Peter and Paul Sitting in a Tree

Text: Galatians 2:15-21

On the city streets you overhear things you probably should not. The other day someone walked by the front of the house talking on her cell phone. She was explaining to her friend that she was planning to break up with her fiance. But it was secret. She didn’t want anyone to know. Just her best friend. Plus, it turns out, everyone who lives on Tremont Street between Hampshire and Cambridge.

The odd things about these overheard conversations is that you only hear the one part. Tremont Street only heard half the argument. We had to figure out, if we cared to, what her friend was saying in response.

This text from Galatians is a little like that. Paul is the woman with the cell phone. Peter is the best friend on the other end whose comments we do not hear. The future of the church is the topic of conversation. Paul is afraid, it seems, that Peter is reneging on a deal: what the church is and who is part of it.

I’ll talk more about their argument in a minute. But like most arguments, the speakers use a kind of shorthand. A special vocabulary that both understand. Paul and Peter, for all their disagreements, share a view of things. They both agree that God has a place in the life of the world, that God is active in the lives of people, that God knows and cares about what people do. They both agree that it is good to receive God’s blessings, and that whether you do or not makes a big difference in your life. They are both Jews like Jesus. They know of God and God’s history with God’s people.

Paul and Peter agree that it is possible to be out of sorts with God. In fact, being out of sorts is the plight of humans. It is the feeling we have that things are not going the way they should be. That the world is in distress. That we cannot quite get on top of things. That things that ought to be smooth turn out to be rough and gritty. That we do the wrong things and do not do the right things.

It is the nature of humans to suffer. At the same time, it is the nature of humans to desire blessing. Blessing is another word for God’s favor on us. Which is another way to say that we hope for good lives nourished by love and fellowship and filled with humor and beauty. Blessed lives.

Paul and Peter agree that sin keeps us from God’s favor. That is the definition of sin. Sin is that thing that keeps us apart from God. We and God are meant to be in a harmonious relationship. Sin is a break in that relationship. Sin is not some violation of the rules. But it is those things that we do that keep God’s blessings away.

Justification, the word used so often in today’s reading and throughout Paul’s writings and especially admired by Lutherans, is the restoration of our relationship with God—and the resulting blessings—that sin has broken. Paul and Peter agree about that, too. Justification is making things right. Reconciling things. It is exactly the kind of restoration you might enjoy if you patched up a broken relationship with your significant other. Who knows why the relationship soured? That’s not the issue. The issue is how to make things good again.

And about that, Paul and Peter do not agree. Paul says that making things right does not depend on something we have to do. No extra chores or sweet gifts will justify us. And they are not necessary. Peter says sometimes they are.

So Paul’s argument in brief goes like this:

1. People are estranged from God. Things are clearly not right with the world, and things are often not right with us.

2. Jesus came to reconcile us with God, to fix that estrangement. To bring us peace with God and with one another. How that works is unstated.

3. The law—the commandments given at Sinai and later embellished somewhat—had guided people in right ways, but they are not essential. The law is not necessary in regards to being aligned with God. No one, Paul says, will be justified by the works of law.

4. Therefore: anyone, not just those who have been given the gift of the law, can be reconciled or justified. Gentiles are, too. It is the faith of Christ—which is what Paul says, not our belief in Christ—the faith of Christ that is critical.

What Christ does, not what we do. Our significant other welcomes us back just because. Not because of what we do but because of what he or she does—which is to forgive us and embrace us. That is what grace means—loving for no good reason.

Paul’s particular complaint about Peter, is this: Peter refuses to eat with Gentiles. The law forbids it. By refusing he shows that he is honoring the law. He is putting the law ahead of his fellowship with other Christians. His actions create two classes of people. Paul thinks that Peter really thinks that there might just be a few little things that people must actually do to be OK with God.

The little things in this case are especially those things that preserve the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. But Paul says to Peter: the boundaries between Jew and Gentile are no longer operative. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. The separation that evidently seems so important to Peter—and similar separations between people that we now days consider important—is as nothing to God.

It is not that Paul necessarily likes Gentiles. He might not. But Paul’s likes or dislikes—no matter how heartfelt and even sensible—are not germane. Nor are ours.

The gospel of Jesus Christ includes all people by its nature, according to Paul. The church is inclusive not because it is nice to include people. It is fundamental to Christ. If we say there is any item by which we can exclude people from the community of the faithful, then by saying so we are saying that that item counts with God. But only Christ is essential. To put such boundaries between people is therefore to deny the power of Christ. Peter, says Paul, is doing that.

That’s his argument.

Perhaps this argument seems to you to turn on a fine point. Are Peter and Paul so far apart? In one sense, no. They agree on most things. In another sense, absolutely. They disagree on something fundamental.

Paul, unlike Peter, sees sin to be whatever is “all about me.” Sin comes from putting yourself at the center of the universe. Or to be less grand, at the center of your life. Preserving, nourishing, and caring for yourself first. Me first. Even when you are generous and charitable and compassionate, in the end it is what you do that is important. And in your relationship with God, what you do is important, too.

Paul denies this. He says that his center, his self, has died. In its place Jesus now lives in him. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For Paul, there is nothing he can do to fix things up with God because Paul is gone. Jesus rules Paul’s life. Paul reaches the harmony and peace that he wants by losing himself.

Peter—we are guessing, because he is on the other end of the phone conversation—Peter preserves himself. Peter says that while it might not all be about him, some of it is. The stuff we talked about earlier.

It is short work to go from “all about me” to “all about us.” As soon as there is something we do that we think God values, we begin to worry about people who do not do it. Whether “do it” means some action, or holding some belief, or having some special background or characteristic, or not. If it is something about me that brings God’s blessing to me, and you don’t have or do that thing, then you will not be blessed. You. And then: you all. And from there, sadly, some go to “you are anti-blessed”—that is, condemned. It is a slippery slope. Paul will have none of it.

Paul’s life—and to be fair, Peter’s too—was a life that struggled to be self-less. It is what Paul saw in Jesus’ willing death, and what in Jesus Paul himself wished to be. He was not always successful, as none of us are. But he created new Christian gatherings and nurtured them by saying over and over: Not “me first,” but God first, community first, service first. Me last.

Galatians is often described as Paul’s treatise on Christian freedom. Perhaps so. What we gain by losing ourselves is freedom. But not so much freedom from the law, as usually proclaimed. Not freedom from rules and codes. It is freedom from the need and effort to bless ourselves.

It is not easy to deny yourself and trust in God. Such trust is fragile and requires constant mending. As Paul says, we live, after all, in the flesh. But he also reminds us that we are, thankfully, mended not by our own skills with spiritual needle and thread, but by God’s grace. From which all blessings flow.

Thanks be to God.

Giving Up

Text: 1 Kings 17:8-24

Perhaps you see this story in Kings as a story about power. If so, you would not be alone. The Bible makes lots of people think about power. A lot of the stories in it talk plainly about power. God is powerful. God’s power helps people be powerful. The power of the righteous is greater than the power of the unrighteous. Good is more powerful than evil. Even when it seems that evil is powerful, it turns out that good is more powerful. As in the story of the passion. Paul writes about the power of sin and the power of being baptized into the resurrected Christ. The people whose scripture is the Bible believe that in the end the power of God overwhelms and fills the universe.

All this talk of power makes some people squeamish. We modern types are not thrilled about talking about acting powerful or being acted on by someone else who is powerful. Though we do it—sometimes do act powerfully and we sometimes are jerked around by powerful others—we do not like talking about it. That is, we would prefer to think of ourselves as both humble and at the same time in control.

In the story of Elijah and the widow, there is a lot of ordering and demanding. God makes demands on Elijah. God makes demands on the widow, Elijah makes demands on the widow. The widow is pretty much at the end of the chain as well as being at the end of her rope. We might ask whether the demands on her are just and loving or exploitative and cruel. Some weird things happen here. One is that after the widow tells Elijah that she has nearly nothing and is about to die by means of despair, Elijah says to her, That’s fine. Go ahead and do that. But before you do, make me some food and serve it to me. And the widow does. Elijah has nothing. The woman has nothing. But even so, this is not a fair transaction among equals. So it is not a great story for those who feel that the world runs—politically, economically, or emotionally—on rational exchange between willing agents.

It is also not a great story for those feel that the way to safety and riches is by making sure that things go right. Making sure. That is, by taking and keeping control of things. This is not a good story for people—I’m one of them—who double check, figure out, and plan carefully. And then worry and fret about whether it will all work out. And perhaps it is not a good story for those who actually are in control—more or less—because they do live lives of abundance. None of those things describe the life of the widow of Zarepthath.

The story proceeds through a series of offers. Though they sound like commands (or demands, as I said), they leave open the chance that they will be disobeyed or refused. Elijah, who has already tried to hide away from God, could have tried to again. And the widow could have sent Elijah packing—which is probably what most of us would have done.

The offers to the woman, though, are made with the arrogance that goes with compassion. A sense that what I’m demanding is better for you. It puts us off, even if it is true. And it puts us off because the person making the offer does it from the position of power. Elijah has the power to feed the woman and her son indefinitely in exchange for just a wee bit of cake now.

The woman accepts the offer and does as Elijah said. It is not clear why. Perhaps she does it out of hope for food from the prophet. Perhaps she does it out of despair—why not, what else can she do? Or perhaps she does it because Elijah has distracted her from her troubles. As a parent might a child: go ahead and run away from home, but first how about a little soup and grilled cheese?

In all these stories today—the two episodes from Kings and the raising of the dead son in the Gospel of Luke—someone invites someone to do some thing. Elijah or Jesus. It sounds like a command. Give me some cake. Give me your son. Rise up. But it is a proposal, a proposition. And in all the stories, the offer is accepted.

In all the stories, the offer is the same: You have nothing. It is the end of the line. No food. No breath. I will give you plenty. Where there is no food, I will give you abundant food, unending. Where there is no breath, I will give you abundant breath, unending.

This is the conviction of our faith. Where there is sadness, God brings joy. Where there is fear, God brings peace. Where there is death, God brings life. Unending.

Is it necessary—I want to know this—is it necessary that to accept God’s offer of abundance that we must have nothing? Or must we purposely let go of everything first in order to accept? And if so, can we? Is this what Paul means in Romans when he talks about dying to sin?

We know that in those moments when things seem darkest that we are most open to listening for suggestions from God. When we are at wits end, or have suffered greatly, or can hardly move from our house because of fear. It seems at those moments that we have nothing. We know that our desire to “make sure” will be unrequited. That moment, when we realize that—that we are powerless—that moment is the bottom by definition. That is what the bottom is. It is as low as we need to go. We give up to God because there is nothing more for us to keep.

Can we do this without hitting bottom? It seems that God’s offer of abundant life is actually always open. But it remains just an offer—it remains unconsummated—as long as we want to keep our power. Can we become powerless enough to accept it? Is it even possible to just let things go by act of will? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Those who wish to save their life must lose it, Jesus taught us. The disciplines of our faith—prayer, song, sacraments taken in humility, serving others—are tools, tactics, techniques for giving ourselves away.

We all find ourselves in trouble sometime or other, some way or other. Then what? What happens then? To which horse do we hitch our wagon to get us out and on? Do we rely on ourselves and our attachments—things, friends, skills, attitudes, privileges, and energy—to make things go right? In that case, we have to ask ourselves: how has that worked for me so far? Are things going the way I want them to? Will a little adjustment here or there fix things right up? Or do we let go, saying to God: I cannot do this by myself. Things are out of control. I do not have the power. In that case, we have to ask ourselves whether I trust God when God says to us: Give me your self.

In his ministry, Jesus makes two kinds of promises. The first is that in giving yourself to God you get abundant life. Which includes sustenance and joy and peace and life. And the second is that Jesus shows us the way to do that.

God is powerful. We follow the way of Jesus not to take on the power of God for ourselves, but to be able to let go of our own claims for power in the light of God’s.

Big, Nice, and Close

Text: Psalm 8
Other texts: Proverbs 8

Today we celebrate the Trinity. A celebration, it seems, of a doctrine. Not a story, not a parable, not a teaching of Jesus. As I said earlier, for some the idea of the Trinity is what makes Christianity rich and meaningful. For others, the doctrine of the Trinity seems obscure, institutional, and a barrier—a stumbling block—to knowing and living a life of faith.

God in three persons, we say. The creeds of the church are organized around the Trinity. Our prayers often end with invocations to the Trinity: in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, Amen. We baptize in the name of the Trinity.

But it is not as if the Trinity were well and equally understood. People have been arguing about its meaning since almost the time of Jesus. Some say—I’ve said—that the formula of the Trinity is God’s name. Some say it is a mystery. That’s what my mother told me when I was of that age to ask your mother about such things. Don’t ask me, it’s a mystery. Some say the three-ness of the Trinity is an expression of our experience of God. We experience God in three different ways: creator God, savior God, and God in the immediate presence near us.

But if it is God’s name—we are not short of names for God. Formal names, familiar names, nicknames, names with meaning and not. And if it is a mystery—God is a mystery no matter what. A God in one being is a mystery. God does not need elaboration to be mysterious.

And if it is because we have many different experiences of God—people have many experiences of God, not only three but lots, or maybe not even three. It all depends on where you draw the outline. God the creator, but how about God the creation itself? God intricately bound up in the wonder and magic of life. God the comforter, but how about God the sufferer? Or God in the agents of comfort, those who bring comfort. I see God in creation, people say. I see God in people helping others, people say. God is the redeemer, the rescuer, but how about God the oppressed. I see God in the victims, people say. It is all one God.

God is not us. So we have a hard time saying what or who God is. We have to be suspicious of sentences that begin “God is …” Even sentences like the one I just said: “God is not us.” How do I know that? I don’t know that. All we really can say are sentences that begin with “In my experience of God …” Or in the combined experiences of many people in different places and over different times. That is all information we can use. But it is in the end personal. We can adopt what scholars and priests say about God and choose to believe what they say. But their saying so and our saying so does not make it so. This kind of belief is a very powerful and well-attested-to way of coping with our experience of the world, which includes our experience of the divine.

The Trinity is chronological. It emerges in history. That does not mean God emerges in history, but the doctrine does. It starts with God the creator. God the ruler of the universe. God who separated one thing from another, who animates life by breathing into the dust. God the first person of the Trinity. The God characterized equally by the people of the Book: God is one.

God the second person of the Trinity is Jesus. The embodiment of God and a person of the earth. Once you say that Jesus is God, and that’s what Christians say for sure, you have an issue. Are God and Jesus one? Is Jesus a kind of God, or a piece of God, or God like a visitor to earth from the heavens? Christians, and Lutherans especially, say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% human.

In the early church the nature of Jesus led to lots of discussion. Did Jesus the person know everything that was going to happen? Did God suffer on the cross? Can God suffer at all? If Jesus suffered, and if God cannot suffer, and if Jesus is 100% God—you see the problem. Some solved the problem by saying that Jesus wasn’t really God. Some said he wasn’t really human. Some said he was sometimes one and sometimes the other. All of these things eventually were declared to be heresies. Forbidden doctrines.

Someone wrote that Christians more than any other people of faith fight over tiny bits of theology, minutiae in the eyes of some. For example, in the verses from Proverbs that we just heard, the character of Wisdom says “The Lord created me at the beginning.” Of course, this is in Hebrew. And the word “created” here is also translated “possess.” The two meanings are different. In one case that Wisdom existed first and in the other case that God made her. Some think that Wisdom equals Jesus. Did God therefore make Jesus? In the Nicene creed, we say that Jesus is “begotten, not made.” That line is there because people had fought over how Jesus came to be. This kind of talk goes on and on throughout the ages. Was Jesus, for example, of the same essence as God the Father, or of the same substance? Maybe this is not something you worry about when you wake up at 5:30 in the morning. But someone did. The Nicene creed originally had this as its last line:

“But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' …—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

It was a big deal.

And God the third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. The spirit of God appears in one form or another throughout the Bible. The word for spirit means breath in both Hebrew and Greek. The spirit appears in the very beginning of Genesis at creation. The spirit holds council in Israel, and the spirit is sent by Jesus to be with his followers after his death. But the Holy Spirit has had a tenuous hold on the title of the third person of God in the Trinity. In the art of the early church, God the Trinity sometimes appears as Father, Son, and Mary (kind of a family portrait, I guess). Sometimes there is a dove, too. Sometimes only a dove. Sometimes there are three men.

All this intellectual chewing happens because people want to know about God in a way that lets them begin sentences with “God is …” They want to know what to say about God.

But the doctrine of the Trinity tells us less about God and more about us. We are creatures. God is creator. We catch glimpses of God. We recognize God from the works, as we might recognize an artist from the art, a band from the music. We are strongly convinced that God is here with us. Our stories tell us that God interferes with the goings on of humans. That God is intimately interested in humanity. That God came to be with us in flesh and blood. All these things are amazing. Plus, we feel that God is partly in us somehow. Made in the image of God, we say. Jesus in us, we say. Even more amazing.

How can that be? What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, the Psalm asks, what are human beings that you should care for them? When I think about the stars, the moon, the universe, how is it that you care about people? How is it that you care about me, for the words of the Psalm are singular. How is it that you, God, are mindful of me?

God lives with us in ordinary time and ordinary places. By the gate, at the intersections, up in the hills, Proverbs says. Those who are God-fearing feel it to be so. You get the idea in Proverbs that Wisdom and God are like close collaborators or proud parents. “Then I was beside him,” Wisdom says, “like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world,” she says, “and delighting in the human race.” They look on their creatures, their creation, and are delighted.

What we have of God are signs or clues or sightings or glimmerings. From that sometimes we are moved to think carefully and analytically about how things must be with God. It is like leaving a movie that is powerful, weird, and confusing. You turn to others for help and understanding. Critics, experts, friends. What just happened? All we know after all is that we are moved and astounded by God. Who seems to be big, attentive, close. And good.

Are You Taking to Me?

Text: Genesis 11:1-9
Other texts: Acts 2:1-21

It appears that many people like to talk about God. What God has done for them and the world. About their relationship and history with God. On the whole, that seems like a positive thing. If God is good and good for you, then telling other folks can be inspiring and helpful to them. Even life-giving. The Bible is the story of God. It tells God’s story to anyone who wishes to find out about it.

The Bible tells us that among other things, God intends us to tell people about God. God tells Israel to be a light to the nations. Jesus tells the disciples to go out and proclaim the good news and baptize people.

But the two commands are not the same thing. And the difference between the two is a conflict—let’s be polite and call it a tension—that runs through the Bible and people’s practices of faith.

The “light to the nations” camp thinks that the best way to tell people about God is to act good. If we act according to our faith and in alignment with God’s wishes, people will see how that makes our lives and the world better. They will wish to get what we have. They will see that what motivates us is God. And they will then want to know—and to know about—God, too. You might call this the “health club” theory of evangelism. You work out. Your friends all notice how buff you are, and how energetic and happy you seem. They ask why. You tell them you owe it all the your great health club. They rush to join the club, too.

The “go and baptize” camp thinks the best way to tell people about God is to talk good. To tell the story to all who will listen. If we tell the story of the Bible and what it promises, people will see the truth in that and respond. What we say will strike a chord in them, and they will want to be part of the story. This is like the health club doing some advertising, plus the surgeon general telling everyone that if they don’t get 30 minutes of rigorous exercise every day, their life will be short and unhappy. Your friends take note. They rush to join the club, too.

The difference between these camps is like the difference between listening and speaking, which I’ll talk more about in a minute. It also is related to another issue in the Bible: is God for us or for everybody? If for us, who is “us” and can other people become “us” at all? And if so, how? The question is central to the book of Acts, which is the story of the beginning of the church. (Some call the events of Pentecost the birthday of the church.) The early followers of Jesus debated whether people who were not Jews could become Christian. Or did they have to convert to Judaism first? Become us? Did the men have to be circumcised? Did the people have to follow the laws given at Sinai? All of them? Some of them? None at all? Was Jesus even here for the gentiles? He came, he said, to fulfill the law and the promise. Were the gentiles excluded by definition, or by indifference?

If Jesus came for everybody, what does that mean about the boundary between Christians and non-Christians? Maybe “all” means all who become Christian, but not those who do not. That has been the consensus interpretation throughout much of Christianity. Conversion first, then salvation. Not the other way around. But it does make the theology of grace, by which God loves us not on account of something we do, a little more complicated. Can you have grace for some, but not others?

If people who are not Christian become Christian, that will possibly change Christianity. Is that OK? One example: right now in our times the most energetic growth in Christianity is in Africa. The new African churches are bringing something new to Christian faith. Some people think this is great, and some think it is horrible. Another example: some of our sister Lutheran denominations are unhappy at the way the ELCA is fraternizing with other denominations. They feel that such goings-on pollutes pure Lutheranism. Does diversity joined make a better product or a weaker one?

The question is: how does God work? Does God make new things by combining lots of other things? This is the way evolution goes. Diverse organisms combine to yield surprising, and sometimes more sturdy, ones. Sometimes diverse organisms just live together in symbiotic harmony, creating a more sturdy society. Lichen is a common example. Also some kinds of jelly fish. Also: nations. Also: churches.

In the story of Pentecost that we just spoke and heard, there are two miracles. One is a miracle of speaking. The gathered followers of Jesus spoke “in other languages,” it says. Meaning, we guess, other than their own. It was a miracle of tongues. But then “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each,” it also says. So it is also a miracle of ears. A miracle of speaking and a miracle of hearing.

How does this story, the birthday of the church, guide us about how Christians should discuss our faith? Discuss both with others who share a little of our faith and with those who share none.

One way is to use the words that the others use. The poster downstairs says “how did Jesus speak to them? In their own words.” It is our job, according to this way, to translate our ideas and convictions into words that make sense to the person to whom we are talking. No jargon allowed, and no specialty language and no doctrinally difficult phrases. Speak in the language of the listener. We do the hard work. We think of new words to explain difficult concepts. This way honors diversity.

The other way is to use the words that you’ve always used. The words are fine-tuned and honed so that they mean something particular and are not easily translated. It is our job, according to this way, to teach others to speak our language. To define for them the meaning of the words we use. We do some hard work, but they do the harder work of learning a new language. Then we all can speak it together. This way honors unity.

[I should say there is a third way: don’t learn their language at all and don’t teach them yours. Just say the same thing over and over again in your own language. Only louder. This is an unfortunately common perversion. ]

At issue is how the church and the world relate. Is it in the world, of the world, against the world, alongside the world, or some other preposition? We might be monasteries, preserving the one truth. Or we might be missionaries. How does the church relate to people not of the church? Are we called to go out into the world, and to speak about our faith and trust in God? Or are we called to sit faithfully at home and invite others to come inside?

The story in Genesis that we heard is usually called the story of the Tower of Babel. There is a tower in it, but that is not really the main point. It is only mentioned at the beginning. What the people in the story want is to have one language and one name and to live in one big city. They honor unity. It makes them strong and excited. But it seems that that is not what God wants. God mixes their language. God stops them from building the city (not the tower, notice). And later in Genesis God names them “God’s people.” The people want to be exclusive, isolated, withdrawn, and pure. They want, I’m guessing here, they want everyone to be just like them. Just like us. God wants them to be fruitful and multiply. God scatters them all over the earth. Go and be different from one another.

The Pentecost story has been called the undoing of the Babel story, but it is not. If it were, all those different languages that people spoke and all the ones in which they listened would be one language. But that’s not what happened. Pentecost does not refute Babel, it confirms it. The people live not in a gray amalgam but in crazy diversity, joined to one another by the Holy Spirit.

People worry, rightly, I’d say, about whether the world is losing cultures as fast as species. The web and English and commerce combine to make the surfaces of people more alike. Is that good? It is not good if in the process we—whoever we are—begin to hope that—and worse, to expect—that others are like us. If we begin to long for Babel in the time before the scattering and mixing. If we only speak and do not do the listening. If we make the others do the work.

Both Genesis and Acts teach us the same thing. Our difference are not a result of God’s punishment, but of God’s design. For that, we give thanks to God.

Feeling Left Alone

Text: Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Marriage is a covenant. Not a contract, usually, even though we speak casually of a marriage contract. If people have a pre-nuptial agreement, that agreement is a contract, but it does not make marriage itself a contract. A contract requires an offer, and acceptance, and a consideration.

A covenant, though, is a promise. A covenant is sometimes described as an agreement. Two or more people or parties agree to do something relating to each other. In that case, as in marriage, there are two promises, dual promises. In a marriage, the bride and the groom both make vows, which are promises. Strictly speaking, there is no acceptance. In practice, the promises themselves act like an acceptance. If, for example, the groom refused to make his vows after the bride made hers, then probably there would be no covenant.

Covenant—the word—seems religious. That’s because it has become so. A covenant does not have to be religious. But religious people have seized on the word as a good way to describe things about God. God makes covenants, not contracts. God makes promises, not conditions.

Covenant with a capital “C” refers to a promise God made with Israel. “I will be your God and you will be my people,” promised God. This is not a contract. Israel cannot void it, and neither can God. There is no escape clause. There are certain things that Israel, as God’s people, is expected to do. When they don’t, God gets discouraged, occasionally annoyed, sometimes crabby. But God does not go back on God’s promise. God is faithful.

Nonetheless, Israel from time to time loses faith in God’s faithfulness. We read in the Bible that Israel sometimes feels that God has abandoned them. Israel wonders whether it did something so bad that God just walked away from the whole deal. The story of the good times and bad of this covenant, which extends right through Jesus to us here and now, is the story of the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation.

A scholar named Phyllis Trible once described Genesis as a “love story gone awry.” There seems not to be a happy ending to the story of the Garden of Eden, a garden of perfection from which people are exiled. The Bible in its various chapters plays out that love story between God and humans. A friend of mine once said on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary: “Ah, our twenty-fifth anniversary! Seventeen wonderful years of marriage.” The story of the Bible is like that. A few thousand years of being God’s people. Most of them wonderful, some of them not.

It is in the not-so-wonderful years that the people feel God has abandoned them.

Feeling abandoned by God is the same as feeling abandoned by anybody you love, trust, rely on, and want to be with. The feeling of being abandoned is horrible. It is more than loneliness. Israel, abandoned, lived on, as we all do. But poorly. Not because God was their protector and shield and fortress and things like that, but because people have an intense, deep longing for God.

It is a basic hunger. Being starved for God’s presence generates at best a vague disquiet-ness or anxiety. Being alone in the universe without God for company is tiring. We are so tiny, the universe is so big out there. We do not always admit, or some never admit, that we long for God. Even though as Christians we proclaim to. We call it other things. Ennui. General dissatisfaction with things. Listlessness. Hopelessness lurking in the wings.

A colleague says that in the church, where people talk about relying on God and grace and forgiveness, they are instead just as likely to act as if everything depends on them. “What the heck is that?” he asks. What it is, is a denial of our dependance on God and need for God’s presence. We can deny all sorts of needs, but that does not mean we don’t need them.

It turns out that people whose faith helps them express their longing for God, compared to those whose faith down-plays that longing, are happier, less pessimistic, less likely to be discouraged. This is just one study, and they didn’t really use the phrase “longing for God,” but that’s what they meant. And they didn’t say which was cause and which was effect. Maybe happier people long for God more. I don’t know.

Genesis and the book of Revelation are the beginning and the end of the Bible. In one sense, the plot line of Revelation reverses the plot line of Genesis, and it takes apart all that Genesis builds up. But in another sense, a more important sense, Revelation reaffirms God’s covenant with humanity. In the book of Revelation, God is close to us. God is extremely present in the book. And in the end, there is a resurrected Jerusalem, the historic home of God. And God lives there with all the people. I am your God, you are my people—the promise is fulfilled totally. We heard about that in the readings over the past few weeks.

But in today’s reading we come to the end of the story, and we just heard the final verses of the Bible. In those verses humanity’s longing for God is dramatically exposed. The whole world calls for Jesus. Come, cries the spirit, the bride, and everyone within earshot. And Jesus responds. I am coming! And so the people, hearing this, call to him again. Come, Lord Jesus! These are the shouts of people and God too long separated from one another. Like people in a long distant relationship, or people waiting, waiting for the return home of a friend or companion or a soldier or migrant. Thirsty for it, as it says. The waiting is over. The longing is requited.

The final sentence of the story in the Bible is “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.” God, who is unconditionally in love with us and true to the covenant, is with us. We turn the last page. We close the book. The love story in the Bible has a happy ending after all.

But the story in these pages is a reflection of the story of humanity and of the lives of individual people. You and me. The story repeats and continues in each of us. When Isaac was baptized this morning, he became part of the story. The covenant becomes part of him and he of it. He will come to know as we do the story of being with God, of feeling abandoned by God, of longing for God, of finding God.

If this all sounds like a lot of personal piety, it’s because it is. The story of Revelation is the reunion of the human and the divine. That union is what piety is: the longing to be joined as humans with God. Whether you see that union in a voice speaking to you, or in a vision as in Revelation, or whether you see it in service to others as in Faith Kitchen. Or whether you see it in Sunday worship and song, or in your own quiet morning prayers, or an unexplained feeling of wellbeing in the scariest moments. Or whether you see it in amazement at the structure of the universe and the quarks and forces that hold things together in simplicity and complexity, or even in the energy of an argument on the street. Or whether you see it in the eyes of your child or lover. In all those things and thousands more, divine God meets human us.

We have no contract with God. But we do have a promise. We are not alone in human time and place. God is with us.

Retirement Party

Text: John 5:1-9

For thirty-eight years the man had the same job. Thirty-eight years of sitting by the poolside. Thirty-eight years of hoping to get into the waters at the right time. Thirty-eight years of unrequited longing to be healed. Thirty-eight years of being pushed aside and passed by. Thirty-eight years is a long time.

Outside of Jerusalem, there was a pool about the size of a football field. There were covered porches around all of it. Down the middle of the pool there was a dividing wall, and there was a porch on that, too. Five altogether. Five porticoes, as it says. Every so often the water in the pool would bubble up or stir around. Some thought it was an angel who stirred the waters. An angel of mercy.

On these porches sat people who were suffering in some way. People who were blind, people who had lost their hands or feet or limbs. People whose bodies didn’t work the same as most. Those people were waiting for the water to move. It seems that the first person into the pool when the water was stirred up would be cured of his or her condition. It was, some might think, superstitious magic. The porches were like the waiting area of a hospital emergency room. People—desperate and resigned—waiting around the pool waiting to be healed.

The man was one of these people. He was not strong; he was without vigor, it says. There were no appointments for the pool. It was first come, first served. The man had had never been able to get to the water in time. Someone else was always faster, pushier, stronger. Or so he says.

Do you want to be made well? Jesus asks him. The man does not answer him directly. The man does not say, “You bet! I’ve been waiting thirty-eight years to be healed.” The man does not say, “Duh! Why do you think I’ve been camped by this pool all that time.” Instead, the man tells a little story of missed opportunities. A story of indignities suffered at the hands of others, of foiled attempts.

Does he want to be made well? The man has a stake in his present situation. His identity as a person is at risk. He is the man who sits by the pool. To be fair, maybe not all those thirty-eight years. It says only that he has been ill that long. But maybe it was thirty-eight. Long enough for Jesus to know that he had been there a long time. Long enough to have a little story about it. Long enough to make it his life. Long enough to become “the man who sits by the pool and never gets in.”

To be made well would have been a blessing. And a problem. To no longer be the person others had known him to be and that he knew himself to be. He would be out of a job. His life would be full of new people, new places, new patterns, new pitfalls as well as new possibilities. Do you want to be made well? In telling his story, the man answers: I don’t know. I’m not sure.

What do you want, Jesus asks the man? This is the world’s second hardest question. The first one being: what are you going to do next (as in: next year, after graduation, after the baby is born, after retirement)?

What do you want? It is a trick question, clean and simple on the surface and complex and messy in the middle. It can be especially scary when the person asking it has the power to make it happen. As Jesus does, as the man detects. Jesus is always asking people this question, and they are often non-plussed and tongue-tied.

“What do you want” hides another question. Which is: Who are you? As with the man by the pool, thinking about what we want forces us to think about who we are. And who we have been, and how it has gone so far. Not only: Would the person I know myself to be want what I want? Am I that kind of person who wants that kind of thing. But also: What kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to know myself and how do I want to be known? And finally: do I have any say in the matter?

Jesus offers the man a change. From living one kind of life to living another. In one sense this is an offer for a wider future. Adventurous but also ambiguous. Unfettered but also uncertain. Healing, perhaps, but also scarring. The change from one kind of life to another. It looks forward in hopeful nervousness.

But at the same time, the new future leaves behind the old past. And even when the old past was not so great, it is still grieved. We are abandoning something, or we are being abandoned. We are losing something.

And in between the grief and the hope is a squishy area of confusion. When we are neither one thing or the other. The man picks up his mat and walks away. What now? What does he do. What does he do that very day, that minute? Where will he go? What will he eat? How will he spend his time? He does not know. No one does. The fact that the man seems to have a choice does not make it better or clearer. And for many people, there is no choice. Changes happen to us as often as we make changes.

At the very end of this passage, it says “Now that day was the sabbath.” In the verses that follow in John, people get upset, for it was not legal to heal someone on the sabbath. Jesus did not have to heal this man on this day. And it was not the only time that Jesus did something like that. There seemingly was no rush. After thirty-eight years, tomorrow would be fine. During normal office hours.

But the verse stands also for something else, less political. Sabbath time is a good time for making, or thinking about making, big changes. Sabbath time is down time. The days of sabbath are like movable joints in the track of our otherwise often rigid lives. Sabbath—Sundays—are occasion of transition between one week and the next. In those days, the demands of our identity have a weaker hold on us. And in those days, our ears are more aware of and open to God’s sometimes whispered invitations. Or to God’s insistent demands. Do this.

I said earlier that Jesus offers the man a change. But that is not true. There is no offer here. There is a question, (which we’ve been talking about). And there is a command. Stand up, take your mat, and walk. I suppose the man could refuse. But the deed has already been done. His body has been healed. He is changed.

Change happens to us whether we want it to or not. This is not always welcome. Some changes are harder than others. It would be nice to know the answers to those two hardest questions, but it is not necessary. And it is not really even germane.

What God wants, is. Through today’s story, we understand that God’s desire is that we be healed. That the reason Jesus is always healing people is because that is what Jesus wants. We are not required to know exactly what we want and who we are and what’s next. God does not wait for us to know what we want. I take that to be good news.

Does God know what we need more than we do? Does God know us better than we know ourselves? I cannot speak to that. It does not say.

It does not matter. What we do know from scripture is that God desires us to be made whole. God is the God of life, and invites us, and sometimes pulls us, and sometimes commands us, into the future.

Revelation Reformation Revolution

Text: Revelation 21:1-6
Other texts: John 13:32-35

Jesus was not a Christian. Luther was not a Lutheran.

We know that Luther was dismayed that people were creating a new church in his name. Maybe Jesus feels the same way. I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say.

Both Jesus and Luther thought of and described themselves as reformers, not revolutionaries. But people were ready for a revolution. It happens a lot with reformers, who see something wrong. But not irredeemably wrong. Something that can be fixed. Something has gone off the tracks in a major way, for sure, but it can be righted and restored.

The book of Revelation is a book of revolution. The old world has passed away, it says, and a new world will replace it. The whole universe will be destroyed, the heavens and the earth, and God will build a new one, re-laying its foundations on the same principles of life, abundance, and justice.

The most scholarly interpretation of Revelation is that it is a response to the Roman oppression of Israel. The land of Israel in the time of Jesus was occupied by the foreign and sometimes cruel power of Rome. In Revelation, the evil Babylon stands for Rome. The destruction of the powers of Babylon in the book are interpreted as the hoped-for destruction of Rome and its entire empire.

This hope for destruction of the world is called apocalyptic, which comes from the word apocalypse, which is just the Greek word for uncovering, or revelation. This book of the Bible has become the archetypical example.

These hopes for the end time, the end of it all, typically arise when people get desperate. It is a kind of “I can’t stand it. I’m out of here” response. Things are such a mess that no one can conceive of a way out. No one can image any solution. No one has any hope in reformation.

People sometimes feel this way about jobs, or relationships, or sometimes life itself. When lots of people feel this way about politics, we call it apocalyptic. These feelings emerge a lot in history among people who are beleaguered to hopelessness in the present. It is not hopelessness altogether, but all hope is directed to a cataclysmic destruction and reconstruction. In our times we have seen such hopes in groups that we mistakenly call cults. The “Left Behind” series is a sweetened version of this thinking. The hope of some Christians for a war in Israel that leads to the end times is a more bitter version.

The book of Revelation is an undoing of creation. The plot of the story, once you get past all the filigree, is pretty much a rewind of the beginning of Genesis. And at the very end of Revelation, in the chapter we just heard, once all has been unwound, a new universe is started. I am making all things new, it says. In one sense, it is the end of the story of a failed experiment. All is thrown in the trash and God starts over.

We must be careful what we wish for. Or at least honest about it.

The wish for the end of all usually means the end of all—except not the end of me. And maybe not the end of my good friends. Not the end of people like me. We imagine that we are observers of the end of the world. Like something out of Dr Who. That the new world that comes of this somehow includes us of the old world. “See, I am making all things new.” There is someone left around doing this new seeing. We don’t want us to disappear, or those we love, we want everyone else to. We want the universe to change, but to be there to watch it.

When we hear about the new Jerusalem, we imagine ourselves to be residents. When we hear that there will be no more death and pain, we imagine us, living in a world to be like that. In spite of our fiery and frantic language, we are not really looking for revolution. We are looking for reformation. This is, I think, good news.

One of the last things Jesus said (on Maundy Thursday) and fundamental to the Gospel, was the new order he gives his disciples—meaning he gives to us and all his followers. “I give you a new commandment,” he tells them—tells us—“that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

This is a hard thing to do. Hard for us individually. Love does not come easily in real life. Some people are hard to like. Some people are hateful. Some people do bad things intentionally. It is hard to love someone whom we hate or fear. In fact, one way we define our own circle of friends, our community, is to separate those whom we love easily or at least willingly, from those we do not.

For that reason, it is hard to love one another institutionally. For nations or tribes, for example. So all this talk in Acts about what Peter and Paul do is pretty radical (though still not revolutionary). In today’s reading, Peter has a dream. In it, he is presented with a lot of food that he is forbidden to eat by dietary laws. “I won’t eat that stuff,” he tells God, “you know I am a good person who obeys your godly rules.” But in Peter’s dream, God gives him permission—gives him a command, really—to go ahead and eat what up until now had been wrong to eat.

Immediately after that, Peter baptizes a household of pagans, gentiles, people who were not circumcised, meaning not Jews. Not of the people. The circumcised followers of Jesus criticize Peter, it says, for doing this. But Peter explains that the Holy Spirit has told him: do not make a distinction between them and us. The Holy Spirit in this story is expanding the definition of “us” and therefore those “one-anothers” whom we are commanded to love.

This is something new. To command to love one another opens up the community of the people of God. That is how the early church interpreted it. This is how people will know that you are my followers, says Jesus. The community of God is defined as the people who love one another. The action of loving one another is what creates the community of Christians. It is not that you love the people in your community—your family and friends and what not. It is instead that your loving others is what makes you a community. Christians are people who love one another. And who do so because Jesus told us to.

That is how other people know that we are Christian. If you love one another, people will know you are my disciples, says Jesus. And if you don’t … well, they might wonder who we are.

Christian theology is full of “re-“ words. Starting with resurrection. And also re-birth, re-newal, restoration. These are reformation words. The prefix means “again.” Christian theology is not big on “de-” words. De-struction, despair, default, death. It is not something Jesus taught. There cannot be “Christian warriors,” as the Hutaree militia in the news call themselves. You cannot kill people in the name of Christ. You cannot do that.

God loves the world, it says famously in John. Jesus expects us to do the same. Since the beginning of creation God has called the world good. It is our impatience, not God’s, that longs for the end of things. We must actively resist the temptation toward that longing.

The reformation of Jesus is making do with what we have and restoring its intended luster, not throwing all things out. Jesus asks us to remove the rust, the scales, the barnacles that have saddened our world and our existence. And then he teaches us how to do that.

Jesus was not a Christian, but we are. We claim Jesus as our lord. He gives us a new commandment. Love one another as he loves us. It is not easy. But it is the power that Jesus has instructed us to use to renew the good world.