All by Myself

Text: Luke 13:31-35
Other texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

There used to be a children’s book called All By Myself. It taught children how to manipulate the fasteners of everyday life. The pages inside contained zippers and buttons and snaps and laces. Children could play with these things and develop small motor skills. The point of the book, implied by the title, was to build confidence and independence. That is part of growing up. Eventually, sometimes to the dismay of parents, children can do more and more all by themselves, and need their parents less and less.

The readings today trace a long journey in time, from the infancy of Israel in the promise to Abram (who is later known as Abraham) to the glory that was Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. This is the temporal journey of the whole Bible. A people growing up under the watchful and loving eye of God, but who increasingly feel that they can do it all by themselves.

The story starts with just one family: Abram and Sarai (soon to be called Sarah). They are childless, wanderers, old. They earlier had been told, as this episode in Genesis begins, that they would be the start of a great family that would in turn become a great and prosperous nation. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,” God had said, but things have not worked out. Abram is skeptical, to say the least. Nonetheless, God reassures Abram. He believed, it says. This shows that one can be skeptical about something and believe the same something as the same time.

The relationship between God and Abram was exactly the relationship between God and Israel. It was personal and intimate, one on one. The nation at this time existed only in this one person. God speaks to Abram. Abram speaks back.

God makes a promise. The one person (or the two: Abram and Sarai), will be many. Abram is skeptical because he has been disappointed in the past. God’s promise has so far been just words. But Abram is faithful because in the end he trusts in the sovereignty of God. God is the creator and ruler of the universe. Humans are creatures. God makes promises and fulfills them. Abram trusts that God’s word is good.

And so it turns out to be. Fast forward to the time of Jesus. Israel is a nation, and has been great. The descendants of Abraham and Sarah have populated the land. The story has had its ups and downs, but now Jerusalem, the center of political and religious life, is a great city. A center of commerce, religion, and politics. Jerusalem was like a cross between DC and New York. Diverse, full of foreign business people, merchants, and travelers. Plus leaders of the state and religious institutions (which at the time were not two different things).

No longer was it God and just one fledgling family. No longer did God and Israel speak one to one. There were many children. They were no longer wanderers. They had homes and institutions and bureaucrats and officials and armies. They were numerous and vital and independent. They could do things all by themselves.

But as a result, where Abram was humble and thankful, they were proud. In some ways, they had forgotten God in all but name. Or better to say: they had begun to forget God’s sovereignty. Humans had usurped some of it for themselves. They believed in themselves more than in God.

This had happened before. (And clearly still happens.) The history of Israel by then covered many centuries. During that time, God had sent prophets to the people, reminding them of God’s commandments and reminding them that they were God’s creation. Yet the prophets were rarely well-received. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” says Jesus, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”

Including, it will turn out, Jesus himself. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”—Jesus quotes Psalm 117. The people hear Jesus. They see what is going on in the city. Does Jesus speak for God or for someone, something else? They are not asking so much whether Jesus is the one, the new king, the messiah. Instead, they want to know: is this man, this Jesus, is he blessed or is he not? Is God speaking to us through Jesus? Can we trust him to guide us?

Like other prophets, Jesus preaches and acts against the prevailing systems of power that forget God. Jesus proclaims good news to the poor and freedom for prisoners, as we heard him a couple of weeks ago. He will fill the stomachs of the hungry and send the rich away empty. He tells us, in Luke, not to judge others, not to charge interest on loans, to give whenever and for whatever we are asked. To check for the log in our own eyes before we go condemning the sliver in our neighbor’s.

If you acknowledge that Jesus is blessed, speaking for God—is God—then you must accept that these are God’s words. If you accept these are God’s words, and you ignore them anyway, you debate God’s sovereignty. As Jerusalem did, and as we often do today.

There is pity and compassion in Jesus’ wish to be as a hen gathering up her chicks. Young animals seek their mother for protection and comfort, and then march out into the world in confidence, knowing that they can always return. The God who speaks to Abram sends him out confident that God is with him. But the Jesus who speaks to Jerusalem as if they were chicks is full of sadness because they seem to have no need for God.

Jerusalem, having a difficult adolescence, has forgotten that it owes its existence to a gift from God. The whole of Israel came as a gift from God. Starting with God’s promise to Abram, God makes agreements, with Israel. “I am the Lord who brought you out of [your birthplace] to give you this land to possess.” You are my people, says God repeatedly. This is your land that I give to you and that I bless for your use. Over and over in this passage the word is repeated: give, gift. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying ‘to your descendants I give this land.’” And the land God is talking about is the land in which Jerusalem sits. For which they are reminded to be grateful.

It is dangerous to lose one’s gratitude. It makes you think that what you have is a result of your own efforts, that you have done it all by yourself, and that you deserve what you have because you are able and righteous. And it makes you lose your respect for forces that are way beyond your control (which are most of them). It makes you forget to be humble, which is a risk; and in doing so, in being proud of yourself, it makes it hard to remember God.

But Jesus’ sadness does not come from thinking that the people are arrogant. It comes because he knows that a life deprived of gratitude is a life of fear and deep loneliness. Imagine the chicks without a hen.

Jesus reminds Jerusalem and reminds us that we are neither self-created. Nor are we adrift. We did not do this all by ourselves. Nor are we in this all by ourselves. We are creatures of a God who remains by our side. Sending us out, welcoming us back. We are not alone.

A Likely Story

Text: Luke 4:1-13

We are forgetful and easily distracted creatures. For this reason, we tell ourselves stories. Old family stories. Stories about growing up, falling in and out of love. About school and career. We tell stories around the dinner table, passing them on from one generation to the next. We tell them in courtship. These stories remind us who we are. We need these daily reminders so that we remain complete.

We tell stories in church through scripture, through the Bible. These stories remind us who we are with God. That we are creations of God, children of God, and God’s people, and brother and sister of God in Jesus. Oddly enough, we find this big story about us and God easy to forget.

We are not the first to do this. People in the Bible have to tell each other the story of God all the time. In the first reading today, from Deuteronomy, the people are reminded to give back to God the first part of what has been given to them. As they do so, and by way of explaining why they do so, they retell the central story of how God freed them—not they, themselves, but their ancestors—how God freed them from Egypt and led them into a land of their own where they now live.

The apostle Paul weaves into this story of the Exodus the story of Jesus Christ. “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek,” Paul writes. Gentiles, pagans, become, through God’s gracious invitation, part of the story, and the whole story becomes for all of us. The season of Lent is a time to reflect on whether we feel like we fit into this big story, whether we feel like it really is our story, and if so, finding a way of being, a way of living, that makes sense in light of this story.

Part of our story—the story of Christians—is the story of Jesus as told by the Gospel writers. Today we hear from Luke about the very beginning of the public life of Jesus. Though oddly in this story there are no witnesses, so it is a private story of Jesus’ which we are privileged to observe.

If you look in your Bibles you’ll see that these verses in Luke are labeled “The Temptation of Jesus.” As you know, these labels are not part of the Bible but are added by the modern editors for our guidance. Sometimes they are imperfect guides, as in this case. Jesus is not tempted as someone on a diet might be to have one of Dan Wyneken’s killer brownies at coffee hour. It is not like Jesus is longing for something wicked that he can and should not have. For this reason, some Bibles call this “The Test of Jesus.” But it might be better to think of these temptations or tests by the devil as offers. The devil wishes to seduce Jesus into doing things which seem, on the face of it, to be well-aligned with Jesus’ ministry.

People go hungry. They pray for daily bread. It would be great if Jesus could turn stones, of which there are many, into bread, of which there is too little.

People suffer from injustice. They pray for an end to oppression and exploitation at the hands of indifferent or brutal political leaders. It would be great if Jesus could claim his authority over all the kingdoms so that they would become as God’s kingdom.

People are defrauded by their spiritual leaders. They pray for good and faithful teachers. It would be great if Jesus could restore truth and compassion in those who guide us.

The devil’s offer is simple and reasonable. Sensible. At the most, it requires a little compromise. When Jesus turns down the offer, therefore, he does not argue it on its merits. He does not discuss the wisdom of turning some stones into bread, or the efficacy of taking over all the nations. He instead quotes and interprets scripture. He relies on the story of God and people. He remains true to the story. The devil’s offer is a perversion of it.

Aligning oneself with the story of God and people is a kind of obedience. The test is not whether Jesus will seize power but rather whether the devil can convince him to violate the story and thus destroy it. There is much at stake here.

Obedience is a foreign-sounding word to most of us. But the obedience of Jesus here is not about domination and acquiescence. It is not about being lawful. It is not about being a good person. It is about embracing the story of God as we understand it and about not being so pleased about writing our own.

We who follow Christ have made a decision to go along with the story we have inherited. To be obedient. That is one of the things we mean when we say we believe the story. We agree that we can and will make the story our own. That we trust that it can be a pretty good guide for us. This does not mean, of course, that we are always able to follow the guidance.

Sometimes the offers of the devil are convincing. We cause suffering, or let people suffer because of our inaction, for example. We torture, or wage war. We consider our claims superior to others. In cases like these, then, we tell ourselves another, alternative, story. A story which is often more compelling and convincing; that is why we go ahead. Expediency, safety, lesser evils, practicality. Stories like these. But these are not the same story as that of a loving God revealed in good creation and through Jesus Christ. They do not align with that story.

There are lots of reasons why we might not do what God asks of us. Are they good reasons? Sometimes they seem to be; sometimes we know they are not. We are given a chance to obey God and to follow Jesus’ teachings or not to. It is not easy to do that—to follow Jesus—it is not always safe to do that, it is not always sensible to do that. We ask ourselves: is it worth it? If I do what I understand Jesus is asking me to do, will the world be better? Will the kingdom of God be more likely? Do I believe what I understand God to be saying to me?

The story of God and people is good news. God makes, forgives, provides for, and loves us. And even lives with us. But for some reason that does not completely make it appealing.

Partly that is because God asks us to do also what God has already done for us: be compassionate, generous, forgiving. Not easy. Partly because we are fearful. Partly because it seems so outrageous that God might love all of us and that we are called to do the same.

So, we are tempted to ignore the story. Make it something for other people in a different time or under different circumstances. Or to discount it, to understand both its promise and its demands more softly.

In the time of Lent, especially, we take it upon ourselves to reflect critically on the story that we, humanity on this earth, and that we, each human, are living and how it fits story of God that we know. To consider how the two stories match up. To ask ourselves: Who are we? How are we doing?

What a Stupid Post

Text: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

It turns out that impolite comments left on blog posts substantially affect the way people judge the authenticity of the posts and how much they like the author. Maybe this does not surprise you. People’s opinions, even those of strangers, seem to matter to us. Words can cause harm. What is surprising is the way the comments affect readers’ perceptions. Comments that include cursing, insults, and angry talk for some readers diminish the value of the post. But the same comments for other readers enhance its value. In other words, rude comments polarize the audience and create or widen division within the community. This might remind you of the U.S. Congress or the nations of the world.

When Paul writes his first letter to the church at Corinth, he writes to a divided community. We have talked about this over the last few Sundays as we have read from this letter. The whole letter, and especially the verses we’ve heard, are an attempt by Paul to bring some sense and unity to the church. So we heard Paul discuss the variety of gifts in the church, none greater than another. And then discuss the variety of people in the church, none less valuable than another. In both cases, people were thinking about themselves first, and about others second, or not a all. They were trumpeting their own worth and denying the worth of others. Paul tells them to stop that. And now, in the verses for today, Paul reminds them of why they should do what he says, and why they can.

These verses talk about love. Therefore the are often used in weddings. They are not bad for that purpose, because the virtues they present are good ones to remember as you get married. But as I suspect you know, Paul is not talking about romance and kisses, or even about friendship. It is not about emotion. The word he uses is translated in the King James Version as “charity.” This is misleading for us, too, because these days it connotes something like a handout, or philanthropy. That’s not what Paul is saying, either. Perhaps a better translation would be respect, or empathy. Or a realization of the human-ness of the other person. It is what we do because we are all equally children of God. He is not asking the nose-in-the air folks at Corinth to like the other people nor to befriend them. But they must love one another.

There are two ways—at least—to read these words of Paul. You might read them as complaint or judgment—or as law, as Lutherans would say. Read them as if Paul were angry, taking the Corinthians to task. You folks are messed up, Paul says in this interpretation. There is another way to behave. A most excellent way, as it says. Love is patient: You are supposed to be patient. But you are quick to anger instead. Love is generous: You are supposed to be generous, but you are greedy instead. You are supposed to be humble, but you are arrogant instead.

You have no right to be so, and Paul reels off a list of increasing skills and powers: speaking in tongues, prophecy, understanding and knowledge, great faith, even self-sacrifice. There is nothing we are, that we have, or that we do that justifies not loving our neighbor.

Or you could read what Paul writes as invitation—or as gospel, good news, as we’d say. Read them as if Paul were encouraging the people to imagine a new way of being with one another. I can show you a most excellent way to behave, with great consequences for you and the world. And here is the way: Be patient, be kind, be humble, be truthful. Your gifts—good speech, faith, knowledge—are great, but in the end lead to nothing. They do not fulfill you. They do not profit you. They do not define you. Without love for others, they are nothing. Without love, we do not flourish.

Paul reveals an idea here, a vision of what could be. This is a poem. It describes how things are and tries to create for us an image of a future. It is specific and concrete.

It is a recipe. To make a new world, do this. There is a most excellent way. Which means more literally: there is a path that is beyond comparison. Here is the big picture: love one another as Jesus has loved you. Here are the details: be kind, generous, patient, courteous.

This seems stupidly simple until you remember that this means more than be kind to the people you like, more than be polite to your friends even when they are being jerks. It means being kind to everyone, whether you like them or not, whether they like you or not, whether they will thank you for it or not. If means being patient and generous to people who are not patient and generous back and never will be, even people who harm you. Even your enemies.

It means going beyond the Golden Rule. To not insist on your own way, as Paul says, no matter how reasonable it is. To not seek yourself, it means more exactly. To not have you be the intended destination for your actions. No matter if you are right. No matter if you think yourself to hold the morally superior position. It means to think of others before you think of yourself. To be as gracious to one another as God has been to us.

We see only dimly (through a glass darkly, the King James says more poetically). What is it that we see darkly, dimly? We see ourselves. We are an enigma. We do not see one another very clearly. From that ignorance, we conclude (as the Corinthians did) that we are better somehow than those vague others. We compare our inside knowledge of ourselves with our outside observations of others, and conclude that those others are fundamentally different from us.

But they—we—are not. Our understanding of one another is incomplete, partial, as Paul says. We do not know each other, nor are we well-known by each other. When we act in love, we begin to see each other person as God sees us. Even those we have found to be intolerable. We begin to know each other as we have been known, fully, as God knows us.

Jesus tells his disciples, as we will hear in a few weeks on Maundy Thursday: Love one another as I have loved you. But he does not tell them how. The Corinthians need—as we do—more practical advice. These verses in Paul’s letter to the people in the church of Corinth are not some treatise on the nature of love. Not: this is what love is and does. And they are not a judgment about what good lovers we are. They are techniques that show us how to do what Jesus commands. This is how to love one another.

Why should the Corinthians do what Paul tells them to? Why should we? We do it because we do not like living in a broken and broken-apart world. And because we are convinced that it is not inevitable that the world be that way. Jesus tells us: Love one another as I have loved you. By this, everyone will know you are my followers.

We try to love one another because we are convinced that Jesus is right: that this will fix the world. Or maybe we are not so convinced. In that case, we try to love one another just because we are followers of Jesus. And that’s what followers do: they listen to the teachings and commands of their leader and try to obey them.

The insulting comments on the blog posts polarize people because they enact a fiction: that we are not one community. They reinforce a myth: That we are not similar children of God.

Tossing insults—or worse—at other people across the aisle or across the world is clearly not working. We who follow Jesus have been shown a vision, and we have been issued an invitation: There is a more excellent way.