Dream On

Text: Psalm 126 March 25, 2007

Dream on. In your dreams. You live in a dream world.

It is a cynical and scary time right now, and in times like this, dreams and dreamers are mocked. Yet we have to dream.

The season of Lent is like a long freight train taking a slow curve on the plains of the Midwest. We carry a lot of baggage as we go into Lent. We start from one place—we have a history, an origin. We have in Lent a destination—we have a future, a new way of being. The theme of Lent is repentance, which you have often heard me say is a turning, a change in direction. Not a sudden change, not a stop-and-take-a-right onto Prospect Street type of thing. But a long and gradual change, so slow that sometimes we don’t even know we are changing. Until we realize that what was once on our left hand is behind us now, and the landscape ahead is different. The promise of Lent is that there is a new way of being that calls us and greets us.

As the Sundays in Lent move toward Holy Week—Palm Sunday is next week, then the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection on Easter—as we move toward those days, the focus of the readings assigned for the day changes. They become less introspective, less critical, less somber. Instead, they talk about joy, and restoration, about salvation, about God’s rescue of those in trouble and sorrow. A God who restores fortunes and frees the captives and returns the exiles back to their land and homes. Stories of dreams.

The psalm today, Psalm 126, sits on the curve of Lent. It looks back and it looks forward. Some think the psalm is confused. The verb tenses seem not to fit with one another. “When you restored [our] fortunes,” the psalm begins. Yet four verses later, it pleads “restore our fortunes, O Lord.” Some translators want to clean this up, making the verbs all agree. Either the psalm is about the past or it is about the future, they say. They say that either the psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving—thanks for restoring us—or it is a psalm of petition—please restore us.

But though the grammar might be confusing, the situation should not be. For most people, the line between thank you and please is a connecting line, not a boundary line. We can be grateful and hopeful at the same time. We usually are. Like with the Lenten freight train, the shift between what has happened to us and what might happen is not a sudden one. Our dreams are grown from the seeds of our experiences.

Yet we live in times when dreams—visions, we might say—are hard to come by. There are always such times. Times when, as it says in the book of Samuel, when dreams were not widespread. Paul, in the book of Acts, noted that with Jesus a new era was starting, when young people and old people would once again dream dreams.

Perhaps you find it hard to dream dreams of your own future. The world seems polluted by greed, violence, stupidity, selfishness. What kind of dreams will those seeds produce? Is it absurd to dream of the future when the future looks dark at worst and dim at best? Are dreams only fantasies, wishful hopes, escapes from a tough spot?

Yet we have to dream to live. Individuals deprived of the chance to dream go crazy. They cannot function, their judgment is bad, they feel dislocated. And so do peoples and nations deprived of the chance to dream go crazy. The wickedness of constant and unceasing oppression of a people—Palestine, slavery, apartheid, anti-Semitism, racism; you can add your own examples—the wickedness is that it stifles dreams in those people. There is nothing to dream when every day is the same or worse than the last, and where the future seems to be the same thing as today, only repeated endlessly. It is a sign of depression when the days ahead seem to be destined to be only today, over and over again.

So it not surprising that the psalm rejoices that the people of Israel can dream again. The psalm was probably written at time when the people of Israel were going home from their exile in Babylon. God has redeemed them from exile, just as God had freed Israel when they were slaves in Egypt. They rejoice because they see that their future will be different than today. Not that it has changed yet, but that it looks like it might, like it will.

Such dreams do not arise from despair. They are not visions of escape or escapism. They arise from hope. A little hope. Dreams—visions of our future—do not cause hope, they are built on hope. They are not the source of hope, but the result. “When the Lord restored our fortunes, then we were like those who dream,” says the psalm. The dreams of Israel come from feeling God’s touch on them once again. It is the hope that God has brought to them that lets them dream.

The psalm does look two ways, back and forward. It is seeing what God has done in their past that gives them the hope to dream of God in their future.

Dreams—the kind of dreams we are talking about—are dreams of Yes rather than dreams of No. Not a dream of the oppressors leaving but dreams of a time of freedom. Not a dream of the destruction of the new Babylon but the building of the new Jerusalem. Not the ending of one difficult part of our lives but the beginning of a time of understanding and contentment. Not release from discouragement and disillusionment but a time of passion and sense of adventure. It is not destruction but construction that brings us joy. Not death but new life.

To dream requires an inkling. That’s a good and strange word. It comes from a word that means whisper. An inkling of hope is the seed of dreams. A glimmer, a glimpse. Not something made up out of our fantasy, but just a speck of reality from which the dreams grow. The amount of hope that feeds dreams is like the tiny glimpse—maybe in passing, maybe in accident—like that glimpse we get of someone that leads us—amazingly—to think, to dream, “I could fall in love with that person.”

The Gospel reading today sits exactly in the middle of the Gospel of John. Beyond today’s verses lies Jesus’ trial, execution, and resurrection. This part of John has been called the Book of Glory, meaning the passion story. Before today’s verses lie Jesus’ early ministry, and especially the miracles. This part of John has been called the Book of Signs. The signs are the inklings of hope that let us dream of new life.

Lent is foremost a way of seeing. The disciplines of Lent are tricks to help us keep our eyes open for God’s presence in the world and in our lives. The meditations of Lent are moments of mindfulness that help us register those glimpses we get of God. And give us hope that we might end up going in a new direction. We pray, in keeping with the psalm, we might give thanks to God, and that we might dream on.

A Father and Two Sons

Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 March 17, 2007

Introduction

Today in the time reserved for the reading of the Gospel and the sermon we are going to do something a little different. We are going to mix the reading with a dramatic reflection of what’s happening in the story. We did this three years ago, and we are going to try it again today, because it seems to me that it puts the dynamic of the story in relief.

The story is the one often called the Prodigal Son. This is a powerful story, and for many a difficult one. Many see the story as an allegory—with they, or their work, or God, being represented by one or more of the characters. And that may be so. But it might also be just a story about three people and how they live their lives.

So: we are going to play with this story a little, go beyond what is obvious in the text, and put the story into our imaginations. Members of the congregation will speak for the characters in the story.

Part 1: Context

Pastor reads:

The Gospel according to Luke, the 15th chapter.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them [a] parable.

The scribes and the Pharisees object. Jesus is violating a law and tradition that excludes law-abiding people from sharing a meal with unclean people. Not only does Jesus eat with these folks, he is the host. The righteous ones are unhappy.

In response, Jesus tells three parables. One is about a shepherd who searches for one lost sheep among a herd of 100. One about a woman who searches for one lost coin among ten. And the story we are about to hear today is about a father, a son who wanders, and a son who stays at home. The man-and-his-two-sons story is common in the Bible. Think Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael.

In each of the three parables Jesus tells, something that is lost is found again. In each of them, the finding leads to a party. But only in the story for today does that cause a problem.

Part 2: Son leaves home (v11-20a)

Pastor reads:

11 “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ‘ 20 So he set off and went to his father.

Young son (member of the congregation) speaks:

It wasn’t so hard to decide to leave. I mean, he hardly ever talked to me while I was there. It was always about my older brother, “Mr. good brother.” He was good, too. Always did the right thing, always did it well. All I every heard was “why can’t you be like your brother?” He was always around when my father needed him, he never put off doing the chores, never got in trouble for forgetting the animals. He never fouled up, as far as I could see.

But I don’t think he ever had any fun, either. And if you thought I was planning to spend my days like that, day after day, you don’t know me very well. It was time to leave the old homestead. I was in line for my part of my old man’s inheritance. It was mine, I deserved it. I wasn’t going to wait around until he died. By that time I’d be too old to enjoy it.

Things didn’t quite work out as I had hoped, as you’ve heard. I admit it, I was a little careless in the spending department. Maybe a little too generous. I had good friends; why shouldn’t I spend money on them if I wanted to? I mean, I wasn’t stupid about it. If this famine hadn’t happened, I’d be telling you a different story today, that’s for sure.

Except: it did happen. That wasn’t too good for me. After a while, I couldn’t buy any thing for myself, much less for my friends. Who seemed to have wandered off somehow. It was no fun, especially no fun when I had to hire myself out to a Gentile and to feed his pigs. Pigs! What would my friends back home think of that, me a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the pigs ate better than me.

I’m not that clueless. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wised up. Maybe I could make my father take me back. Though he’d be pretty upset. I mean, who wouldn’t be, I guess. And my brother. I didn’t even want to think about my brother. So I concocted this plan. I’d go back to him on my knees. I’d tell him I messed up. I’d offer to work in the field picking weeds, if that’s what it took. So that’s what I did.

Part 3: Son returns home (v20b-24)

Pastor reads:

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

Father (member of the congregation) speaks:

I won’t lie to you. I was not a happy about it. Not at all. I was angry, to tell you the truth. Asking for half his inheritance now. While I was still his living father. I’d never heard of anything like it. It was like as far as he was concerned, I was already dead. You are dead, he might as well have said. Give me my half of your life, he might as well have said.

And leaving me and his brother to do all the work around here. Just walking off like he could have cared less. I wouldn’t exactly have called that “honoring your father and mother.” I didn’t get it. It was very confusing to me. Still is, really. I guess I could have refused him, but … And I thought: he’ll have to learn the hard way.

But when he was gone, I missed him so much. That little jerk. I worried about him. It was hard to sleep at first. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I’d heard a sound. What was that? Maybe he’d come back, maybe he’d changed his mind. I wondered: was he ok? Really, I wondered (though I didn’t admit it to myself): was he still alive? And I prayed so hard that God would watch over him. Pray, God, that he be kept safe.

And sometimes I’d think: at least my oldest son is still with me. At least he is here. I’m proud of him. He is a man who knows his duty and does it, no complaints. And who respects his father, at least. So I thought that was how things were going to be. That was it.

When I saw that boy coming up the road. I can hardly tell you. I just about had a heart attack. I thought: that can’t be. This is just like those noises at night. Don’t get your hopes up. But of course, it was him. I made a fool of myself, running down the road like that. They must have laughed to see an old proper man like me acting so undignified. What did I care. My son was not dead! He was alive. God be praised! It was like he was raised from the dead (and I felt that way, too: me being raised). Raised from the dead. And that’s why I set up this party. If there was one day in the year to eat meat, this was the day. And I’d invite all the neighbors, let them come, too. What a day!

Part 4: Brother is unhappy (v25-30)

Pastor reads:

25 ”Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’

Older brother (member of the congregation) speaks:

Ah. When I came down from working, I thought: what is this? What’s going on here? There were a ton of people, all making noise. I thought: has something bad happened? Was there an accident? I thought: Is my father all right?

Like I should have been so worried. It was a party. But no one had told me about any party. In my own house! It still ticks me off just thinking about it. Here I was, like some alien. Stuck on the outside. As usual, I guess. Sometimes I felt like we were a modern-day version of Jacob and Esau. I’m the hard worker, and he gets all the attention. He always was my father’s favorite. I don’t know how I know; I just know it. I never understood why. Here he might as well have spit in my father’s face, and still he allows him back. “Your brother,” they called him just now. Not my brother, friend. Maybe my father can call him his son, but if you ask me, he lost rights to that a long time ago.

To be fair, when he first told us he was leaving, part of me said “you are such a light-weight.” You are leaving us in the lurch. But the other part of me thought: Maybe I wish I could go with you. A little. I mean, it’s good to be here and all, but sometimes I feel kind of stuck. I mean, I have this whole place, really, but even so… And when he goes, I thought, it will be even more lonely here that it is now. He always gets the adventure. He’s the one who gets to have the fun. There is never a party for me. Never for me. My father takes me such for granted, as if I was a piece of furniture or something. I know I could get my own calf and cook it if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to do it myself; I wanted my father to.

Part 5: Father reconciles (v31-32)

Pastor reads:

31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

The Gospel of the Lord.

This story is commonly called the Prodigal Son, but it is misnamed. It is has little to do with the son’s extravagance, which is what “prodigal” means. It has also been called the Lost Son, but that’s not much better. If anything, as in the parables of the coin and the sheep that precede it, it is the finding, not the losing, that is important. It is the found coin, the found sheep, and the found son who make the searchers celebrate. Nor is the focus on the extravagance of love in the father, or his forgiveness. By welcoming his son, he does only what nine parents out of ten would do.

Instead, Jesus uses this parable as he does the other two in the series: as a way to respond to and deflect the Pharisees’ remarks at the very beginning.

The Pharisees and scribes see two kinds of people. Us good ones and them bad ones. Jesus is eating with them bad ones. It makes us good ones mad. We don’t know how it makes the bad ones feel. But where the Pharisees see two kinds of people, Jesus sees one kind.

What makes this story different from the others is that it does not end with the return of the son, as the others end with the return of the coin and the sheep.

In this story, the younger brother and the older brother are two people separated by hate and hurt. One will not eat with the other. Yet the way this story ends is that the father reconciles the two. The father comes out to see the younger son. And the father comes out to see the older son. Both sons. In the father’s eyes, they are both beloved sons. It is not enough that each son is joined to the father. They are joined to one another. “Your son,” says the older son. And the father corrects him in return, “Your brother.”

Jesus is a reconciler. Not only between us and God. But between us and us, between one and another. Though we might have good and clear reasons, no doubt, to remain apart, those reasons are not God’s, not Jesus’. These days—and it seems dangerously so—we are separated from one another as the brothers were, by hate and hurt. We are all of us lost to each other. And when we are found to be brothers and sisters, then God rejoices. And invites us not to grumble, not to quote some law or other, not to be aggrieved, not to seek revenge, but to rejoice with God.

Thanks be to God.

Seeking God

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-8, Psalm 63
March 11, 2007

The Bible looks like one big book. But it really is a library, a collection of stories told and then written over centuries, and finally assembled into one official version. The writings themselves hardly ever existed as complete works that some scholar could just copy down. Most of the source materials for the books of the Bible are small fragments, sometimes just a few lines. They come from dozens and in some cases hundreds of separate documents. Often they disagree: one document has words in a passage that another leaves out. Scholars try to put all these fragments together to make coherent books, which together make the library, the Bible.

In the process of doing this, these scholars have rules of thumb. For example, one is that if two sources disagree about a verse or passage, the rule of thumb is to choose the “harder” passage. That is, choose the one that is harder to understand. I guess another way to say this is: choose the one that makes the least sense. The rule is based on the notion that a scribe copying a text might change something that seems difficult to understand into something that is easier to understand. But hardly ever would the scribe do the opposite: change something clear into something obscure. So it is more likely that the harder version is more original. This sometimes makes for strange results which make us modern day Bible readers scratch our heads.

Another rule of thumb is that when something appears in a writing it likely appeared because there was a problem brewing or happening among the readers (or listeners, really). So, for example, when Paul writes about how people should share a meal, he is trying to correct their horrible manners. This rule is based on the notion that you don’t write about things that are either ordinary or just going along fine. “Today I brushed my teeth,” that sort of thing. The Bible by and large is a book of writings that came from stories or speeches in which people were trying to change something. A nice way of saying this is that the Bible is a book of transformation.

It is especially so in the prophets, like Isaiah, who provided our first reading today.

This is a great passage. It appears at the beginning of the what people call “Third Isaiah,” which are the last chapters of the very long book of Isaiah. In these chapters, people have occasion to rejoice, because the exile of Israel to Babylon is over, or nearly so. It is full of comforting words. Milk and wine and rich food for everyone. And freedom from oppression and poverty and a return to Israel’s former power and prestige.

On the one hand, the problem—in the Biblical scholar sense—is that times had been bad and people were discouraged. So these words are good news. On the other hand, the problem was also that the people had been tempted by Babylon and its ways. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?” asks God. That Babylonian bread looked pretty sweet. Pretty yummy. But, God says in Isaiah, as sweet as it was, it was not nourishing. Not healthful. It was not suitable food for the children of God. It was good, perhaps, but it was not God.

People had been, in other words, tempted to abandon God. But that’s because, in part, the people suspected that God had abandoned them. And when people feel cut off from God, who knows what might happen?

The gathering hymn today is all about our need for God’s presence. (This hymn has the strangest title [As Pants the Hart]; the Bible scholars would have been proud).

As pants the hart for cooling streams
when heated in the chase,
so longs my soul, O God, for you
and your refreshing grace.

Just as a deer (the hart in the poem), out of breath from being chased by hunters, desperately thirsty, hot, and tired, longs to stop by a stream and be cooled and restored, just that way we humans long for God. When you are exhausted from the demands of work, when you have too much to do and too little time and too little money, when your expectations are dashed, when you feel like nothing is going right, when you feel beleaguered and pressured, when you are confused and lost—then your soul longs for God. To be refreshed by God’s grace. “My soul thirsts for you, it says in the psalm [63], … as in a barren and dry land.”

We need a place to come home to that is bigger and more cosmic than our houses. We need food that is more soulful than a brunch at S&S [local deli]. We have plenty of things—lists and list of things—plenty of things to buy that are not bread, as Isaiah says, plenty of things to work at—lists and lists of chores—plenty of things to work at that do not satisfy. When in this state, I procrastinate and wander about. Maybe you do something similar.

One trouble calls another on
and gathers overhead,
falls splashing down, till round my soul
a rising sea is spread.

Without knowing that we are connected to God, that God is there, that God hears us and that we might hear God—without that we homeless. We are children of God who like the Israelites for Isaiah have become refugees.

God is there, we know. God is here. We know it. So why don’t we hear God? Why can’t we speak to God? Are we ignoring God: too busy, too preoccupied, too self-involved, too anxious? Are we nervous about hearing from God? Is our phone busy? Maybe. But sometimes it seems as if it is God’s phone that is turned off. I can’t come to the phone right now, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

The idea that God might not be around right now is not very modern. We are taught that God is ever present in our lives. I’m sure that’s right. But even so, it doesn’t always feel that way to us. In the chapter in Isaiah just preceding this one, God explains to the Israelites: “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. … for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.”

And Psalm 22, which in a few weeks we’ll hear Jesus quote, starts out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”

Yet we continue to seek God. Why is that?

For you, my God, the living God,
my thirsty spirit pines;
oh, when shall I behold your face,
O Majesty divine?

It is the seeking itself that connects us to God when nothing else seems to. The desire for God is enough to bring God close to us and us close to God. “We hope for things we cannot see,” says Paul. Our desire—our thirsty spirit pining—the desire itself is a clue to us that we continue to turn to God and to depend on God. We look for food that is bread, actions that satisfy, in God. “Seek the Lord while he may be found,” cautions Isaiah, “call upon him when he is near.” Yet it was the seeking and calling in the face of darkness and silence that kept Israel alive during its exile. “You are my God,” says the psalm, “eagerly I seek you.”.

During Friday night Taizé worship here, we’ve been singing a song that goes like this:

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten, Those who seek God shall never go wanting. God alone fills us.

It is those who seek—not just those who find—who shall never go wanting.

We seek God for rest and peace that is, as the psalm says, better than life itself. There is no other rest so complete. St Augustine wrote in the first chapter of his Confessions, that

“You [that is, God] have prompted humans that they should delight to praise you, for you have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.”

I used to start my morning prayers with thanks for my existence. That I should exist, be created, a creature to see and know and feel. How great is that? But I’ve started recently to take one step back. I start now with a prayer of thanks that God exists. That’s even greater. And that I should have a chance to seek God. And to step toward God, as the hymn says it:

For now I trust in God for strength,
I trust God to employ
his love for me and change my sighs
to thankful hymns of joy.

Journey with a Hen

March 4, 2007 Luke 13:31-35

Preacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg

Two weeks ago Pastor Tim Seitz led us in a wonderful reflection about the Transfiguration and the importance that the actual journey--a difficult mountain hike---played in the impact of that story. Last summer I had a chance to experience that first hand when I visited Ostrog Monastery in Montenegro. I knew the monastery to be a holy place for the people of the region, but I didn’t really know what to expect. So I was surprised when I piled off the bus in a low river valley only to find the monastery nowhere to be seen. “Gde jest?—Where is it?” I asked a fellow pilgrim. “There,” he pointed to what appeared to me to be a very small white dot up a very steep mountain slope. Several hours and about 6 miles later we emerged hot and dusty, scratched and sore, onto a ledge where awaited a veritable paradise. Cool and ancient, the monastery beaconed us to enter and be refreshed. Inside, we found paintings and candles and pools of water where thousands of pilgrims before had washed their tired feet. It was only later that I reflected on how much the power of that experience was formed not just by the monastery itself but the ardor and struggle of the journey.

Our passage today also circles around the idea of journey—as both figuratively and literally the passage focuses on movement towards the story’s inevitable end. And how appropriate is the metaphor of a journey for us now, just as we as a church enter into our Lenten journey, a liturgical period of forty days approaching Easter.

The remarkable thing about this scripture passage, though, is that it is not just we who are on a journey through Lent towards the hope and future of Easter, but that Jesus is also making this journey. He too is preparing, taking stock of his relationships, considering what he’s accomplished and what he still hopes to accomplish--knowing that his time on Earth is running out. And that gives me hope. That Jesus understands our struggles because he’s lived them. Here we see him—worrying and considering--walking his own journey of Lent towards an ending he is determined not to avoid.

The imagery of “journey” inundates this passage. In the verses just before our scripture for today, Luke has described that Jesus is going from “one town and village after another, teaching as he makes his way to Jerusalem.” It is somewhere in Galilee, mid-way on his journey, that the things described in this passage take place.

For Jesus, this is a journey which he is not completely happy to make. And actually, we have the chance to get a strong sense of how Jesus feels because almost the entire passage is Jesus’ own words. He is hidden not behind a parable or a complicated allegory--it is Jesus speaking as himself. And because of that, you can sense his emotions even more clearly—his sadness, his regret. You can sense it in the way he says “Jerusalem, Jerusalem”-- a tinge of reproach in his voice. Exasperation, even regret. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I want to love your people and you’re just not letting me.” Who is he talking to? Who is not letting him love? The passage isn’t clear, but the result is—Jesus is deeply regretful that the thing he wishes most, what he “has so often desired” is being thwarted.

For me, the most powerful aspect of this passage is that these intense emotions are all deriving from love—a love for US. And not just any kind of love, but perhaps the most powerful love we can feel in this world- the love of a parent for her child. Jesus feels sad in this passage, not because people have disobeyed him, not even because he knows they are going to kill him, but because the people haven’t given him the chance to love them as he wishes he to, with a love that is warm and tender and soft. He feels frustrated because he wants to love us.

I just love how Jesus chooses to describe this love. There’s a lot of great love images in the Bible—the love of a father for his prodigal son, the love of a shepherd for his lost sheep, the love of a woman for her lost coin, but the one in this passage just about takes the cake.

It is certainly not what the people of the time expected—he does not describe himself as a powerful elephant, a lion--the king of beasts, or a sleek leopard. No, Jesus describes himself as … a hen. He looks at us… and loves us… and thinks carefully about the kind of relationship he would like with us… and says, “I want to be your mother hen, and you to be my chicks. And I want to open my wings and you could come run under them, and I could keep you warm and safe and dry and loved.” It is a love that is tender and motherly. It is a love that worries herself sick over us.

Now I spent a lot of time on my family’s farm growing up, but we never had any hens. So I was happy to live in Poland two years ago with a family who had chickens. Now you don’t have to be around hens very long to see they love their chicks. The way they will sit and sit on those eggs is a paradigm of hope. And those hens look at their eggs and listen. You know, hens can actually hear their chicks chirping inside the egg before they hatch, and they learn the individual cluck of each chicks and the chicks learn the special cluck of their mother before they are even out of their shell. And that’s the sort of love Jesus has for us—as individuals in all our uniqueness. The kind of love that a mother has for her own children. That gut-wrenching, instinctual, you-are-stitched-into-my-soul kind of love. Jesus is willing to die for us. That’s powerful love.

A mothering hen is not just loving, she is also vulnerable. Earlier in our passage Jesus says Herod is like a “fox.” Now I don’t know how much experience you have had with hens, but the hen-fox relationship is not a pretty one. During my brief foray into hens we had only one fox encounter but it made me realize how awfully vulnerable hens are. When Jesus calls Herod a fox, and just seconds later describes himself as a hen, he is giving a graphic example of the very tragic reality of his situation. Jesus doesn’t self-describe himself as a mother bear, who also deeply loves her cubs, but actually has a chance of surviving a predator’s attack. No, Jesus chooses the metaphor of a helpless hen, defenseless but fearlessly loving his chicks--us.

For that is what he is—vulnerable, but fearless. When the Pharisees warn him about the imminent danger, does he run, does he try to protect himself? No, he looks at them with sad, loving, resolute eyes and he says ‘Tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work…. And I must be on my way to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, where they kill prophets and stone those who are sent to it.” Jesus knows he will be killed. And in the face of danger, he takes the choice of love, to cure and heal and to push onward in his Lenten journey toward the cross.

For this is what it is, a Lenten journey. Jesus is looking ahead at his fate and he’s deeply considering where he’s at, what he’s accomplished. “How often I have desired to gather you together,” he says. But it hasn’t worked out like that. And why not? “Because,” he explains, “you were not willing.” Who was not willing? Perhaps Jerusalem, perhaps the Pharisees, but perhaps it is the people… “us.” The hen makes her special clucking noise and the chicks… scatter or obstinately refuse. Because it is us who has the choice—Jesus waits, wings outstretched, inviting, no, hoping we’ll crawl underneath safe and secure, but it is us who must choose our path and uswho must turn our footsteps towards him.

So this passage isn’t just about Jesus’ journey, it is also about our journey. About our choice and our freedom. Jesus only offers a powerful example of what a Lenten journey can be. It can be a time to pause, to assess our place and our relationships. To take a stand for what we believe in. To open up to the disappointment and regret we have in our lives and consider it. To not shirk from the sadness and pain.

In this Lenten time Jesus invites us to dig into the disappointments and regrets of our life… but he also promises that we don’t have to remain there. Because Lent is a journey, not a destination. In this passage Jesus is sad. He is regretful and pained, but he is also confident that the story doesn’t end there. Just as he knows that in Jerusalem awaits a cross, he also knows that in Jerusalem awaits an Easter morning and an empty tomb. He may invite us to dig into the pain and disappointment, but to do it with the confidence of delayed joy. Because just as we know the hurt, we also know the hope: the promise of a place where there is no hurt or pain or regret. This doesn’t mean Jesus skips the difficult journey there. Just like my pilgrimage to Ostrog Monastery, the journey is part of the destination—the scratches and bruises, the tired feet and parched lips are as much a part of the experience as the refreshing water and cool shade of the monastery.

And that is the wonder of Lent, that we have a chance to walk in this path where Jesus has led. Not just in these 40 days, but in our lives. For isn’t that what Lent is? It is a symbol of a journey we make towards Easter. And what is our yearly Easter if not a small foretaste of that great Easter we each will one day know, when it is us who will die and rise again to God.

In our passage Jesus is pained to think that despite his greatest hopes, his people have not come to him as chicks would to a mother hen. Instead, he dejected admits “and I tell you, you will not see me again...” But the story doesn’t end there. Instead he continues—“you will not see me again until the times comes when you say “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” You see, the invitation remains open still. And the choice remains ours. We are free to always say those words and Jesus will be there, the mother hen, wings open wide, welcoming us home.

Down in the Dust

Text: Luke 9:23-36 February 22, 2004

[Editor's note: Pastor Stein did not preach this week. This is a sermon on the same Gospel passage, preached in 2004.]

In the classic movie Buckaroo Bonzai, Peter Weller plays the title character. Buckaroo is a surgeon, a physicist, a comic book hero, and a rock star. Actor Lewis Smith plays his partner, lieutenant, and fellow musician. His name is Perfect Tommy. He is perfect. Able, cool under pressure, good looking, brave, decisive. There is something especially appealing about the notion of this man who is able to avoid the imperfections that otherwise put sand in the works of the lives of normal people like us. But of course it is fantasy; the man is made up. As in action-adventure movies of every era, he is the projection of our enthusiasm at the possible and our frustration with the actual.

Christians have a complicated relationship with perfection. The Kingdom of God is the promise of a perfect world on earth, a place in which all things go as God intends, without friction or misalignment. Heaven has been portrayed in our tradition as a place of perfection, and though images of it in the arts and in our imaginations vary, it is a place of perfect peace and contentment. Throughout Christian history people have vainly tried to make themselves perfect through prayer, self-inflicted suffering, and deprivation. As perfect as Jesus, they say they hope to be. Yet, especially as Lutherans, we know such effortful works cannot lead to perfection, since we are all sinners. That is, we are all imperfect.

These urges for the perfect self and world come as much from our hearts as from scripture. When we look at Adam and Eve and their fall in Eden, we grieve at not only what we have lost but what has yet to be restored.

On the mountain, Luke reports, there is a meeting between Jesus and his two greatest prophetic ancestors, Moses and Elijah. This is like a subcommittee of the Prophetic Mountain Club. They have three things in common. They all like mountains (Moses received the law on Mount Sinai, Elijah heard God’s still, small voice on Mount Horeb); they all come to listen for God’s guidance; and the third thing I’ll talk about in a moment. At this meeting Jesus becomes cloaked in dazzling white (as bright as a flash of lightning, another translation has it). The disciples see them in glory, a kind of technical term that means a shining divine presence. Not just glorious, their glory and Jesus’ are something that you could see.

For Peter, it is a perfect moment. That is, untouched by the hunger of the 5000, the feeding of whom Peter has just seen, and untouched by Jesus’ prediction of his impending execution, which Peter has just heard. It is a heavenly moment. In this moment, the usual messy platform of history is dust-free. This gathering of God’s special buddies takes place in a divine clean-room, unpolluted by real life.

Peter wants to keep it that way. Let’s build little huts, he says. In this way, perhaps, he can preserve that perfect moment forever. He can encapsulate, contain, and package it. He can keep this experience separate from the world of difficulties he inhabits.

We are subject to epiphanies, moments that reveal in an often dramatic surprise that God is here, that God is with us at this moment right now in this place. They happen to some of us in dreams. They happen to others in places where nature is thick. When sitting in a quiet grove, or a park at the end of the day, or on the rocks as the waves of the oceans shatter at our feet. They happen in moments of great happiness, at births and at the restoration of long-neglected friendships. They happen in times of sorrow, at bedside hospitals, in bottomless sadness.

They come in visions, in unexpected or impossible sightings, in voices we hear or seem to overhear. They come in moments of sudden clarity, where it seems to us that we somehow know the whole truth.

These epiphanies reveal something to us about God, and about God and us, and about God and the world. They are important experiences in our relationship with God. They give us important information. They deepen and enrich our understanding about God. It is dangerous and wasteful to dismiss them, as we modern people might tend to do. Unlike in other centuries, direct revelation of God has in our time been demoted as no longer authoritative or even useful. At worst, people consider it delusional. At best, wishful thinking. But to discount these experiences or to ignore them as random firing of synapses is denial. Like putting our hands over our ears and singing la la-la la-la. We should not drown them out.

They are not trivial. But neither are they the substance of our Christian life. They are enrichers, signifiers, pointers, but not the main thing. Had Peter succeeded in domesticating what happened on the mountain he would have confined and distorted both Christ’s character and his mission. Jesus cannot abide on this mountain for long.

As God did Moses and Elijah, God sends Jesus and his disciples back to the imperfect world. It is the third thing the three have in common. Sent back from the world of dazzling glory to the world of dust. Moses with his tablets and to more wandering and arguments with his people and with God. And Elijah—much to his dismay—to his prophecies. Jesus, to his teachings, his healings, his organizing of sometimes clueless followers, to his trial and death and then his resurrection and ascension. And Peter and John and James to a hard, and I’m sure, amazing, life of action in the world.

Listen to him! The voice of God directs the disciples. Listen to him. What does he say? If any want to become my followers, he says, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and continue to follow me. Continue to follow me. It is an ongoing and continuing day-to-day life of hard and nourishing and disappointing and fulfilling and aggravating and joyful work led by Christ.

The mountain of Moses and Elijah and Jesus is a meeting of heaven and earth. Perfection and dust. This story is in the middle of the Gospel of Luke. This is not the climax. This meeting is not the point of the story. The story continues. And continues not with us humans being hauled up onto the heavenly mountain. But with Jesus, chosen son, walking down to the dust, walking down to this imperfect world, walking down to be with us.

Jesus is not a sample of or a call to perfection. In our theology, we do not say: Jesus, perfect in every way. We say instead: Jesus, human in every way. We cannot make ourselves perfect. And we cannot make the world perfect. We are not called to. We are not called to be Perfect Tommys. We are followers of Jesus Christ. We are called to listen! Listen to him!

There Are Three Kinds of People in the World

Text: Luke 6:17-27
February 11, 2007

There are two kinds of people in the world.

There are those who are poor, and those who are rich. There are those who are hungry, and those who are full. There are those who weep, and those who laugh. Is that right? Is that what Jesus is saying here? Are there poor hungry weepers and rich stuffed laughers?

In the time when Jesus was healing and preaching, there were many, many people who were poor, hungry, and powerless. If you drew one of those demographic charts that look like pyramids, with big bases of poorer people at the bottom and gradually smaller layers of gradually richer people, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet at the very top—if you drew one of those for Palestine 2000 years ago, it would look more like a thumbtack than a pyramid. With a wide horizontal base and a vertical spike. Almost everybody was poor. A very few were very rich. And a tiny bunch, way at the top, at the point, had almost all the power and most of the goods.

It is different today, but not a lot different. In the U.S. now, the richest person has about 350,000 times more stuff than the average person. (That means that for every dollar normal people have, the richest person has 350,000 dollars. For every cup of coffee you and I buy, the richest person can buy a pretty good house in Cambridge; for every latte, he can buy a house on Brattle Street.) In this country, the top 1% of the people own about a quarter of all the stuff that can be owned. In the world, the top 1% owns 40% of the stuff. The poorest 50% of the people, that’s three billion people, own only 1% of the stuff.

So it is not much of a shock to hear Jesus talk about poor people and rich people. What is—and was—a shock was to hear him say that the poor, hungry, and sorrowful people are blessed and that the rich, stuffed, and happy are to be pitied. How you define rich and poor depends on where you stand—and about where your friends and neighbors stand in relation to you. But I’m sure that you could classify people by their reaction to Jesus’ words. I suspect that the people in the first group that Jesus talks about, the poor hungry ones, thought, “hooray, finally!” And that the people in the second group, the rich full ones, thought things like, “the guy is delusional; let’s be realistic; what’s wrong with money?” They knew who they were.

Both those who celebrate and those who protest cannot claim that Jesus is speaking about some other world. In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus talks about wealth and power, he means wealth and power in a physical, earthly way.

The word “blessed” here pretty much means filled with abundance. It has to do not with things of the spirit. It has to do with power and riches and privilege.

By the same token, the word “poor” means destitute, without anything. It means not those who don’t have enough money, but those who have no money. If you know someone who has less than you have, then you are not poor according to the meaning of this word. There is a paradox in Jesus’ proclamation. Blessed are the poor is an oxymoron. Rich are you who are poor, Jesus seems to say.

And the word “woe” means “alas!” or “too bad.” It is not a word of condemnation. It is a word of grief. A word of sympathy. If anything, Jesus’ proclamation about the rich is one of pity and compassion. I’m sorry; too bad for you who are rich.

The same extremes are found in the other blessings and woes that Luke lists. To weep means to wail in intense sorrow. To laugh means to be full of joy. To hunger is to look on a table piled high with food and know that none is for you. To be filled is to be free to take your pick of that feast.

Jesus speaks to a crowd that knows that the Bible tells them—as it tells us—to care for the poor and hungry. The mandate of this care comes from our common humanity as identically children of God. The stories of the Bible emphasize that we are created beings, and also that we are freed beings. All the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt, not just the leaders and those with connections in high places.

But that common bond erodes pretty quickly. Jesus speaks to the crowd—who are mostly poor people. They hear him say what is way too obvious to them. The poor see the rich, because they had better see them: the rich have power over the lives of the poor. But the rich do not see the poor. The poor are by and large invisible, hidden by the wish of the rich not to see them. Which is what Jesus means when he says “they exclude you.”

If there are two kinds of people in the world, they are not granted equal weight in the world’s balance. When this happens, it is an injustice. That’s what the word “injustice” means in the Bible. A glitch in the plan, a distortion in God’s hopes and intent for the world, caused by the sin of people in their greed and fear. Injustice in the world is a sign that the idols are prevailing over God.

It certainly is true that there are rich and poor, hungry and well-fed. That may be the way it is. There may even be reasonable-sounding explanations for it. But both those who are poor and those who are rich know one thing: it is not just. It is not right. It is not just for some to sit by the side starving while other are more than satisfied. That may be the way it is, but Jesus reminds the crowd—and us—that it is not God’s way.

The prophets remind us that the community of God is a just community. Not a world in which the satisfied take a little better care of the hungry. Not a world in which the privileged give a little bit more to the needy. But a world that works in a different way, works in such a way that there is no poverty, no hunger, no oppression, no violence.

Jesus’ teaching here to the crowd is both a vision and an announcement that that’s how it is in God’s world. This is not a passage to elevate the ambitions of some and castigate others, though it does serve notice that in Jesus things will change. He is not saying there are two kinds of people in this world. This is not a call for the rich to be nicer and for the poor to hold on a little tighter to hope. It is a call for all people to welcome God’s kingdom. In the world of sin, only the rich and powerful get abundance. In the God’s kingdom, all do.

The beatitudes, as this list of blessings is called, comes in Luke right after a scene of healing. Jesus, it says, healed those who were troubled with unclean demons. We are all of us, poor and rich, hungry and full, sorrowful and jubilant, troubled by unclean spirits. The injustice of the world wears us away, makes us tired and crazy. We follow Jesus in the expectation that he will cure the world of the unclean demons of injustice.

The joke goes that there are three kinds of people. Those who are good at math and those who are not. I wonder about that virtual third person. A being who is like a spirit. This imaginary prophet who is unable to see the world divided into two halves. But who sees that in the eyes of God, in the just world, there is only one kind of people.

Lord of the Dance

Text: Luke 5:1-11 February 4, 2007

“They left everything.” That’s what Luke says. In the Gospel of Mark, from which Luke borrows freely, it says “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” It amounts to the same thing. Immediate and total change of life in a single instant. Simon (we know him better as Peter, after Jesus renames him)—Peter and James and John leave behind all that they had and all that they had thought they hoped for. In a single moment, and everything at once.

How are we to take this selection from Luke? Some see it as just an interesting story about how Jesus recruited his first disciples. Not everything in the Bible means something other than what it seems. We learn that they were common folk, not fancy or rich. We meet Peter, who is so impulsive throughout the Gospels. We learn that Jesus intended from the start to conduct his ministry in a team, rather than as a sole practitioner.

And some see it as an allegory, where one thing stands for something else. The disciples stand for us. Or the sea stands for the world and the fish stand for us. Or the fish stand for potential Christian converts. Or, as one scholar wrote, the net stands for us, though I’m not sure I understand that one.

But I see this passage more as a parable, a parable told in the actions of Jesus rather than in his words. As in a parable, unlikely things happen. Jesus, a carpenter, instructs Simon, a fisher, how to fish. They go out in the day, when the fish normally avoid the nets. The results are surprising and outlandish. And, like all parables, this one is less about us and more about the way God behaves.

In this story in Luke, it is as if Jesus and Simon Peter dance with each other. They are partners in one event, the calling of disciples for the ongoing ministry of Jesus. But Jesus is not the choreographer and Peter the dancer. Nor is Jesus the recruiter and Peter the job applicant. Nor is, yet, Jesus the leader and Peter the follower. That hasn’t happened yet, but it is happening right in front of our eyes.

If on the one hand we watch just Jesus dance, we see him make a suggestion about getting in the boat and trying to fish some more. We see him, somehow, provide an abundant catch of fish, too many for the nets to hold. Really, fish without end. And more than Peter by himself can handle. And we see Jesus forgive Peter, or at least we infer that he does so. And finally, we see Jesus tell Peter and his buddies: first, that they do not have to be afraid and second, that their lives have just been transformed.

If on the other hand we watch just Peter dance, we see him complain to Jesus about going out in the boat again. After all, it is daytime, and no one catches fish in the daytime. But in spite of that, we see Peter do what Jesus says. Some say this is a sign of Peter’s obedience, but that’s not quite the right word. Peter is enthusiastic. Peter is ready to try anything, no matter how crazy and weird it seems. He, the fisherman, is fishable. Then we see Peter catch a lot of fish, calling his partners for help. They do help, after which Peter falls to his knees, begs forgiveness, and tells Jesus to get out of town (the words mean “leave the neighborhood”). And finally, Peter leaves everything and follows Jesus.

To tell the story this way makes no sense. It is silly. It makes no sense because the point of the story is the give and take between Jesus and Peter. This give and take are not part of every Gospel story. The same story in Mark goes like this: Jesus said, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they did. That’s it. That’s the whole episode in Mark. But not in Luke.

In improvisational theater, I’m told, there is a paradigm called “offer and accept.” One of the actors creates an opening, an opportunity. “Wait, look out there. I think that’s my daughter in the car,” the actor might say. That’s the offer. One of the other actors then, if all goes right, steps into the opening and furthers the action. “Sure is, and it looks like she’s got an elephant in the back seat.” That’s an accept. If the second actor had just said “Yep, that’s your daughter,” that would not be an accept. That would stop the action, putting the responsibility back on the first actor.

It is like a dance, each person alternately offering and accepting, creating futures and walking into them. One dancer leads by creating a space into which the other moves.

The dance between Jesus and Peter in this story is a series of offers and accepts. Jesus proposes a boat ride, Peter accepts. Jesus suggests some more fishing. Peter complains at first, then agrees. Peter catches too many fish. Peter begs forgiveness. Jesus forgives him. Jesus tells Peter he has a new job. Peter leaves everything behind and follows Jesus. Ballroom dancing. Step step, side, together. It is the pattern of the life Jesus shares with Peter.

And more often than not, it is the pattern that Jesus shares with us.

It would be easier, for those of us who would like to know God and follow Jesus, if Jesus would just capture us—the word in the Gospel for catch people really means to snag—if Jesus would just snag us as he did Paul on the road to Damascus.

But not many of us feel called so strongly and so suddenly by Jesus that we leave all we have and follow him. Our lives do not usually conform to Mark’s story—Come follow me. Ok, will do, Jesus. Maybe that is the way it works for some. For most others, we meet Jesus in a kind of dance like the one performed by Peter and Jesus. Jesus suggests something. We try it, or we don’t. Something happens. Or doesn’t. We complain, and then like Peter we do what Jesus tells us anyway. We take a step. Jesus takes a step. We step back, Jesus steps forward. Jesus proposes something wild. Too fancy a step for us, we demure. For the time being, anyway.

And for some, we’re in the dance hall standing around watching the others dance, thinking maybe we’ll try it out sometime. But not now. It looks fun, but embarrassing.

Dance is a way of communication. And also an exercise in solidarity, patience, trust, and joy. And it is also a means of seduction. It seems that we are less often commanded to follow Jesus than we are seduced to follow him. Divine seduction is a kind of grace.

They left everything, says Luke. In a instant, says Mark. It appeals to us, this sudden break with the past. It is sentimental, in a James Dean sort of way. Rebellious and outrageous. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus shocks his listeners by asking them to put him, to put God, before other things they hold dear. If we are to follow Jesus, he says, there can be nothing that we are not willing to set aside.

Yet for most of us, we hesitate, thinking about the people were leaving behind—what about poor Zebedee, the father of James and John, who in Mark is left to run the fishing business by himself? Thinking about our families, our jobs, our aspirations and plans, our obligations to others. It is a constant awkward negotiation.

It would be wonderful to be swept off our feet by God. But more often we are gently guided, like a dance partner, learning to trust God and to feel trustworthy ourselves. In calling Peter and James and John, Jesus never says “follow me.” He just steps out onto the floor, puts out his arms. “Do not be afraid,” he says. Just dance.