Moments of Resistance

Text: John 12:20-31

They asked Jesus a question. Jesus answered them. But the answer seemed to have nothing to do with the question.

The question was: Can these Greek folks come and see you? The Greeks came to Philip. And Philip came to Andrew. And Andrew and Philip came to Jesus.

The answer was: The hour has come. But that was no answer at all. Jesus did not mean the hour had come to meet the Greeks. He did not mean: Sure, I’ll see them in an hour. Or: Bring them by, I can spare an hour. Jesus answered them—it says answered—Jesus answered them with a discussion about grain, and fruit, and hating and losing lives, and dying and glory and a question to himself.

These folks came to Jesus, it says. But Jesus answered them in a strange and unhelpful way. That’s because there are two stories here in the Gospel of John, and they smash into each other in today’s reading. There is the story in the beginning of John of the gathering of the disciples and Jesus’ traveling ministry. And there is the story at the end of John of the Passion, of Jesus’ travels to his execution on the cross. The two stories butt up one against the other right in this passage, in this verse, joined only by a conjunction. They came to see Jesus the miracle worker. But—that’s the conjunction—but Jesus’ mind was on what was to be, not what just had been.

The first part of the Gospel of John has been called by scholars the “book of signs.” The signs are the miracles that Jesus performs—like turning water into wine. There are seven of them altogether, and at the moment of today’s story, Jesus has just performed the last one: the raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead.

The second part of the Gospel of John has been called the “book of glory.” Jesus is to be glorified, meaning his nature and importance are to be revealed and honored. This part of John contains the story of Jesus’ trial, execution, and resurrection. It begins pretty much with this speech of Jesus.

We are looking at Jesus standing on a threshold of his life. A moment of transition. This is the hour, he says. Now, he says. Jesus stands as if in front of a portal, a gate to something new and maybe scary, like one of those shimmering things in sci-fi movies. He stands as we do in situations like this—times of certain change but uncertain futures. Hesitating, wondering. “Now, my soul is troubled,” he says. What should I say? “Father, save me from this hour?” He wonders, should he turn away, should he turn aside?

He tells a little story to us, but I hear him telling this story as much to himself as to his listeners. Unless a grain falls to the ground, he thinks, it is just a single seed, alone and unrealized. But if it falls, then from it becomes fruit. Abundance. Life. And other seeds that yield fruit of their own. “It is for this reason,” Jesus tells us, tells himself, “It is for this reason that I have come.”

It is not for himself that he lives. A single grain, a grain living by itself, the text says. This is the beginning of the church. This focus of this story is not on the death of the seed but on its productivity. About what can happen to the seed. Jesus must do what he is called to do. Which is to live in such a way that many others will follow his life and teachings so that the world may be changed. Even if as in his case it means his death. And we, who know how the story turns out, know that even though he hesitates here, in the end he does not turn away, but steps forward.

Our lives are full of these points of resistance. Invisible resisting barriers that we can feel as we confront the next step our lives will take. As we think about love, about work, about things we own, about where we will live. Shall I marry, shall I quit, shall I move? Shall I accept? Will things work out OK? Am I making a mistake? Am I doing what’s right, or am I being foolish, setting myself up for a fall? What shall I do?

It does not take much to make us cautious. To block us. Some years ago, before the chapel here was built, some folks from Faith conducted an experiment. They walked into the sanctuary—this space—as if they had never been here before. What they noticed were visual barriers: three sets of doors, a dark space under the balcony, a big beam across their field of view. Little things, but enough to become barriers. If you were wondering: shall I go inside to check out this church, you might hesitate. You might turn away. Just a little decision made just slightly more difficult. The experimenters could feel it. Feel the resistance.

Most of our decisions fall somewhere between whether we should enter a church and whether we should follow our destiny to change the world. But the points of resistance are there. You can feel them. Sometimes subtle, often not so subtle. Points of doubt and worry. They can make us depressed or anxious, wake us up at 5:00 in the morning, keep us from speaking to people, make us think too much.

We stand, unable to move for a moment, or for years. Perhaps it would be better, we think, to turn back, to find some earlier, familiar certainty. Or perhaps it would be better to turn aside, to pursue some other option that makes us feel a little less uneasy. Or: we could just go ahead and see what happens. We just don’t know. We don’t know what’s on the other side of that portal. It is scary.

“Whoever serves me must follow me,” Jesus said. There are no limits to this command. It is not conditional. It does not depend on favorable prospects or certain information. Followers of Jesus follow Jesus. That is true by definition, not by constraint.

But to follow Jesus does not mean to do exactly what Jesus did. But to do as Jesus did. To act in the face of fear and uncertainty. To step forward trusting in God’s good wishes for us. To reach out to others even if it does not benefit us. Even if it harms us. Jesus steps through that portal to the cross. When we follow Jesus, it does not mean we must be tried for blasphemy and executed by an oppressive regime. It does mean that even if that were the outcome, we would follow God’s call to us. This passage is not a call to suffer as Jesus suffered, but to be willing to.

Most of us will not suffer as Jesus did. Thank God for that. Not even close. But we will all stand before choices that fill us with doubt and fear before we make them. We will all feel God’s call, even though we might not name it that way. We will all feel our souls troubled. We will all feel that temptation to pray to be saved from that hour.

We do not have to pick the hardest thing. Somethings the easy thing is the best thing. We do not have to rush ahead. Sometimes the best thing is to stay where we are. There is no certainty that things will work out well. Sometimes they don’t.

But we don’t have to be so blocked by fear. Jesus by his teachings and example calls us to go places and do things we might never have dreamed of otherwise. To step forward not without fear, but in the face of fear. We can go with Jesus into the uncertain future.

Eternal Living

Text: John 3:14-21
Other texts: Numbers 21:4-9

Horrible food. And such small portions.

Why have you brought us out of the land of Egypt? complain the Israelites. Talk about ungrateful. They had been in Egypt because they had been slaves. Moses with God’s help freed them from slavery. Now, in the desert, the old days in Egypt perhaps don’t look so bad. They have turned their gaze to the past, to the familiar. The present is uncomfortable, and the future is uncertain. As they turn their eyes back, they see a past that was never there.

The Israelites are perishing. When you are perishing, you don’t know where to look. Every option looks the same. One as good as another. Or as bad.

Who knows what they were expecting? There was no itinerary. There was no ETA. No one knew for certain where they were going. They had fled a bad situation. When you are in deep trouble, it is hard to think about anything besides “let me out of here!” “Anything is better than this thing.” But that is not always true.

Far from home, wandering in the desert, confused and anxious. To top it all off, poisonous serpents—which we imagine to be snakes—appear among them and start biting them. And the people die from these bites. After all this disappointment, then comes despair.

Perishing is like that. It is a long, drawn out, process. Not quick and sharp, but slow and dull. One thing after another, until you cannot stand one more thing. And then one more thing happens, and it turns out you can stand it, just barely.

The word means to be destroyed and means to be lost. When we are perishing our lives feel lost and small. It is a kind of spiritual claustrophobia. A severe narrowing of what is possible. A feeling that there is no point in doing anything, hoping for anything. When we are perishing our world has become tiny, gray, and without purpose. A relentless downward slope. The power and beauty of the world dwindles and decays.

Some are perishing now. And others fear it in these scary times. Scary not only because of the economy but because of war and torture in the world, because of food and water shortages, because of greed, selfishness, and cowardice. I wonder whether our outrage—an overused and scary word in itself—is not a mask for our fear of everything falling apart. The world and maybe our own lives. Too many snakes this time for us to handle.

This is not how it is meant to be. Perishing, that is. Though it has been so for at least as long as we have history. We are not meant to be fed a life of thin broth. But instead a fat feast. The Lord will prepare a feast of rich food, Isaiah once said. We are created to have abundant life.

Which is another way to say eternal life. “Life of the age” is its literal translation. John the Gospel writer likes things that are opposite—dualisms as the scholars say. Light and dark, choice and destiny, now and forever, hidden and revealed. And perishing and eternal life. For God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus, so that we may not perish but have eternal life. Look, God says, you can have eternal life.

As perishing is not a synonym for death, so eternal life is not a synonym for everlasting life. Though death is a kind of perishing; though everlasting life is a corollary of eternal life. For John, eternal life is life without limits, even the limit of death, but not only that limit. Maybe it is better to say “eternal living.” Eternal life is living so abundantly that it is like the kind of living God does. Eternal life does not mean unending life but life lived in the unending presence of God. Abundant does not mean excessive or profligate, but what used to be called “good.” Good life. Not everyone wants to live forever (many do, for sure), but I bet that everyone wants to live abundantly, live a good life.

We like to talk about all this stuff in words. Lutherans especially do. Luther was a wordy kind of guy. Though I’m sure his thoughts began in his heart, what he gave us were tons and tons of words. Words about how God was, how God worked, what Jesus was, what salvation meant. Luther, for all his self-professed disdain for theology, for all his earthiness, was a theologian. He liked to figure things out. And after and as he figured things out, he really liked to tell everyone about it.

Theology is said to be “faith seeking understanding.” But it is important to see that this starts with faith. All too often, we act as if it were the opposite: that understanding figures out faith. Understanding can help, but sometimes theology leads us into weird dark alleys and an emphasis on the fine points. Or into battle.

When the Israelite are perishing in the desert, God asks very little of them. God doesn’t ask to be obeyed. God doesn’t reiterate all the things he said to them before. God doesn’t yell at them for being ungrateful jerks. God doesn’t ask them to figure things out. God doesn’t ask them to believe, or to believe in anything in particular. God doesn’t ask them to trust in God. God doesn’t ask them to be religious, to be theologians, to do or say anything special. God doesn’t ask them to repent, or promise, or work hard. All God asks is that they look.

John tells us: Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. The word condemn here means to separate (as a judge might separate who is right and wrong). The word saved means to heal. God did not send Jesus to break things apart but rather to mend them. To fix the wounds, and relieve the pain. To put an end to perishing.

When you are perishing, you don’t know where to look. Every option looks the same. What God asks for is that the Israelites redirect their gaze. That they turn away from their longing for the good old days in Egypt and instead look at what God has given. What changes for the Israelites is their point of view. They attend to what is God’s. They become mindful of God.

When we say we believe in Jesus, another way to say that, one way to think about that, is that we are mindful of him. That it is not a question of thinking things through and coming to a smart conclusion, but to attending to Jesus. It is as much how we look<,> as it is how we see things. As much who we look at<,> as it is what we see.

Just as Moses held up the snakes, John says, just in this way God held up Jesus. God loves the world. The snakes still bit the Israelites, and the snakes bite us. But their power is gone. We can turn our gaze, our minds, to God in Christ. We are not meant to perish. We have eternal life.

Effective Expedient Expert Idols

Text: John 2:13–22
Other texts: Exodus 20:1–17

Lutherans have a lot to say about the Law. When Lutherans speak of the the Law, the Law of the Bible, the Old Testament Law of the Torah, not the books in the statehouse, it is always with a capital “L.” Few other Christian denominations make such a big deal of the Law. Some Christians see the Law as at best an outmoded irrelevance to them. Something not applicable to the New Testament and Christianity. Some see it as at worst a toxic burden. Something that Christians should reject as legalistic and condemning.

But that is not how Luther—who learned Hebrew so he could translate the Old Testament—it is not how Luther saw it. And it certainly not how Jesus saw it, who said he came not to dissolve the law but to complete it, to fill it out.

The Law was and is a gift. The psalm we just sang together is a song of celebration and thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for the law. Not only the whole Torah, which means teaching, but the Halakah, the particular 613 statutes that include the ten commandments. So we sang, “the teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul.” And we sang, “the statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart.” These are verses that describe a valuable and welcome privilege and gift.

The law is guidance. God gave the laws so people would not be confused and uncertain. The word for the statutes, Halakah, means a path that one walks. It is easier to walk a path than to bushwhack. Easier to travel on a road than cross-country. Easier to follow the road signs—or the GPS—than to figure out the directions at each turn. The law is a way, instructions for the good life. They come from God. They are the words of God, which is a better translation than “commandments.”

So we sang, “More desired are they than gold … sweeter far than honey.” This is how Jesus would have known the law.

The foundation of the law, expressed in the little preface to the Ten Commandments—the ten words—is freedom. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the one who freed you from slavery. This is not a statement that establishes God’s authority. Not: “I am God your creator and I am a lot bigger than you, so obey.” Instead it establishes God’s compassion and trustworthiness. “I am the God who remembered you, sought you out, guided you, cared for you, freed you” What is behind these words is a God whom we know from experience we can trust and follow. We are easily distracted, tempted, and trapped. God who freed the Israelites from slavery is a God who frees us from traps.

We just heard this story in John of Jesus acting pretty violently. Throwing stuff all about, yelling (I’m sure) at the people there, whipping them or at least their stuff, dumping all that money on the ground. “Get out of here,” he says. “This is not a marketplace, not a shopping center.” Maybe we are shocked at gentle Jesus acting so belligerently. Or maybe we are thrilled. “Go Jesus, get rid of those sleaze-oids who are shilling in the church.”

But the people who were there would not have been shocked or thrilled. They would have been mystified. For the merchants were in the Temple as a convenience for the worshippers.

People had come from all over to Jerusalem for Passover. They would have been expected to make an offering of a lamb or a dove. But it would have been difficult to carry such animals on their journey to the city, so the travelers would buy the animals from the Temple merchants. They would have wanted to pay Temple taxes, so they would change their Greek or Roman money with the money changers. It was an efficient way to run the system.

The first of the Ten Commandments is this: you shall not make yourself any idol. Idols are traps. Idols are things, ideas, habits, values, or points of view that entrap us. We grant idols power over us. Idols then guide us. Money is a commonly cited example of an idol. Sometimes we do things because we want money or because we fear losing money; then we have let money control our behavior. Sometimes the desire for money or the fear of losing it makes us do things that betray our natures as children of God. Then we might say we are worshipping an idol.

There was nothing really wrong with the merchants conducting business in the Temple. It was practical. It was efficient. It was effective. It was convenient. It made good use of the merchants’ skills. It was all those things. It just had no place in God’s holy house.

We share with the Temple leaders a love for effectiveness, expediency, and expertise. But we have to be careful that we do not let these become idols that trap us and lead us astray. We do things that are effective because it gets things done. They accomplish the productive goal. We do things that are expedient because it gets things done with a minimum of fuss, bother, or conscience. They accomplish the goal conveniently. And we rely on expertise because it gets things done more quickly, elegantly, and correctly. It is efficient and prudent.

There is no problem with all this. Theoretically. But the things we do in the name of effectiveness, expediency, and expertise are not always the best things for the people involved or affected. Sometime it hurts them. Sometimes us, too. Sometimes it is better for people to be allowed to be a little sloppy, inconvenient, and amateurish.

Our love for God and neighbor overrules our love for accomplishment. Better to do something in a half-baked way than to harm others. Better to take longer than necessary. Better to do things more poorly. Compassion for others might move us to settle for less than the best, the fastest, or the most economical. It might move us to work less frantically. It might help us tolerate a little disorganization and uncertainty. It might let us lower our standards. To settle for good enough. To give others and ourselves a break.

The world needs some slack. Slack is the sabbath of everyday life. (Sabbath being the third or fourth commandment, depending on how you count). Even in these scary economic times, we need to put aside time for nothing useful. Slack is the enabler of forgiveness, at the center of Christian theology and life, to allow harm done without retribution or revenge. To not tie up all loose ends. Slack is grace.

The Temple, the church, is a sanctuary. It is an institution set aside by the culture. We come here for lots of reasons. But one reason is to be freed from idols. And to learn to escape from their traps. That does not mean that the world’s presence is not felt. We do talk about building projects and fund-raising and lending a hand with chores and accomplishments. But in the physical and spiritual space of the church—and, we hope, in our lives day to day—God comes first. And neighbor comes first. Everything else comes second.

The passionate actions of Jesus in the Temple need not shock us or thrill us. They can comfort us. Jesus comes to the Temple mindful of the first commandment and freedom on which it is based. Jesus’ job is not to make things work smoothly. Jesus defends us from compelling and sneaky idols. Jesus, the way, frees us.

Good Deal

Text: Genesis 9:8-17

As I said before the service, there is going to be a quiz about the first reading, the one about Noah. So, here are the questions.

Question 1. This passage describes a promise. What is the promise?

Question 2: In this passage God says “I have set my rainbow in the clouds.” What is the purpose of the rainbow?

Question 3: To whom is the promise made?

There is a fourth question, but that one will come up in a few minutes.

For the “religions of the book”—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the relationship between God and people is based on a deal. The formal word for this deal is “covenant,” which means “agreement.” When the Bible was translated into Latin, the word used became “testament.” Testament unfortunately also means statement, as in someone’s last will and testament. But what they were getting at was not God’s will but the deal that God and people made.

The fact that we relate to God through an agreement is remarkable. Our relationship is more than just creator and creature. More than “I’m God and you’re not.” It is as if we have a contract with God. A contract implies equal respect, even in the face of unequal power or even unequal benefit. It also implies that God and we have a common purpose, a common endeavor that we agree to work on together. We are partners with God through mutual agreement. The endeavor we have agreed to work on is the good of the world, the nourishment and maintenance of all creation, and way of being or you could say a way of living that lets us walk humbly together, humans and God. We walk as two lovers walk, side by side and in harmony, step matching step. At least, that’s what we hope for in the deal.

God made three main covenants with Israel. Each is known by the name of a person, a leader. The first is the one we read about today. The covenant of Noah. The second is of Abraham, to make a great and prosperous nation. The third is of Moses, the covenant at Mount Sinai where the commandments and the other laws were given. For Christians, there is a fourth covenant, the new covenant as we say in Holy Communion or new testament as we call Christian scripture, the covenant of Jesus and God’s promise of graceful forgiveness. None of these covenants supersedes the previous ones. They are all part of and add to the relationship that God and people share.

The story of Noah and the ark is one of the first stories in the Bible. It comes immediately after the exile of Adam and Eve from the garden and the slaying of their son Abel by his older brother Cain. There is a sort of “time passes” chapter that lists the generations from Adam to Noah, Then the story of Noah begins.

You might remember the story of Noah’s Ark as a sweet tale of animals coming two by two into a great ship that Noah built. But they go into that ship because God is about to flood the whole earth and destroy almost all life on land.

It is a difficult time in the life of God and people. God has had a kind of buyer’s remorse. It turns out that the first people were wicked, and God, the Bible says, regrets the decision to create humans. So it rains for a long time, the earth floods, and the only creatures and humans that survive are the ones on the ark.

Out of this story comes the first covenant between God and humanity. Out of this story of destruction, willfulness, obedience, and salvation, comes the first deal. The terms of the deal are clear.

It is specific. Never again will all creatures be cut off by the waters of a flood and never again will there be a flood that destroys all of life. God promises no more flooding here. This is not about general affection or about preserving life in general. What just happened? says God: it won’t happen again.

It is timeless. This is an everlasting covenant, says God. It is permanent. For me and you, for all generations, says God. The waters will never again become such a flood.

It is inclusive. This deal has collateral beneficiaries. It covers all animals as well as people. Every living creature of all flesh, God says. Every animal of the earth. The agreement is with people, but the whole earth is blessed.

And finally, it is one-sided. I’ve been calling this a deal, or an agreement. But it is more like a promise that God makes and that we attend to. As for me, says God, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendant. This is God’s work. And God takes on the task of maintaining and keeping the promise. God puts a rainbow in the sky. The rainbow is a reminder. But it is not a reminder to us. It is a reminder to God. When the rainbow is seen in the clouds, God says, I will remember this deal. The remembering is not ours but God’s.

Here is the fourth question of the quiz: In this agreement between God and the world, God agrees not to flood the earth again. In this agreement, what do we people agree to do?

Right: Nothing. This is a unilateral unconditional promise given to the world through the God’s arbitrary love, which we call grace.

This is perhaps a particularly Lutheran understanding of the story of Noah. Where others might pay more attention to the wrath of God which drowned the world in the first place, Lutherans tend to see the love of God which saved it. When others might see the wickedness which brought the flood down on them as they deserved, Lutherans tend to see the nothing that people did to deserve God’s everlasting promise of life.

This is a pretty counter-cultural notion. There must be something we can do to annoy God, you might think. I’m sure there is. I’m sure we annoy, anger, and sadden God all the time. But there is nothing we can do that will make God renege on promises made. Nothing we can do that will make God abandon us. God wishes blessings for us, God’s people and God’s children.

We are now in Lent. This season is traditionally a time of reflection and repentance. But that does not mean it is a time for us to beat up on ourselves. We do enough of that without having to create a special season for it. We do not need special coaching to see ourselves as coming up short from time to time.

Lent is a time for reflection but it is not a time to blame ourselves or others. It is not a time to find, lay, or take blame. It is a time to look at what we have been and done. But not to look with hateful or guilt-filled eyes. And though it is a time for repentance, it is not a time for shame. It is a time to consider the direction in which we are going and to consider how we might go from now on. Lent is a time of grace, not a time of wrath.

It is a time for forgiveness, forgiving others and ourselves. For sins we have done and sins that others have done against us. But we do not need to pay penance. We are given forgiveness freely. It is not necessary for us to pay for that gift. We do not need to demand penance, either. It is not our place to demand that others pay us.

It is fitting that the story of Noah appears at the beginning of humanity’s relationship with God and at the beginning of this season. It is a story of God’s intense desire to extract good from the bad. And of God’s ongoing practice of renewal and rebirth. It is a story of blessing. In this season of Lent, look back with forgiveness, look forward with confident anticipation, and be thankful.

Down to Earth

Text: Mark 9:2-9

On the cover of the bulletin you’ll see Raphael’s interpretation of the Transfiguration, the formal name for the story we just heard in the Gospel reading. This image was painted around the same time that Martin Luther was stirring up the Reformation. In real life the painting is about thirteen feet high by nine feet wide. I would guess it is a little more impressive at that size than the image on today’s bulletin.

Like many paintings of this story, this one depicts two worlds. At the top is the heavenly world, the mountain top of the story. There Jesus meets with the greatest prophets Moses and Elijah. They are all kind of floating in the air, and the disciples are just below them, terrified (in Mark’s version of the story) or asleep (in Luke’s version). Below them, in the dark, are the people of the earthly world, evidently in sin, sickness, and suffering. The split between the divine and the mundane is clear, and it is clear in whose realm Jesus belongs and is comfortable. That is one way to see this story.

The story of the Transfiguration sits in the church year between Epiphany and Lent. It is on the cusp of the two seasons. From the mountain top we look back on the stories of the ministry of Jesus. What he did, what he said, and especially the people he healed. His worldly work. And also we look forward to the story of the passion. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection at Easter. His heavenly work.

The story itself sits almost exactly in the middle of Mark. Right before it, Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus tells Peter that he, Jesus, will be executed. So in Mark, too, it sits on the cusp, with the ministry of Jesus on one side and the passion of Christ on the other.

In the story, Jesus invites a few disciples, Peter, James, and John, to come up with him on a high mountain. James and John are silent throughout the whole episode. Peter, as usual, has plenty to say. What he says is this: Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. It is good for us to be here. How is it good? Is it good for Peter and his buddies, or is it good for Jesus, or is it good for the world? Is it a good that benefits one of those groups? Or is the fact itself that we, the disciples and Jesus, are here that is good? I have an idea about this, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

The Transfiguration is a big deal. It is one of the church’s feast days. But it was not always so, and it did not become so until just before Luther’s time, in the 15th century. The events of the Transfiguration don’t really change our picture of Jesus.

Some say that the point of the feast is that it establishes a boundary. But if so, that boundary exists already in the events of the life of Jesus. And besides, I’m not so sure that we can turn the person of Jesus into two different characters, one pre-Transfiguration and one post-.

And if the point of the feast is that Jesus is revealed to be at least closely connected—if not coincident—with God, then we already know that. Peter has just declared a few verses previously that Jesus is the Messiah. And if it is that now we know that Jesus is going to his death, we already know that, too. Jesus just told us so.

The story is powerfully dramatic. But though it seems to be about Jesus, it doesn’t add much to the disciples understanding of Jesus, nor to ours. So what is it doing here, and why does the church think this is important? Important enough to get its own day.

When you read this story, you think, at least I do: why did Jesus invite his disciples? Especially John and James, who just hang around and don’t say two words between them. But even why Peter? Jesus doesn’t need the disciples to be there. He does not teach them anything. He doesn’t even talk to them until the end, when he orders them to keep their mouths shut about all this. Which of course, they do not.

The story seems to be about Jesus, but I think it is more about the disciples, and especially about Peter. I think that Jesus brings these three important church leaders up to the mountain with him for their sake. Silent James and John and excited talkative Peter are not there just to observe and report. They are there to be changed. It is their metamorphosis that becomes the long-term result of the events on the mountain top.

Peter says, Lord it is good for us to be here. When he says “good,” he means a lot more than that things are just fine, or fortunate. He means, in the word he uses, that it is beautiful, excellent, precious, and fitting. That it fits into the scheme of creation and the universe. That it is good in the same way that God in Genesis saw things to be good when the world was created. Peter is saying something really important and crucial. World changing.

For Peter, this event with the prophets and the voice of God establishes his vocation—his calling—in a way that was, if not casual, then unconfirmed. He sees in a way that he did not see before that Jesus is from the people of Moses and Elijah, but even more: that he is like them. That he, Jesus will change the world. And that he, Peter, will be an important instrument of that change. It finally clicks. There is a conversion here in this story, and the person who is converted is Peter.

Our lives are full of moments of change. We are often on the cusp of something that was and something that is about to be. But it is rare that we see that until it is too late, so to speak. Turning points are hard to see until we realize that we’ve made the turn. It seems like all we are doing is making small decisions here or there. To confirm the path we are on for a while or to deny it. To stay the course or make a new one. And often as not, as with Peter, the path we take depends as much or more on what someone else does as on decisions we ourselves make. But occasionally, as with Peter, we do see that we are on the cusp, that it is an important moment, that something is happening right this minute in our lives, that the future is going to be amazing.

No matter which version of the Transfiguration you read, in each the followers of Jesus are surprised. That’s the way it is to follow Jesus. You go up the mountain with Jesus. Something happens. You come down the mountain. Everything is different.

The church—Christianity—celebrates this feast because it is an event in the life of the church more than it is an event in the life of Jesus. Down comes Jesus from the mountain. Down come John and James. Down comes Peter.

Down they come to the world of sin, sickness, and suffering. The world in the lower half of the painting. The place of Jesus is not after all to be in the clouds, floating above the sorry disciples. It is to be with the sorry disciples. It is clear in whose realm Jesus belongs. The ministry of Jesus does not shut down with the Transfiguration. It is conveyed to John and James and Peter, and it has been conveyed through the church to us here in this place and in this time. Where it is good for us to be.

Healing into a New Story

Text: Mark 1:40-45
Other texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14

No one emerges from an illness the same way he or she went in. Even when cured by a miracle of the spirit or by a miracle of medicine, illness changes us.

Naaman, commander of the army, had leprosy. A vaguely defined and incurable skin disease. After much drama, hurt pride, fortunate intervention, and God’s work through the prophet Elisha, Naaman was healed. He emerged from the river Jordan with skin as smooth and pure as a preadolescent’s. No sores, no scars. He was better than new. But that does not mean the experience of being ill had been undone. Could he escape the memory of the time he had leprosy? Could he forget the looks of disgust that people must have given him? Or perhaps the looks of admiration that he had become an army commander and friend of the king despite his illness. The events of his disease would remain a part of the story of his life.

What does it mean to be healed? It is tempting to think that healing means restoring things to the way they were before. Before we were injured, or before we got sick, or before we were hurt emotionally, or before we endured a major loss. In those times, we long for suffering to just go away, as if it were a bug that might fly off, leaving us unbothered and unchanged. But we are never unchanged by illness and loss.

First, we are creatures and can never be put together exactly the same way after we are broken. Second, we are creatures who move forward in time—we age—so that even if we could be reassembled, we can never return exactly to the person we once were. And third, we are creatures who remember things as we move forward in time, so that even if it were possible to undo an illness, we could not undo our experience of it. Naaman remembers himself having leprosy and having to humble himself. The beggar remembers himself being unclean, sick, and outcast, no matter what happens to him after his encounter with Jesus.

Nor does healing mean to be made perfect. As if that were possible, as if that had any meaning to creatures who are organic and complex. None of us were ever perfect. What would that mean? What would be the standard? Are we imperfect because we cannot fly? Are we imperfect because we are soft? Are we imperfect if one leg is a little shorter than the other? Are we imperfect if we are near-sighted? If we are not as smart as the next person? If we can’t run very fast? Beside all that, we are biological beings living in a biological environment. We will always be ill, more or less. Most of the time mostly less, thank God. But there is something wrong with every one of us. Partly, it doesn’t matter very much. And partly, we are used to it.

Nor does healing mean to be resigned to one’s fate. Illness and loss make us angry, disappointed, sometimes ashamed. There is not much we can do about our condition. But it is not helpful to simply suck it up, to live with anger, disappointment, and shame. Those are not good things to live with. Not good things to carry around in our heads and hearts and bodies. The beggar approaches Jesus because the beggar sees and hopes and expects that Jesus will change him.

There was once a young man named Matthew who was in a car accident when he was thirteen years old. In the accident his spine was broken. He lost control and feeling of everything below his diaphragm, including his legs. He later wrote about his experience. He said that most of the people looking after him—his mother, the doctors—wanted him to become a person with no legs. That is, they told him that he would never use his legs again and that he had to develop really strong arms and that it would be best if he somehow disassociated himself from his legs. They would be attached, of course, but not really part of his existence. He felt they wanted him to be a new person, newly born in a way, a person without working legs.

But Matthew was having no part of this. Over time, he learned that though he could not feel his legs or move them, they were clearly part of him. When he sat up, they were a counterbalance to his torso. They affected his movement, his grace and awkwardness. Not just like they did before his accident, but in a new way. His body was one body. The different parts working together, the same as everybody’s. Not the same way as everybody’s. How they worked together was different. That they worked together was the same. He wrote that when he realized this, which took years, he felt he was healed. He was healed not by becoming a new person. He was the same person as before. But he was the same person with a new story.

Illness and loss seem to be our enemies. They are outside of us, attacking our being, distorting our existence. But healing does not eradicate them. Healing brings them into our story. Healing changes the trauma into an event in our lives. Something that happened. Healing takes away the power of illness and injury. They no longer define us and control us. They are things that have happened, or are happening, to us, just like all the other more ordinary things. Healing makes them part of our story. The story we tell about ourselves. When I was thirteen, Matthew said in his story, I was in a car accident. When I got sick, we might say. When I and my spouse separated. When I lost my job. When my grandmother died. How I became weaker, slower, befuddled. We are not made into new people by such events. We are the same people. But we do have new stories.

The healing stories we’ve been hearing in Mark are stories of power. Who has the power over us. The beggar comes to Jesus. If you chose, you can make me clean, he says. You have the power, he says, to change my life.

Healing means we are freed from the power that our wounds have over us. We cannot eliminate them, ignore them, or resign ourselves to them. We can though deprive them of their power. They don’t have to be define us or be the boss of us.

The connection that Jesus makes so often between forgiveness and healing is a natural one. Sins against us control us until we forgive them. Sins we cannot forgive make us angry and resentful and do stupid things. When we forgive someone who sins against us, we don’t eliminate the sin, or forget about it, but we do weaken its power over us.

In the same way, when Jesus promises us eternal life, it frees us from the power of death. It does not eliminate death, but it weakens its power. When Jesus tells us not to be afraid but to trust in God, it does not eliminate fear, but it weakens its power.

We can place our illness, our loss, our shame at the center of our lives. We can think of ourselves as the person who is ill, the person that something bad happened to, or is happening to, the person who has been wounded. Or we can seek out another center. We can search, as Naaman did, for God’s prophet. We can call, as the beggar did, for Jesus. We can discover a new story for ourselves.

Jesus, if you choose, you can make me free.

To Be Right or To Be Good

Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Is it better to be right or to be good?

It is the question that Paul asks, in a round-about way, of the people of Corinth. And therefore asks us.

Perhaps you will say that to be right is to be good. When we act, we should act on what we know. (The Corinthians would agree). When we do, you might say, then it is likely that the outcome is best. To act in ignorance and to act against reasoned thinking is risky and foolish. Like the people of Corinth, we value knowledge. We as a culture spend a lot of energy getting, organizing, and preserving knowledge. We have knowledge workers. We weigh things one against the other and pick the best outcome, we hope, limited only by our knowledge. Practicality, expediency, and effectiveness are the children of knowledge. We judge behaviors and outcomes by them.

By this reasoning, it is OK to be good, but that is not the main point. Or to be more kind, goodness is a desirable outcome, but not always relevant. Goodness is a consideration. The CEO is a practical manager. The chief ethics officer is an annoyance.

What makes the words of Jesus, who was a visionary, and Paul, who was a lawyer, so amazing is that for both of them goodness is exactly the main point. Jesus is always getting into trouble because he breaks the law in favor of the immediate needs of people. The right thing to do is to obey the law. But when Jesus sees someone in trouble, he does the good thing whether or not it is the right thing. The sabbath is for people, not people for sabbath, he said, which pretty much sums it up. He heals people at the wrong time. He hangs around with the wrong people. He touches the wrong people. We do things, he seems to say, because they are good for people. Knowledge and all its children are a consideration. But they serve goodness. Even if when it is risky and foolish, it is better to be good than right.

Paul is unhappy with the Corinthians. He starts by telling them that they are in the right. You have knowledge, he admits. You have knowledge of Jesus and his teachings. You know what is right, what are the true facts about God and the world. But that knowledge is not causing you to do good.

When Paul speaks in this passage about what I’m calling goodness, he uses the word that is translated love. But for Paul and his listeners, that word does not describe a feeling, a sentiment. Love is not about feeling either romantically or affectionately drawn to another person. It means to act. Love works, love does things. Love works to serve others. That is what love does. It is a consequence of love and a definition of love.

But that is not what the folks at Corinth are doing. They are not acting in love. They are not making things easier or better for other people. They are making things harder. Not because that’s a good thing to do, but simply because they can. They are right, and they act as if that gives them special powers.

In fact, Paul agrees they have special powers. Our Bible calls this power liberty, or you could call it freedom, but it is translated elsewhere as authority or power. They have the freedom, or liberty, or permission, that comes with knowing that God favors them because of what Jesus did. This knowledge has puffed them up, Paul says. They have inflated egos. They are thinking a lot about themselves and not much about others.

Paul’s argument, which probably seems a little weird at first, goes like this: You and I know, says Paul to his readers, that there are no such things as idols. Idols have no power. They aren’t real. They are just made up things. There is no reason to revere them. You could spit on an idol (Paul doesn’t say that) and it wouldn’t matter, because an idol is just a manufactured item, like a shovel or a trash barrel. Paul and Paul’s compatriots know this. So if someone makes a sacrament of meat to an idol, it means nothing. It is not holy or special. It is just plain old meat. A lamb chop. Sirloin steak. So there is no reason not to eat it. Anyone with knowledge of Jesus knows this. Or should.

But let’s say that someone has a little left-over worry that maybe idols have a little divinity in them. That they are kind of holy. “Not really, you know, but, well, maybe a little. I mean, maybe.” So they think, I cannot eat this meat because it has been part of a sacrifice to a pagan god. And if they do, they feel bad—Paul says they feel defiled.

Evidently the folks to whom Paul writes have been eating this meat. Sort of flaunting it in front of others. Like when someone does something taboo because he or she doesn’t believe in the taboo, and therefore it has no power for them. You can just see them approaching the others, teasing them: Go ahead, have some of this great meat. Yum! This sure is good.

When you do this, Paul says to the Corinthians, it shows that you do not understand what Jesus was all about. You are hurting these people, making them seem foolish or sinful. And making you superior, just because you are right. It is right, but it is not good. Through your knowledge, Paul says, you are destroying your brothers and sisters. You are sinning against them, and, he says, sinning against Christ.

When we sit upon a platform of what is right and do things that harm others, we sit with the Corinthians. When we begin our discussions with words like “I know” or “it says” or “Luther said,” we are enlisting the force of knowledge. And when through that we hurt others, we are not loving them.

What Paul asks for in his letter is not a kind of sentimental fluffy embrace of all things, people, or behaviors. And he does not dismiss the power of knowledge. He agrees that knowledge of Jesus Christ is liberating and powerful. Nor does he dismiss the need to exhort people to think clearly and humbly. Paul is always doing that. He was stubborn and vocal about it. (Martin Luther was the same way; no wonder he liked Paul.) Paul’s letters, like this one, are often lists of correctives and criticisms of people doing things the wrong way.

But Paul does not lean on doctrine. Or maybe better to say that Paul finds doctrine to have a tough flexibility to conform to things new and unforeseen. And that doctrine must be based on love, the kind of love we are talking about. It must be able to accommodate real people and their real situations. And because Christian doctrine is based on Jesus, it is able to.

Right and good are not inevitably opposed. They are not the opposite end of some scale. Often they are coincident. But when there is a conflict between structure, doctrine, law, or process and love, what do we do? How do we decide? Which pulls us most strongly? Which do we trust the most?

It looks like it will continue to be stressful times for the world, the nation, the church, and individuals. In these days especially, fear tempts us to trust knowledge as our guide and not trust love.

In these days, it is helpful to remind ourselves of Paul’s answer to the people of Corinth. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up, says Paul. Love is better than knowledge; good is better than right.