and blood.

It is compassion for his human brothers and sisters that drives God to intervene as a person. He did not come to help angels, Hebrews says. He did not come to make things balance out. He did not come to demonstrate power. He came to help the descendants of Abraham, to help us, to help people. God was tested by suffering, as we all are. In his suffering, it seems, God through Jesus learned what it is to suffer and die. Something creatures know first hand.

We are brothers and sisters of Jesus. We are first of all brothers and sisters of each other. We have the same father, Hebrews says. The logic goes both ways: being connected with Jesus strengthens our connections with each other.

The complicated and intimate relationship between God and humans makes it seem reasonable, and not crazy, to model our relationship with other people on our relationship with God.

The psalm today is a hymn of praise to God who created us and all things in the universe. It recognizes God’s power and God’s love for the world, and it also gives us a chance to rejoice that we are beneficiaries of that. As we praise God together, we are bound together ourselves. Just as we are bound together by being claimed as brother or sister of Jesus.

The Bible puts us in our place. And our place is side by side. With Jesus also. Loving one another as we love ourselves, and also called to praise one another as we praise God.

Uncertain News

Text: Matthew 1:18–25
Other texts: Isaiah 7:10–16

It was an extraordinary event in ordinary but difficult times. Joseph was engaged to Mary, something which then meant nearly-married. Finding her to be pregnant—the details of the discovery remain untold; how did that conversation go?—finding her to be with child was, from Joseph’s point of view, unfortunate but not without precedent.

That was not the extraordinary thing. It would not have been the first time something like this—what would have been seen as adulterous behavior—happened with a young couple. There was even provision for it in tradition and in the statutes. A divorce was in order. Joseph, it says, was a righteous man. Meaning not that he was good—though it turns out that he was—but that he was law-abiding. The whole awkward transaction would be accommodated by the scheme of things.

What was extraordinary was what the scripture oddly treats as simply matter of fact. Sort of mentioned in passing. Not that Mary was with child, but that she was with child from the Holy Spirit. Not an every-day event. To help him deal with the news, Joseph gets heavenly advice, which he heeds.

We typically like things to be ordinary. Ordinary things give us a foundation. There is no way we can from scratch think our way through every little moment of our lives, make considered decisions about the thousands of little choices we have, or plan every action. Most of what we do is ordinary and we like it that way. The ordinary both reflects and shapes the values we already hold.

But the ordinary is not flawless. It is rough and crackle-y. There is always a small (or not so small) gap between what is and what ought to be. Like a bumpy ride, a pixelated image, a song out of tune. Aggravating at best, terrifying at worst. We know how things should be, and this is not it.

That gap is the fuel of prophecy. It is the spark of the prophetic spirit. A prophet, like Isaiah, highlights the discrepancy and instructs us about how we can, or how God will, repair the breech.

The life of a prophet is a frustrating one. You can hear it in the reading from Isaiah, who complains about us weary mortals who rarely do what is right and needed. But at the same time that frustration energizes the prophet, who works hard to make the world be as it should, as God intends it to be.

We ordinary mortals find the daily grind of trying to change things to be tedious. We long for a savior. A king in the line of David for some, or just a charismatic and effective leader, for others. Someone who will draw up the plan and recruit us for its implementation. (Or maybe just do it all for us). You do not have to be religious to want a savior. Our longing for someone to save the world is so strong that we are on the constant lookout for a sign. When is the savior coming? Is this the one? We want a sign.

But then again, we don’t. If the ordinary is our foundation, then signs of a savior and sounds of prophecy threaten it. For a start, prophets tell us what we have up to then ignored (or even fostered) that we know we should not have. But more, they ask us to change our ways, or they predict that ways will be changed around us. Something will be different. A leader will take us into new territory.

For some, this worry is clearly sensible. The status quo benefits those with status. But even for those who suffer, sometimes the oppression of the certain present is easier to take than the anxiety of an uncertain future.

In Isaiah a sign is promised to Judah. Matthew interprets the birth of Jesus as the sign that is the fulfillment of that promise. But on the face of it, the birth of Jesus is not very striking as a sign. The birth of a child is hardly unusual. And there are few decorations that alert the people to the child’s future power. Mary gives birth to a son, and Joseph calls him Jesus. End of birth story. The Magi come later in Matthew and the shepherds are there, but that is in Luke. This was not a theological accident, as we sing praises at Christmas to a God who was born not only as a child but also born humbly.

An infant is an embodiment of uncertainty. All potential in a little package of actual. Parents-to-be fret about the growing child in the womb. Ultrasound does not help much. There is plenty unknown. Joseph is beneficiary of a kind of divine ultrasound; did that comfort him about the baby? The angel’s announcement is maybe not welcome, for it means that things are going to be new and strange.

Unlike Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who was unable to speak after an angelic visitation regarding his son to be, Joseph could talk. I’ve sometimes wondered about what he and Mary, speaking late at night as expectant parents do, what they said to one another about the coming child, who has already been an occasion for dismay, confusion and cosmic hope.

Parents live equally thrilled and terrified about what might happen to their children. They extrapolate from what they know of the world and the way it works. But in difficult times the past is a poor predictor, and even worse if something extraordinary happens. Even a message from heaven is not helpful. How could Mary and Joseph have known, after hearing the angel say that their son would save the people from their sins, what was really going to happen in the next 30 years, to say nothing of the next 2000?

The birth of God in the person of Jesus seems to tell us that God works in the uncertainty of this world. That the savior does not bring along a set of construction blueprints for the new world, but rather is a problem solver with a big idea and a willingness to work with whomever he can recruit—including us—which is pretty much what happened. Jesus it says, fulfills the promise that God is with us. Immanuel. God as Jesus is with us in this world as it is.

And yet, Jesus is a power for a new world. His birth from Mary and the Spirit is not an assertion about his DNA but about his mission and his method. The Spirit is the person of God that is the bringer of new life. As we say in the creed, the Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life.

Matthew tells us that Jesus is born to change the world. He comes enacting and teaching a way of living that is out of the ordinary. He threatens the certainty of things, even the former certain power of death.

We worship a God whose birth portends not eternal sameness but eternal newness.

His coming disrupts the old way of being, not by transferring power to the righteous people, but by offering patient uncertainty that makes possible a new world.

Seed of Change

Text: Matthew 3:10-12
Other texts: Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13

The Bible is our story.

It is the story of the people who wrote it, preserved it, transmitted it from one generation to another. Those people still exist. We are some of them. For that reason, the Bible perseveres. It is a version of history that we cherish.

But there could be, or could have been, other versions of the same events, told by other peoples. Our story is the story of Jesus, whom we follow, declared Messiah, fulfillment of scripture. But imagine a story owned not by the followers of Jesus but the followers of John the Baptist. A story, say, once told among them but since lost.

You can hear in the stories of John and Jesus a rivalry or competition. In our version of the story, John is the precursor to Jesus. An eager pointer to a greater man with a better message. John is a willing voice in the wilderness that prepares the world for a man next to whom John feels unworthy. Yet the message of John fits uneasily with the teachings of Jesus. Maybe in John’s version of the story, Jesus absconds with John’s movement. Jesus’ message is adopted over John’s and John’s followers become Jesus’ followers instead. You wonder whether John was as welcoming to Jesus as Matthew makes out.

John preached repentance. This poor word has by now lost all its vigor, reduced to something about remorseful apologies and half-hearted resolutions to do better. But it means instead a change in life. We might say transformation. A change of heart and mind. A turning things around, or in a different direction.

But not a random or accidental turning; rather one based on consideration of the past and intention for the future. And therefore not easily done. John’s baptizing in the river was not to magically cause repentance, as our translation “baptize … for repentance” implies, but rather “baptize … into repentance.” Baptism marked entry into a new kind of living, a new way of existing.

Lots of people came to hear John. People of the city and all the surrounding country. John’s message of a change in the order of things was welcome because things were so messed up. There was not much that was good for most people in Palestine in those days. People would have been encouraged by what John said, especially the part about the winnowing fork and the burning chaff. A welcome message especially if you think it applies to other people and requires a change in their behavior (or power or status) and not in yours. Repentance is good for the other guy for sure.

The Pharisees and Sadducees show up unexpectedly. It is not clear whether they were in favor of baptism or opposed; Matthew says they were coming to, or onto, baptism, which is pretty neutral. It seems likely that they, being part of the power elite, were not super eager to see things, or themselves, change. A big change of mind and heart would not have suited them.

Change is hard. Hard to accommodate, hard to bring about, hard to have happen in your life. Easier, perhaps, to anticipate. We think, as probably the folks in the crowd did, about good new things ahead.

But change always brings grief. A change in direction means you are leaving something behind. There is a sadness, even when the future looks better. There is some comfort in the familiar, whether pleasant or bitter. Uncertainty is scary. When the disciples are called by Jesus, he asks them to give up their jobs, their families, their traditions, to leave their homes. They go eagerly, but it must have been difficult, even though the call was clear and compelling.

Change requires that we give up control. Systems, relationships, and privileges that sustain and protect us are rightly at risk. We cannot make changes in our lives without making changes in the patterns that we follow. That is, after all, what we are trying to do. That is the point. But those patterns of connections and behaviors—whom we rely on, routines we follow, rules of thumb (or rules of law, even)—are foundations for day to day living. We secretly hope for new direction without disruption.

What will things be like in the new days ahead? We cannot know. Whether we choose to change or change descends upon us, we have to trust God when God says that we will be OK, that God will take care of us. We are not very good at that. Trusting God.

Change emerges from judgment. Being judged and found wanting is the seed of change. If we are satisfied with the way things are—well, then hooray! Let’s keep up the good work. That is why we distrust the commitment of the Pharisees and Sadducees to John to the Baptist. They enjoy too much power and privilege.

Judgment is not a reflection of one’s character. It is an astute and deep observation of the nature of our actions. What are we doing? Whom is it affecting? What harm or good is it accomplishing? Judgment is essential and unavoidable prerequisite to change, for it makes clear the distinctions between the way things are and the way we think they are, and especially between the way things are and the way we want them to be. Judgment is clear seeing.

But judgment without forgiveness is just nastiness. Repentance is a continuation of a path, not a dead end. We are not followers of John the Baptist but of Jesus. Judgment can stop us in our tracks, but the forgiveness that Jesus teaches allows us to go forward even in the face of our own sins and the sins of others. The horrible mistaken, stupid, mindless, or malevolent things people do. Repentance—change in direction—requires both admonition and acceptance. A recognition that we are both responsible and cherished. It is not an accident that we start each Sunday worship with confession and absolution. Judgment of our actions and our negligence followed by reassurance that God is not therefore going to make our lives miserable, in the future or now.

We just heard Kelsi and Brad talk about peace. Paul in his letter to the Romans that Jacob just read prays that we live in harmony with one another. Isaiah describes a world in which natural enemies live cordially together. People have longed for peace forever. Yet we have no peace.

We have to judge that we have no peace because we do not want it. Or rather, that we want some other things more than we want peace. A peaceful world would be a drastic change in the way people are with one another. It would require that we give our trust to God to keep us safe and prosperous. It would require that we give up foundational patterns of discourse, economics, and politics. It would require that we be willing to lose things that are most valuable to us. The path from the way things are to the way things could be and that we pray for them to be is risky and scary. So we don’t take that path. We never have. So far.

We look ahead in Advent, but only after looking backward. Advent is a season, therefore, of judgment. Of seeing where we are and where we might better go. John the Baptist quotes (misquotes, actually) another passage from Isaiah, who said: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness.

Advent is not so much waiting for the coming of Jesus, but rather constructing a smooth path in our wilderness on which Jesus can walk here with us. Asking him for clear thinking about what we are doing—righteous judgment as Isaiah says. And courage to follow him in a new direction for us. And forgiveness along the way.

Be Still!

Text: Psalm 46

If this were some decades ago, we would be celebrating not Christ the King Sunday but rather Judgment Sunday. Or, as this church’s Swedish ancestors would have called it, Doom Sunday. In 1925, this jolly label was replaced pretty much everywhere by Christ the King Sunday. That, in turn, has sometimes been modified to the Realm of Christ Sunday, presumably for the sake of people who have problems with monarchs.

Regardless of its name, this feast Sunday was a reflection on the happy day when the powers of the world will be displaced finally by the power of God, whether that be the end of time or the restoration on earth of God’s rule as intended in creation. One of the readings for this day, but in another year, is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, where the sheep are separated from the goats. This is a judgment-at-the-end-of-time scene, but it is also about living according to God’s hopes in the present world, reminding us that caring for the hungry, the sick, and people in prison is caring for Christ. Right now, right here.

This double-meaning of the day—both heaven and earth—plays out in the readings. On the one hand, the Gospel today from Luke is usually read during Holy Week, but put here to make us think about what kind of king might die on the cross and what might be in store for him, and for us, after death. Remember me, says the criminal, when you come into your kingdom. That will be today, says, Jesus, but clearly not here on earth.

The psalm, on the other hand, is about present hope in the midst of chaotic danger. The God of Jacob—one name of God, our God—is our refuge and strength. Very present, the psalm says. In times of trouble—very now. The sentence both characterizes God (God is a person who provides refuge) and identifies God (where someone should turn to when they need refuge).

This psalm, Psalm 46, was the inspiration for the Lutheran theme song, A Mighty Fortress. Refuge, the word we sang today, is sometimes translated as stronghold—thus, fortress. Looking at things this way, God provides refuge from dangers around us. Refuge from natural destruction—of which we have seen too much these past few weeks, but which is always with us no matter how we behave or what we think. Though the earth will move (meaning perhaps earthquakes), the mountains shake and tremble, the seas (helped by the winds) roar and foam.

And refuge also from human destruction, political dangers, and violence. Kingdoms totter, it says. Nations get into an uproar. Wars rage. We do more harm to ourselves than nature ever has. Even when we know that wars do not make glad the people of God.

This psalm is not a treatise on the existence of evil and God’s role in it. It is not an essay on theodicy. It is about our relationship with God. It presupposes evil, or at least acknowledges it. Human and natural. The psalm characterizes and identifies us—as a kind of people who turn to God in times of inevitable trouble. Rather than turning to some other source of power. The power of violence or money, for example, or the power of ourselves alone. Who is our refuge among the many we might choose? God is.

This psalm is partly a song of hope and partly a song of confidence, but mostly it is a song of reliance. It is a paradigm (which is a more like a rule of thumb than a formula) for understanding and living in a difficult world.

A refuge is a stronghold, but it is also a place of quiet peace. A communal refuge from external threat, but also an individual refuge from the chaos of our lives. And from the cacophony of our internal conversations: worries, second thoughts, guilty thoughts, dark anger, regrets, fearful timidity. What St. Augustine, writing about this psalm, called “the contentious uproar in the human mind.” We can be as easily distracted and kept apart from God (and from each other) by the noisy crowd inside our heads as by the scary events outside us.

We are not very fond of kings, officially. Nonetheless, kings at their best represent an embodiment of refuge. Kings ideally sit on the throne in the service of humans and under the guidance of God. They provide a stronghold against external threats. They lead us and keep our minds on what matters. A monarch in the abstract cares for his or her people and provides for them. A coronation, like an inauguration, or an ordination, is a statement of hope and a statement of trust given.

We give to kings the power to settle disputes and to reconcile discord. We hope that God will do that. In our often heartbreaking attempts to organize the world, to keep the peace, to ensure prosperity, we natter away, doing as best we can. But we know that all this talk is often grandstanding or whistling in the dark and posturing. When God in the psalm shouts “be still!” God is not trying to calm us down but to shut us up. Stop it! Enough with the wars and the uproars. This is good news. Kings take charge for the good of all, and like children who get wound up too tightly, we desire and welcome the voice of authority. We know from all of human existence that we have not done very well untangling our own troubles and we pray for God’s intervention.

In spite of our suspicion of real-life monarchs, we persist in calling Christ a king because we want a king.

God is in the midst of the city. This is a psalm about expectations of God’s presence among us here. The God of Jacob is our refuge. The psalm is a celebration. Our refuge is not some other thing besides God, and our refuge is not some other God. Our refuge is not only at some other time, and it is not in some other place. The king of the universe is with us in our midst. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Suffering, Hope, and All Things

Text: Luke 21:5-19

The dominant story of Christianity is “suffering relieved.” Suffering, relieved. What was lost is found. What is broken is restored.

In the beginning, our spiritual ancestors the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. Jesus healed the incurably, chronically, ill. He recovered children and friends from the dead. He died on the cross and rose once again to talk and eat with his companions.

Underpinning this story and running in parallel with it is another: God loves the world. In the beginning, in Genesis, God calls the world and all things in it good, meaning suitable, harmonious. God so loved the world, we read in John, that God sent Jesus. God sent him, it goes on, to save the world, not to condemn it.

Together, these two stories make Christianity inevitably a religion of hope, worshipping and trusting a God whose primary longing is to heal a world God loves and all the creatures in it.

The episode we just heard in Luke seems like pretty much bad news, full of anger and destruction. But the events that Jesus predicts in it have already happened by the time Luke wrote down his Gospel. False prophets, battles, earthquakes, famines and epidemics. Though portrayed as a prediction, this story is really a report. It is a story not of fearful and anxious anticipation but rather one of loss and grief.

The Temple was an amazing structure, having in the lifetime of Jesus been expanded and renovated. Beautiful stones, as Luke describes it, gifts to God. Imagine a magnificent cathedral in size and grandeur. Yet in less than a decade after all this work had been completed, the Romans attacked Jerusalem, killed many of the Jews there, and destroyed the Temple. Just a few stones left one upon the other. All were thrown down, as Jesus said.

In times like these, nothing makes sense. People get socially and geographically disoriented. They get discouraged and feel helpless, seeing no way to proceed into the future. How—by what means and with what energy—can they go on living?

Jesus, quoted by Luke, tries to help the people make sense of what is happening in their lives. Presented as a prediction, it sounds like all these painful events have some purpose. And they include a kind of promise of protection.

And yet things turned out badly for the immediate followers of Jesus and for Jerusalem. The city remained occupied, people were persecuted, jailed, and killed. The promises seem vague in time and scope: when will the disciples gain their souls? What does that mean?

Christianity is an embodiment of hope. Yet this does not mean that Jesus is some kind of divine mechanic or repairman. That is not the essence of what we hope for. Jesus’ words are comforting not because he is promising to fix up the mess in Jerusalem. (He did not, as the report-disguised-as-prediction proves.) There is something else going on here. Something broader.

Apostle Paul writes that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Christian hope is non-specific. We are not asking God to give us a hand with our list of projects. This does not mean that we should not ask God for that; we should ask God for everything we desire. But that even if God fixes up every broken thing on our list—a good job, peace on earth, a happy relationship—that is not enough. God has told us to expect more. We hope instead—or in addition—to know peace and completeness even though we live in a world of suffering.

We live a very short time in the grand scheme of things. Humanity—the species—is pretty new, and the life of each person is brief. But our faith tells us—grown from the essential Christian stories about God’s love and healing—our faith tells us while the universe is a place of both loss and redemption, that by nature over all—on net—redemption overcomes loss. Good is stronger than evil, as we sing, love is stronger than hate. The light, begins the Gospel of John, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overwhelm it.

Christian hope is not that God will make all things right, any more than God rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. Or that God extracts good from all evil. Or that all things go according to God’s plan. Even though all those things may be true. It is instead that suffering is never the end of the story. That it is not even the main story.

Hope is a consequence of God’s grace. It is a form of grace, too—hope itself is a gift; why should we be blessed by being able to hope and find hope? But more than that, hope comes from grace like a plant comes from the soil. Amazing grace. God creates the universe and provides all things, including us. Including life. Our hope emerges because we are fundamentally grateful for the universe and for our own existence in it. Even when we suffer. Hope comes from knowing God’s grace, feeling it, living in a sea of it. Thankfulness is both a consequence of hope and its cause.

There are worries behind the scenes, so to speak, in the crowd. But even though their lives are at stake, and even though Jesus tells them they will be hunted down and persecuted, even though in fact they have been—even so, their own safety is not their main concern. What they want to know, it seems, is whether any of what is going on makes sense? How does the destroyed Temple fit into God’s long-time promise to Israel and fit into the actions and words of Jesus? Is their faith built on random weird and unconnected events? Is there meaning in the world and does God have a hand in it and do they have a part in it? Jesus’ short answer is: Yes. His words, which do not on the face of it seem comforting at all, oddly give the people hope.

We are in the middle of a very long and large story of healing and love intertwined. Things which seem to be one sorrowful way turn out to be something else. The horizon is long, chronologically and spiritually.

And what seems to be the end is never the end. Healing and rebirth are always possible, and redemption and renewal are the essence of the cosmos.

Don't Know Much

Text: Luke 20:27-38

We don’t know much about most things. We don’t know how the brain works. We don’t know how gravity works. We don’t know how life began, or what dark energy is.

We are like characters in the 1950s song by Sam Cooke, where the protagonist sings: Don't know much about history. Don't know much biology. Don't know much about a science book. But, I do know, he says, that I love you, and I know that you love me too. That pretty much sums up the Gospel reading today from Luke. That is how it is with God and us.

The Sadducees attempt in this passage to trap Jesus into acknowledging the absurdity of the resurrection. The Sadducees were competitors with the Pharisees for power and control of the theological agenda at the end of the first century. The Sadducees held that there was no resurrection of the dead. They accepted as authoritative only the first five books of the Bible—the story from Adam through Moses—and in those books they found no evidence of resurrection.

The Pharisees, in contrast, argued that all of scripture, including the prophets and the psalms, revealed God’s truth. And that the Bible therefore supported the notion of resurrection. Apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and it is not a coincidence that so did the newly emerging Christian community formed largely by Paul. The Pharisees (and the Christians) suspected that the Sadducees, even though Jews like themselves, were not really Jewish (much as some Christians today deny that others are Christians, based on some doctrine that they do or do not hold).

The Sadducees felt that God operated within the current world and within its limits. The promises God made to each of us were promises made to living human beings. They were godly and real, but they did not extend beyond life, past death. The covenant that Moses brought from Sinai was not secular, but it was about this world.

This was a difficult position to hold by the time Luke was compiling his Gospel. The Romans by then had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was clear that the power that held dominion over Palestine then and there was Rome. Many many Jews had suffered and died, and the survivors wondered what meaning the covenant had after the destruction of the center of religious and political life.

The notion of resurrection from the dead was thus appealing: God’s promise continued past death and therefore could be trusted eventually (even if not presently.) God did not mean for the Romans to have the last word. In one sense the position of the Sadducees was one that, from the view of the Pharisees and of Jesus, lacked imagination. God was doing a new thing here, or perhaps better to say God was making a new announcement about an eternal thing.

This was not just whistling in the dark, or extracting good out of a bad deal. The Pharisees thought the Sadducees were settling for too little. The Pharisees expected more from God.

Though our claims about resurrection usually seem to be statements about our own nature (what is death? what happens to us after death? how will it be for us and others? what do we hope for?), the discussion that Jesus has with the Sadducees here is more about the nature of God. Can God be trusted? Is God’s power over the universe limited? What is God’s reach and scope?

The words “resurrection” and “eternal life” and “heaven” are not synonymous (that would be a good topic for Bible study), but they cover similar ground. What the Sadducees want to know (or want to argue against) is whether all things end with death and if not, what happens next, regardless of what we call it.

We often think of heaven as some place, either carved out of this world, or existing above and beyond it. “When I get to heaven, going to put on my shoes, going to walk all over God’s heaven.” But the details elude us as much as they fascinate us. Is heaven the way Dante imagined it? Or is it like things here in Cambridge, only much better? Will we see people there that we have loved and lost? Will we be like ourselves? How old will we be (what age would you pick)? Will we be stripped of our diseases, quirks, and weirdnesses that in some ways define us?

And questions broader but just as unanswerable: Do we go to heaven right after death, and if not, what happens in the in-between time? Is heaven just for people? How about animals? How about creatures from other planets in the universe? Is it going to be boring? Is it necessarily pleasant? About these things the Bible, our source, is silent.

What Jesus seems to be saying to the Sadducees (and to all who overhear his conversation) is that heaven—“in the resurrection” rather—is not like any of this. You Sadducees, even you who do not believe in it, he says, are asking the wrong questions. Heaven, eternal life, resurrection of the body; it is not like this, not very much like things you know about. Not about marriage or brothers or laws of property and power. What happens after death is not a continuation of what happens here, only forever. Thank God for that, for we do suffer in this world. But we cannot say that it is like that except nicer and cleaner. Heaven is not a place that recaptures or recovers the past.

But neither is it nothing, as the Sadducees claim. We learn here, as they do, that there is death and that there is something more. Death’s catchment area is this world. Death is the end of many things, but it is not the end of everything. What happens after that is certain but unknown.

And different. It is not what you think. Assumptions we hold become meaningless. Systems of power become powerless. Relationships change. And what we experience in our lives here is not all that God has in mind for us.

Jesus is not giving us this story in Luke to tell us how resurrection works. Not to explain resurrection. The Bible is a book about God and God’s relationship with us. This story is not about the mechanics of the cosmos, but about God. To God, all things are living, Jesus says. Human life may not be endless, but God’s love for humans is.

We know just a little about God. Things that are revealed to us in scripture and in our living. But our job, if you want to call that, our destiny, our hope, is not to know about God. We do not have to know how God works. We just have to know God. To know God and to love God and be loved by God.

Or as Sam Cooke might put it: Don’t know much about divinity, don’t know much about theology, but I do know that God loves me.

In the now and in the later, Jesus tells us that we are alive to God. That is how it is with God and us.

Saints, All

Text: Luke 6:20-31

Who are the saints that we commemorate on this day, All Saints Sunday?

If you were raised in another tradition, or attended confirmation class some years ago, you might think of saints as people marked and named as special by the church. Krister Stendahl, Lutheran pastor, scholar, one-time bishop of Sweden, and former dean of Harvard Divinity School, once was a guest preacher at a church on Nantucket. It was the feast of Peter and Paul. But his wife, he told us at the time, had had to remind him that in the Episcopal church, in which he was preaching, it was the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

His point was that it was rare for Lutherans to give our church heroes saintly titles freely bestowed by other traditions. The feast days on which we celebrate them are named for their accomplishments rather than their saintliness. Thus we say the feast of Andrew, Apostle, rather than the feast of St. Andrew. The Confession of Peter, rather than the feast of St. Peter. The Conversion of Paul, rather than the feast of St. Paul. Mark, Evangelist, rather than St. Mark.

This is not just iconoclasm. Not just the Lutheran reformers’ queasiness with ecclesiastical ornamentation. The Lutheran practice reflects a theological prejudice: There is no basic distinction between spiritual performance that is excellent and that which is merely mediocre or even poor. We are, as the formula goes, all both saints and sinners. There is in fact no such thing as spiritual performance. We are only creatures, all in the same boat, all struggling as best we can—or maybe not even that hard—but struggling nonetheless. Our hearts are with Jesus, but that hardly makes us perfect. We suffer. We rejoice. We praise God. We fight with God. We forget God. So none of us deserve special gold stars. Or, as we celebrate today, we all do.

When it comes to sinning and sainthood, we are all in this together. But we need to be reminded of that over and over. We are brothers and sisters of all people. That is hard enough to remember. Even more demanding and hard to admit: we are all equally commendable and disgraceful.

Blessed, Jesus says in Luke, are the ones who are poor. And those who are hungry, who weep, who are hated. This seems impossible. To be blessed means to be fortunate, or favored; lucky, we might say these days. A blessing is a hope (or a small petition to God) that all things will go well, that you will thrive and prosper, that your life will be good.

The beatitudes—which is what this list of blessings is called—are ferocious in Luke. They are not wimpy good wishes. The word “poor” means someone reduced to begging, who has no other way to survive. It means wretched, miserable. The word “weep” means to wail, mourning in tears and with one’s whole body. To be excluded means to be put aside, cut off as in prison or a camp.

We cannot sentimentalize what Jesus is talking about, and we cannot spiritualize it, as the list in Matthew does: blessed are the poor in spirit, it says there; blessed are those who hunger for righteousness. In Luke, the blessings go to those who are really poor, really hungry, really treated as less than human.

The beatitudes in Luke and Matthew are similar, but they are not the same thing. They are each a list of blessings, but they are about two different things altogether.

The blessings given in Luke’s list to the poor and hungry make people uncomfortable. For four reasons.

First, it does not seem like the poor are blessed. It seems like they are not.

Second, people want to be blessed but they do not want to have to be poor to do that. They want to be blessed and rich, too. Which seems to make sense, but which is contradicted by today’s reading.

Third, they do not want to admit that God makes a special claim for the poor. God is supposed to be neutral in this, even though the prophets and the Gospels often say otherwise.

And fourth, and most germane on this day, they have a stake in considering certain people as essentially different from them.

We just spent, as most of you know, some time in Australia. We learned a little about the Aborigines, the indigenous people who lived there when the Europeans arrived. As in this hemisphere, those who lived there were displaced, conquered, captured, enslaved, and murdered. In some places, Aboriginal people were classified by the occupiers as “fauna,” so that they could be hunted legally and without shame.

To its credit, Australia is trying to undo a tiny bit of what can be undone, and is spending lots of time, money, and energy facing its history. We who have a similar history here regarding both Native Americans and especially slavery, and other people and nations who do, too, could take a page from their book.

If all people are saints and sinners, we cannot make cosmic distinctions between one whole class of people—the poor, say—and another. We cannot consider a kind of people to be virtuous and another kind to be wicked. We cannot use words like primitive and advanced to describe whole cultures. We cannot justify creating wealth on the foundation of the suffering of other people. We cannot, as much as it is in our power, to deprive certain others the blessings we have.

By specifying the wretched, hungry, incarcerated, oppressed people as the ones who are blessed, Jesus is more than making some strange and disturbing observation. He is instructing his disciples—his students; us—concerning the nature of the world about which he preaches. The distinctions that seem so obvious and inevitable are nothing. And should be nothing. And can be nothing.

Purity is not a Christian value.

Sainthood is not something we earn or deserve or nominate. It is God’s work, not ours. We are saints because God claims us.

Today we light candles, remembering and honoring those who have died. Not because they were so great. Like all of us, they were a complicated mixture of one thing and another. But because like us they have a place in God’s heart that is not in jeopardy. They were all sinners. All saints.

What Angels Say

Text: Daniel 10:10-14, 12:1-3
Michael and All Angels

Today, in a moment, we will welcome Christina, Jeff, and Nicole to membership in this church. One of the many good things about the ceremony, which is called the Affirmation of Baptism, is that we begin the confession of faith (the creed) with a promise to “renounce … the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises.” This certainly reflects the view of Martin Luther, for whom evil was personified in the devil, or satan, and was a force active against God and good. Luther was said to have recommended that we spit in the devil’s face, and in the Lutheran theme song, A Mighty Fortress, “the old satanic foe” is thwarted in his quest to “work us woe.”

For Luther, the conflict was both cosmic and personal. Whether or not you believe evil to be encapsulated in a person, the renunciation that we promise affirms that evil exists, and that it is a force that diminishes us and is to be reckoned with. And on the flip side, that evil can be resisted and that we live in the hope that it will someday be derailed.

Sometimes that hope is tried by circumstance. When the portion of the book of Daniel, from which we heard the first reading, was thought to have been written, Israel was occupied, and the religious practices—like observing the Sabbath—were outlawed. The structure of a faithful life had been dismantled. God, it seemed, had abandoned God’s people. Where was God’s presence? Evil prevailed. How were the Israelites to live without God, without God’s guidance? How would they know how to live a faithful life against the forces that oppressed and censored them, made them forgetful and desperate? Were they on their own? Was God uncaring, or impotent, or angry, or no longer mindful of them?

Into this despair a mysterious and grand creature in human form comes to Daniel. He brings good news. “Do not fear, Daniel, …your words have been heard.” He reveals to Daniel a vision of things to come. But it is his presence and his announcement that God evidently has been hearing about the plight of God’s people, and does care, and has plans to do something about it—that is the good news.

This is the job of angels. To bring news, specific news from God in particular times. An angel is not a characteristic or type of some heavenly creature, but a job description. More an adjective or verb than a noun. Someone who participates, as someone said, in angelic events. The word “angel” means news, or message. An angel is a messenger. It is not a coincidence of spelling that the word “angel” resides in the middle of the word “evangelism”—ev-angel-ism—meaning good news, news—angel—that is good.

In the Bible, angels bring, almost always, momentous news. Timely news. They announce God’s interest—as they do in Daniel—and remind people of God’s involvement in the affairs of the world. Usually when the people are despairing and wondering where God is in their lives. They are sent by God, and they come to particular people—delivered by hand, so to speak, not published or broadcast—carrying a particular message. They do God’s bidding and obey, as the psalm says, because they know God’s bidding. And angels, being a sign of God’s attention, know those whom they visit.

When it seems, as it often does in hard times, that God is lost, then we are lost. We are God’s creatures, and we have neither the skills nor the foresight nor the courage to find our good way by ourselves. The devil feels free to roam uninhibited, and we are more likely, being anxious in our loneliness, to be enticed by his promises, which begin to seem full of possibility, not empty at all.

When God seems lost, stories like Daniel and Revelation appear. They are apocalyptic, which does not mean “end of the world” but rather means they reveal. They are visions. Though they portray destruction and chaos, they are really books of hope. They are not stories of the end of all time and space, but stories of hope for a new world, a new beginning, a new way of being, and world that fits better what God had planned for us. They are not written to frighten us into goodness, but to comfort us. God comes in these books not to ruin things, but to save them. Angels are agents of this conviction.

We have a sense that the world and we are made for better things. That the good that God declares the creation to be in Genesis is our birth and our destiny. Angels seem to fit into that, somehow; in popular tradition they embody the deepest contentment that we long for and believe will be ours. They are imbued, saturated, with heaven, where God works and lives. And the angels, too.

The idea of heaven is appealing, but not so much as a place of harps and clouds. But rather as the embodiment of a heavenly life that is the life we most feel designed for and need. A life free of the evils of the world—wars, poverty, slavery, privilege—and the sorrows of humans—hungry, disappointed, abused. Where the world is true, in the sense that it is one pure thing all the way through, not bruised like a fruit by expediency and fear and equivocation and violence. Heaven is a place, or a condition, or a time, in which the pattern of goodness is clear and achieved.

People tell stories about angels all the time. They do not do that because angels are cool, though they undoubtedly are, at least as described in the Bible. But because the people have been convinced that they have had a glimpse of heaven in an angelic event. They have been brought a message, a revelation, that in the midst of the forces of evil, the devil, and all his promises, there God is present, and is watching over them.

Passionate God is Heartbroken

Text: Luke 15:1-10
Other texts: Exodus 32

It is possible, I suppose, to have a god who might do anything. Or at least to have a theology that claims it so. But could you praise and worship a god who is capricious, who may not keep promises, who cannot be taken at one’s word?

The relationship between us and the God we worship is based on a covenant, a promise, a contract between us and God. We worship a God who instructs us in how to be righteous—that is, in how to be right with God. We trust that instruction to be true and effective.

It may be that our God can theoretically do anything—it doesn’t say—but theory does not matter here. The God we know has willingly constrained God’s self. I am your God and you are my people, God has told us. We have a relationship in which God has promised to be involved. “You have sworn to [your people] by your own self,” Moses reminds God in our first reading. On God’s own name and by God’s own being has God promised to behave in certain ways toward humans (and toward all creation). And God has enlisted human partners—like Abraham and Sarah and Moses—who rely on and trust in God’s faithfulness to God’s promises.

Today’s first reading comes as Moses has been up on Mount Sinai getting God’s law, retrieving the two tablets on which God had written them. He had been there for forty days, and the people down below had become impatient. They had prevailed on Aaron to make an image of God as a golden calf, immediately violating the first commandments of God about making (and worshipping) idols.

God is not pleased. At first, God blames Moses. “Your people,”—now they are Moses’s people—“are acting perversely.” Then God threatens to wipe out everybody, just as God did before Noah and the flood. Then God tries to bribe Moses, telling him that he, Moses, will be the father of a great nation, a promise God already made long ago to Abraham. Finally, God asks Moses to step back so that God can act without impediment. “Leave me alone,” says God.

But Moses will not step back. Moses argues with God. Moses threatens to embarrass God. Moses reminds God of the covenant that God had made with the people. And in the end, and amazingly, God changes God’s mind.

The God we worship is not a statue made of gold or anything else. Our God is, according this story, moved by argument, persuaded by the threat of embarrassment. God cares what people think of God. This God is not perfect, unemotional, unchangeable, unmoved. Our God has a stake in the fate of the world, admires creation, has desires, weeps when seeing the suffering of humanity and gets annoyed at its stupidity. This is a God who prefers good to right, mercy to judgment. This is not an impassable God, meaning one who cannot, does not, or chooses not to feel. Our God is a God of passion.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard Jesus tell two parables (they are a companion to a third, the story of the Prodigal Son). In each of these parables, something is lost, someone longs to find what is lost, and what is lost is found. In each story, there is a big feast and celebration.

But these are not so much stories about what is lost as they are about finding, about searching for and finding, and rejoicing at finding. What is lost does not ask to be found (they are sheep and coins, after all). Though repentance is mentioned, no one in the parables repents; no one asks for forgiveness. But they are searched for and welcomed home anyway.

The parables are more about the persistence of the seeker than they are about the character of what is sought. They are not about how great the repenters are; they are about how great God is.

It is no fun being lost. Being lost in the woods, lost in the dark city, lost as a child in the mall—it is terrifying. It is a good metaphor for the despair and hopelessness we can feel. Being lost in our lives, feeling as if we had no different future or no future at all, fearful that we might not survive—it is mind-numbing. Feeling as if there is no one in the whole world who might look for us, might try to find us, might bring us home. Feeling that we are wicked, out of control, occupied by demons, sinners unforgiven and unforgivable. Estranged from God, people, and all creation.

And to lose someone—or to see someone we love who is lost or in danger of becoming lost—is heart-breaking.

The Pharisees and scribes see Jesus being somehow corrupted by his fraternization with sinners. His contact with sinners makes him like a sinner, they think. No doubt the sinners see it differently. They are those who, as in the parable, know they are lost. (Unlike the Pharisees, who think they are not.) They eat with Jesus, it seems, because Jesus knows what it is to be lost.

The woman ransacks her house to find the lost coin. The shepherd goes out into the wilderness to find the lost sheep. They are driven to find what is lost. Jesus eats with the sinners—and then tells these stories to explain it—because he is likewise driven. Those who are lost break God’s heart, God’s passionate heart.

We who are lost lose conviction that anyone would come to find us, that we can be found or rescued. But we are not just lost things, one lost thing among many things not lost, a fraction not worth bothering about. We are lost to someone. The shepherd is compelled to search for the lost sheep because the sheep is lost to the shepherd, belongs to the shepherd, is the shepherd’s own. The shepherd cannot be a shepherd without longing to find the lost sheep, any more than God can be God and not search for us lost sinners.

What the shepherd does seems crazy. Which of you, Jesus asks, would not leave the 99 in the wilderness to search for one. The answer of the prudent sheep owner is: none. No one would do that, no one would value the time so cheaply, no one would risk the 99 for the sake of the one. But God does.

Our God—they are your people, Moses eventually reminds God—our God is extravagant and exuberant. Our God is crazy in love with people. With us.

When God declares to the Israelites—and to us—I am your God, you are my people, then God becomes vulnerable to losing us. God’s heart is changed. All heaven rejoices.

Seeker, Not Sought

Text: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Other texts: Luke 14:25-33

Happy are those who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, sings the psalm for today. Psalm 1, the one that introduces the 149 others. Happy are those who have not lingered in the way of sinners. Happy are those who do not sit with the scornful. They meditate on God’s teaching day and night. And everything they do prospers.

It is a small crowd, those happy people. So small that perhaps there is no one in it. Who are these people who have never sinned nor listened to sinners, who think only of God’s teachings? Whose every endeavor prospers. Are there any such people in the real world?

Moses has presented his people with a choice. He has done God’s work, leading the Israelites out of slavery and conveyed to them God’s law and commandments. Now, on the verge of finally entering the land promised to them, Moses preaches one last sermon, exhorting them to walk in the way of a God who has freed them, fed them, guided them, and now brings them home.

I have set before you today life and death, Moses tells them, prosperity and adversity. Choose to follow your God, not other gods. Choose to observe God’s decrees. If you do so choose, you will prosper. If you do not, you will perish. Blessings or curses, he offers. Life or death. Choose life.

The choice is clear. Choose life. Obviously. Who, given this choice, would willingly choose death?

Yet, we are easily led astray, as Moses warns the people. The Bible is a story of a people who, though they love God, are nonetheless unable to keep God’s commands, who are unable to keep away from the counsel of the wicked, who are unable to do what they want and refrain from doing what they do not want. In other words, it is the story of all people.

It is not easy to choose life. It is not always clear what is a blessing and what is a curse. Can a war be just? Can ending a life be compassionate? Can greedy accumulation enable mercy? We are more confused than villainous.

We are prone to distraction. It makes sense. We are aware creatures with lots of interests and a brain that likes to know everything that is going on. It helps us survive. Things compete for our attention. Some are the commandments and ordinances, as Moses says, of God, and the teachings of Jesus, whom we follow. But even when we turn to God, that attention is short-lived. So there is never only one choosing of life and that’s that. We have to choose life over death again and again, endlessly.

Our distractions are rarely evil. Jesus tells his disciples that those who do not hate their families cannot be his disciples. This is a hard saying. Partly that’s because we in our time honor families and find them to be—usually—a source of physical and spiritual comfort and energy. And partly because honoring parents is one of the commandments that we are supposed to obey. And partly because it is hard to make yourself feel some way, much less hate what you now love. Including life itself.

But Jesus is not talking about feelings, here. The words love and hate in Jesus’ time were more about obligations and behavior than about emotions. They had their source in contract law. So the admonition of Jesus here is not so much about degrees of affection. It is rather about loyalties and where they lie.

This is not the first or last time that Jesus compares his disciples’ allegiance with other calls on them. Elsewhere in the Gospels they leave their homes, their work, their nets and fields, their parents. They leave the dead to bury the dead. They are advised—as they are here—to give up all they own. They are instructed to carry no baggage. These things are all distracting voices—serving other gods, in the words of Moses. They add to the cacophony that makes it harder for one to decide how to choose life.

These statements by Jesus are not a call to asceticism. They are not a call at all. They are not a list of requirements. They are not a gateway to discipleship. They instead are an observation, a description, a statement of fact. Physics.

Being a disciple of Jesus is likely to get you in trouble with your family. Jesus is going to ask you to make moral, practical, and political choices that may estrange you from others, including your family and in spite of your bonds to them.

When Jesus talks to his disciples in this passage, he is giving them a heads up. When you become a disciple of mine, here is what might happen. This is a warning of sorts. A disclaimer.

The cross is not a prerequisite of following Jesus, but it may be a consequence. Disagreeing with ones we love is not a recipe for discipleship, but it may be the result. Those who hold their families most dear—and their possessions—are likely to run into problems. They will likely have to make decisions in which it is hard for them—maybe impossible—to choose life over death.

A disciple is a student. That is what the word means. The hope of discipleship is transformation, not just accumulation of knowledge or a notebook full of aphorisms. Those who follow Jesus hope for transformation in themselves and, as a result, in the world. Being Christian changes things. We obey God—we follow Christ our teacher—because we love God and also because we find that God’s promise of a new life is trustworthy.

This does not mean we have to get it exactly right. We will not get all A’s. We will choose our families and possession—other gods—over Christ. Our hearts will turn away, as Moses warns. Yet that is not a reason to abandon the whole enterprise.

The commands and grace of God are good news about the heart of God, who longs to bring us life. Moses’ talk about loving God, obeying God, and holding fast to God is not so much a statement about law as it is about heart—God’s heart. God makes a promise of life. It turns out not to be as contingent as it seems, for as the story unfolds, God delivers on God’s promise anyway, even when the Israelites—and we—continually choose death over life. Even when we walk in the counsel of the wicked.

A lectionary alternative for today is psalm 139. It is a fitting partner to the one we sang today, almost as near the end of the book as Psalm 1 is to the beginning. The psalm gives thanks that God is with us, even when we stray. As we are bound to. You search me, it says to God, you know me, you follow my journeys, you surround me.

Even when we walk among the wicked, the scornful, the sinners. No matter how little we meditate on God’s teaching. God seeks us out and walks with us.

Living It Up

Text: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Other texts: Luke 14:1, 7-14

We seek the good life.

What kind of life is that? We know the answer in the core of our being. We know, as it says in Hebrews, that it has little to do with the love of money. It is not nourished by accumulation. Instead, it has something to do with contentment, peace, humor, generosity, companionship.

The book of Proverbs is an example of wisdom literature. Wisdom literature teaches us what the wise person would do. The wise person is the one who seeks the good life. Wisdom literature guides us to the good life. In the first short reading today, it teaches us about the wisdom of humility. Jesus adapts this teaching to his own.

The book of Hebrews—being a theological treatise disguised as a letter—is not primarily about how to live the good life. But the last chapter, from which we heard today, is. It tells us what the good life means for Christians. If Jesus by his existence and death replaced altar sacrifice for his followers, then how, Hebrews asks, can they now worship? How can they now show their love of God? Rather then leaving them to figure this all out, the author of Hebrews reserves the last chapter to guide them.

At the top of this guide are two commands. The first one is: continue to love one another. The word is phila-delphía, translated often as brotherly love (thus the motto of the city). Love other followers of Christ. And the second one is: show hospitality to strangers. The word for hospitality is philo-xenía, love of strangers. Strangers here does not just mean someone with whom you are not familiar. It means strange. Weird. Do not forget to love people who are weird. People maybe not like you very much.

So, to live the good Christian life: love the ones you’re with, and love the others, too. That sounds like something Jesus might say. Be hospitable to all. And especially, he says in the Gospel reading for today, especially the ones who seem strange to you.

To be a good host—to be a good practitioner of hospitality—is to think of others first. To think of them more than you think of yourself. A good host is aware of the needs of his or her guests. More, a good host goes out of the way to make sure those needs are met. A good host puts money and time and thought into nourishing guests in body and spirit. The host is driven by love of his or her friends, and, for Christians, equally of strangers. It is a model for Christian love.

Hospitality is a form of humility. Humility is social glue. It embodies interdependence, patience, and awareness of others. It is essential for good community. Humility requires a tolerance for self-doubt and uncertainty. A willingness to wait and see. A humble host is not independent, self-reliant, or self-righteous. A person certain that her or she is right is not a humble one.

But mostly, humility requires imagination. What would other people like? What would they dislike? This is more than asking: what would I like if I were in the shoes of that other person. It is more than the golden rule. It is imagining what it would be like to be that other person, with his or her background, abilities, history, not with yours. As if, as it says in Hebrews, as if you were in their body. Imagining what it would be like—not for you to be in jail, with all your education and strength and confidence—but imagining what it would be like to be that person in jail. What would it be like to be that person who is being tortured? And then, imagining that strange person so well that you love strange them, and act accordingly.

This hospitable imagination is not rare, exotic, or saintly. It serves nurses and counselors well. But also other people with empathetic imaginations who are not in care-giving occupations. Salespeople (the best of whom are servants to their customers), and good product designers. Steve Jobs of Apple, but maybe not Tim Cook, who replaced him. Empowering leaders, but maybe not charismatic ones. Effective teachers. Best friends.

Jesus advises us in his parable to be humble. To sit in the lowest place. The humble, he says, shall be exalted. But this is not easy advice to hear. None of us wants to be at the bottom. It makes us feel little and helpless. We fear that our survival and happiness—and our chance at the good life—depends on the power we ourselves have over our time and money and well-being.

But it is possible to be humble without being terrified if we put our trust in a higher power, in God, to care for us. It would be imprudent to do otherwise. So when Hebrews tells us to be content with what we have—do not push to the head table—it adds: “for [God] has said ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, what can anyone do to me?’”

It takes practice to remind ourselves of this. It is a spiritual discipline. We get better at it over time. Just as we do imagining ourselves being another.

The Gospel of Luke has a preference for a change in the the way the word is ordered. In Luke, Mary predicts that the powerful shall be brought down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up. In Luke, Jesus calls the poor blessed, but woe to the rich. But this readjustment of powerful and powerless, rich and impoverished, is not regime change. Not the same old structures but with new bosses. It is a change in the working of the world.

For Luke, the good life is a sign of and at the same time a cause of God’s new world. Which world comes out of our own humble actions and at the same time makes our actions possible. But it is not going to happen if we all continue to make a beeline for the best seats. The evidence of this is that so far it has not—either for each of us individually or for the world. The good life continues to elude us.

When reading the teachings and parables of Jesus, it helps to ask whether it is a commandment—your should do this—or an observation—you are doing this. But perhaps in this case, it is an invitation. If we practice being good hosts, if we approach others with humility, if we imagine ourselves to be as others are, then we trust the good life will be ours. And the world’s.

The Prayer the Lord Taught Us

Text: Luke 11:1-13

Jesus was praying.

What was he saying? What was he thinking? He was praying in a certain place, it says. Did the place matter? Did he stand or kneel or sit in a special way? What did he do with his hands? His head?

The disciples want to know. Certainly no strangers to prayer, an important part of a faithful life in Palestine, yet they see or infer something in the way Jesus prays. Teach us to pray, Lord.

So Jesus recites to them what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. It is not quite the same version we pray. There is another version in Matthew chapter 6 that is more like ours, a little longer, a little more familiar than Luke’s. And wordier.

This prayer is very old. And it is short. As concise as possible, essential, straightforward. Easy to remember, quick to say, suitable for all occasions. Martin Luther wrote that the Lord’s Prayer was one of the things all Christians should memorize and recite at least daily (he said that children “should be given neither food nor drink” until they do so). It is so familiar to us that we forget how odd it might have sounded.

First: Though people often say this prayer in private, it is a prayer prayed for all people together. Though we often mean it to be about each one of us, it is written in the plural—we, not I; give us, not give me. We thus speak it aloud whenever Christians assemble. It is a prayer for the people of God, yet adopted and implemented, so to speak, in the lives of individuals—you, me.

Second: The prayer is full of demands. This is not a shy prayer. The verbs are in the imperative. We are not begging God here. We are making a claim on God. Give us, forgive us.

The demands are simple and basic. This is a prayer about human need. To be fed, to be forgiven, to forgive others, to live a life without undue trials. (And also to know a holy presence and to hope for a godly world). There is nothing about a distant God out there or up there (at least not in this version), a god who is only vaguely interested in us. This is a prayer to God who knows what it is to be a person in the world.

Third: This God we can call father, parent. This does not imply by itself that God is good and compassionate—though that is so. It does imply a connection between God and us that is strong and direct. We are able to make these demands in this prayer because God, whom we can call our father, is as close to us as a parent would be. God is not some dispersed ethereal force, nor just a good idea, nor an inattentive creator. To open our address with “Father” indicates our own stance that the God to whom we pray will welcome our petitions as legitimate.

Our prayers are legitimate without condition. We do not have to adopt any special posture. We do not have to come to God in a special frame of mind. We do not need to be in a special spot. In the Lord’s Prayer, we do not have to thank or praise God or give fancy titles or add flattering adjectives to God’s name before we get down to business. This prayer is about us, not about God (except as we imagine God listening). God is not so insecure, Jesus seems to say, that we cannot just right off tell God what is on our mind, what we need.

That all works out because, Jesus explains, God desires to provide for us. Jesus tells us this by way of two stories. Both use a logic common in Jesus’ time: if something is true in the small it must be even more true in the large. An argument from lesser to greater.

A man approaches a friend. The time is inconvenient. The friend is annoyed. Give me some bread for my guest, the man says. Get lost, says the friend. Yet because of the man’s dogged persistence, the friend gives in. Jesus begins this story by saying in essence: Can you imagine such a thing? Can you imagine a friend, a friend, mine you, not some stranger, going against all the rules of hospitality, refusing to get up, no matter what a bother it is, and to not give the man some bread? And the words Jesus uses imply that the expected answer is: No! No way could that happen. It is a rhetorical question, a rhetorical story. If you cannot imagine one friend telling another to get lost, certainly God would not.

In the same manner, Jesus asks his disciples: which of you would give your child a snake if he or she asked for a fish, or a scorpion if asked for an egg? And in the same way, the expected answer is: No! None of us would. This is not a comment about the real behavior of some parents. The parent in the story is the disciple, the listener. “Which of you parents?” Nor does it imply that God gives us what we need, not what we want. The child is not denied what he or she asks for. As before, it is a rhetorical story of the same sort. If you who are just an ordinary person would not give poison when food is asked for, certainly God would not.

These verses are not about theology. They are not treatises about the existence of evil in the world. Or about whether prayer is effective. There will be other times for that. They are about praying. About how to pray. Teach us to pray, the disciples ask Jesus. This is a practical instruction, with illustrations.

We are sometimes tempted to edit our own prayers. We think that what we pray for is too outrageous. Too impossible. Too deviant. Too trivial. Or too grand. So we do not pray for those things. We censor our own prayers, thinking God does not wish to hear them, or that certainly God would never grant them, or even that perhaps God cannot grant them.

But Jesus is telling the disciples to pray for what they want. To pray their deepest desires. To pray their shallowest whims. The heroic things and the stupidest. To ask God. Just talk to God. Do not try to be God’s gatekeeper of worthy prayers. You wish to receive, to find, to have doors opened. Therefore ask, search, knock. That is our job. In prayer, our only job. Do not remain silent.

The Lord’s Prayer is a rude prayer. It does not equivocate. It is not vague around the edges. It is not sycophantic. It does not consider or inquire about God’s will. It is a human prayer about human desires. All that is needed to pray the Lord’s Prayer is that we acknowledge the depths of our own need and be willing to reveal them to God.

The man in the story with the sleepy friend, we heard, was persistent. But the better word for it is “shameless.”

Pray for what you really want. The impossible, the minor, the weird, the honorable. Pray shamelessly. Pray for what you want.  

Restorative Justice

Text: Luke 10:38-42

In an informal poll regarding today’s reading from Luke conducted over the past two weeks, the results show that 90% of the people can’t stand Mary. Maybe you are one of them.

Why is that? Mostly they say that they are Marthas. That’s what they say. Not that they are like Martha, or that they understand Martha, or that in the same circumstances as the one in Luke’s story, they would do exactly as Martha did. They identify with Martha. A lot. That makes this a good story, when people have strong feelings about the protagonists. They see themselves as too busy, often distracted, knowing that they are missing some undefined better part but unable to do otherwise.

Jesus does not help the situation. Martha asks Jesus to intervene, and instead of siding with her, Jesus tells Martha that she is distracted, going all this way and that, as if she did not know that already, thank you. And he doesn’t say anything at all to Mary. He just makes some unhelpful—and maybe they think, dismissive—comment to Martha regarding Mary.

Their target is Mary. But really, Mary is hardly even in this story. Martha is a complicated character, while Mary never says a word. She has no depth. We do not know Mary.

In this story in Luke, Mary is a prop. Her presence advances the story and provides motive for Martha and a subject of conversation between Martha and Jesus. As the man by the side of the road is in the story of the Good Samaritan which we heard last week, and which immediately precedes today’s story in Luke. But today’s story is not about Mary, who does not advance it and hardly contributes to it. The story is about Martha.

Mary, we heard, has the better part. What part is that? What is the better part? We read into that phrase what we want, just as we read into the actions and words of Martha all sorts of characteristics, roles, and motives. What is the better part? Some say this means the contemplative life, others say the act of worship, still others say education, piety, adoration. No one says couch potato, but they could. It is all speculation. The Gospel is completely silent on this issue.

It is silent because it does not matter. Luke is not interested in what Mary does or does not do. Except only in the sense that she does something that affects Martha. Mary could be doing anything as long as Martha was unhappy about it and complained to Jesus about it. Luke’s silence is evidence.

Mary has, it says, the good part. Not the better part, as our Bible version has it. Not better than Martha’s, which is how we often read it.

And whatever it is, it cannot be taken from Mary. But whatever it is, Martha wants it taken from Mary.

She wants it taken away, whatever it is. Martha wants justice. She feels that something is happening here that is unjust. She is doing all the work and Mary isn’t. She is being the host and Mary isn’t. She is following the rules and Mary isn’t. There is an imbalance here. It is not fair. Not right.

Martha seeks judgment. We might at first think Jesus is agreeing to do that here. But there is no judgment. Jesus refuses to tell 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.

Martha wants to restore the balance by making Mary suffer as much as she, Martha, has suffered. She wants Mary to do what Martha is doing. She wants to take something away from Mary—the good part that Mary has and that Jesus identifies.

That should not surprise us. That is often how we ourselves view justice. As a way of equalizing or compensating one hurt with another. Doing justice becomes making sure that all suffer equally. We think that justice is done if you pay for your crime.

But a just system is not one that counters one evil with another. Two wrongs don’t make a right, children rightly say. 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 balance the harm others do to us with harm to them.

Rather, justice is healing, a restoration of what was broken. Each case is different; that is how healing works. It is not that there are Marthas, but this particular Martha. Martha seeks revenge but Jesus offers healing. Martha, Martha, he calls her, as God calls a prophet, from one life to another.

You can think about this story in Luke as a proverb, telling us how to behave (a tips-for-life sort of thing). That one way is better than another. Do not be distracted. It is not good for you or others. Don’t be crabby. Don’t triangulate. Be quieted in your life. Words of wisdom, as proverbs are.

Or you can think of it as a parable, like the parable of the Good Samaritan, presenting us as parables do with a shocking situation (host complains about sister to guest) and exaggerated emotions. And making us think carefully about how it will be in the kingdom of God.

But this story is not just Mary, Martha, and some guy—as it could be if it were a proverb or a parable. It is Mary, Martha, and Jesus. The Bible is a book that tells us about God, through poems and proverbs and parables and prophets and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As with the story of the Good Samaritan, Luke puts this particular story in this very spot for a reason. The words of Jesus here tell us something that Luke wants us to know about God. They tell us about what justice is not and what it is. They tell us that God welcomes our demands for justice and hears them as pleas for healing.

Careless Grace

Text: Luke 10:25-37

We bring a lot of baggage to this reading in Luke. That is how it is with scripture. Reading scripture is a conversation between you and the text. The text stays the same. You change a lot. You come with your history, your worries and hopes that depend on current circumstances, the events of the day both global and local. It is no doubt a good thing that this is so. Otherwise, what is the point?

But when we read a familiar story like this one, the conversation can be a little stilted. This story in Luke is certainly one of the best-known stories in the New Testament, and many of us have heard it since we were children. So when we come upon it, we hardly even need to listen to it. It is like your grandfather telling the same joke over and over. Still funny, but we know the punchline. So it does not have the impact it once did. Maybe it is kind of boring, even.

This story is usually known as the Good Samaritan. That is a little misleading, as the word “good” never appears in it. It is not really about his goodness. Some people call it the Merciful Samaritan. That is better, because he is merciful—the text does say that. But there is a lot going on in the story, so we could call it “The Man Who Was Left to Die,” or “The Way to Eternal Life,” or “A Lawyer Learns a Lesson.”

The story is often portrayed as a triumph of grace over law. The lawyer who occasions the story, and the men who pass by the wounded man, are all official students of the law. And the Samaritan is an outsider who acts from kindness.

But compassion for others is a part of the law. That is why we read Leviticus today. We heard a few of a long list of laws. These are the laws given via Moses to the Israelites. There are a lot of them. In Leviticus: 247. Plus many more in Deuteronomy. They all come from God. “I am the Lord your God,” they all end. And one of them is “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The point is that loving your neighbor as yourself is just as much law as the other statutes.

The laws are a part of God’s grace. They provide guidance and comfort in a world of suffering and fear. They are one embodiment of grace. The lawyer is not trying to get out of obeying the law. He is trying to escape the graceful part of it, the part which I’m sure he finds annoying. What he wants is an interpretation that lets him off the hook.

He wants to justify himself, it says. Justify means judge. He wants someone to judge him based on his adherence to some very specific actions. He wants, perhaps, for Jesus to say: it is OK if you do these particular things with these particular people and it is OK if you don’t do these things with these other people. It is OK. You are a good person. God will think you are good person.

The lawyer might, as it seems, be trying to escape some obligation. But he might just want to know what to do. How can he do the right thing if he does not know exactly what the right thing is?

But really. We all do know what to do, don’t we? It is built into us. Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves does not strike us as radical. That is because it makes a lot of sense to human beings. That does not mean it is easy.

Why do we admire the Samaritan in the story Jesus tells (which is a kind of parable) and disdain the two others who walked on by without stopping? Mostly it is because he helps someone who needs help. It makes the story much more dramatic that he does so at his own risk. The Samaritans and the Jews were enemies, at each other as only feuding cousins can be. The Samaritan is in the wrong neighborhood, which makes it dangerous for him. And then he stops to help a Jew. So he would be hated by the Jews for what he is and hated by his fellow Samaritans for what he does.

Yet his compassion—built in compassion, I’d say—compels him to care for a person who lies suffering by the road. We are amazed at the priest and the Levite because they did not.

The Samaritan is merciful, it says, but a more modern way of saying it is that the Samaritan is kind. That kindness is sometimes called Common Grace, meaning grace that is given to all people. People in common, or common people, meaning you do not have to be special to get it. The sun rises on the evil and on the good, and God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous, it says in Matthew. This unconditional favor is gospel. The Samaritan is filled with Common Grace.

The thing is, we all are. When we focus, as the lawyer seems to, on the exact boundaries of grace, we make things more complicated than they need to be. We can applaud in general the rule of law and ponder who by rights gets what and debate what makes things fair or just. But if we ourselves were in the ditch by the side of the road, beaten and near dying, we would not do that. We would see in an instant and would all agree that the interpretation by the passersby—that their interpretation of the law of God somehow and amazingly does not compel them to love us as themselves.

One way to think about this is to ask: who owns us? If it is primarily the rules, then it is important most of all to be precise. That is what lawyers and scribes—who were the lawyers in Jesus time—are supposed to do. The law—not just the law from Moses but any law—the law makes distinctions. Is this thing or action the thing or action described by such and such a law? If so, one thing happens. If not, another. The law justifies our actions. We are judged by the law. Since we live in a complicated, fluid, and only-human world, making these distinctions is never ending and a lot of work. Plus, the stakes are high—life and death sometimes—so it is even harder. It is important to get it right. The lawyer in the story, living according to this scheme, is right to ask Jesus to be more specific. He wishes to survive. He wishes to reach God.

But if it is primarily gospel, then it is important most of all to be kind. Suffering compels our compassion. In the moment the rest simply does not matter. No rule, no matter how precise—or even no matter how otherwise good—no rule trumps kindness.

The lawyer wishes to be free. He sees better definitions and more exact measurements as the way to get there. “But who is my neighbor?” he asks. For whom can I defer the kindness within me for one reason or another? We make countless good arguments for hesitating, or refusing, to offer help to people in need. What reasons are good enough?

But Jesus will not tell him. Instead, Jesus tells a story. The lawyer like everyone else can see who in the story is doing what should be done. By every thing that can be measured, the Samaritan is the wrong person doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. A foreign law breaker. But even the lawyer admits that it is not time for those measurements. Who is neighborly? Jesus asks. There is only one answer.

It is hard to know who we are in this story. Sometimes we might be the passersby, sometimes the man suffering in the ditch, sometimes the innkeeper, watching, amazed. It is a parable, not an allegory. But for the lawyer the interpretation is precise: if you want the kind of life you seek, be the one who showed kindness.

Go Humbly

Text: Luke 10:1–11, 17–20

Marshal McLuhan, a thoughtful philosopher of modern culture, wrote that the medium is the message. The delivery vehicle of the message conveys the message at least as much if not more than the content. At the time, this was a radical idea. That was fifty years ago. Now everyone knows this; the idea goes without saying. But it is not really a new idea. In the story we just heard in the Gospel of Luke, the point is at least as much about the messengers—the medium—as it is the news they bring.

Jesus sends out thirty-five pairs (or maybe thirty-six; it depends on which source you use)—pairs of apostles, sent out into the towns. Their mission is clear and explicit. They are to depend on the hospitality of others. They take only the clothes on their backs.

But more important, they offer a kind of hospitality of their own. They make no judgments. They come only when invited. They eat what is put in front of them, sharing whatever the family eats, whether or not they like it. They heal the people who come to them. They make no demands, they have no interest in exploiting the good will of their hosts. They do not try to find the best accommodations. They are content with what there is and what comes their way. Besides all that, they announce good news about the nearness of God’s kingdom. Of which their actions are examples.

What they do not do is berate people, convince people, try to sign them up for something, make them join something. They carry with them a kind of power invested in them by Jesus—an apostolic authority, you could say. But that authority is not to boss folks around or manipulate them or to enlist them. Nor does it demand that people respect them or even pay attention. The authority gives them the power to heal people and the courage to freely reside with people without disapproving of them and the willingness to be vulnerable and take risks. All great gifts.

The disciples are sent to prepare the way; they are not the way itself. It is not about them. They are not proud. They represent Jesus and the new world that he brings. A new way of being. At best, they are the signs of that world. Signals. They therefore do not rejoice in their own good fortunes or the thrill of power. They are happy that have been given the power to heal people, freeing them from the demons that inhabit and control them. The disciples can walk among snakes and scorpions. But Jesus cautions them. They are not to rejoice in their own ability to accomplish great things. They are known in heaven—not meaning that they will get their just rewards someday, but rather that God knows them and their deeds already. They are quiet saints. Servants, as it says elsewhere, and as Apostle Paul often writes.

These 70 (or 72) disciples are humble, modest, and obedient. These are tough words for us. Even though they sound nice, we rarely long to be humble, modest, or obedient. We do not aspire to these things, nor admire them in our social models. They sound weak, for one thing.

These are words that describe relationships in which we are equal to others, or even in which others are greater than we. They are not about relationships in which we excel, dominate, prevail, control, or determine. They are words which seem to call us to deny our selves. Something Jesus talks about at length elsewhere. Approvingly.

Compassion, central to the Christian life, grows from humility, modesty, and obedience. To be compassionate requires a recognition of the suffering of others. To empathize. To recognize that the suffering of someone else is no less than our suffering is. That all people suffer exactly as we do. We have no special authority therefore to inflict suffering on others. And we do have special obligation to relieve the suffering of others.

Saying that the disciples are saints does not imply that they are special in some innate way. Humility, modesty, and obedience are not character traits—inborn, immutable, unattainable abilities. They are skills. As skills, they can be taught—that’s what Jesus did and does. As skills, they improve with practice. They are important and effective even when you do them poorly.

This story appears only in Luke. Of the four Gospel writers, Luke is the most interested in the mission of the early church. And of the four, Luke is also the most interested in social and economic justice. The Magnificat of Mary is in Luke, at the very beginning. The good news that she feels carrying Jesus is the prospect of the restoration of the kingdom of God. Things will be ordered differently; better—less vertical, more horizontal. The peace that the disciples offer, and the announcement they bring to the towns, is shalom—the peace of things that are now out of kilter being once more in line with God’s intent.

Perhaps what the disciples do seems trivial, or only marginally effective. But what they do is the message of Christianity. When people are most moved by Christianity, it is because they sometimes see in Christians generosity, compassion, and persistence in the face of fear. What we do as Christians is the message.

The disciples—who as always stand for us—are getting lessons in humility, modesty, and obedience. They take great risks. They come back overjoyed. They are coached in their tasks. They are not required to find their own way to follow Jesus. They are given instruction and guidance.

Their mission is not to make more Christians. It is to heal and offer modest hospitality to all. And to talk about a new world.

We in this age are in the middle of a moral crisis. People feel they have authority to inflict suffering on others. They do not feel a special obligation to relieve the suffering of others. This is not a new crisis, but it seems to me more urgent. Our arrogance and self-satisfaction are not safe.

Jesus announces a new way. But the message will be heard only if it is lived out in the lives of the messengers.

Peter Paul and Many

Text: John 21:13-19

Feast of Peter and Paul

Christianity is a faith that sits in the moment, acknowledges the past, but has a preference for the future. Its vocabulary is full of words about restoring what is broken, renewing what has decayed, resurrecting what is dead. It is not an accident that all these words begin with “re-”, along with many other ones like reconciliation, restoration, rebirth. The prefix means “again” or “back.” They are all about finding something that has been lost—rediscovering it—or getting back to the right path after having wandered, or being cleansed after being corrupted.

In all these words, there is a turn, a change of direction. We acknowledge the past but head on out into the re-formed future. Repent—another such word—means to make a turn. Forgiveness—an essential word but this time without the prefix—lets us grieve the past but importantly releases us from it so we can step ahead in freedom.

As a consequence, we are open to big surprises and changes in our lives. We are taught by example and doctrine that that is how God works. Words like calling, commissioning, and conversion are all about being pulled into the future. We say that we accept God’s call, but sometimes it feels like we really have little choice in the matter. Often the result is that we are comforted in unexpected ways. Other times we are distressed. But we are usually at least a little amazed.

Today we celebrate the ministries of Peter and Paul. They did not have much in common. Peter was an ordinary fisherman. Paul was a privileged and educated Roman citizen. Though thrown together in the same stew by God, it seems that they did not like each other much. Peter supported Paul in his ministry to the gentiles, but Peter had big doubts about the plan until a vision set him straight.

Peter was much more involved with the fledgling church establishment than Paul was. Peter was careful. Paul was impulsive and exuberant. Peter does not mention Paul much, but Paul refers to Peter disdainfully, as he does in today’s second reading, by including Cephas—Peter’s name in Aramaic—in a dismissive list.

But Peter and Paul did have in common Christ’s call to them. Both were recruited directly by Jesus, Peter at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Paul on the road to Damascus after the Resurrection. They were both renamed by Christ—Peter was Simon, Paul was Saul. They were both founding leaders of what was to become Christianity.

But most of all, they both had their lives totally turned around by Jesus. A new direction. Neither of them anticipated what they would become. Neither one of them could have imagined, given their backgrounds, inclinations, or prospects, what would happen to them.

Of the two, Paul’s story is the simpler. He is called once, through dramatically, and after that seems to apply the same energy and commitment to strengthening Christianity as he did attacking it before, and he seems pretty happy with his lot and his vocation.

But Peter’s story is more complicated.

Peter is one of the first disciples called to follow Jesus. He becomes a good friend of Jesus. They were buddies, companions. Peter was an enthusiast. It is Peter who wants to build booths at the Transfiguration. It is Peter who wants Jesus to wash his whole body, not just his feet. It is Peter who tries to walk on water. It is Peter who so confidently acclaims Jesus as messiah. Peter is a doofus.

But something happens to Peter. First, he denies Jesus three times. And the death of Jesus, his friend, is a harsh blow. The Resurrection confounds him. In the Gospel of John, Peter is the first to enter the empty tomb. According to other accounts, Peter is the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared. Yet he responds by going fishing; his job before he met Jesus.

The conversation today between Jesus and Peter is a turning point in Peter’s life. One of those change-in-direction events. By the time it is over, Peter is a new person. A different person. No longer a fisherman, Peter has a new role given to him by Jesus. A more difficult role. A more responsible role. From now on in the Bible we will hear no more goofy stories about Peter. He stops being exuberant and playful.

Jesus had before nick-named him Rocky, which is what Peter means in Greek. At the time, Jesus said to him: On this rock—on you, Peter—I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Now Peter understands the seriousness of this commission. In the course of one conversation Peter goes from a care-free flaky sidekick to a reliable but troubled leader. From outlier to administrator. From rebel to mainstream. It is Peter who has to worry about infrastructure while Paul gets to be the flashy marketeer. Peter agonizes about the admission of gentiles; Paul just goes out and signs them all up.

Do you love me? Jesus asks Peter. Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, Jesus tells Peter. Be a good shepherd to them. Not just to nourish them, but to do all that a shepherd does. Both Paul and Peter nourish God’s people. They have that in common. But it is Peter who has to make sure that the fences are set, the hay in the loft, the lambs attended to.

When Jesus asks about Peter’s love for him, he is not testing Peter’s character. This is not a job interview. He chose Peter long ago. Jesus knows that Peter’s job will not be glamorous. There will be tough going. He will be taken places he does not want to go. Danger lies ahead. Peter’s call to lead God’s people is not a consequence of his love for Jesus. His love does not compel him.

Rather, it is his love for Jesus that enables him to respond to Jesus’ call. It is a job that he cannot do without his love for Christ. Jesus is not saying, if you love me, then tend my sheep. It is not a condition. He is saying, since you love me, you will be able to tend my sheep. The work is hard. But because you love me, you will be able to do it.

Peter and Paul are long gone, but the work of attending to God’s people continues. It is now we who are called to nourish each other in body and spirit.

It is not likely that we will be called upon to create a whole new religion. But it is likely that there will be big changes and surprises in in our lives. That we will on occasion be amazed. And that we will be called sometime to make a sharp turn into a new future. In those times, we trust that we be sustained and guided, as Peter and Paul were, by our love for God in Christ.