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What Day is Today

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

This is not a day of sweet contentment. This is not the day that resolves Holy Week’s mysteries. This is not the explanation. It is instead a day of disruption. Of new mysteries made.

Today is a day of confusion. A day of joy and fear. This is the day that Mary Magdelene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb where Jesus had been placed, his death clear to everyone and attested to by the soldiers who went out to make sure. The two disciples went to watch the tomb, in Matthew’s story, not to anoint the body—that is in another Gospel. But to keep a vigil, to keep watch. Jesus was dead. The last scene had closed, the credits had rolled off the screen.

But then an angel appeared, an angel in white, looking for all the world like lightning, with a message: Do not be so quick to draw conclusions. Take a look, see what you see. The angel rolled away the tombstone, and—behold!—as a result the earth shook. Behold! it says. And the guards shook too.

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

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

In the Gospel of Matthew, this story is short and clear. There is no magical realism of the sort found in the Gospel of John. This is an account as straightforward as Matthew can make it. This is what happened, here is who said what to whom. Yet the earthquake and the lightning-like angel—to say nothing of the amazing message—tell us that straightforward and commonplace are two different things. The story is not easily told in natural terms. Yet Matthew’s deadpan delivery makes it clear that it is not unnatural. A surprising and unexpected simple event.

Yet there is an urgency underlying Matthew’s version of this event. Behold! the angel says. The word repeats four times in this short passage, but never translated that way in our Bible. It comes out as “suddenly.” Suddenly there was a great earthquake. But it is really: Behold! A great earthquake! The word comes from a word about sight, about seeing. Seeing with urgency. Pay attention! might be better. Or Look here! Pay attention, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary! Jesus is going ahead of you. Behold! Jesus met them and greeted them.

Expectations get us stuck in a kind of dreary landscape. It is not that the two women had run out of hope. Rather, they saw that what happened to Jesus is what happens to everyone. Promising beginnings give way to disappointed middles or tragic ends. The promise of a new world was not so much dashed as it fizzled out. They arrived at the tomb expecting to find things as things always are. It is not that they could have been prepared for what happened (though Jesus does try to warn his disciples ahead of time). But if everything works out as predicted, then there is no new world. There is no transformation. If our lives follow the expected route, if we understand exactly how things work, then there is no surprising future.

Behold! says Matthew. Behold! says the angel. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary are filled with fear and joy. Both coming as a result of expectations shattered. Is everything going wrong or is everything going right? Should they be afraid that things that cannot happen have happened, or should they be joyful for what has happened? Behold! says the angel. Can they believe their own eyes?

Fear and joy. It is a recipe for confusion. The angel tells them not to be afraid. And Jesus says the same. And he tells them to be joyful (not Greetings as our Bible puts it, but more than that: an encouragement to joy. Great to see you! he says.)

It is confusing. Yet it is only in the midst of this kind of holy confusion that change happens, and new futures are revealed, hinted at. Unfold in us and in front of us. And out of which new worlds are formed, or new ways of being in the world. New kingdoms. The kingdom of God. When expectations are not met, and both joyfully and fearfully so.

Though we sometimes seek out these times of confusion, stepping into adventures unknown, on paths untrodden. More often—if we are blessed—they come upon us, as they did Mary Magdelene and the other Mary. We can and do run from them. In Matthew’s story, the two women are told to tell the other disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee. In Mark’s version, they are told the same. But in Mark, they say nothing to anyone, and run away. In Matthew, they run to the disciples in fear and joy to announce the good news. By their actions, the church is born. A new thing.

Faith is not an antidote to confusion. It does not ensure a predictable life that fulfills our expectations. Such a life closes off all avenues for re-birth and renewal. Rather, faith lets us not only endure that state of fear and joy, it lets us welcome it. To seek it.

God is certainly not done with us. There are bound to be more fearful, joyful disruptions ahead. More mysteries to unfold. Faith enables us to remain confused and not to flee, trusting in God, awestruck at what God has done, and eager to see—Behold!—what will happen next.

Thanks be to God.

Palm and Passion

Text: Matthew 26:14—27:66
Other texts: Matthew 21:1-11

There is a lot of hoopla today, in a seriously religious kind of way. And it will continue throughout this week until next Sunday, Easter Sunday. This is the central moment in the church year, far outweighing Christmas, and we rightly make a big deal of it.

We are so familiar with the story, however, that there are few surprises. Not only do we know what is going to happen, we know how to interpret it. We know what it means. The church has had 2000 years to think about it. And we know how things turn out.

We just heard one of the two Gospel readings for today, this doubly-named Sunday. We heard the Palm part, where Jesus rides into the city amidst rejoicing and hosannas. We are about the hear the Passion part, where the joy turns to grief and horror. These are not two different stories. They are a part of one thing, one story. In its simplest: a rabble-rousing blasphemer comes to the city, makes more trouble, and is arrested, tried, and executed.

However, no such story of life cut short is simple. Hopes and expectations reside in the narrative of all people, and especially in those whom we allow to lead us—from messiahs to presidents to CEOs—allowed because we trust them to redeem us, heal our sorrows and sins, and bring us peace and contentment. They rarely can.

This is one story. But if so, are we obligated to explain it? To explain how what starts in glory ends in grief? What starts in hope ends in mourning? Or it that just the way things go: a sudden change in the winds, and a good life turns tragic?

The people lining the road to Jerusalem expect a king. The king is coming to you, quotes Matthew, borrowing from the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah. And the crowds call Jesus, with hope, the Son of David. A warrior king, scion of the greatest monarch of Israel. They have heard his teaching, seen his healing, eaten the bread and fishes with which he fed thousands, watched him confront authorities. These experiences fuel their expectations of a powerful leader. Save us! they cry—which is what hosanna! means. Hosanna, Son of David—save our nation!

Although this part of the story is about Jesus, Jesus is hardly present in it. It is a story of people longing for what they think Jesus is. Jesus is the carrier of a desperate desire. This man, riding humbly, as it says, on a donkey, nevertheless inspires in the people vision of political power and the overthrow of the sitting government. What is Jesus thinking, as he rides without speaking over the cloaks and branches, as he sees the expectant faces of his brothers and sisters, other than that he is surely headed toward his death. And their disappointment. We do not know; it does not say.

You will hear in a moment the second Gospel reading, also from Matthew, but five chapters later. You will hear that while Jesus at first speaks quite a lot, once he is brought before Pilate, he says almost nothing. He claims nothing. He will not answer when accused. He will not answer a single charge, it says. He will not claim the title of king of the Jews. “You say so,” he responds to Pilate. And those words—except with his last breath, when he asks God why he has been forsaken—those are his final words.

The Jesus of Matthew’s Passion is a humble man, not an imperial one. He was humiliated by everyone—priests, passersby, even the bandits. He is mocked and ridiculed. Save yourself, if you are the Son of God—Son of David, mighty warrior. Save yourself—a wicked mockery of the earlier hosannas. Save yourself, if you can save others as they say you have. But he cannot. Or does not. Unlike in John’s Gospel, where Jesus seems to be in charge of directing a drama about his own death, here in Matthew he is powerless. There no clever win-by-losing scheme going on here. Only losing.

We, like the crowd with its palms and hosannas, have a hard time accepting a humble Jesus. We transmute his powerlessness in the Passion according to Matthew into a secret power. But this makes his death meaningless and trivial if it is only part of some theological mathematics of atonement. Instead, we teach that it is important that God really died—as everyone does—and really suffered—as everyone does—and, if we are to believe Matthew, was truly humiliated. As everyone is.

It is helpful to hear the Palm and Passion story as if we never knew of Easter. If we never knew how things turned out. To imagine that the last word in the Gospel of Matthew was, as we are about to hear: So they went and sealed the tomb.

And then to ask ourselves what is the good news in that. Without the resurrections, does it make sense to follow a God who is disgraced and crucified? Because we do.

The Jesus of the Palm and Passion steps out of the normal way of the world. He is humble not because he is obedient to God—though that is no doubt true—but because the usual and acceptable way of things in the world is arrogance, exploitation, abuse of power, and leverage. Jesus refuses to participate in that scheme, which is a cause of much suffering and despair. Are you king of the Jews, Pilate asks? You say so, answers Jesus. You inhabit the world of kings and courts, Jesus answers, but I do not.

Christians have tended to pray for a kingly Jesus who is on their side, an earthly force with divine power whose wishes parallel their own, morally, politically, or culturally. We are no different in that regard from those singing hosannas by the side of the road.

But the Jesus of Palm and Passion does not serve us like this, but rather with persistent courage and humility, and brings this good news through the ministry of his life—there is a another way.

Resurrection Life

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14 Other texts: John 11:1-45

Hooray. A warm sunny day. Spring finally has forced its way to the front, pushing winter to the back of the line. The crocuses’ prematurity has been vindicated. We can breath again. A fitting day for texts whose theme is clearly resurrection and rebirth.

Things like to live. The grasses pushes up to shatter the asphalt. The trees thrive even in their urban four square feet of soil. Our bodies crumble and are rebuilt constantly. We get sick, we get well. Forests encroach on formerly cleared land. In the history of our earth, great calamity has destroyed almost all species, and the remainder has re-covered the earth more than once. The Noah story repeats. Life in the aggregate is strong, and against it death is irrelevant.

The miracle of resurrection is matched by the miracle of creation. The wonder of re-birth is exceeded by the wonder of the first birth. Thinking about being born again reminds us of the astonishing fact that we are born at all.

The bones lie in the valley. Ezekiel is led there by God. There are very many bones, it says. Very dry, no marrow, no life left in them. Ezekiel walks around all around them. A desperate and creepy image. The bones represent despair. Northern Israel has been conquered and turned into oblivion. Judea is left alone, bereft. Our bones are dried up, they lament. Our hope is lost. We are cut off from God completely. They mourn in advance the prospect of their certain end from their separation from God.

This theme of displacement is one of the great themes of the Bible, a common pathology of sorrow in the story of God and humans. The theme of being far from home, from the nourishing and true spiritual center, from the source of life. Adam and Eve tossed from the Garden. The Israelites enslaved in Egypt, and then later exiled to Babylon. The fear of eternal judgment that would separate us from God forever.

Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord, we sang in today’s psalm. Hear my pleas, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for God.

Yet the bones rise. The bones live. Ezekiel speaks to the bones, the Lord speaks to the bones. The destruction is undone, reversed. The organs of strength and motion—muscle and ligaments—grow again, re-organized. Form emerges out of chaos.

And finally, lifeless form is given life by the breath of God. Ezekiel speaks to the winds, the Lord speaks to the four winds. The word for breath is the word for wind is the word for spirit, appearing nine times in these fourteen verses. The wind, breath, spirit of God comes into them, and they live.

The story reiterates the creation, the creation of form from chaos, the speaking of things into existence, the spirit as the carrier of the power of life. This wind/breath/spirit word is the same as the wind that blew over the waters of chaos in the first chapter of Genesis. God the creator in Genesis is the healer in Ezekiel. God the creator, the redeemer, and the breath of life are all the same.

Yet the stories are not quite the same. Resurrection is not the same as first creation. It is not new life, but renewed life. Just as risen Lazarus is not a reborn baby Lazarus, but a restored grown-up person, with memories and unrequited desires and old scars. (As resurrected Jesus came with scars and wounds to show disciple Thomas). Resurrection is an impure process—like everything else in life. The resurrection of the bones in the valley and the friend of Jesus in the tomb restores something that was lost. Repairs something that was broken.

In this way it conforms to John’s notion of eternal life, which is not something that comes after life but which is part of life. Resurrection is therefore likewise not something post-life but part of life. It is not an exception or an aberration, but rather the long-term consequence of the breath of God that animates all the universe. It is built in.

I am the resurrection and the life, Jesus tells Martha. Both resurrection and life. Lazarus is raised, and later eats with Jesus. Both the restoration of loss and also the new life that follows.

Resurrection in this way is the chief model of Christian life. It is the basis for our confidence in words like renewal, revival, restoration, and even repentance. It is the force behind Desmond Tutu’s hymn: Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death.

Resurrection describes our experience of being lost and then found by God. Of recovering a life destroyed by grief or anxiety. Of being freed from addiction. Of finding grace when burdened by self-hatred. Our experience of being saved not after death but from despair and hopelessness now is evidence that resurrection is the norm, not the exception.

What kind of God would create the world and yet never rescue it in times of trouble? What kind of God would push the cosmos off on a long, sometimes treacherous, and always surprising journey without a guide?

The Spirit of God dwells in us, Paul reminds us in Romans. God’s spirit/breath is in all of us. Some people dismiss the Lazarus story as mere resuscitation. But that is mean-spirited. The story, like the one in Ezekiel, like the whole arc of the Bible, is one of an always-near God whose love of life infuses all of creation.

Thanks be to God.

Simple Suffering

Text: John 9:1-41

A common way to interpret the Gospel of John is to consider it to have two parts. In this view, the first part is called the book of signs and the second part the book of glory. The first part contains seven stories, which we might call miracle stories. For example, the first of these is the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana. Each of these stories is described by John as a sign. They point to something. What they point to is the glory of God embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. We are supposed to pay attention, like the famous smart dog, to the thing pointed to more than the finger pointing to it.

However, this makes some pretty amazing stories—and long and detailed ones like today’s—some pretty amazing stories into things a little boring and contrived. These stories are not just about random miraculous deeds. All but one of them have to do with healing someone or feeding someone, or many someones. This is not a coincidence. The story itself tells us a something important about Jesus and the world he proclaimed.

The episode today about the blind man and his cure is simple on the face of it. A man is blind. Jesus heals him. That is sign enough, if that is all you are looking for. But of course, as in real lives of real people, things get complicated. Everyone brings their own expectations and baggage, powerful people exercise power, and as sometimes happens, people get hurt.

The political core of the story is, as it often is with Jesus, about what is OK to do on the Sabbath, which is protected by the third commandment. The day is holy because it reminds us of both God’s work in creation and freedom from captivity.

Jesus cannot be from God, the Pharisees claim, because he healed someone on the Sabbath when it was not dire—he could have waited but did not. Jesus does this a lot, elsewhere saying famously (and a little unfairly) that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

Jesus heals the blind man on the Sabbath. To our Protestant thinking, there is nothing wrong with this. What’s the problem? If a person suffers, you relieve the suffering. But as the story shows, acts of compassion are rarely without consequences. The Pharisees are upset by the behavior of Jesus, which undermines useful and God-given rules for people trying to live together. The parents are fearful (and, it turns out, rightly so) of what all this weirdness means for their son and for themselves in their own community. The man himself is amazed and pleased at first, but his life is irrevocably changed.

Helping someone—relieving suffering—is a choice we make. Is it always harmless to chose to be compassionate? How do we decide? In the face of the anger and sadness which this act caused, how did Jesus decide to help the blind man to see?

He could have ignored him. There are always plenty of reasons to pass people by. Their suffering could be from birth, as the blind man’s was. Who sinned, the disciples ask, this man or his parents? They had no doubt the man was blind for a reason, and none either that his blindness was permanent. Perhaps people who suffer are to blame, perhaps their upbringing is. Their culture, their genes, their circumstances. Their character. Do they deserve to be helped? Helping people might be fruitless, it might create ungrateful dependency, it might aggravate things. It might be inconvenient at the moment.

But for Jesus, healing is always timely. The demands of suffering are always urgent. Jesus tells his disciples: “We must work the works of the one who sent me while it is day.” No dawdling. No waiting for approval or to get ducks lined up.

Though not in a gospel known for ethical teaching, this story gives us four interconnected ethical guidelines for Christian behavior.

First, present suffering always trumps hypothetical future benefits or dangers. Arguments about the imagined dangers of healing a man on the Sabbath are outweighed by the actual benefits of his seeing for the first time. Even if the dangers are likely, that is not enough to deny healing when it is possible. Or on the flip side to justify causing suffering. We do not know the future, and to allow or to cause suffering for the sake of an imagined future is hubris and arrogance. We can learn from the past, we try to prepare for the future, but in the moment we are called only to relieve or prevent suffering.

Second, and as a corollary, compassion always trumps form. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong paperwork is not sufficient to deny healing. Procedures, taboos, and expectations are helpful, but they are not compelling.

Third, knowledge is not a prerequisite for helping others. We do not have to know how someone came to be hurting. We do not have to know whether he or she sinned or not. Or will continue to sin or not. We do not need to know the consequences of our compassion. “The one thing I do know,” says the man, is that “I was blind, now I see.” How did this happen, the Pharisees ask? “We do not know how it is that he sees,” say the parents, “but now he does.”

And fourth, underlying the other three: suffering is simple and complete. It is not complicated, subject to equivocation and argument. It is not good to suffer. There is no redeeming virtue. There is no meaning to it. There is no need to explain it (except to know how better to heal it). The man’s blindness in itself is sufficient to call on Jesus to heal him. “As Jesus walked along,” it says, “he saw a man.” That is all it took. To relieve suffering, no questions asked, is one way to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The disciples in John call Jesus rabbi, meaning teacher. But he does not so much explain God’s work as reveal it. In this story, it matters not how God works but that God does.

What Jesus calls himself—in the very next verses in John—he calls himself the good shepherd. Jesus is a pastor (which means shepherd). He is not a theologian. He is not an ethicist, either. He comes to heal the suffering world. To save the world, as John puts it. Not to debate about saving it.

Shepherds, like the one in today’s psalm, know the sheep, make sure they have food and water, a safe place, a place to rest, a trustworthy guide. To be fearless, to be undistracted, and to love the sheep first of all.

The Lord is this, our shepherd. May the Lord’s goodness and mercy pursue us all our days.

No Tent

Text: John 4:5-42
Other texts: Exodus 17:1-7

It is common to refer to people new to the habit of going to church as “seekers.” Some churches have special worship for seekers, different from worship for others, which I guess they could call “finders.”

There are a couple of problems with this. First, it divides people into groups based on some notion of spiritual progress, as if such a thing existed. And second and more important, it implies that God can be found in particular places, through particular means, and through particular efforts on our part.

It is hard for us to get over the idea that as far as God and we are concerned, we are the agents. We see ourselves as world-crafters, coming up with visions and implementing them, creating something from nothing. Being made in the image of God, we imagine that we are the same as God. That is a bit of a stretch. It is only God who creates something from nothing.

It is fine to demand things of God, to argue with God, and to complain to God. There is a lot of all those things in the Bible, including the passage we just heard about the Israelites whining in the wilderness. But that does not mean that we are the bosses. We have neither the authority nor the responsibility.

Even when we acknowledge that we are not the same as God, we think that it is our actions that lead us closer to God. Our work—to say it in a Lutheran way. Including the work of seeking God. As if to find God, we have to go looking for God. And that if we do not seek—and especially that if we do not do it right—we will not find.

We are driven to these thoughts because we miss God. We are afraid of God’s absence. Or we grieve that God is far away.

The Israelites ask: Is the Lord with us or not? It is a common question in times of trouble. Where is God when people are dying of famine, or plague, or drought? Where is God when people are exiled, or enslaved, or suffer humiliating defeats? Where is God when violence takes innocent lives, where is God when someone near to us is suffering?

Sometimes we think that this is God’s problem. That God is unaccountably and unfairly absent. But we just as often think that God is missing because we did not act in the right way or look in the right places. We are all too willing to blame ourselves.

We think there is a special way to God. That God lives in the Temple, for example, and that people must go there to meet God. Or that God is in the churches, where we have come together especially to be close to God. Or that God is present in a more intense way in a spiritual retreat, or in prayer, or when we are contemplating scripture.

We think there is a special path on which we must walk. We wonder whether we are abandoned and not favored by God because we have not found that path. Or perhaps that we are on some path that looks pretty good, but wonder whether we are tragically mistaken. We are doing stuff that seems right, but who knows whether it really is?

When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, she wonders whether God is more on mount Gerizim in Samaria or more in Jerusalem in Judea. Neither one, Jesus answers. Not meaning that God will not be in those places, but that there are no places which are the exclusive abode of God.

When Jesus answers the woman about on which mountain is God’s favorite house, and after telling her neither one, he then adds one more thing: that the Father seeks the worshippers.

The seeker is God, not us. It is God’s search that matters, not ours. God’s longing for us, God’s work.

The woman at the well does not come to Jesus, Jesus comes to her. She does not discover him, he discovers her. The story of Jesus in the Gospels mostly follows this pattern. Some people come to Jesus to be healed, but many others are healed because Jesus finds them, suffering. Jesus tells parables about sheep that are lost and searched for and coins that are lost and searched for, the searcher, we gather, being God. Jesus approaches the first disciples and calls to them: Come and see.

Before God was in the Temple in Jerusalem, God was with the people as they wandered through the desert. God, like them, was a nomad, and God’s presence lived in a tabernacle or tent. God’s word was near because it was among the people.

But as the people settled the land and built permanent structures, God, like the institutions that tended to the people, seemed to settle in (so to speak) and people began coming to God’s house in Jerusalem. In the Gospel of John, in the prolog in which it says in English “and the word dwelt among us,” the phrase John uses here—and only here in all the Gospels—means God lived among them in a tabernacle. Back to the tents among the wandering people.

But for the Israelites and for us, God is not in one place and absent from others. Neither Temple nor tent nor church. God is not revealed in one program, or one kind of piety. There is not one path to God that we must carefully tread. A colleague wrote that our job is not to find the path to God, but rather to walk the paths where God is most likely to come find us. But even that is less than graceful. It does not matter on what path you walk, God will come to find you anyway. There is nowhere that God is not. You have searched me and know me, it says in Psalm 139, you have searched out my path and are familiar with all my ways.

For Lutherans, the official definition of the church is a place in which the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. All the rest, while nice and helpful, is not necessary. And for Luther, the essence of the Gospel and the sacraments is a word of promise.

There are lots of implications of that promising word, but one is that no matter where we are or what we have done, or are doing, or contemplate doing, God will come find us. The church is a place that is special not because it is especially holy and filled with the spirit of God more than other places are. It is special place because in the church we say that promise over and over again.

People of the Cross

Text: John 3:1-17

We are people of the cross. A church, a faith, of the cross. This is a tale of three crosses.

The first cross is a crucifix. Jesus on the cross. A physical, embodied, suffering human.

Jesus comes to this world to be human. Where, perhaps, God experiences what it means to be human. We are created by God, yet—could it be?—as much a mystery to God as God is to humans.

Jesus comes to suffer. But not only to suffer. I imagine he laughs with his friends (he certainly tells jokes). He loves to eat and drink. He is often the life of the party. He hangs with all sorts of people.

But he comes, in the end, to suffer. Either part of the plan, or an inevitable consequence of his mission—hard to say. All people suffer—and that is surely not part of the plan, though it, too, often comes with the mission. But sometimes suffering just comes for no reason at all.

Jesus sees what we see. In the passage just preceding the one we heard today, it says “Jesus … knew all people; … he knew what was in everyone.” He learns what we know. To experience regrets, make hard decisions (some of which have no good end), to lose one’s sense of self, to witness despair. We get confused by the wickedness of others, and surprised by wickedness of our own. We get frustrated by our inability to help others because we lack skill, resolve, or resource.

The cross is a sign of failure. In the same way that war is a failure. Executing others is a failure. Slavery is a failure, imprisonment. All are signs of a failure to discover, to imagine, a way of being that reconciles conflict, failure to see humanity equal to our own in other people, failure to figure out how to love all as we love those nearest to us. The cross is just one example of—and stands for—all the desperate last choices that we end up making.

There is nothing good about crucifixion. There is nothing good about war. There is nothing good about poisoning someone to death, or electrocuting him. There is nothing good about enslaving someone. There is nothing good about denying the needs of others. They are all dark failures of our souls.

The cross is failure for Jesus, too. Jesus did not eagerly seek his own death on the cross. Jesus despises death. Jesus did not seek death, but he was willing to go to his death. He was willing to live a fearless life that predictably would lead to his execution. Jesus came to persuade, teach, show, lead the world to another way of living. But that did not happen because of the hard and frightened hearts of humans. Death on the cross, as my colleague John ... says—that was Plan B. Such things are always plan B.

The second cross is an empty cross. Like the one behind the altar. Christ is no longer there. Christ is risen.

We are people of the Resurrection. Death is not the end of life. What we think of the end turns out to be open-ended. What we absolutely know about life and death turns out to be inadequate.

This cross brings hope and new life in the face of discouraging experiences. Even in the darkness we see light. The crucifixion of Jesus turns out to not be the end of the story. God is able to extract the good from evil, to mine the good from the ore of fearful errors that we keep making.

Nicodemus comes stealing out of the darkness. In a very strange conversation—each person seemingly speaking past one another—Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

The word, as you probably know, means “from above” and also “again” and “anew.” Some Bibles, like ours, translate it “born from above.” Others translate it “born again.” It is like the phrase musicians use when they say “take it from the top,” also meaning again and anew.

In these meanings—theological or musical—the point is that we get to start over within familiar boundaries. Jesus is not talking about a some fantastic place totally unlike the one in which we live, but about this place here, only different. Take it from the top.

We are not condemned by our traditions or habits of heart to repeat old patterns. Just because we cannot think of another way to have the world run does not mean that there is no such way.

Neither are we condemned by our sins, by our fears, our regrets, our pain. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are comforting, not condemning. There is another way to be, he says to Nicodemus. God brings it.

No one can see the kingdom, Jesus says, unless they are born anew. Open your eyes. Can you see it? Each day starts fresh. Each day we are forgiven. Each hour is new; each moment. It is eternal life—meaning abundant, blessed life, here and now—constantly renewed.

The Wednesday evening worship during Lent closes with this prayer: “What has been done, has been done. What has not been done, has not been done.” Neither forgetting or denying the past, yet we escape from the power over us of regrets and disappointments. Our sorrows will not rule us.

The third cross is made in gesture. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We are people of the Trinity.

Nicodemus comes to meet Jesus. He sees the power of God. He hears Jesus promise the gift of eternal life. He is invited to receive that gift—to receive new life—from the Holy Spirit.

We can lean on the trinitarian God, who created us and the elaborate, amazing, and difficult world; who knows intimately our sorrows and joys; and who leads us forward each moment into new blessings. The trinity is a multipurpose vehicle that carries us from death to life, from darkness to light, from crucifixion to resurrection.

The Gospel of John famously sees two ways of being, described mostly as two communities, two peoples. There is the community of darkness and the community of light. We are born first into the community of darkness. The one from whence Nicodemus comes, and which is the community of suffering. But we can come into the community of light. An encounter with Jesus (Nicodemus here, a woman at a Samaritan well next week), is (or can be) a transforming experience. We enter (or are born again, born anew) into the community of the light. We are freed from the captivity of the past (you will never be thirsty, Jesus tells the woman) and enter into abundant life. We become people of Christ.

Precise Bliss

Text: Matthew 4:1-11
Other texts: Genesis 3:1-7

The Gospels are not exactly history. They are a different form of writing, a different genre. They tell a truth, but the order of presentation and the rules of evidence are not the same as a modern history might be. What is left in or left out has a particular purpose. Which is to reveal God in the person and life of Jesus Christ. Every passage in the Bible was a choice made by the original compilers, and a choice repeated century after century by copyists.

So for every one of these passages, we have to ask: why is this here at all? why is it here in this particular place? and—since this is a story in the Bible and therefore about God—what does this passage tell us about God? We should always ask these questions, and especially so when the events in the passage are otherwise unobserved, when there are no witnesses.

As in today’s passage. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he, alone, fasts and meets the devil. This story also appears in variations in Mark and Luke. Evidently the early Christians felt it was important to them. Some tale that circulated among them, some story that told them about Jesus.

Jesus is tempted, our Bible says. In English, the word implies something alluring, some captivating force that tries to seduce upright persons into performing questionable deeds. But these offers by the devil? what is so tempting about them? Is Jesus so hungry for food, security, and power that he finds them appealing?

Rather than tempted, Jesus is tested—the word also means examined. The identity of Jesus is at stake here more than his character. He is being offered a choice. There are two ways of life ahead of him. More about that choice in a moment.

Jesus may not find the offers of the devil tempting, but we would. These things are exaggerated versions of things every creature needs. Food to sustain us, a place to be safe from peril, some control over the forces and structures that affect us. These are human needs. No human being can live without them. If we lack them, our lives are at risk from starvation, danger, and oppression. What the devil offers Jesus is to be free from the conditions of humanity. To be not human. To have instead the power of gods.

This is at the heart of the offer made to the man and woman in the garden. You will be like God, the serpent says, knowing good and evil. This is not primarily an offer for moral wisdom and judgment. It is not a corruption of sweet innocence that leads somehow to divine abilities.

It is instead an offer of power. The appeal of the knowledge of good and evil is the power it gives to see distinctions and to differentiate between consequences. The power to influence the future more predictably and to plan more confidently. It is the power behind politics at its best, behind childrearing, behind inculcation of social values.

But it is also the power behind life-and-death judgments that we feel justified making, the hubris that we can tell what is good and what is evil, and the arrogance to control the lives of others or to take them on the basis of only human knowledge. The power we have been given in the garden is always much less than we think, and more destructive. Even though knowing good and evil, we have not become gods. The serpent lies. Even having succumbed to its temptation, we remain human.

It is not in us to escape our humanity, even with serpentine assistance. The point of this garden story near the beginning of creation is not that we once were perfect, but are no longer. We never have been perfect. We are flesh and blood, with all that messiness and organic-ness. Creatures each of whom is semi-organized and tremendously complicated. We are particular biological beings of the earth and its current conditions of temperature, light, and pressure. Humans. The point of the story of the garden is that we grieve the gap between what we are and what we fantasize it is possible to be.

Stone will not turn into bread. We will not be able to fly off steeples. None of us will be wise and strong enough to rule one harmonious world. Sorrow is sad and pain is painful. It is not helpful for us—it did not help the man and the woman in the garden—to be tempted by contrary promises.

Yet the world is very good. That is what God declares in the first chapter of Genesis. Pain and sorrow are our condition, but they do not spoil life. They are part of it, as limiting but not more so than our inability to fly unaided and make bread from stones. That we can jump and walk and make bread from wheat is not a disability, but a gift. A particular bliss. It is a gift of God to humans: that joy is better than power.

The word for devil is a verbal noun that means literally to throw over or throw across. Thus the devil is a misleader, a diverter. The devil is a distractor. The job of the devil in the story in Matthew is to distract Jesus from his mission, his nature, and his love. And the job of the devil is to distract us in the same way. To turn our attention to what we do not have and to make us wish that we were gods, having infinite resource, pleasure, and power.

Jesus in the Gospels is tested throughout his life by one singular temptation. Shall he give up his ministry? Shall he back off from his humanity? Shall he claim his divine power? He is tested here in the desert, and again with Peter in whom Jesus hears the voice of Satan, and again on the cross when he is taunted to save himself.

Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit as the first event in his ministry. There he meets the devil, who offers Jesus this choice. Which Jesus must make before he begins his work here. The choice is not to turn stone into bread, or not.

The choice is to be human, or not. To maintain solidarity with people he serves, or not.

The story is here to show us that Jesus made an intentional and willing choice. Jesus chose solidarity with us. The rest is history.

Credibility

Text: Matthew 17:1-9

We have to ask ourselves: is this story credible?

Even for Peter, it is too much. Even for Peter—Peter, the most enthusiastic, observant, faithful disciple of Jesus—Peter, the disciple who just identified Jesus as the Messiah—even for Peter it is overwhelming and weird.

The presence of Elijah and Moses (who are long dead or at least lone gone from this earth), the bright overshadowing clouds, the voice (we figure it is God speaking), the strange transformation of Jesus into a being who shines like the sun. Peter’s response about the dwellings is strange but understandable because he is nonplussed. Is there any right response to what he has just witnessed?

This story appears in pretty much the same form in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a sign to us that the early followers of Jesus thought it to be pretty important. Even so, it seems like a glitch or interruption in the fairly smooth narrative of the Gospels. In Matthew (and the other two, more or less) the story appears in the physical middle of the book. And it appears in the middle of the plot, too. It is a hinge: before this event, we have been learning about Jesus, his teachings, and his ministry. Soon after it, the story begins to head slowly and inevitably toward the crucifixion. Because of its position between ministry and passion, the lectionary serves us up this story every year on the last day of Epiphany, just before Lent. It is on the cusp.

Still, it is hard at first to see what this story adds to the Gospels. We already know that Jesus is the son of God, the Messiah, beloved by God. The disciples know it, too. Peter had already declared that Jesus is “the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus had already said that he came to fulfill the law in the tradition of the prophets, represented in the story by Elijah and Moses. In other words, the story is not evidence. It does not prove anything new about the nature of Jesus to us or to the disciples.

It does, though, give us information.

Essential information, evidently, or it would not be repeated in each Gospel. It tells us a lot about the complex and unequal relationship between God, Jesus, and us. And it reminds us about the nature of divinity. The telling of the story itself is so important that we have to tell it the same way over and over again every year.

Jesus is transfigured, the reading says, a rare word these days. It is an unfortunate translation because the word in the text is the basis of the word “metamorphosis.” Which means changed in form. Jesus is changed somehow, but it is not like the old Jesus is replaced by a new one. Rather, it is the same Jesus who is revealed in a new light. Something that was always the essence of Jesus is visible when it was hidden before, or at least was understated or un-emphasized.

The story reminds us rationalists that there is more going on with Jesus. He is more than a wise prophet, teacher, and good friend. For all my talk last week about following Jesus, he is more than a good leader. There is something about him that draws people to him, something powered by the spirit of God and detected by everyone. It is mysterious. Ineffable, as theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel would say. Inexpressible. Not easily described. Even his disciples were at a loss to understand what just happened on the mountain, and they were there.

But even so, Jesus’s transformation is not ghostly either. Jesus is not primarily a spiritual creature. But both physical and spiritual.

It is complicated, a complication embodied in Peter, who in the Gospels has at least three different roles. He is Jesus’ friend, a person like every earthly friend. Sometimes a goofy, good natured one. At the same time, he is the one who sees Jesus for what he really is: the Messiah. He sees Jesus with a clarity that the other disciples lack. At the same time, he is the first bishop of Rome, the rock on which the church is built. He is the administrative and missionary force of the body of Christ in the world after Jesus’ death. He is wise and foolish; trustworthy and flaky; an enthusiast (a word which means filled by the spirit) and a bureaucrat.

Jesus goes up to the mountain for a strange and other-worldly conversation with an ancient prophet and a law-giver. But three disciples—James, John, and Peter—are also there. They are there only because Jesus has invited them along. They are invited not because they are needed as witnesses, but because Jesus has friends and colleagues in both worlds. He goes up to the mountain, and then he comes down to earth again.

One way for us to know Jesus is to think our way there. To learn, read, talk, and argue about Jesus. To take his words seriously. To evaluate them against the needs of the world. To invent theologies that, for example, proclaim him to be 100% human and 100% divine at the same time. To philosophize about what is going on in the sacraments. To ask what Jesus would have us do.

But for many, either frequently or rarely, we discover Jesus in ways that are inexplicable, surprising, and often astonishing. Amazement is the prevailing color of our lives and faith. Who is this Jesus who moves us so, to whom we seem so oddly and suddenly attached? Where did that attachment come from? How can it be?

The same Heschel writes about radical amazement. Amazement itself becomes the reward and the gift. It is a pleasure itself, like the pleasure of gratitude or the pleasure of beauty. All gifts to us given by God for no earthly reason. Just because evidently God wants to.

This openness to ineffable amazement is necessary for our faith, for otherwise, really, why bother? Why pay attention to Jesus? It is this, more than our thoughtful consent, that gives us the courage for our mission. That lets us read the Sermon on the Mount without ridiculing it, that lets us claim that renewal and restoration are always possible, that lets us serve others at the risk of our own loss.

The question is not, therefore, whether the transfiguration story is credible. The question is whether it somehow draws us to a God who is strange, good, and here.

Thanks be to God.

Dangers of Mercy

Text: Matthew 5:38-48
Other texts: Leviticus 19:1–2, 9–18

The Bible is full of information about how God wishes the world to be. It contains lots of statements about what we should do as a culture, a nation, and as individuals within communities, to make it that way. We loosely refer to all these statements as laws. The Ten Commandments are examples, and though they are more accurately called the Ten Words (decalogue is the formal name), they are clearly commands. Imperatives. Do this and do not do this.

The laws of the Bible are like guides, though not guidelines. They are designed to show us the way and keep us on track. We might think of them as guardrails, except they do not physically keep us from going over the edge, as a rail might do. Or we might think of them as those ropes that keep people in the ticket line, except that they are not physical hard-to-ignore-but-possible-to reminders, as the ropes are. Instead, they are more like the white and yellow lines painted on the asphalt.

It is easy to cross them, but it is not wise to. Adhering to their guidance keeps us safe and leads us on our way. At least, that is what they are designed to do. If we all observe the imperatives of the lines, we are protected from veering off into some large and stationary object, or over the edge of a dangerous boundary, or into the path of an oncoming driver. Not everyone follows the lines, and we are therefore still subject to the effects of others’ (and our own) mistakes or malfeasance. We all of us are only human, subject to distraction, exhaustion, stupor, and meanness. But if we are law-abiding, we have a chance.

In this way, the laws we see in the Bible are gifts, given to us by God, to guide us on a good way.

The laws exist, first of all, because we in fact are inclined to do the things they tell us not to and not to do the things they tell us to. Otherwise, we would not need a law about it. And second, because the things they ask us to do or not do are helpful. If everyone stole things all the time, we would be even more frantic than we are about securing our goods. If everyone slept with the spouses of others all the time, social ties would fray even more than they do. If everyone violated the sabbath all the time, greed and poverty would rule even more than they do. If we dishonored our parents all the time, we would be even more likely to repeat the sins of previous generations than we do. This is practical morality.

Leviticus is the central book of laws in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. The portion we just heard in the first reading contains rules for relationships. Listen to the things we are not supposed to do: cheat, lie, steal, defraud, revile, exploit, promise without intending to deliver. These are about getting along with other people in the world.

In this passage is the rightly famous and summarizing law: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But the whole section, and much of the whole set of laws, is about neighbors, which is another word for the people with whom we are a community. Neighbors are not known by their geography but by their relationships with us. Sometimes this word is translated as “fellows” or perhaps “fellow citizens.” Companions, friends, people with whom we share life. Thus Leviticus talks about leaving food not just for other Israelites but for the aliens—foreigners, immigrants—all neighbors because we share lives.

These are not religious laws in the sense we use the term religion now. There was no distinction between church and state. These are laws of citizens in a nation, or in our case in a world. These laws tell us what we should do, and how the world is supposed to go.

The Gospel reading today from Matthew makes up the last verses of the Sermon on the Mount. The similarity of the Ten Commandments and the sermon is not coincidental. Like the commandments, the words of the sermon also tell us what we should do, and how the world is supposed to go. In a sense they are a reflection on Leviticus, a commentary, and an application of old laws to a new particular time. I did not come to abolish the law, Jesus says. Jesus’ words adjust the notion of neighbor to a people occupied and oppressed, and they interpret the meaning of love.

Like all the laws, the commands of the Sermon on the Mount define a way for the world. Jesus calls this in Matthew the “kingdom of heaven.” It is a different sort of world than the one most people live in, but not a different location. A different way of being. Just as the nation of Israel was defined by Levitical laws as a different way of being. Like those laws, the words of Jesus deal with things that we usually do or do not do, and like them, they are helpful. Though it may not seem so to us. Which is partly the point.

It is an odd sort of world, we think, where people do not retaliate, where they give or lend to all who ask, where they practice extravagant generosity, where they not resist an evildoer, where they love and pray for their enemies. Where we freely acknowledge that God willingly provides nourishment to the righteous and the wrong-headed equally.

As we did before, we have to ask what kind of world would it be if everyone did the opposite of these laws. People would seek retribution all the time, they would withhold from those in need, they would be stingy, they would be quick to strike back, they would seek to harm their enemies.

It would be as this world is. Jesus understands this, using the behavior of the gentiles as an example of the prevailing standards. If you did all those things, he says, you would be just like everyone else.

But you are not. You are my people. You follow me.

We try to make sense of these absurd commands of Jesus. It is difficult. They are not designed to give an edge of power to faithful Christians. They are not methods designed to shame or embarrass our enemies into submission. They are not designed to make us feel good about ourselves. They are not some impossibly high standards designed to motivate us to be a little better.

The words of Jesus—whom we follow—are guides to living in the kingdom of heaven. They are how people in the kingdom of heaven are expected to behave, just as the laws of Leviticus are how people in the nation of God’s people Israel are to behave.

But even if these words could not be explained in any way—by common sense or thoughtful reflections about the kingdom—even if not, we would still be called to obey them. That is because we are Christians. We follow Jesus. We call Jesus teacher and lord, guide, or master. It is not that Jesus is naive or mysteriously spiritual. Jesus is aware of the dangers of mercy, he is just not—as most of the world is—he is just not afraid of them.

Laws are a gift to us only if we value them. People flocked by the thousands to hear what Jesus had to say in this sermon and in other times. That is because they were eager—or desperate, probably—to know how to live in a difficult time. They were looking for a way. What would the kingdom of God be like? What could Jesus tell them about it? How was he going to help them to get from the usual world to a better one? They needed to know this. We do, too.

Just because we follow Jesus does not mean that his commands are easy to follow. They are hard. But they are not suggestions. And they are not invitations. They are commandments. They are laws. Guiding us in the same manner as white and yellow lines painted on dark asphalt guide us. They show us the way.

Because they are hard, we need to take these words seriously, as seriously as if they came from God as we profess they do.

The laws in Leviticus are surrounded by centuries of argument, interpretation, scholarship, and investigation. They have gotten and continue to get a lot of attention. Christians need to pay this much attention to the Sermon on the Mount (and the other commands of Jesus).

We need to stop dismissing them or explaining them away and instead debate how to apply them. What exactly—what exactly—do they mean for us in our homes, and streets, and world? For our policies, our productions, our work, our loves?

This is my beloved son, God will say next week in the story of the Transfiguration. Listen to him! What is he saying?

Let your word be ‘yes, yes’ or ‘no, no’

Text: Matthew Matthew 5:21-37

This sermon preached by Abbie Engelstad, Vicar at Faith.

I have a confession to make, and it is now a public confession. The way we do liturgy in this church the person who reads the gospel ends the selection for that day by saying “this is the gospel of the Lord”—my confession is that the first time I read this gospel out loud, that part came out as a question. “This is the gospel of the Lord?”

I had to sit and puzzle over that spontaneous question mark for a while. What was this gospel triggering in me that I found unsavory? Jesus is being harsh in this passage, and not altogether likeable. Just a couple verses before where we picked up today Jesus has corrected any perceived nonsense about what he is here to do, he says to his listeners, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.” He seems to be chiding with a finger waggle “Don’t think you’re getting off easy because I’m here changing the rules.” And then he goes on to say in our Gospel for today, in fact, I’m not abolishing the law I’m making it more severe. Jesus paints this picture for us dramatically. By the established law those who murder are liable to judgment, but in Jesus’ words those who are merely angry with a brother or a sister deserve the same punishment as those who murder, which is nothing compared to the seemingly even more mundane offense of calling someone a fool, which deserves eternal damnation. It is from this passage that we get Jesus’ famous words that have haunted many in Christendom about lust in the heart as equivalent to adultery and the near unacceptability of divorce. Jesus demands what generation after generation of Christians have proven to be impossibilities—if it’s not the anger, it’s the name calling, if it’s not the name calling it’s the lust, if it’s not the lust it’s the divorce, or the simple swearing of an oath. Contemplating our most assured failure in at least one of these categories is none too comforting.

When I picture Jesus in this scenario, chastising, throwing around imperatives, demanding more, I think of this club I was in in high school. It was a surprisingly liberal suburban high school, where everyone had a good cause and a nice car, and we had a club that was focused on this one social justice issue and the leader of this club was insufferable. For him every action item we suggested was an insult to the severity of the problem, and he let everyone know that no matter what we did we were complicit, already guilty of the atrocities. It was in the memory of this student with his nose in the air, that when I read this gospel aloud for the first time I ended with “this is the gospel of the lord?”

Then I read it again. For two reasons: 1) because I’m not about to stand up here in my second sermon ever and insult Jesus. And 2) because somewhere I knew that the figure Jesus became in my head in this Gospel wasn’t Jesus at all, it was me in all of my fallen self-righteousness. It was the president of that club. Jesus became Ralph Nadar. And that’s nothing against Ralph Nadar, god bless him, but that’s not Jesus.

They have things in common. Ralph Nadar, if you’re unfamiliar, has a vision for this world and he continues to fight tirelessly for that vision despite the constant barrage of doubt and slander thrown his way. He never married or had kids. Ralph Nadar, and we could name many activists here, dedicates his waking life to changing this world into a better world. That might sound familiar. That is a project many of us claim. We endeavor to hold ourselves and those around us to a higher standard. These are indeed the conditions for nobility, vocation, altruism—and self-importance, righteousness, and judgment. Christ is not Ralph Nadar.

So how do we make sense of the gospel for today? How do we conceive of Christ as a reformer, an activist, a visionary, without making him susceptible to the pettiness of the human ego? We could ask that question another way: how do we hear these exhortations differently, when we recognize that Christ is not susceptible to the pettiness of the human ego? When we do what we were born to do, and trust that God is God, what do we hear?

I’ll share with you what I hear. I hear a God who knows this world intimately. And not only that, I hear a God who knows the kingdom of heaven right now, in this world, in this life. Christ knows differently than we know. Christ sees differently than we see. He knows the plan for a better world not in predictive way, not in an intellectual, prescriptive way, Christ knows the plan for a better world in his body. He knows it from meditating in the wilderness for forty days, from having his feet touched with so much love, he knows it from having the privilege of touching someone no one else will, he knows it from wading into the Jordan river and feeling John the Baptist’s arms around him, supporting his body, and allowing himself to be submerged in the waters of baptism. Jesus knows the kingdom of heaven right now, in his flesh. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus calling us into this knowledge because if we only knew. When I remembered who Christ was, I heard a God who wants me to feel what God feels, to exist beyond the possibilities of legalism and to imagine what a world could look like and what a world could feel like, and perhaps what it already does.

We cannot know exactly what Jesus’ world feels like, and for us, unlike him, when we try re-create that world we stray into self-righteousness. But Jesus gives us some clues as to how we might imagine the world he knows. This is a world where not only do we not call each other fools, we don’t even have the urge to call each other fools, where we forgive our accusers spontaneously and immediately, where we not only refrain from swearing an oath, but where it doesn’t even make sense to swear an oath because we recognize that everything is God’s, we are entitled to nothing, and even the aging of our bodies is given to us through joyous grace.

We are bound to forget, to get caught up in self-righteousness, to believe we know what is best for this world, to fight for it and sacrifice for it, and then call our neighbor a fool. We are bound to turn piety into judgment. We are bound to fail. And for that we should try to forgive ourselves sometimes. And we should do our very best to remember, as often as we can, that Jesus will never stop communicating to us exactly what we need to hear. In your baptism, whatever that looked like in your life, God touched you and said you are already good, but we forget.

In the Epistle for today Paul addresses the Corinthians, not as spiritual people, but as infants, people of the flesh. He is trying to knock down egos and reign in hubris and fantasies of self-sufficiency and remind the leaders of the church in Corinth that they belong to God, and that the work of the church is not theirs to claim. Paul is calling them out. The world ‘we’ build, the world where we are constantly forgetting that we are already good, that we are baptized, needs Pauls, activists, visionaries, people who call each other out about not living as spiritual people.

But the beauty of this Gospel is that Christ is addressing us as spiritual people and as infants. Christ knows all of us, and says in the waters of baptism “you are enough” now listen for all the ways I try to remind you of that. He walks ahead, beckoning, welcoming, encouraging, sometimes harshly saying what he needs to say so that we might hear it again and again, trying to remember that God is God and this existence is already good. This is the gospel of the Lord.

When and Then

Text: Isaiah 58:1-12

Central to Christianity as Lutherans know it is the tenet that God’s love and favor is given to us unconditionally. God is a God of grace, demonstrated in various ways that include, not the least, the presence of God among us in the person of Jesus Christ. We do not hold that we deserve God’s good favor. If we had to perform some special deeds to be in God’s good graces, then we would all be out of luck.

We inherit our stubborn defense of this idea from Luther, who was fighting a church at the time that made getting into heaven contingent on special works that the church required. Luther was a polemicist. He was in a battle. He could give no credence to good works as required by God (though good works were still good to do for the world). So, for example, he argued that the book of James should be taken out of the Bible because it said What good is it … if you say you have faith but do not have works?

This stubbornness is warranted because as soon as we allow that God’s love for us is conditional—contingent on even one thing—if it is up to us (if we do something then God will love us or not)—then we are in a mess.

We need to know without reservation that we are a loved child of God. That as Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of God. That nothing we can do puts us beyond the pale of God’s regard for us. Grace thus frees us to take radical risks.

But as soon as there is one conditional work, we can never trust whether we are good with God or not. We get trapped again. We wonder: who decides what that thing is? Who metes out forgiveness? And how do we trust that we have performed that one thing adequately? People will use that undone work to condemn us, or we will use it to condemn ourselves. As a colleague puts it, the demons of the world (and in our own heads) tell us lies.

Thus we emphasize our trust in a God of grace, and we are fearful to talk about judgment. But what, then, are we to make of this passage in Isaiah, whose verses drip with judgment peppered with conditional Ifs and Thens?

The people of Israel have returned from exile. They have been fasting and praying. Yet is seems they have some complaints about the results. Why do we fast, they say, but you, God, do not see? We humble ourselves, but you do not notice. They evidently feel that by fasting and worshipping that they ought to have earned God’s favor. This idea would not have been out of line with the widespread theology of their day (and sometimes even in ours) that acts of worship and piety are the way to the heart of God, who will reward them with prosperity and safety.

But God is having none of it. You act as if you were a nation that is doing the right thing, God says, and that you are following my commands. But you are not. You fast, you worship, you bow down to me. But you are self-serving and you exploit your workers.

Is this what I want, God asks rhetorically? What good is that? (God sounds like James.) What I want, God says, is justice. I want you to be just. I want you to share what you have with the hungry so that they are no longer hungry. I want you to take the poor into your own homes so that they are no longer homeless. I want you to free those you are oppressing. You think, God implies, that you are the victims. You think you are getting a raw deal. But in fact you are the victimizers, the raw deals are the ones you are making.

When God accuses the Israelites of hiding from their own kin, God is using an idiom that means that they pretend that the impoverished and destitute people do not exist. They have turned a blind eye, we would say, to the needs of others. It also means figuring that someone else will take care of the afflictions of others. We hide from the annoying and impertinent pleas of our own brothers and sisters. It is hard to deny that God is judging us.

God’s demand for justice is right in the middle of the message of Isaiah and the other prophets. Let justice flow like water, Amos says famously. And justice in this case does not mean criminal justice and does not mean retribution for sins against us. It means taking care of widows and orphans (seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow; so Isaiah says earlier—economic and political justice). And all that the widows and orphans represent: which is oppressed, suffering, and disenfranchised people.

God defines a new kind of fast. Not forgoing food for a while with the intent of influencing God, but a spiritual discipline nonetheless. A kind of overriding attentiveness to the demands of others, demands that call us with authority simply because the others are people. Not deserving or good or friendly or pathetic, just people.

This fast is not designed to persuade God but to transform us. If you give food to the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then, says God, your light will shine forth like the dawn. If you stop quarreling and fighting and trying to blame each other, then your light will shine in the darkness. God will be with you, God will have your back, God will guide you, God will fulfill your needs.

This sounds like a deal God is making with Israel. If you want my favor, then do these things. This is conditional. If you go about the old way: such fasting as your do today will not make your voice heard on high. In the heavens, God will not hear you. And if you fast by doing justice, then God will answer.

But these pairs of Ifs and Thens are not so much conditional as consequential. This is the judgment of physics. If you shake the apple from the tree, it will drop. It is inevitable, but not transactional. These paired statements are less If and Then and more When and Then.

When you live out your life according to the justice that God commands, then you will find God guiding you. When you care for the afflictions of other, then you will find your cities will prosper like a watered garden. You will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets to live in. And when we deny justice to the poor, as we seem to be doing, things fall apart and it appears that God is far away.

This is about God’s love, but that love is not at risk. We are at risk, and God’s words in Isaiah are warnings. They are not threats of abandonment or punishment. They are cautions about the consequence of our actions. And they are hopeful prophecies about the way things will be when we do as God teaches us. We will hear God say “here I am.”

Bead Work Blessings

Text: Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12

[Often the readings of the lectionary—the list of readings for each Sunday—seem like a bunch of beads in a bag. Maybe related, but mostly not. But today is seems to me that each reading is like a bead on a string, held together loosely, but in order, with a beginning and an end. We start with God’s disappointment in the people of Israel. We end with God’s blessing. We’re going to follow that string like a rosary.]

What have I done, God asks, that you should be weary of me? This is a disappointed and sorrowful God. Israel, God’s people, whom God brought out of Egypt, whom God redeemed from slavery, led across the wilderness, given a safe and sacred home, has abandoned God’s law and betrayed God’s blessings.

Earlier in Micah, the prophet lists Israel’s sins. God speaks through the words of Micah, saying: The powerful covet fields of others, and seize them, and take away their houses [2.2]. They cry “peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who have nothing to put into their mouths [3:5]. The rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets [prophesy] for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” [3.11]. These sins against the people (unfortunately familiar) make God more sad than angry.

In this passage we just heard, the people in response ask what they might do to repair the breach they have made with God. What acts of piety do they have to perform before God is pleased with them? How about sacrificing a whole calf? How about a thousand sheep (which is more than the richest king would own)? How about ten thousand rivers of olive oil? The proposals are absurd. The prophet is sarcastic. The question is wrong. Pious posturing is not what God desires.

God’s desire is not a secret. To the Israelites or to us. The good is known. God has told us what it is. God has told us what is required. To do justice. To love kindness. To walk humbly with God.

This sweet list is not one of high-minded intentions, but practical acts. Acts of grace. To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

Justice comes first. The order is not an accident. Justice is the basis for living as God’s people. Nothing comes before it. Justice is harmony, the right relations between one person and another, reconciliation of trespass. The opposite of covetousness, of indifference to the plight of others, of self-glorification, of engineered advantage over those who are weaker. Just actions are ones that repair lopsided economic and political inequity. A just world is the one God intended at creation. Just actions are those that heal this world that has been broken.

Love of mercy comes second. Mercy is sometimes called kindness, or loving kindness, or devotion. It is compassion more than pity. Being merciful is not a request to temper deserving punishment (as in: have mercy on me) so much as treating all people with kindness because they are God’s people just as you are.

Love here means less all weak in the knees and more faithful or loyal or steadfast. The kind of fidelity that is the basis to friendship or marriage or close relationships. We love mercy not because we choose to feel nice about someone but because we are faithful parts of a community of God’s people.

Walking humbly with God comes third. To walk with God is to follow God’s direction. God’s direction is given in the commands of God. The commands of God are gifts to God’s people that guide us, that show us a way to live, that instruct us how to be just and merciful to one another. To walk humbly with God is to accept God’s guidance rather than our own. To accept God’s sovereignty, to trust in God’s word. It defines us as God’s people, as the ones who follow God.

Yet, like the Israelites, we find God’s guidance to be difficult. Today’s psalm lists some requirements of a godly person. One who is blameless, it says, speaks the truth, never dissembles, does no evil, holds no contempt, does no wrong, never reneges, never loans money for interest, and does not take bribes. I think this psalm is a little Biblical joke. There is no such perfect person. No one is blameless. Everyone does some wrong. Everyone is a sinner.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth. There is an issue in the church. Some people there think a lot of themselves. They seem to think they are not sinners, but good and law-abiding folks. Perhaps they think that they embody Psalm 15 and have it posted on their refrigerators.

They think they are different from the riff-raff with whom they share the church. They are standoffish, and eat by themselves, and put on airs. Paul in this letter reminds them that Jesus comes for the weak and the foolish, for the sinners. This is a shock to the powerful and wise, for in Paul’s culture, as in ours, they are usually not only respected sycophantically but admired and catered to.

This makes the list of blessings in Matthew—which we call the beatitudes—seem so strange. It was strange to those who first heard it and strange to us. To be blessed is to be favored, to be fortunate—endorsed by the fates—and empowered. In what universe are the meek, the heartbroken, the hungry, and the discouraged fortunate?

It would be a mistake to sentimentalize the condition of the subjects of this list. It stinks to be poor, to mourn, to starve. This is a not a recipe for spiritual success. Not some key to the happy life. And not a reward for pure living.

The people who are listening to Jesus at the foot of the mountain are a motley bunch. People who are ill and suffering, people on the margin. When Jesus tells these unlikely folks that they are blessed, he is not celebrating their suffering. But he is celebrating them. The beatitudes in Matthew are addressed to the people Jesus came to heal. They are the broken people, and Jesus comes to minister to them and to change the world in which they are allowed to suffer. When Jesus calls them blessed, he is declaring their worth to him. They are his purpose and his people.

In the Gospel of Mark, the first public thing Jesus does is perform an exorcism. In Luke, the first thing he does is to describe his mission. In John, the first thing he does is to perform a miraculous sign of his divinity. But here in Matthew, the first thing Jesus does is to bless the poor and the outcast.

The beatitudes are a preface to the Sermon on the Mount which follows them. (And which we’ll hear more about during the remaining weeks in Epiphany.) In this way, they serve as an introduction to this sermon. They are not themselves an ethical imperative—not a command to moral action—but they put into context a speech that is. The world is unjust. Those who suffer embody that. But the world does not have to be that way.

The sins of the Israelites against the people was made possible by their forgetting (or feeling free to forget) that God exists. Or of acting as if the commands of God were amusing rather than serious. Historical, mythic, and irrelevant to modern conditions. That deciding that whether or not we are obedient to them makes no difference in our lives or the good of the world.

Yet God’s desires are not secret. God has told us what they are. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds—as we often need reminding just as much as the Israelites did—reminds us that we have committed to be God’s people. That we who follow Jesus are commanded to do justice and to love mercy. And Jesus teaches us how to walk humbly with God.

Seeing, Staying

Text: John 1:29-42

John’s is a strong-flavored Gospel.

And it is therefore not always to everyone’s liking. It mixes powerful themes that seem sometimes to oppose one another: theological sugar and salt—light and darkness, life and death, people who are favored and those who are cursed. It is not like Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which share with each other a common heritage and though very nourishing are perhaps less savory than John. And for some, easier to swallow.

Some people see the Gospel of John as a kind of religious and missional travelogue. In it, Jesus moves back and forth from place to place, talking with whomever he finds there. He visits exotic locales—like Samaria, not normally popular with the Judeans—and gathers new followers along the way. Some are content to listen to him, learning about a new way to live. And some end up pulling up roots and becoming disciples, living in that new way. We hear the beginning of all that in today’s reading.

In it, Andrew and another nameless follower of John the Baptist are immediately drawn to Jesus, and they abandon John on the spot. (This sort of thing seems to happen quite a lot with Jesus—even in our time). When Jesus notices them walking toward him, he speaks his first words in this Gospel: What are you looking for? What do you seek? The disciples oddly reply: Where are you staying? Come, Jesus says—is this an answer? it is hard to say—Jesus says: Come, you will see. Come and see.

Seeing and staying are two of those strong themes in John. The words for both of them appear more often in John’s writing than in any other book of the Bible. The fact that they are a part of Jesus’ first conversation—almost all of it, really—is not an accident.

The two ideas represent two flavors of discipleship, which in some eras (ours, for example) seem to be in conflict. It is a persistent dichotomy, two different answers to the same question: What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? How does one live a Christian life?

On the one hand (the “seeing” side) is a kind of observational life. Come and see. The word that John uses is sometimes translated as “knowing.” On this side are all the worshipful and prayerful disciplines that Christians rightly cultivate and value. This is a faith of the senses. Looking, watching, enjoying. Finding God in beauty, in relationships. In our own hearts, calm or excited. In listening to music, pondering and savoring poetry. Seeing God in our studies and research.

In this way of living, there is a sense of anticipation and expectation on our part. Waiting for something to happen. By seeing things we make discoveries that change our lives. In our religious life, we hope for such discoveries and changes. It is one of the many reasons we worship and study together, expecting the Spirit to reveal God and God’s will to us, and to guide us. It is an essential part of some religious orders and, in a less intensive way, of spiritual retreats.

On the other hand (the “staying” side) is a kind of participatory life. The word that John uses is also translated as remaining, living, dwelling, abiding. Where are you staying, the disciples ask. Where are you at? How do you stand? What is your position? On this side are all the Christian good works, things we do in the world because they represent obedience to the commands and teachings of Jesus. And conform to his example. Be compassionate first and foremost. Feed the hungry, visit the prisoners. Turn the other cheek. Do not judge others. Love your enemies.

This way of living is not necessarily a religious life as normally conceived. It is religious because it comes out of our promise to follow Jesus. And though we are not looking to find God in these works, we in fact usually do.

People help others directly—social services, as we might say—to relieve suffering. They work politically to change systems of violence and injustice and to prevent suffering. And they work at ordinary jobs always keeping in mind that they are first of all disciples of Jesus.

None are completely obedient to Jesus whom they follow. They try to live—ideally—as if they lived with Jesus. As a roommate, say, or a member of one’s family, or good friend. Could they go home at night and relate their day to Jesus with a good conscience and a straight face? How was your day? Not bad.

What do you seek? There is a longing in everybody, I think, to live a deeply spiritual life. And certainly so for people who gather into churches. We are called here by the same God who turned the disciples toward Jesus. There is something in us that wants, in some way that is hard to talk about, to be very close to God, to be intimately connected to God. And the other thing we really want to do is to change the world for the better.

As the disciples did, we see in Jesus a way to do that. Jesus is revealed to us—that is what Epiphany means. We follow Jesus because we think he is the best guide, and that he is a trustworthy one. And because we suspect through experience that we cannot make it on our own. When Jesus asks the disciples what they seek, that is what they answer. We want to know where you are staying, they say. We want to be there, too. We want to go where you are going and to live in a way that we can best learn by being with you, abiding with you, living in the same place as you.

In the course of their lives together, Jesus teaches them. He instructs them, for example, in the sermon on the mount, which is the focus of the Gospel readings for almost all of the rest of Epiphany and a kind of instruction manual. And he heals people and he feeds them, and he gets into trouble with the authorities, and he does miraculous deeds. He sees the world differently than we usually do.

When the disciples ask to stay with Jesus, he shows them how to see with the eyes of Jesus. Seeing and staying turn out not to be such different things. Jesus knows that he will not always be with his followers on this earth, but they can learn to see as he sees. That is why “Come and see” is a good answer to “Where are you staying?” It is not a tricky answer.

For if we see things as Jesus sees, won’t we find ourselves called to abide with him? And if we stay with Jesus for very long, won't we inevitably see as he sees?

Being in Christ

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

The consensus among scholars is that the letter to the Ephesians was not written by the apostle Paul, even though it claims to be. It was likely written by a disciple of Paul, or some of his entourage, and signed with his name, a common practice of the day. It does adopt the ideas of Paul, and you might think of the letter as something like “A Treasury of Pauline Themes.” Not quite a summary, and not quite Paul’s Greatest Hits, but a way to convey the core and flavor to others of Paul’s preaching.

It opens with an initial greeting followed by the passage we just heard. There is an urgency in this letter to get right to the essence of things. These twelve verses are, in the original greek, one long unbroken sentence. It is as if the writer wants to get all the ideas out in one big rush and is carried away on a wave of their importance.

And they are important, for the question they want to answer is: who is God; and what is Jesus? It seems to have something to do with being “in Christ,” whatever that means.

It is an easy and familiar phrase. “We are all one in Christ Jesus” as we proclaim every Sunday before we share the peace with one another. Being in Christ and Christ being in us is a central mystery of Christianity, especially for that part of Christianity that reached us through Paul. But this long sentence in Ephesians—which is composed of multiple descriptive phrases and conjunctions hanging off the subject, God the Father—this knot of words that floods us with concepts and images of Christ and his nature—seems to be necessary to the writer to get it right and richly so.

If we untangle it just a little, we see three clusters of ideas. In the first cluster, we see that we are blessed. Blessed be God who has blessed us with blessing is how it starts out. Good words—that is what the Greek word here for blessing comes from: good plus word. What God has done through Christ is good for us. It makes brings us favor. It reminds us that God is good. When we think about Jesus, we are grateful to God the Father.

We are grateful not only for this gift—this glorious grace, it says, bestowed on us in [Christ] the beloved. But also that we are enveloped into this little family, adopted as children of God, getting the same benefits (or inheritance) that God’s own are entitled to.

In the second cluster, we see that as a result of this free favor, we are forgiven our sins (trespasses it says in our translation). In spite of our tendency to mess up a lot—by omission or commission—God does not hold it against us. This is the kind of thing you see in your children—usually—or your best friends. You love them because you do, in spite of—and in some cases because of—their weird and difficult habits. They are endearing, you keep them close to you—embrace them—because they exist and because you, like God in this way, are gracious. You do this according, as it says in the letter, according to your good pleasure.

And finally, in the third cluster we discover that our lives have changed. We are somehow in Christ and therefore different. It is a result of being in Christ, it says, that we are redeemed (that is, set free from all the powers that bind us). In Christ we are of God’s family. And in Christ, God reveals God’s intent and plan.

Yet, how does this work? It is safe and revealing to add some modifiers, to probe into this big and sometimes opaque idea.

Perhaps we are in the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ. That being in Christ means that Christ is aware of us, thinks about us, watches over us, wonders about us.

Perhaps we are in the acts of Christ. In the theological sense. That God came here in the person of Jesus and lived, died, and rose again. Those acts accomplished something for us (among other things: set us free from worldly and satanic fears, goods, authorities, and structures). Being in Christ means that we are the beneficiaries of those acts.

Or perhaps we are in obedience to the commands of Christ. Jesus taught us how to live the good life, and commanded us to love one another, to forgive sins against us, to give freely, to consider that compassion trumps authority. Being in Christ means that we organize our lives to respond to Christ’s teachings and work for justice.

Or perhaps we are in the company of Christ. Especially at Christmas, we celebrate that God is with us—Immanuel—in our present anxieties and contentments. We take comfort and strength that we are not alone. Being in Christ means that we are aware—and grateful—that God is always nearby us. In crowds, in relationships, in loneliness.

Or, finally, perhaps we are in the body of Christ. As we share the meal in the Lord’s Supper, we ingest the being of Christ, who becomes part of us. At the same time, we share that being with all who eat this same food, given for us, and thus we become like them. We are joined not only in our longing to know God but in the atoms of our own bodies.

Being in Christ is like being in touch, being in love, being in conversation, even like being in a boat on a stormy sea. And especially like being in community with God and others. It is why this letter is in the plural.

There is no metaphor for our relationship with Christ that is both obvious and clear, and none that is comprehensive. With the saints in Ephesus and the rest of us, spiritual descendants of the first followers of Christ, we gather into churches, hoping to find comfort, identity, and understanding.

There, we are blessed. To ponder, and experience, and share all the ways of our being in Christ. Where we are blessed not only with discovering those things, but joining with others in seeking them.