Transformed Thomas

Text: John 20:19-31 Easter: April 15, 2007

Preacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg

It seems to me that Thomas has gotten pretty rough treatment through history. This passage in John has forever gotten him labeled as a man crazy about empirical proof, a man of shallow faith. His name has even come down through history as almost a caricature—Doubting Thomas—a name to describe the unimaginative one, the naysayer, the one who stubbornly sticks to only those things he can hold or touch, unable to make that “leap of faith.” But I’m not so sure that’s who Thomas really is. I think he’s actually a much richer character. And in fact, he has as much to teach us about believing as fearing, loving as mistrusting.

To begin with, Thomas is not the only one in the story who is having trouble completely buying what is happening. Pastor Tim described last week the other disciples’ reaction to the women’s discovery of the empty tomb. Are they overjoyed to hear the news? No, Luke says they dismiss the women’s story as an “idle tale.” Mark goes so far as to say even those at the tomb are so full of “terror and amazement” that “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And you have to admit, it’s a pretty logical response—resurrection is not something we’re accustomed to dealing with. Only days before the disciples have seen Jesus die, even helped lay him in the tomb, and now they’re not only hearing he’s alive, they’re actually seeing it. Basically, I think the disciples are not quite sure what to do, and it’s frightening.

It’s ironic actually; in the midst of Easter, the season of our greatest hope, of renewal, of life bursting forward, we find the disciples in this passage scared and alone. They are huddled together in the Upper Room, fearful to so much as open a window, let alone believe that any Good News that is filtering through to them.

While I think Thomas joins the disciples in their understandable fear, I also wonder if there isn’t another reason for his hesitancy to believe. I think Thomas is not only unsure of what is happening, he is also nervous to trust, to give hope a chance. I suspect we’ve all experienced something like that in our lives. Something we’ve wanted so badly that when it happens, it is too frightening to believe. Or maybe, like the disciples, we’ve lost something we care deeply about and when it returns we aren’t quite able to admit it’s real. Worst of all, is that we might be tempted to shut ourselves off completely, too scared to let ourselves be vulnerable out of fear that we’ll be hurt again.

I remember when I was younger we once had a bedraggled little puppy wander onto our farm. Now if that little guy wasn’t the most unfriendly little thing—it wouldn’t let you hold it or even get too close, but preferred to just stare back with a wary eye from a safe distance. Each day my brother and I would lay out a pan of kitchen scraps and try to entice him closer, but the pup wouldn’t even look twice at it. In the morning, though, the plate would be licked clean. It took weeks for that puppy to learn to trust us, but ever so slowly he did, until eventually he grew to become our loyal dog, Nicky, sweet and affectionate.

Loving someone means being vulnerable and that’s frightening. It’s tempting to want to protect ourselves against that. I’m sure Shadow had had a tough puppy-hood and wasn’t about to let some fickle owners hurt him again. I think of how easy it can be to never take that step to love again, to never make yourself vulnerable. With that in mind, I try to imagine how Jesus’ disciples have just been feeling—their greatest hope, their hero and teacher, their MESSIAH, has been KILLED. This man in whom they had so many hopes, so much trust, is suddenly gone. They must feel abandoned, lost, and frightened. Reaching out to Jesus means opening up to be vulnerable again.

In that sense, Thomas models a powerful transformation. In the face of great pain, having just lost the leader he loves, he at first hesitates, chooses to doubt. But then, he reconsiders, he squares his shoulders and makes himself vulnerable by trusting again. With this act he embodies, OUR part, as follower’s, of the Easter story. Jesus has lived into his part the Easter promise, and now he waits for us to live into our response. Just as Jesus is resurrected from death into new life, Thomas is resurrected from disbelief into new hope. For what is the resurrection if it is not responded to, if it is not believed, accepted, rejoiced? But this takes trust, it means living into the vulnerability to love again. In this pivotal moment, Thomas reaches out to love his Lord in a new way, as a Christ who is both present and yet not of this world. What a powerful thing that is, to make that decision to believe. It is only appropriate then that Thomas’ cry is one of truest and rawest proclamations in all the Bible “My Lord and my God!”

And this cry moves us to the third resurrection of the story. It is the rebirth of a new kind of church. Up until this point the “church,” or what will become the church, has essentially been a group of people who are in constant contact with their charismatic leader, Jesus. They hear him preach, they witness miracles, they are cured or know people who are cured. They are able to see Jesus, touch him, hear him—just as Thomas wishes to do. Jesus realizes, though, that this is all about to change. He will soon leave them and they will have to go on alone, building a church based on his teachings and on faith, but without his physical presence. From now on, they will have to speak of their experience of Jesus to a people who never met him. And in a matter of 50 years, even those who had met Jesus in person also will be gone. The church is about to become those Jesus speaks of, who “have not seen and yet have come to believe”.

Thomas models just how difficult that transition is going to be, and Jesus realizes it. It is not easy to believe without physical proof. How daunting for this fledging church to reach out to people who will have to believe without seeing. Even worse, Jesus knows he’s going to be depending on these disciples, the very ones who themselves have trouble believing without seeing. How can they expect others make this decision when they can hardly decide for themselves?

But Jesus doesn’t make them do it alone. He doesn’t berate Thomas for his disbelief, but he meets him where he’s at. Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples stranded but gives them the tools with which to do it. He breathes on them... He strengthens them with his spirit. He gives them the mandate and the confidence to speak his message for him—to forgive sins, to preach the good news. Although Jesus command for them is challenging, he does not abandon them.

And that is the church that we’ve inherited. A church that follows a God that challenges, but also gives the tools to overcome those challenges. A church based on a promise but not physical proof. Unlike Thomas, we don’t ever get to see the incarnate Christ. When we gather together as a Christian body, as we do today, we hold little hope that Jesus will walk in in physical form to speak and counsel and heal. But even if we don’t see him in “in the flesh,” we still see Jesus in the world, don’t we? And I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the Thomas story. I mean, did you ever stop to wonder why Thomas asks to touch Jesus wounds? Why not ask to shake his hand or maybe to embrace him? Perhaps it is because it is through these very wounds that Thomas feels the closest to Jesus. Just as Thomas is suffering, so is his Lord, and perhaps this is where Thomas feels the greatest empathy, the greatest sense of connection. And is it not the same for us today? That sometimes the most profound way that we’re able to reach out to God is through the wounds of the world? When we reach out in love to others, when we respond to those in need, stand with those who are lonely or forgotten, are we not also reaching out to God ourselves? When we dare to speak out against injustice or take up the voice of the unheard, is that not our own cry to God? When I consider my own life, it is at these times of reaching out that I most strongly feel in harmony with what Jesus calls us to do. It is at these times that I most clearly feel the presence of God.

Just as in this passage Thomas is resurrected through the wounds of Christ from disbelief to hope and love, so too are we. In the face of all the pain and hurt and abandonment—Christ’s wounds in this world—we are called not to retreat, not to huddle in our Upper Room. Instead we are called to know those wounds; to not be afraid to touch them, to feel them. We are called to feel the breath of Christ and be strengthened. To reach out towards our broken world and see in it what Thomas sees, “my Lord and my God.”

Gravy

Text: Luke 24:1-11 Easter, April 8, 2007

What do you supposed the other ten did that night? The ten out of eleven who dismissed the news of excited Mary Magdalene and Joanna and the Mary the mother of James, and some other women, too. The ten who were not Peter. Because Peter being Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself.

But the other ten thought that Mary and Joanna and Mary were telling an idle tale. An idle tale: It is hard to know exactly what that word means since it appears only here in all the new testament. It probably means they thought the story was made up, a yarn. A little hokum. Hogwash, if they were not so polite. Perhaps you know what it is like to feel the presence—a physical presence near you—of someone you love who has died. Perhaps the other ten thought that that was what happened to Mary and Joanna and the other Mary and their friends. A kind of extreme wish fulfillment that they, the other ten, were somehow immune to.

They all must have been disappointed to say the least when Jesus was executed on the cross. Where was God in all this? Some people in the crowd wanted to know why Jesus had not saved himself. And in another Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself calls on God: why have you forsaken me? Had God abandoned Jesus?

So no one expected what they found. What they found was nothing, which was not what you’d expect to find in a grave. The men there (not described as angels, but maybe they were) berate Mary and Joanna and Mary, asking them why they seek the living among the dead. But the men are not being fair, for the women did not come to seek the living. They had come to care for the body of the dead. They had seen the dead body of Jesus in the tomb, just two verses before. They had come to complete the story of the life of Jesus.

But evidently—that is, the evidence showed—the story was not over. They found that perplexing, it says. I’m sure they did. More believable is, as it then says, they found it terrifying. When something impossible and world-changing happens, it is right to be terrified.

Maybe the other ten did not believe in impossible and world-changing things. At least at that moment—later on they must have changed their minds, since they later risked their lives to preach the story of the risen Christ. But at the moment they were in denial. What they denied was the power of God to alter the forces of the universe, to be grand about it. As we should be today, on Easter Sunday.

Mary and Joanna and Mary, it says, told “this to the apostles.” What exactly did they say? Did they talk about the men in dazzling white, the empty tomb? Or did they talk about their own fear and confusion. Did they mention that they were advised to recall Jesus’ own earlier words about how he would rise? Did they mention that they remembered those words? And did they say whether that memory help them understand what had just happened?

The other ten did not believe a word of it. But we don’t know what anyone at this moment believed. Belief is not the issue of this passage. The women might or might not have believed what the dazzling men told them. Peter, who only sees an empty tomb is simply amazed. So he goes home, presumably to think about it a bit.

What is it that God can do? Can the world be changed by God? Is that what the other ten are thinking?

Isaiah features so strongly during Holy Week and Easter because the prophet writes so strongly about the change from despair to joy. Which is at the heart of Easter. About the stingy past and the abundant future. About hopelessness and hope renewed. There is no question in the prophet’s mind that God can change the world, that God in fact is the source of change for the good. “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” God says in Isaiah. What could be more radical than that? New everything.

In the past there has been sorrow and struggle. And mostly, at least in this passage we just heard, mostly futility. The seeds we have planted—our projects, our ideas, our imagined future—have not yielded the fruit we hoped for. Others have received the benefit of our labor, of our ideas, of our energy. Others have reaped what we have sown. The houses we have built—our security, our safety, our comfort, our provisions, our establishments—have been inhabited by others, denied to us. What we have done has not worked out. Children, our hopes, die from illnesses or hunger or abuse or inattention. And the old do not live out their allotted lives.

Isaiah writes of the time of the Babylonian exile. Yet, now, the exiles return home. The former things shall not be remembered, God says. Not to forget them, but to let them go, to look forward. “Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating,” God says. A new world is coming, where “one who dies at a hundred will be considered a youth,” when men and women will not labor in vain. When instead of futility, there will be satisfaction. When instead of scarcity, there will be abundance.

A friend was badly burned at his high-school graduation party (he was trying to re-start a fire by throwing gasoline on it). No one thought he would live. His mom later said he looked like a piece of charcoal. Imagine a mother seeing that. Yet he recovered, and lived, and just now is thinking about retirement, having raised a family and started a business or two. My friend says about this experience that the whole of his life after that stupid party is gravy. Gravy, meaning extra, undeserved. We might say: gravy, meaning grace.

So much of what we do is based on fear of one thing or another. And what those things or the other things boil down to in the end is fear of death. All our deepest anxieties, and a lot of our trivial ones, are anchored in the fear of death. If the knot that ties us to death is cut, then we are free to wander where we will.

This tiny and crucial episode in the Gospel of Luke ends in uncertainty. In the moment of the discovery that Jesus is no longer dead in the tomb, there is no conclusion. The story sits on the cusp. Things could go either way. Mary and Joanna and the other Mary and Peter could all go home and ponder things forever and dither about, and the other ten could sit around and mourn and talk about the good old days. But that’s not what happens.

What does happen is that they all change their lives, and tell people about Jesus and his life and crucifixion and resurrection, and they heal people, and they start communities, and they write books of the Bible, and they spread the story.

What does happen is that all realize that in the Resurrection of Jesus they have seen a glimpse of where God stands and how God works. The passage does not end with belief but with a way of seeing God and God’s power. Something impossible and world-changing can happen.

They see that God is willing to disrupt the laws of the universe to change things. God is willing to interfere in human affairs. And God, against the power of death, stands on the side of Isaiah and on the side of gravy.

Our Guy Jesus

Text: Luke 19:28-40 Other texts: Luke 22:14—23:56

It says in the instructions for today for pastors that “a long sermon might not be desirable.” I do, though, want to say a few words about why this Sunday has two names. But I’ll keep it short. Actually, I’ve made the same promise over the past few years, and each sermon comes out about the normal length. But this time, I really mean it.

In the book of Luke, the Gospel we read this year, there are four major stories that unfold in the next seven days. We just heard two of them. The first is Jesus’ grand march into Jerusalem. A time of joy and high expectations. The second is Jesus’ trial and execution. A time of shock, injustice, violence, and death. It does seem crazy—it is a little crazy—that the church should try to force both of these huge events into one Sunday. It is disorienting.

The third of the four stories is what happens in Luke between the palms and the grave. We’ll talk about that in a second. And the fourth of the four stories is Jesus’ surprising rise from the dead and the discovery of his empty tomb. That one we hear on Easter, when we come into this place and say to one another: “He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

In the space of one week we cover material that takes up between a quarter to a half of the Gospels, and in that time we tell each other stories that are the central stories of Christianity.

If you come to church this Thursday and Friday, on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, you find the transition between Palm and Passion a little smoother than if you just hear it all today. But even so, it is hard to reconcile the triumph of the one story with the disappointment—to say the least—of the second story. When we hear these two stories back to back like this, it seems that they are unrelated except in chronology. How can the crucifixion of Jesus have anything at all to do with the earlier march into Jerusalem and the Hosannas? Jesus is great, our hero. Jesus is dead, hung as a criminal.

But the events are related. One does lead to the other. Between one and the other in the Gospel of Luke, in the interlude, so to speak, Jesus solidifies his reputation as an enemy of those in power. His march on Palm Sunday—we should really call it “cloak Sunday” since in Luke the people throw their cloaks, not branches—his march is a sign to the people of Jerusalem—the combination in its day of New York City and Washington, DC—a sign that is scary to those who govern and enforce standards of behavior. And after that, he drives the merchants out of the Temple, and he denounces the scribes (he says essentially: Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in tailor-made suits, and whose words move the financial markets, and get to have the best box seats at the Red Sox games, and eat at the fancy restaurants), and he predicts the destruction of the Temple, the seat of power.

Jesus made people angry. Some people. Jesus was not brought to trial because he was a lovable sort of person. He was brought to trial—and condemned—because he was a law-breaking rabble-rouser, and because he was good at rousing the rabble and therefore scary and threatening.

We are Christians. That means we follow Jesus Christ. Jesus is our guy. We consider what Jesus says and does when we think about the world, and our place in it, and what we should do from day to day and in the long run, and what kind of person we want to be, and what we hope will happen, and how the world could be better than it is. It is not easy having Jesus as our guy, because Jesus was a very brave person, not influenced by fear, and he almost always focused first on what would be good for people—people first—and hardly ever on systems and doctrines. Which got him into lots of trouble. And his disciples, too.

Because we are Christians, we think hard and often about how we stand with Jesus. That is, not what Jesus thinks about us (he thinks we are great; that’s not a problem), but about what Jesus means to us. How does he seem to us. At the moment, do we praise him, thank him, ignore him, deny him, what? (Disciples of Jesus have done all those things.) This question is especially prominent during today, this combined Palm and Passion Sunday, and during these seven days ahead. Where are we in the story? Are we the movers and shakers, or the law-makers, or the law-abiding citizens, or the indifferent crowd? Or are we the rabble, looking to Jesus? It’s the ancient, constant, present question of Holy Week: who is Jesus for us?

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.