a Sermon for Advent 3C
Text: Luke 3:7-18
Let’s begin this morning looking back 20 years. It was a particularly memorable Christmas for me. We had extended family around, including cousins, which was unusual. And on the morning of Christmas Eve, I came down stairs to find a big box under the tree with my name on it.
As every 10 or 11 year-old knows, the hardest thing about seeing a big box for you under the tree before Christmas morning is having to wait all day, staring at it. It was like a beacon, calling out to me. “Drew! Here I am! Open me!” And I could hardly resist. I couldn’t stay in the same room with it.
Making matters worse was this was 1988/89 and my Christmas list contained only one item. Normally the list was full: GI Joe, Transformers: but not this year. This year contained just this: The Nintendo Entertainment System.
I had been bugging my parents for months and talked about it constantly. We had inherited an Atari 2600 the year before, but this was evolution! This was proof of progress! This was countless hours of entertainment and fascination! Well, when I saw that box, I became convinced that what was inside was the NES with its two controllers, the light gun, and Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I could hardly wait to finally make that game mine.
The next morning, the first thing I race for was that big box, and when it was my turn to open a present, I ripped the paper off of the front and inside was a big model of the space shuttle. I was heart-broken. And I’ll admit it—my expectations kept me from appreciating the present that was given to me. More tragic is that my Dad had bought this model to build with me and my 10 year-old self couldn’t get that. I was focused on other things.
In many ways, our expectations get mixed up in the “holiday season”. We’ve had some challenging readings here in Advent so far, and this morning’s is no exception. We’re all looking ahead to Christmas with its carols and its egg nog and its presents and its fellowship. The season is naturally pregnant with expectation. At the same time, that expectation leads us to ignore the signs around us. Just as my 10 year-old self knew that the box was the wrong shape—hours spent staring at the NES box behind the counter in KB Toys told me that—we look at life, and the season, through expectant eyes, not eyes of observation.
This morning, we finally get to hear that grating and persistent message of John the Baptizer’s that we talked about last week. We get to hear the jarring language (“You brood of vipers!”) and the threats (“but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”) that we might be quite tempted to overlook—to ignore in our attempt to get happy about Christmas. To be joyful at the coming of Jesus.
We know John comes to prepare the way for Jesus. And talking about John at the beginning of the church year is appropriate. It makes chronological sense. It makes theological sense. But I wonder if we take seriously the notion that he came to prepare the way for Jesus…to lead us on the way. That the Good News is first revealed by John and begins here.
John has this big crowd of followers who are all wondering if he is the long-expected Messiah. He looks like what they expect the Messiah to look like, and he talks like what they expect the Messiah to talk like, and he behaves like what they expect the Messiah to behave like…but they still aren’t sure. That’s interesting, isn’t it? So this disparate group has just been put in their place by this potential Messiah and they still ask “What then should we do?” John responds by telling them to be generous and fair with what they have. If you have two coats and you see somebody without one, give it to him. Pretty simple. Then the tax collectors ask what they should do, and John tells them not to cheat people. Take only what you are instructed to take. And the soldiers are told to be happy with the wages they receive, and not bully others and take from them. John’s instructions come to us as no-brainers, don’t they? Especially in light of what we know our faith to be about. But let’s pause at this window for a minute. If we look inside, we see a culture in which safety and security required that you look after yourself first. Having two coats meant you had a spare in case something happened to the first one. It meant having coats for different kinds of weather. It might have even meant that it was the only luxury you had. As for the tax collectors, most of their income came from collecting more than was prescribed—marking up the taxes. Like a merchant that sells goods from a manufacturer to a store, the income has to come from somewhere. And for the soldier, brutal treatment and extortion was a means of keeping the peace. John’s teaching isn’t so common sense in that context—and can seem eerily similar to our own world.
But John’s teachings here are about fairness. We should read them in the way that our guts tell us to. Despite the expectations the world has for us, we should be fair and generous to others, collecting only what is needed, while taking nothing for ourselves. That’s a pretty solid way of operating. But I think it does more than that—I think it gets our focus off of ourselves and onto other people. It isn’t what I can do for them, but for what can be done for them. See the difference? Just take the ‘I’ out.
John is preparing the way for Jesus, not physically: scuffing the ground from Bethlehem to Jerusalem or sweeping the dust off of the road: and not emotionally as a pre-Messiah herald because people couldn’t figure it out. John prepares the way by helping people let go of themselves. Letting go of self-sufficiency. Letting go of personal consumption. This is repentance. This is John’s preparation. For us to see Jesus as the Messiah, we must first repent and give up that devotion to self and materialism and macho bravado and ladder-climbing and all of that stuff. So we can just let it go. Hand it over.Because that understanding of expectation, that sense of ‘what I’m going to get’ keeps us from understanding Jesus as the Christ. John prepares Jesus’s way by altering our expectations of the Messiah.
This morning, we celebrate Gaudete, as is traditionally symbolized with a pink candle in the advent wreathe and is an ancient practice that is being renewed in the church. The word gaudete is Latin for “rejoice” and has been used to infuse some joy into an otherwise penitential season. I’ll admit that I had a hard time seeing the joy in this reading when I started. The others, I definitely could. But this Gospel lesson is about joy. John reveals the Good News that will be brought to new life in Jesus. That is joyous. That our calling is to give to others what is missing in their lives is joyous. That our calling is to not take from others and to treat them honestly and fairly is joyous. And most of all, that we can give away the pressure and the anxiety of self-sufficiency to our Messiah so that we might live our lives in joy and generosity—that is joyous.
Today, we can rejoice in our new expectations for the coming of our Lord. May his name be praised forever.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Stand up and raise your heads
a Sermon for Advent 1C
Text: Luke 21:25-36
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
So here we are, at the end of Jesus’s ministry. On the first day of Advent. New Year’s Day in the Christian Calendar. New year, new gospel, so we dive into Luke; and in the gospel, we’re starting toward the end in chapter 21. This is one of the strange components of a Lectionary in which we don’t actually tell the story in order. We begin the year with Jesus telling us how it’s all going to end, and then we jump back to the beginning. And in the Spring, we have Lent, which hits the Temptations, and then jumps to Jesus’s final days. Then there’s Easter and Pentecost, which are chronologically sound, following Jesus’s death and resurrection, but then we get into the Season of Pentecost, where we rewind and go through Jesus’s actual teachings. All of which lead up to this one. At the beginning.
The teaching itself is a prophecy, not unlike the one from two weeks ago about the Temple. This one is bigger, though. This involves not just human stuff, but cosmological stuff: “the sun, the moon, and the stars”. And the global human response is distress—everywhere. The phrasing is truly appropriate for us as we deal with current warming trends in the oceans and news reports of icebergs that broke from the Antarctic ice shelf and are now drifting north toward New Zealand, while our region is still recovering from hurricanes and flooding: “The roaring of the sea and the waves” indeed!
I’m mindful of the fact that we don’t really know how we ought to take this type of talk. Some look at the Scriptures as something to decode. As if the secret to the end times is hidden within the text even though Jesus himself tells us that we won’t know “when the master of the house will come”. This is a cottage industry within Christianity, peaking of course with the Left Behind books. But this thinking has been with us for a long time—each time disproven by the world’s existence past the predicted date.
Another response that many have taken is to ignore this talk, either confining it to its time and place or by ignoring the graphic imagery. In either case, the purpose is to desensitize the scripture to something more palatable and less strident; depriving it of its power to affect us and make us feel a certain way. This seems just as harmful to the Scripture.
We seem to be less afraid of the details of the Scripture itself than we are about discussing what the end actually looks like. About what it means to stop being…us.
It is said that we have an obsession in our culture with youth. I think a more accurate expression of this is that we have an obsession with avoiding aging. We don’t want to be young, we just don’t want to be old. The now common practices of cosmetic surgery and taking pills to stave off the outward effects of aging serve as obvious proof of this. The issue isn’t about becoming children again (though for some, that may actually be the case), but something more elemental: our understanding of youth is that in youth, our sites are set on tomorrow. Youth is about promise and expectation and hope and anticipation. It is about what is coming in the future.
Middle age, then, comes to represent the potential realization of those dreams and hopes and expectations. It is the time in which we embody the future in a present. We then take on a caretaker roll—maintaining the world, the institutions, the practices of a person of a certain age. Our prescription for middle age is to live in the present.
This leaves our senior time as representing the past. Our bodies prevent us from doing the things that we did when we were younger and our appearance changes.
But the truth is that we prefer to think about what could be to what is and certainly prefer it to what was. We catalog aging as a process of losing hope and optimism, as we are overtaken by pessimism and “realistic” thinking. We fight idealism because our own lives have seen things that have brought anger into our hearts and tears to our eyes.
In the middle of this talk of destruction, confusion, and conflict, Jesus tells his disciples this: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus talks about the end of things, not as a source of destruction and devastation, but of fulfillment of expectations, of hopes, and of dreams. A time of the old becoming new. In death, we are born anew. We talked about this two weeks ago when we tackled the “mini apocalypse” in Mark—the destruction of the Temple and the birthpangs—but in this one, Jesus gives his disciples instructions: to hold up their heads and stand tall.
This isn’t about arrogance, indignation, or confrontation. This isn’t about feeling special or chosen. This isn’t even about feeling righteous. This is about believing. Believing that hardship leads to reward. Believing that we have somebody that is there for us when we feel all alone. Believing that, in spite of today, tomorrow will be better.
When Jesus tells his disciples to be ready, he doesn’t couple that with “because tomorrow the world will end,” but with “so that your hearts may not be weighed down”.
As is often the case, Jesus may as well be speaking right to us. This may as well be a direct line to our own time. Because sometimes we feel bad, our hearts feel pretty heavy. We look at tomorrow, not with hope and optimism, but with anxiety: because we fear loss; that something will be stripped from us. For some, this is the fear of having the car keys taken by a son or daughter—that tomorrow might be the day.
But Jesus tells us not to fear: not to be afraid of tomorrow. That we must hold our heads up to the light and see the world as it truly is. What we long for about youth is that freedom to not fear tomorrow, to not worry about what will happen this time next year or the year after that, and to not worry about loss. But who says that we don’t all have that freedom? Who says that we have to look at tomorrow with death-colored glasses? Who says that we can’t be hopeful dreamers?
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Text: Luke 21:25-36
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
So here we are, at the end of Jesus’s ministry. On the first day of Advent. New Year’s Day in the Christian Calendar. New year, new gospel, so we dive into Luke; and in the gospel, we’re starting toward the end in chapter 21. This is one of the strange components of a Lectionary in which we don’t actually tell the story in order. We begin the year with Jesus telling us how it’s all going to end, and then we jump back to the beginning. And in the Spring, we have Lent, which hits the Temptations, and then jumps to Jesus’s final days. Then there’s Easter and Pentecost, which are chronologically sound, following Jesus’s death and resurrection, but then we get into the Season of Pentecost, where we rewind and go through Jesus’s actual teachings. All of which lead up to this one. At the beginning.
The teaching itself is a prophecy, not unlike the one from two weeks ago about the Temple. This one is bigger, though. This involves not just human stuff, but cosmological stuff: “the sun, the moon, and the stars”. And the global human response is distress—everywhere. The phrasing is truly appropriate for us as we deal with current warming trends in the oceans and news reports of icebergs that broke from the Antarctic ice shelf and are now drifting north toward New Zealand, while our region is still recovering from hurricanes and flooding: “The roaring of the sea and the waves” indeed!
I’m mindful of the fact that we don’t really know how we ought to take this type of talk. Some look at the Scriptures as something to decode. As if the secret to the end times is hidden within the text even though Jesus himself tells us that we won’t know “when the master of the house will come”. This is a cottage industry within Christianity, peaking of course with the Left Behind books. But this thinking has been with us for a long time—each time disproven by the world’s existence past the predicted date.
Another response that many have taken is to ignore this talk, either confining it to its time and place or by ignoring the graphic imagery. In either case, the purpose is to desensitize the scripture to something more palatable and less strident; depriving it of its power to affect us and make us feel a certain way. This seems just as harmful to the Scripture.
We seem to be less afraid of the details of the Scripture itself than we are about discussing what the end actually looks like. About what it means to stop being…us.
It is said that we have an obsession in our culture with youth. I think a more accurate expression of this is that we have an obsession with avoiding aging. We don’t want to be young, we just don’t want to be old. The now common practices of cosmetic surgery and taking pills to stave off the outward effects of aging serve as obvious proof of this. The issue isn’t about becoming children again (though for some, that may actually be the case), but something more elemental: our understanding of youth is that in youth, our sites are set on tomorrow. Youth is about promise and expectation and hope and anticipation. It is about what is coming in the future.
Middle age, then, comes to represent the potential realization of those dreams and hopes and expectations. It is the time in which we embody the future in a present. We then take on a caretaker roll—maintaining the world, the institutions, the practices of a person of a certain age. Our prescription for middle age is to live in the present.
This leaves our senior time as representing the past. Our bodies prevent us from doing the things that we did when we were younger and our appearance changes.
But the truth is that we prefer to think about what could be to what is and certainly prefer it to what was. We catalog aging as a process of losing hope and optimism, as we are overtaken by pessimism and “realistic” thinking. We fight idealism because our own lives have seen things that have brought anger into our hearts and tears to our eyes.
In the middle of this talk of destruction, confusion, and conflict, Jesus tells his disciples this: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus talks about the end of things, not as a source of destruction and devastation, but of fulfillment of expectations, of hopes, and of dreams. A time of the old becoming new. In death, we are born anew. We talked about this two weeks ago when we tackled the “mini apocalypse” in Mark—the destruction of the Temple and the birthpangs—but in this one, Jesus gives his disciples instructions: to hold up their heads and stand tall.
This isn’t about arrogance, indignation, or confrontation. This isn’t about feeling special or chosen. This isn’t even about feeling righteous. This is about believing. Believing that hardship leads to reward. Believing that we have somebody that is there for us when we feel all alone. Believing that, in spite of today, tomorrow will be better.
When Jesus tells his disciples to be ready, he doesn’t couple that with “because tomorrow the world will end,” but with “so that your hearts may not be weighed down”.
As is often the case, Jesus may as well be speaking right to us. This may as well be a direct line to our own time. Because sometimes we feel bad, our hearts feel pretty heavy. We look at tomorrow, not with hope and optimism, but with anxiety: because we fear loss; that something will be stripped from us. For some, this is the fear of having the car keys taken by a son or daughter—that tomorrow might be the day.
But Jesus tells us not to fear: not to be afraid of tomorrow. That we must hold our heads up to the light and see the world as it truly is. What we long for about youth is that freedom to not fear tomorrow, to not worry about what will happen this time next year or the year after that, and to not worry about loss. But who says that we don’t all have that freedom? Who says that we have to look at tomorrow with death-colored glasses? Who says that we can’t be hopeful dreamers?
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Monday, November 16, 2009
Lack of updates
There has been an obvious lack of updates on this page. For that, I'm truly sorry. I have preached since March, and plan on putting more up here, but that'll have to wait. Since the transition to St. Paul's, I am now using a different computer. Old sermons are on my laptop. Ah, technology! They might show up eventually. Until then, take a look at the last few that I have that are newly posted!
Drew+
Drew+
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Expectation
a Sermon for Proper 28B
Text: Mark 13:1-8
Growing up in a pretty small town in northern Michigan of about ten thousand and going to a liberal arts college of 1,300, it wasn’t until I moved to the Boston area that I could appreciate the size and scope of civilization. The way you have to crane your neck up to see the middle of buildings, and then hitch it again to see the tops. The small feeling you get walking between skyscrapers—like a mouse or an ant, scurrying to find what you need or marching into your place in the system. The enormity of our creations is incredible. We need drive 30 or 40 minutes to get that feeling here. Incredible.
Many of us have had this experience. This is the same feeling the disciples no doubt felt entering Jerusalem. They’re villagers, not city folk. Fishermen and laborers. Small town people, coming to the big city. It must have been an overwhelming experience. Like the times we entered the big city for the first time, that sense of confusion takes over. “Everyone moves so fast, and they know where they’re going! I’m just in their way,” we think. The size and scope of the city stops us and keeps us stuck; our feet stick to the pavement. We couldn’t feel more different. At the same time, there’s also an energy—an excitement in the city. You start to move and go where the people are going, adapting to the pace and so quickly learn to go with the flow—naturally. The first time in the big city can be a transformative experience.
Now imagine this moment. The disciples walk up to the Temple Mount, walls that go up several stories in some places, but it’s the vastness that’s most impressive: they extend 488 m along the western side and 470 m along the eastern side. And 315 m along the northern side and 280 m along the south side. In relative terms, 5 football fields by 3. 1,500 feet long. The disciples have never seen anything like this. And on top of that, the site means something to them. This is the center of their worship. We can only begin to understand this sensation when we walk into the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Huge place of worship—major connections with our faith. Awesome. And they are there with Jesus, preaching and teaching. They must have been on such a high from this. This is the big time. Like a violinist playing Carnegie Hall or a rookie walking into Yankee Stadium. Big time.
So imagine the world-shattering experience they get as they leave. They’re jumping up and down, they can hardly contain themselves. “Jesus preached at the Temple! This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for, this is what we’ve been building this ministry toward, we have finally arrived. We’ve made it. Aren’t you excited Jesus?” Calmly, Jesus responds “Yeah, it will call come down. Every last brick.”
The Disciples are left with this tremendous gut check. “Really? All of this?” The skyscrapers that are so incredible, testaments to human innovation, will be so utterly devastated that not one piece will be left in its original place. Everything will be upturned. The disciples are left to process this as Jesus continues walking. They essentially cross the street to the Mount of Olives and sit down. And the four most prominent disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) sort of check on Jesus. They want to know if he really meant what he said. So they ask: “So, this destruction you were talking about, when does it happen?” What Jesus proceeds to say is troubling. He gives markers that are so vague, that they are perpetually present—they are always in the “right now”. And this talk goes on for many more verses after our reading for today. Many scholars refer to this as the “Mini Apocalypse”. For readers of Mark, including us, as we’ve been working through this whole gospel, we are all thrown by this sequence as much as the disciples were about the Temple. It feels different, scary even. This is a hard pill to swallow as it is, let alone when we compare it to what we’ve read so far. Jesus is telling us some pretty bad news. It doesn’t seem like “good news” at all!
What he seems to be telling us, however, is not a ghost story designed to scare us, but a statement about change: that the Temple, this physical, enormous testament to human innovation, would be overturned so completely that every piece would be affected and the world would change forever. A world with a Temple ends and a world without one will begin. That the Temple was really destroyed forty years later is almost irrelevant, because the metaphor is so powerful. Jesus ushers in an age in which everything goes topsy-turvy, shattering that cozy image of imperial peace. Rome and the Temple authorities brought oppressive certainty and Jesus brought chaotic freedom: a true revolution.
A second useful image comes to us in the final verse: “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” That this scary, and frightening time is difficult, but allows for something miraculous to happen: childbirth.
When Rose and I found out that we were going to have a baby, we joined natural childbirth classes. Our hope was that we could give Sophia the best opportunity for success. We wanted what was best for her, and we knew that might require some…sacrifice…on our part. Perhaps more on Rose’s part, but, you get my meaning.
What we learned from these classes was a whole lot more than what was about to happen; we also learned a bit about why.
I know that there will be at least one woman in this room that will say “He’s not going to talk about pain, is he? What does he know?” And there are a few more that are about to cross their arms and lean back a little bit, eyes narrowing in anticipation. Yes, I am going to talk about the pain of childbirth. But this is the root of it. Pain isn’t bad. It isn’t evil. It hurts, of course. But pain itself isn’t bad. Our Registered Nurse Midwives talked about pain as our bodies’ communication system. Just as the pain you feel when you touch something hot warns you of danger, the pain of childbirth communicates to the expectant mother what stage she’s in. It tells her what is about to happen.
Our tendency is to eliminate pain, and therefore, ignore its message. Medically, childbirth is approached as a problem—as a disease—that must be fixed. That a mother must be rescued from her condition. But what happens when a child is born? The pain disappears as hormones rush through the new mother’s body. And as her eyes see the new baby, and hold her in her arms, everything has changed. The world is made new.
This is the story of new creation. Of a time when the old transitions into something new. When out of the past, we claim a new future.
Jesus gives us this fearful vision today, not to frighten us, or get us to think bad thoughts. He doesn’t hope to scare us into salvation or condemning our neighbors for not seeing the signs. But instead to see the present age as the preparation for a better tomorrow. That we are laboring for the coming birth. That all of this that we are doing may be difficult and may take every ounce of strength and courage that we have, but in the end, a beautiful baby is born. Born into a world that is ready to nurture this new creation into childhood and then adulthood.
And for St. Paul’s as it approaches the end of another year and the start of a new one in two weeks, with Advent, may we do so with excitement, anticipation, and the awesome realization that we are active participants in miracles.
Text: Mark 13:1-8
God of Hope and Wonder, you share with us your miracles and allow us to participate in your miraculous incarnations. Help us to behold them in the world around us and in one another. Amen.
Growing up in a pretty small town in northern Michigan of about ten thousand and going to a liberal arts college of 1,300, it wasn’t until I moved to the Boston area that I could appreciate the size and scope of civilization. The way you have to crane your neck up to see the middle of buildings, and then hitch it again to see the tops. The small feeling you get walking between skyscrapers—like a mouse or an ant, scurrying to find what you need or marching into your place in the system. The enormity of our creations is incredible. We need drive 30 or 40 minutes to get that feeling here. Incredible.
Many of us have had this experience. This is the same feeling the disciples no doubt felt entering Jerusalem. They’re villagers, not city folk. Fishermen and laborers. Small town people, coming to the big city. It must have been an overwhelming experience. Like the times we entered the big city for the first time, that sense of confusion takes over. “Everyone moves so fast, and they know where they’re going! I’m just in their way,” we think. The size and scope of the city stops us and keeps us stuck; our feet stick to the pavement. We couldn’t feel more different. At the same time, there’s also an energy—an excitement in the city. You start to move and go where the people are going, adapting to the pace and so quickly learn to go with the flow—naturally. The first time in the big city can be a transformative experience.
Now imagine this moment. The disciples walk up to the Temple Mount, walls that go up several stories in some places, but it’s the vastness that’s most impressive: they extend 488 m along the western side and 470 m along the eastern side. And 315 m along the northern side and 280 m along the south side. In relative terms, 5 football fields by 3. 1,500 feet long. The disciples have never seen anything like this. And on top of that, the site means something to them. This is the center of their worship. We can only begin to understand this sensation when we walk into the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Huge place of worship—major connections with our faith. Awesome. And they are there with Jesus, preaching and teaching. They must have been on such a high from this. This is the big time. Like a violinist playing Carnegie Hall or a rookie walking into Yankee Stadium. Big time.
So imagine the world-shattering experience they get as they leave. They’re jumping up and down, they can hardly contain themselves. “Jesus preached at the Temple! This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for, this is what we’ve been building this ministry toward, we have finally arrived. We’ve made it. Aren’t you excited Jesus?” Calmly, Jesus responds “Yeah, it will call come down. Every last brick.”
The Disciples are left with this tremendous gut check. “Really? All of this?” The skyscrapers that are so incredible, testaments to human innovation, will be so utterly devastated that not one piece will be left in its original place. Everything will be upturned. The disciples are left to process this as Jesus continues walking. They essentially cross the street to the Mount of Olives and sit down. And the four most prominent disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) sort of check on Jesus. They want to know if he really meant what he said. So they ask: “So, this destruction you were talking about, when does it happen?” What Jesus proceeds to say is troubling. He gives markers that are so vague, that they are perpetually present—they are always in the “right now”. And this talk goes on for many more verses after our reading for today. Many scholars refer to this as the “Mini Apocalypse”. For readers of Mark, including us, as we’ve been working through this whole gospel, we are all thrown by this sequence as much as the disciples were about the Temple. It feels different, scary even. This is a hard pill to swallow as it is, let alone when we compare it to what we’ve read so far. Jesus is telling us some pretty bad news. It doesn’t seem like “good news” at all!
What he seems to be telling us, however, is not a ghost story designed to scare us, but a statement about change: that the Temple, this physical, enormous testament to human innovation, would be overturned so completely that every piece would be affected and the world would change forever. A world with a Temple ends and a world without one will begin. That the Temple was really destroyed forty years later is almost irrelevant, because the metaphor is so powerful. Jesus ushers in an age in which everything goes topsy-turvy, shattering that cozy image of imperial peace. Rome and the Temple authorities brought oppressive certainty and Jesus brought chaotic freedom: a true revolution.
A second useful image comes to us in the final verse: “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” That this scary, and frightening time is difficult, but allows for something miraculous to happen: childbirth.
When Rose and I found out that we were going to have a baby, we joined natural childbirth classes. Our hope was that we could give Sophia the best opportunity for success. We wanted what was best for her, and we knew that might require some…sacrifice…on our part. Perhaps more on Rose’s part, but, you get my meaning.
What we learned from these classes was a whole lot more than what was about to happen; we also learned a bit about why.
I know that there will be at least one woman in this room that will say “He’s not going to talk about pain, is he? What does he know?” And there are a few more that are about to cross their arms and lean back a little bit, eyes narrowing in anticipation. Yes, I am going to talk about the pain of childbirth. But this is the root of it. Pain isn’t bad. It isn’t evil. It hurts, of course. But pain itself isn’t bad. Our Registered Nurse Midwives talked about pain as our bodies’ communication system. Just as the pain you feel when you touch something hot warns you of danger, the pain of childbirth communicates to the expectant mother what stage she’s in. It tells her what is about to happen.
Our tendency is to eliminate pain, and therefore, ignore its message. Medically, childbirth is approached as a problem—as a disease—that must be fixed. That a mother must be rescued from her condition. But what happens when a child is born? The pain disappears as hormones rush through the new mother’s body. And as her eyes see the new baby, and hold her in her arms, everything has changed. The world is made new.
This is the story of new creation. Of a time when the old transitions into something new. When out of the past, we claim a new future.
Jesus gives us this fearful vision today, not to frighten us, or get us to think bad thoughts. He doesn’t hope to scare us into salvation or condemning our neighbors for not seeing the signs. But instead to see the present age as the preparation for a better tomorrow. That we are laboring for the coming birth. That all of this that we are doing may be difficult and may take every ounce of strength and courage that we have, but in the end, a beautiful baby is born. Born into a world that is ready to nurture this new creation into childhood and then adulthood.
And for St. Paul’s as it approaches the end of another year and the start of a new one in two weeks, with Advent, may we do so with excitement, anticipation, and the awesome realization that we are active participants in miracles.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Blind make better guides
a Sermon for Proper 25B
Text: Mark 10:46-52
This morning’s gospel might feel a bit disembodied. It begins as Jesus and Co. enter Jericho and then leave it. Its location doesn’t serve to remind us where we are in Jesus’s life or in his ministry. It might help us to note that this is the last passage before they get to Jerusalem. This is Jesus’s last chance to teach his disciples something. To help them get it—to see what he’s trying to tell them.
It also serves in the Gospel of Mark as a second bookend with another healing story. Back in chapter 8, Mark heals a blind man outside of Bethsaida, and then again, another one here, in chapter 10, outside of Jericho. These blind men bookends serve to inform a sequence in which Jesus attempts to teach about discipleship. About what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We are given the opportunity to see these teachings in light of these two healings. And amid these teachings are examples of the disciples screwing up, misunderstanding Jesus, and just plain ignoring his instruction. With these two healing stories, Jesus hopes that the formerly blind will lead the spiritually blind.
In this lesson, we meet Bartimaeus, a blind beggar who shouts after Jesus for healing. We are given the picture of the outsider. His blindness, his practice as a beggar, and even his location on the outside of the city direct us to see Bartimaeus in this way. This man is on the outside—not even—looking in. This passage therefore gives us another example of the way Jesus interacts with the poor and the sick. His mind is on other things—he’s just foretold his own death and he’s getting close to walking through the gates that will lead him to the cross—and this man interrupts the journey to ask for help. And Jesus, of course, helps him.
For some of us, it is easy to focus on the outsider—the one that is ignored. We long to be the Good Samaritan and not the pious ones that walk on by. And nothing gets our “helper” antennas up like helping the blind. But Bartimaeus is something else: he’s also a beggar. For many of us, beggars are a different story. We get all righteous and we stand tall and we think “go get a job, ya lazy bum.” And then we feel guilty for thinking that and reach in our pockets and find a dollar and change and put it in their cup as we walk by. “Here you go” we grumble. The gospel is always teasing us into recognizing those people we seem to have a hard time wanting to help.
Many of us also have a hard time being an outsider. If you don’t believe me, ask a teenager what its like to be singled out of a group. Or a homeowner if she’s ever felt the pressure to mow the lawn more often or decorate the house in a certain way. We join fraternities and social organizations precisely because we want to be a part of a group—to be on the inside. And like James and John last week, we like to be the best insiders we can be.
But as much as we want to be insiders, we do it out of fear of being left out—of being alone. We are afraid to be the people that look different, act different, or even think different from the group. We want in.
This is natural, as we are social creatures by our very nature. We are designed to move in groups, to love and nurture one another. We aren’t really supposed to be alone.
But Bartimaeus offers us a unique vision of the outsider.
Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus is healing people, but none of them get a name. Except Bartimaeus. He gets a name. And more than that, his father is named. Only major players get this treatment. Bartimaeus is afforded status and power in the gospel simply because he is named in it. And because he has a name, he is not defined by his circumstances. He isn’t “The Blind Man from Jericho,” but Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. He is unique and different, not because of his difference (his blindness), but in spite of it. His difference is part of his identity, not his sole identity.
But the gospel doesn’t stop there. Bartimaeus is named in the Scripture before he is healed. This means that what makes Bartimaeus unique is outside of his blindness and not dependent on it: it’s his faith.
In other accounts of healing, the individuals are transformed: they preach the gospel and tell the world of the miracles that Jesus has done after they are healed. Or they witness Jesus’s miraculous power and then respond. But Bartimaeus’s faith predates the healing—and even more, the internal expectation of being healed. He doesn’t care to be healed, he asks to see! His faith exists outside of the healing. In other words, he was a follower of Jesus before he even met him.
And as the chapter ends, Jesus encourages Bartimaeus to do what the rest have done: to leave. He says “Go; your faith has made you well.” But what is Bartimaeus’s response? It says: “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” He followed Jesus “on the way”. Not just where Jesus was going physically, but spiritually.
Bartimaeus is named because he is a disciple. Not officially, of course. He didn’t get the ID card or name badge that says: “Bartimaeus—Disciple” on it. And unlike James and John, Bartimaeus is good at it. He sees what Jesus has to show him and is moved to live, act, and believe accordingly. We’re invited to see it, too; to be that kind of disciple. To share in a faith that isn’t dependent on what we get from God (or Jesus or the Spirit), but on our devotion. To risk devotion blindly without ever expecting to see.
In a little bit, we’ll be starting our Core Values Workshop. We’ll explore the values that are resident at St. Paul’s—the things that are here. The things that make St. Paul’s, St. Paul’s. We’ll learn things about ourselves, about who we are as a church. If you’re already excited about it like I am, then great! But if you’re a bit skeptical, try this on: the example we take from Bartimaeus isn’t about healing the nameless blind or being an outsider without identity, but about God’s grace with each of us—and with all of us. Like Bartimaeus, we have a name; we have history; we have identity that already exists. And, also like Bartimaeus, we have opportunity to demonstrate our faith. We have opportunity to participate as followers of Jesus on the way.
Bartimaeus’s faith wasn’t determined by his ability to see. It was his vision.
Text: Mark 10:46-52
God of Hope and Wonder, we are grateful for your servant Bartimaeus, for his example for us, and we ask that you be with us—help us to see what you want us to see. Amen.
This morning’s gospel might feel a bit disembodied. It begins as Jesus and Co. enter Jericho and then leave it. Its location doesn’t serve to remind us where we are in Jesus’s life or in his ministry. It might help us to note that this is the last passage before they get to Jerusalem. This is Jesus’s last chance to teach his disciples something. To help them get it—to see what he’s trying to tell them.
It also serves in the Gospel of Mark as a second bookend with another healing story. Back in chapter 8, Mark heals a blind man outside of Bethsaida, and then again, another one here, in chapter 10, outside of Jericho. These blind men bookends serve to inform a sequence in which Jesus attempts to teach about discipleship. About what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We are given the opportunity to see these teachings in light of these two healings. And amid these teachings are examples of the disciples screwing up, misunderstanding Jesus, and just plain ignoring his instruction. With these two healing stories, Jesus hopes that the formerly blind will lead the spiritually blind.
In this lesson, we meet Bartimaeus, a blind beggar who shouts after Jesus for healing. We are given the picture of the outsider. His blindness, his practice as a beggar, and even his location on the outside of the city direct us to see Bartimaeus in this way. This man is on the outside—not even—looking in. This passage therefore gives us another example of the way Jesus interacts with the poor and the sick. His mind is on other things—he’s just foretold his own death and he’s getting close to walking through the gates that will lead him to the cross—and this man interrupts the journey to ask for help. And Jesus, of course, helps him.
For some of us, it is easy to focus on the outsider—the one that is ignored. We long to be the Good Samaritan and not the pious ones that walk on by. And nothing gets our “helper” antennas up like helping the blind. But Bartimaeus is something else: he’s also a beggar. For many of us, beggars are a different story. We get all righteous and we stand tall and we think “go get a job, ya lazy bum.” And then we feel guilty for thinking that and reach in our pockets and find a dollar and change and put it in their cup as we walk by. “Here you go” we grumble. The gospel is always teasing us into recognizing those people we seem to have a hard time wanting to help.
Many of us also have a hard time being an outsider. If you don’t believe me, ask a teenager what its like to be singled out of a group. Or a homeowner if she’s ever felt the pressure to mow the lawn more often or decorate the house in a certain way. We join fraternities and social organizations precisely because we want to be a part of a group—to be on the inside. And like James and John last week, we like to be the best insiders we can be.
But as much as we want to be insiders, we do it out of fear of being left out—of being alone. We are afraid to be the people that look different, act different, or even think different from the group. We want in.
This is natural, as we are social creatures by our very nature. We are designed to move in groups, to love and nurture one another. We aren’t really supposed to be alone.
But Bartimaeus offers us a unique vision of the outsider.
Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus is healing people, but none of them get a name. Except Bartimaeus. He gets a name. And more than that, his father is named. Only major players get this treatment. Bartimaeus is afforded status and power in the gospel simply because he is named in it. And because he has a name, he is not defined by his circumstances. He isn’t “The Blind Man from Jericho,” but Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. He is unique and different, not because of his difference (his blindness), but in spite of it. His difference is part of his identity, not his sole identity.
But the gospel doesn’t stop there. Bartimaeus is named in the Scripture before he is healed. This means that what makes Bartimaeus unique is outside of his blindness and not dependent on it: it’s his faith.
In other accounts of healing, the individuals are transformed: they preach the gospel and tell the world of the miracles that Jesus has done after they are healed. Or they witness Jesus’s miraculous power and then respond. But Bartimaeus’s faith predates the healing—and even more, the internal expectation of being healed. He doesn’t care to be healed, he asks to see! His faith exists outside of the healing. In other words, he was a follower of Jesus before he even met him.
And as the chapter ends, Jesus encourages Bartimaeus to do what the rest have done: to leave. He says “Go; your faith has made you well.” But what is Bartimaeus’s response? It says: “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” He followed Jesus “on the way”. Not just where Jesus was going physically, but spiritually.
Bartimaeus is named because he is a disciple. Not officially, of course. He didn’t get the ID card or name badge that says: “Bartimaeus—Disciple” on it. And unlike James and John, Bartimaeus is good at it. He sees what Jesus has to show him and is moved to live, act, and believe accordingly. We’re invited to see it, too; to be that kind of disciple. To share in a faith that isn’t dependent on what we get from God (or Jesus or the Spirit), but on our devotion. To risk devotion blindly without ever expecting to see.
In a little bit, we’ll be starting our Core Values Workshop. We’ll explore the values that are resident at St. Paul’s—the things that are here. The things that make St. Paul’s, St. Paul’s. We’ll learn things about ourselves, about who we are as a church. If you’re already excited about it like I am, then great! But if you’re a bit skeptical, try this on: the example we take from Bartimaeus isn’t about healing the nameless blind or being an outsider without identity, but about God’s grace with each of us—and with all of us. Like Bartimaeus, we have a name; we have history; we have identity that already exists. And, also like Bartimaeus, we have opportunity to demonstrate our faith. We have opportunity to participate as followers of Jesus on the way.
Bartimaeus’s faith wasn’t determined by his ability to see. It was his vision.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Flipped upside down
a Sermon for Proper 21B
Text: Mark 9:38-50
So then, John, as this morning’s gospel continues The Story, steps up and tells Jesus about this recent event. He says: ‘We saw this guy who was performing miracles in your name, but he wasn’t one of us, so we tried to stop him.’ I imagine that he looked up at Jesus with big puppy dog eyes, hoping for a pat on the head. Like he went up to the guy and asked him if he had a license to do what he was doing: the miracle police. And Jesus’s response is so measured: “Don’t stop him,” he says. “He’s on our side.”
John asserts that this unsanctioned do-gooder should be silenced because he didn’t run it through the proper channels. He didn’t get his proclamation license. He isn’t really one of us. But Jesus’s response is simple: “sure he is!” He does what the disciples do. Just because he isn’t a disciple, doesn’t mean that he’s cut off from the Holy Spirit.
We tend to get a little credentials-focused, I think. Did you get the proper degree, from the proper school? We have all of our elaborate checks and balances to make sure that we cut out the riff raff. And even when we’re the riff raff, if we get in, we feel obligated to keep out the rest, because we know what they’re like. This is our club, we think. Let them find another.
I had a good friend in college that wanted to be a teacher. He applied to the teaching department two or three times and was rejected each time. I’m not sure if it was because his grades weren’t high enough or if he didn’t have the proper personality for the job. In any case, he tried and was sent off into the wilderness. Another friend of mine, was admitted immediately with little trouble. Her ministry was validated.
The tragic difference between these very different potential teachers is that the former was a kind, insightful, funny, engaging, and creative man and the latter was a heavily structured, A-Type woman, who was not that good with people. The former, who was much more likely to affect his students was dismissed because, presumably, he didn’t act the part. She was more “polished” and “together”.
But Jesus isn’t just interested in letting this rogue proclaimer continue in his ministry, he explains the cost of stopping him. He says: “If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” In other words, the punishment doesn’t just fit you if you stop someone, but for impeding their progress! Being a speedbump gets you drowned! Heavy stuff from Jesus here.
But Jesus is revisiting the discussion that the disciples had moments before, as in last week’s lesson.
Last week, Jesus used a child as a visual example (a “little one,” right?) of his replacement of the order; he says ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ He reiterates his turning over of the order: the first are last, the masters will serve the servants, etc. And then includes a child. Jesus continues this conversation with his reference to the “little ones”. He means for his disciples to see that they are blind to the needs of those that need them most.
How easy it is for us to set up stumbling blocks. To stand in the way of others. But what is it that motivates us? Fear? Are we afraid that someone else will get the job? Or perhaps that we didn’t really earn it in the first place.
As Americans we like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, don’t we? We think that the people that are best at something should win. We often root for Goliath to beat David because Goliath is bigger and should win. We think the people with the best test scores should get in the best schools, the one with the best degree should get the best job, and the one with the most cunning should win Survivor. We think the best need to win.
It is this idea that Jesus is challenging. He argues that the weakest should be first, not merely in some intellectual sense, but in society. That the runt of the litter needs to be first in line because he can’t fend off his siblings. That children shouldn’t fend for themselves, the poor shouldn’t be consistently exposed to disease and famine, and that the mentally disabled shouldn’t be excluded from participating fully.
There are two ways to put yourself in front of someone: move ahead of them, or push them behind you. The first is something you do, and the second is something you do to them. Jesus isn’t discouraging his disciples from succeeding or bettering themselves, or hoping for more. He’s telling them to stop knocking other people down to get ahead. That their success is dependent, not on how they compare with their neighbors, but how they help them. The grade isn’t a curve, in which the top student gets the highest mark, but is dependent on how she helps the other students pass—it’s the anti-curve. It is a grading scale that suggests if anyone fails, the whole class fails.
The disciples, like us, were predisposed to competitiveness and ownership. They wanted to be in charge of the message and wanted to be the ones that get credit for doing it well. They wanted to succeed within a meritocracy. But the Roman world wasn’t anymore ruled by merit than the United States is today. It was about “who you know” and self-promotion. It was about making yourself look good and cutting down your neighbor. And the disciples had a very hard time with Jesus’s teachings.
Just as we do. For all of those reasons. We want it all, and if someone else can have it too, maybe that’ll be OK, as long as we get it first. We’re in it for ourselves and our children. We are reinforcing a world view that rejects helping each other out. We take the flight attendant’s advice seriously when he tells us to put our own mask on first before assisting someone else. The picture in the card in front of us actually shows a woman with a mask on helping a “little one” put hers on.
Jesus’s radical disposition is to flip the pyramid. That the weakest many at the bottom need not hold up the most capable few at the top. That the most capable should exercise their gifts on behalf of the weak. That the most deserving are the ones that can’t do this on their own and could never hope to.
Jesus is with the small and the weak and longs for us to put them first. This is Jesus’s hope for us. It is this fertile soil from which the Spirit’s stalks emerge. To be radically present for one another, to not only hope for the best in each other, but help them achieve it. To be confident in the Spirit’s call to each of us and to the ministries that will emerge here from this place, under this church, in this soil. That the Spirit’s stalks will break through the floor and bust through the roof, directing our eyes skyward, laser-locked on the heavens and that the people that are St. David’s will be forever transformed and made new.
Text: Mark 9:38-50
God of Hope and Wonder, open our eyes to brokenness in the world, open our minds to the plight of those that cannot speak, and turn our hearts to share your blessings with others. Amen.For the second time, Jesus has just told his disciples that he is to die and on the third day be raised. And the disciples get a bit red in the face and look at each other because the conversation they were in the middle of was a discussion about who is the greatest among them: who gets to be the super-disciple. Jesus’ go-to guy.
So then, John, as this morning’s gospel continues The Story, steps up and tells Jesus about this recent event. He says: ‘We saw this guy who was performing miracles in your name, but he wasn’t one of us, so we tried to stop him.’ I imagine that he looked up at Jesus with big puppy dog eyes, hoping for a pat on the head. Like he went up to the guy and asked him if he had a license to do what he was doing: the miracle police. And Jesus’s response is so measured: “Don’t stop him,” he says. “He’s on our side.”
John asserts that this unsanctioned do-gooder should be silenced because he didn’t run it through the proper channels. He didn’t get his proclamation license. He isn’t really one of us. But Jesus’s response is simple: “sure he is!” He does what the disciples do. Just because he isn’t a disciple, doesn’t mean that he’s cut off from the Holy Spirit.
We tend to get a little credentials-focused, I think. Did you get the proper degree, from the proper school? We have all of our elaborate checks and balances to make sure that we cut out the riff raff. And even when we’re the riff raff, if we get in, we feel obligated to keep out the rest, because we know what they’re like. This is our club, we think. Let them find another.
I had a good friend in college that wanted to be a teacher. He applied to the teaching department two or three times and was rejected each time. I’m not sure if it was because his grades weren’t high enough or if he didn’t have the proper personality for the job. In any case, he tried and was sent off into the wilderness. Another friend of mine, was admitted immediately with little trouble. Her ministry was validated.
The tragic difference between these very different potential teachers is that the former was a kind, insightful, funny, engaging, and creative man and the latter was a heavily structured, A-Type woman, who was not that good with people. The former, who was much more likely to affect his students was dismissed because, presumably, he didn’t act the part. She was more “polished” and “together”.
But Jesus isn’t just interested in letting this rogue proclaimer continue in his ministry, he explains the cost of stopping him. He says: “If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” In other words, the punishment doesn’t just fit you if you stop someone, but for impeding their progress! Being a speedbump gets you drowned! Heavy stuff from Jesus here.
But Jesus is revisiting the discussion that the disciples had moments before, as in last week’s lesson.
Last week, Jesus used a child as a visual example (a “little one,” right?) of his replacement of the order; he says ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ He reiterates his turning over of the order: the first are last, the masters will serve the servants, etc. And then includes a child. Jesus continues this conversation with his reference to the “little ones”. He means for his disciples to see that they are blind to the needs of those that need them most.
How easy it is for us to set up stumbling blocks. To stand in the way of others. But what is it that motivates us? Fear? Are we afraid that someone else will get the job? Or perhaps that we didn’t really earn it in the first place.
As Americans we like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, don’t we? We think that the people that are best at something should win. We often root for Goliath to beat David because Goliath is bigger and should win. We think the people with the best test scores should get in the best schools, the one with the best degree should get the best job, and the one with the most cunning should win Survivor. We think the best need to win.
It is this idea that Jesus is challenging. He argues that the weakest should be first, not merely in some intellectual sense, but in society. That the runt of the litter needs to be first in line because he can’t fend off his siblings. That children shouldn’t fend for themselves, the poor shouldn’t be consistently exposed to disease and famine, and that the mentally disabled shouldn’t be excluded from participating fully.
There are two ways to put yourself in front of someone: move ahead of them, or push them behind you. The first is something you do, and the second is something you do to them. Jesus isn’t discouraging his disciples from succeeding or bettering themselves, or hoping for more. He’s telling them to stop knocking other people down to get ahead. That their success is dependent, not on how they compare with their neighbors, but how they help them. The grade isn’t a curve, in which the top student gets the highest mark, but is dependent on how she helps the other students pass—it’s the anti-curve. It is a grading scale that suggests if anyone fails, the whole class fails.
The disciples, like us, were predisposed to competitiveness and ownership. They wanted to be in charge of the message and wanted to be the ones that get credit for doing it well. They wanted to succeed within a meritocracy. But the Roman world wasn’t anymore ruled by merit than the United States is today. It was about “who you know” and self-promotion. It was about making yourself look good and cutting down your neighbor. And the disciples had a very hard time with Jesus’s teachings.
Just as we do. For all of those reasons. We want it all, and if someone else can have it too, maybe that’ll be OK, as long as we get it first. We’re in it for ourselves and our children. We are reinforcing a world view that rejects helping each other out. We take the flight attendant’s advice seriously when he tells us to put our own mask on first before assisting someone else. The picture in the card in front of us actually shows a woman with a mask on helping a “little one” put hers on.
Jesus’s radical disposition is to flip the pyramid. That the weakest many at the bottom need not hold up the most capable few at the top. That the most capable should exercise their gifts on behalf of the weak. That the most deserving are the ones that can’t do this on their own and could never hope to.
Jesus is with the small and the weak and longs for us to put them first. This is Jesus’s hope for us. It is this fertile soil from which the Spirit’s stalks emerge. To be radically present for one another, to not only hope for the best in each other, but help them achieve it. To be confident in the Spirit’s call to each of us and to the ministries that will emerge here from this place, under this church, in this soil. That the Spirit’s stalks will break through the floor and bust through the roof, directing our eyes skyward, laser-locked on the heavens and that the people that are St. David’s will be forever transformed and made new.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
What the Darkness Really Hides
a Sermon for Lent 4B
Text: John 3:14-21
First things first—today’s gospel contains perhaps the Bible’s most famous line. Or at least the verse most commonly referenced. In ballparks and stadiums—the man with the rainbow wig would hold up a sign that said simply “John 3:16”. Passing by Vinnagrette’s here on Elmwood, you can usually see it on their billboard on Sunday mornings. “John 3:16”. The verse itself, so readily familiar:
As the hallmark for Christian ministry, these words seem a bit…difficult. Let me rephrase it:
But in this gospel, Jesus is finishing up this conversation with Nicodemus here, and he’s been trying to explain life and death, and Nicodemus just can’t seem to get it. He keeps trying to take Jesus literally—to him, being born from above means being re-born or born again—meaning literally passing through the womb a second time. What Jesus argues for is a spiritual birth.
I mention this as a reminder of Jesus’s context. Reading Jesus’s arguments here, he seems to be setting up a structure of relating concepts—the spiritual and the physical, salvation and condemnation, good and evil, light and dark. He seems to be setting up a structure of in and out and God, through the Son of Man, has given us a way in. This should be good news. Except that it seems to imply that some will be out. That some will be condemned—that some are already condemned.
And if we know anything about Jesus, we know that he isn’t a big fan of pride and boastfulness, right, so let me connect the dots here…
You know that I don’t see Jesus this way, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t either. But the Jesus of this gospel is a bit troubling. Made worse by the way we use these words to exclude. To judge. To condemn. To be the ones that say to all the others out there that they are wrong, they are condemned, they are out. We can sit back in our ivory towers, shouting down to the ground “don’t blame me—these aren’t my words—they’re Jesus’. I’m not keeping you out, he is.” Like the bully that grabs another kid’s wrist, then forceing the child’s hand into his own shoulder saying “stop hitting yourself”. We can easily hijack the situation for our own ideological abuse.
But Jesus gives us an interesting motif here. He describes truth, salvation, and condemnation with the images of light and darkness. He presupposes the darkness, right? He presupposes that we are in darkness and that a light—Jesus, right?—has come into the world.
Imagine for a moment the solitude of darkness—Imagine getting up in the middle of the night. Your eyes adjust to twilight pretty easily now. You get out of bed and head for the bathroom. Your muscle memory tells you to turn on the light but you remember that sudden light kind of hurts, so you head to the toilet in darkness. In this darkness, you can see shapes and you’re familiar enough with your surroundings that you know what’s there. The big blob to the left is the counter with the sink, right? The lighter thing to the right is the shower. In this darkness, you can see the rugs and the soap dispenser and the toothbrushes, and all of the stuff in the room, even though everything is draped in darkness. You wander back to bed, pull the covers up, and drift back to sleep.
Now imagine living in that world permanently. Imagine the darkness as normal. Imagine that you have to do all of your business, love your friends, cook and eat dinner, do everything in the dark. Now think about that light switch. Think about that flood of light that suddenly blinds you. That you can’t keep your eyes open. We’d avoid it, right? We avoid routine pains, don’t we? So we actually like living in the dark.
Jesus also points out that “all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” But to Jesus, we all do evil—we all screw up. And out of shame or guilt or whatever, we keep ourselves and our loved ones in the dark. We don’t want our secrets exposed, we don’t want our faces to be seen, right? We don’t want to have to look each other in the eyes.
Jesus offers us an option. He says “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” The point is that we aren’t the light—aren’t living in light, aren’t people of light—Jesus is the light. But we can “come to the light,” we can move ourselves to the light. We can flip on that switch and see all that is there—the shower that needs to be cleaned, the towels that need to be washed, the garbage can that is full, the Q-tips and toilet paper need to be restocked—and we are different people. We can look in the mirror and recognize that we could use a little more sleep, our eyes still don’t like the light, but they’re getting used to it, and all of this stuff will be here tomorrow waiting for us. And then, when we go to bed in total darkness, we no longer see with dark eyes, but light ones.
The harsh Jesus I described earlier isn’t the real Jesus—it isn’t the Jesus that came to save the world. Jesus isn’t excluding (or encouraging us to condemn our neighbors), but offering us salvation and truth. Offering us the choice to live a life of honesty—physically and spiritually. To be the people we believe ourselves to be.
Our great festive night, The Great Vigil of Easter, begins with a fire built in darkness, which is used to light the Paschal Candle. We follow that candle into a dark church, following the light of Christ in the midst of darkness. That light doesn’t just reveal the room and make us feel safe, it reveals each of us. So that we might look each other in the eye. To see and be seen.
Text: John 3:14-21
First things first—today’s gospel contains perhaps the Bible’s most famous line. Or at least the verse most commonly referenced. In ballparks and stadiums—the man with the rainbow wig would hold up a sign that said simply “John 3:16”. Passing by Vinnagrette’s here on Elmwood, you can usually see it on their billboard on Sunday mornings. “John 3:16”. The verse itself, so readily familiar:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”These words are attributed to Jesus.
As the hallmark for Christian ministry, these words seem a bit…difficult. Let me rephrase it:
God loves us so much that he had his son killed—but don’t worry—if you believe hard enough, you won’t die like him.Not the cheeriest of lines. Those in the advertising business might suggest that we stay away from that as our tag line, don’t you think?
But in this gospel, Jesus is finishing up this conversation with Nicodemus here, and he’s been trying to explain life and death, and Nicodemus just can’t seem to get it. He keeps trying to take Jesus literally—to him, being born from above means being re-born or born again—meaning literally passing through the womb a second time. What Jesus argues for is a spiritual birth.
I mention this as a reminder of Jesus’s context. Reading Jesus’s arguments here, he seems to be setting up a structure of relating concepts—the spiritual and the physical, salvation and condemnation, good and evil, light and dark. He seems to be setting up a structure of in and out and God, through the Son of Man, has given us a way in. This should be good news. Except that it seems to imply that some will be out. That some will be condemned—that some are already condemned.
And if we know anything about Jesus, we know that he isn’t a big fan of pride and boastfulness, right, so let me connect the dots here…
- he says “those who believe in him are not condemned”. OK, check.
- “But those who do not believe are condemned already”. They remain condemned. Starting out behind the eight ball, right? Tough stuff here.
- He explains that “because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” So he’s declaring who’s in and who’s out.
You know that I don’t see Jesus this way, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t either. But the Jesus of this gospel is a bit troubling. Made worse by the way we use these words to exclude. To judge. To condemn. To be the ones that say to all the others out there that they are wrong, they are condemned, they are out. We can sit back in our ivory towers, shouting down to the ground “don’t blame me—these aren’t my words—they’re Jesus’. I’m not keeping you out, he is.” Like the bully that grabs another kid’s wrist, then forceing the child’s hand into his own shoulder saying “stop hitting yourself”. We can easily hijack the situation for our own ideological abuse.
But Jesus gives us an interesting motif here. He describes truth, salvation, and condemnation with the images of light and darkness. He presupposes the darkness, right? He presupposes that we are in darkness and that a light—Jesus, right?—has come into the world.
Imagine for a moment the solitude of darkness—Imagine getting up in the middle of the night. Your eyes adjust to twilight pretty easily now. You get out of bed and head for the bathroom. Your muscle memory tells you to turn on the light but you remember that sudden light kind of hurts, so you head to the toilet in darkness. In this darkness, you can see shapes and you’re familiar enough with your surroundings that you know what’s there. The big blob to the left is the counter with the sink, right? The lighter thing to the right is the shower. In this darkness, you can see the rugs and the soap dispenser and the toothbrushes, and all of the stuff in the room, even though everything is draped in darkness. You wander back to bed, pull the covers up, and drift back to sleep.
Now imagine living in that world permanently. Imagine the darkness as normal. Imagine that you have to do all of your business, love your friends, cook and eat dinner, do everything in the dark. Now think about that light switch. Think about that flood of light that suddenly blinds you. That you can’t keep your eyes open. We’d avoid it, right? We avoid routine pains, don’t we? So we actually like living in the dark.
Jesus also points out that “all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” But to Jesus, we all do evil—we all screw up. And out of shame or guilt or whatever, we keep ourselves and our loved ones in the dark. We don’t want our secrets exposed, we don’t want our faces to be seen, right? We don’t want to have to look each other in the eyes.
Jesus offers us an option. He says “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” The point is that we aren’t the light—aren’t living in light, aren’t people of light—Jesus is the light. But we can “come to the light,” we can move ourselves to the light. We can flip on that switch and see all that is there—the shower that needs to be cleaned, the towels that need to be washed, the garbage can that is full, the Q-tips and toilet paper need to be restocked—and we are different people. We can look in the mirror and recognize that we could use a little more sleep, our eyes still don’t like the light, but they’re getting used to it, and all of this stuff will be here tomorrow waiting for us. And then, when we go to bed in total darkness, we no longer see with dark eyes, but light ones.
The harsh Jesus I described earlier isn’t the real Jesus—it isn’t the Jesus that came to save the world. Jesus isn’t excluding (or encouraging us to condemn our neighbors), but offering us salvation and truth. Offering us the choice to live a life of honesty—physically and spiritually. To be the people we believe ourselves to be.
Our great festive night, The Great Vigil of Easter, begins with a fire built in darkness, which is used to light the Paschal Candle. We follow that candle into a dark church, following the light of Christ in the midst of darkness. That light doesn’t just reveal the room and make us feel safe, it reveals each of us. So that we might look each other in the eye. To see and be seen.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
The Temple and Change
a Sermon for Lent 3B
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17 and Mark 9:2-9
In our first reading from Exodus, God gives a list of rules to the Israelites. Eight do-nots and two dos: don’t worship another God, don’t make an idol, don’t use God’s name in a wrong way, do remember the Sabbath, and so on. We know these rules. We recognize them. They have informed the way people have lived their lives for over three thousand years—a pretty remarkable feat.
The character of the rules themselves is pretty remarkable. They direct behavior and action. Do this, don’t do that. Here are the proper rules for life; for the way we live together. Don’t steal or kill or lust after someone else’s property. These rules direct action.
But the rules themselves have a life of their own, don’t they. They have a proper name (capitalized and everything): The Ten Commandments. And they served, and continue to serve, as the basis for not only individual behavior, but collective behavior and our institutions. The Sabbath is kept holy, the worship of God and no one else, for instance, serve as the principle instructions for the Israelite people themselves, and the Jewish faith.
When Jesus turns toward Jerusalem in this morning’s gospel, he’s following the rules. He is heading to the Temple for Passover. But he doesn’t seem to act like a good Jew when he gets there, does he? Instead of taking an animal into the temple for sacrifice, he fashions a whip and drives the livestock out of the place. He throws over the tables of the money changers. His actions are not only loud—but they are violent and destructive. Jesus expresses a righteous anger that many of us may find troubling or difficult to deal with.
So what do we do? We refer to this passage as “The Cleansing of the Temple”. We justify his anger as being in the right place and that money changers themselves must be the problem—that they were the 30’s CE equivalent of lawyers—‘have you heard the one about the moneychangers…’ And yet, the people in the Temple were following the rules. The moneychangers and those selling livestock enabled the people to make their sacrifices in the Temple—they facilitated a proper practice. Everyone there was following the rules.
It is no doubt hard for us to deal with this arrangement—let’s be honest. Our freedom fighter is their terrorist. For those that work in customer service fields—or anybody that deals with people—you no doubt know what its like to get yelled at; to be chastised for following the rules. For not only following your boss’s orders, but the rules outlined in the employee manual. My wife and I both worked in bookstores for years and dealt with angry customers with threats and sometimes reasonable arguments. All we could do is say “no, I’ve never thought about that before” or “Let me speak to my manager.” When we were the manager, we would simply say “I’m sorry, but company policy says…” The righteous customer never likes to hear that.
But we can’t really compare Jesus to an angry customer, can we? We can’t separate what we know about Him from this action. But this anger, this action does seem at least a little out of character, doesn’t it? Even if he were truly surprised by what he saw—I can’t imagine he was—it still wouldn’t condone this action. It isn’t the moneychangers that have any say in what they do—it’s the Temple authorities. It’s like responding to a telemarketer at dinnertime as if he or she really had any say in when your phone rings when the company employs them to do just that. It seems like misplaced rage.
The problem with this reading of Jesus is that we think we know who Jesus really is—not just the parts with which we are often familiar, but all of Him. Our experience of Him, our knowledge of Him, our belief in Him—all of it. As Brian McLaren suggests, Jesus isn’t simply an answer man—in fact, he often responds to questions with more questions. He also doesn’t only speak in words—but actions. This great big action in the Temple was a visual parable. His driving out the animals and throwing the money to the floor and flipping over the table were an incredible visual statement about our relationship with God.
The Gospel begins by referring to the location of this passage as being the Temple, but Jesus refers to it as “my Father’s house,” a distinction that Jesus intends to make a severe statement about. It’s identity, purpose, and reason for being is about to change. The notion of worship is about to shift from the indirect worship that is temple sacrifice to the direct worship of God—wherever one may be. Jesus’s radical theology here is matched by his radical action of flipping over tables.
The implication of this change isn’t simple, though. It means dealing with hard questions about practice—and worse—dealing with their underlying understanding of the rules. Those governing rules. In Mark, this same passage is linked with Jesus’s final teachings, including his declaration of the Great Commandment and its companion: to love God and one’s neighbor. Jesus is asking these people to not only deal with change—but change that seems fundamentally wrong to them.
But isn’t what Jesus asking of them freeing them? He is freeing them from more than this simple obligation, but the hierarchical nature of the practice: spending more money on a “purer” animal in order to incur more favor from God.
And doesn’t Jesus free God from that narrow relationship, allowing God to love every one of his creations?
I think He does. I think Jesus wasn’t freeing a couple of sheep and cattle from a horrible ending, but us. Jesus loves those rules as we do. Jesus loves the faiths that have grown out of those rules as we do this faith. Jesus loves His Father’s house and all of the people there—visiting or working. But to love them and us—change had to come.
This congregation has had to deal with change. A changing city, a changing membership, and a changing world beyond these doors: St. David's knows change. It knows the pain and worry that comes from it. But it also knows hope. It knows what kind of place it can be, a mirror for the changing and diversifying culture around it.
In revealing to us the freeing power of change, Jesus offers God’s grace as the strength, as the means of making the impossible, possible. That undeserved, freely-offered, unbeatable grace. We don’t have to go to the store to pick it up and we don’t have to make more money to earn a better share: God just gives it to us. “Here you go,” God says. “You look like you could use it.”
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17 and Mark 9:2-9
In our first reading from Exodus, God gives a list of rules to the Israelites. Eight do-nots and two dos: don’t worship another God, don’t make an idol, don’t use God’s name in a wrong way, do remember the Sabbath, and so on. We know these rules. We recognize them. They have informed the way people have lived their lives for over three thousand years—a pretty remarkable feat.
The character of the rules themselves is pretty remarkable. They direct behavior and action. Do this, don’t do that. Here are the proper rules for life; for the way we live together. Don’t steal or kill or lust after someone else’s property. These rules direct action.
But the rules themselves have a life of their own, don’t they. They have a proper name (capitalized and everything): The Ten Commandments. And they served, and continue to serve, as the basis for not only individual behavior, but collective behavior and our institutions. The Sabbath is kept holy, the worship of God and no one else, for instance, serve as the principle instructions for the Israelite people themselves, and the Jewish faith.
When Jesus turns toward Jerusalem in this morning’s gospel, he’s following the rules. He is heading to the Temple for Passover. But he doesn’t seem to act like a good Jew when he gets there, does he? Instead of taking an animal into the temple for sacrifice, he fashions a whip and drives the livestock out of the place. He throws over the tables of the money changers. His actions are not only loud—but they are violent and destructive. Jesus expresses a righteous anger that many of us may find troubling or difficult to deal with.
So what do we do? We refer to this passage as “The Cleansing of the Temple”. We justify his anger as being in the right place and that money changers themselves must be the problem—that they were the 30’s CE equivalent of lawyers—‘have you heard the one about the moneychangers…’ And yet, the people in the Temple were following the rules. The moneychangers and those selling livestock enabled the people to make their sacrifices in the Temple—they facilitated a proper practice. Everyone there was following the rules.
It is no doubt hard for us to deal with this arrangement—let’s be honest. Our freedom fighter is their terrorist. For those that work in customer service fields—or anybody that deals with people—you no doubt know what its like to get yelled at; to be chastised for following the rules. For not only following your boss’s orders, but the rules outlined in the employee manual. My wife and I both worked in bookstores for years and dealt with angry customers with threats and sometimes reasonable arguments. All we could do is say “no, I’ve never thought about that before” or “Let me speak to my manager.” When we were the manager, we would simply say “I’m sorry, but company policy says…” The righteous customer never likes to hear that.
But we can’t really compare Jesus to an angry customer, can we? We can’t separate what we know about Him from this action. But this anger, this action does seem at least a little out of character, doesn’t it? Even if he were truly surprised by what he saw—I can’t imagine he was—it still wouldn’t condone this action. It isn’t the moneychangers that have any say in what they do—it’s the Temple authorities. It’s like responding to a telemarketer at dinnertime as if he or she really had any say in when your phone rings when the company employs them to do just that. It seems like misplaced rage.
The problem with this reading of Jesus is that we think we know who Jesus really is—not just the parts with which we are often familiar, but all of Him. Our experience of Him, our knowledge of Him, our belief in Him—all of it. As Brian McLaren suggests, Jesus isn’t simply an answer man—in fact, he often responds to questions with more questions. He also doesn’t only speak in words—but actions. This great big action in the Temple was a visual parable. His driving out the animals and throwing the money to the floor and flipping over the table were an incredible visual statement about our relationship with God.
The Gospel begins by referring to the location of this passage as being the Temple, but Jesus refers to it as “my Father’s house,” a distinction that Jesus intends to make a severe statement about. It’s identity, purpose, and reason for being is about to change. The notion of worship is about to shift from the indirect worship that is temple sacrifice to the direct worship of God—wherever one may be. Jesus’s radical theology here is matched by his radical action of flipping over tables.
The implication of this change isn’t simple, though. It means dealing with hard questions about practice—and worse—dealing with their underlying understanding of the rules. Those governing rules. In Mark, this same passage is linked with Jesus’s final teachings, including his declaration of the Great Commandment and its companion: to love God and one’s neighbor. Jesus is asking these people to not only deal with change—but change that seems fundamentally wrong to them.
But isn’t what Jesus asking of them freeing them? He is freeing them from more than this simple obligation, but the hierarchical nature of the practice: spending more money on a “purer” animal in order to incur more favor from God.
And doesn’t Jesus free God from that narrow relationship, allowing God to love every one of his creations?
I think He does. I think Jesus wasn’t freeing a couple of sheep and cattle from a horrible ending, but us. Jesus loves those rules as we do. Jesus loves the faiths that have grown out of those rules as we do this faith. Jesus loves His Father’s house and all of the people there—visiting or working. But to love them and us—change had to come.
This congregation has had to deal with change. A changing city, a changing membership, and a changing world beyond these doors: St. David's knows change. It knows the pain and worry that comes from it. But it also knows hope. It knows what kind of place it can be, a mirror for the changing and diversifying culture around it.
In revealing to us the freeing power of change, Jesus offers God’s grace as the strength, as the means of making the impossible, possible. That undeserved, freely-offered, unbeatable grace. We don’t have to go to the store to pick it up and we don’t have to make more money to earn a better share: God just gives it to us. “Here you go,” God says. “You look like you could use it.”
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Listen up
a Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, B
Text: Mark 9:2-9
We’re visual people, aren’t we? We watch TV and movies more than we listen to radio shows. They tell of the famous Lincoln and Douglas debates going on for seven hours—now, it can be like pulling teeth to get people to watch for an hour in their own living room!
They say that my generation is more visually oriented than its predecessor, growing up on the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Millenials are even more so.
Some suggest that if we want to communicate with the emerging generations, we need to think visually.
This morning’s gospel seems tailor-maid for a visual representation—it seems to operate solely on visuals. In the first verse, Jesus picks three disciples and hikes up a mountain to be by themselves. And, while nobody else is watching, Jesus is suddenly transformed in front of their eyes. It is easy to imagine the film adaptation, isn’t it? The quiet leader, names three people to go on this secluded hike with him. “Peter,” he says. “James, John, you’re with me.” Out into the wilderness, they hike. And as their base camp is out of sight, the leader holds up, stopping in the middle of a clearing. The three stop, wondering why they aren’t moving. Suddenly, a bright light shines around their leader, and his clothes change from dust-covered gray to a brilliant white. And the three can tell, they’re not sure how, but they can, that Jesus is different—he’s changed.
The visual examples continue, as Elijah and Moses appear, and they have a conversation with Jesus. Amazed, Peter suggests that they pitch three tents for these three special people.
Then a cloud comes over them and a voice speaks a familiar phrase: “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him!” And without warning—it’s gone. The cloud, the light, Elijah and Moses, everything. And standing there is Jesus.
Jesus then leads them down the mountain, telling them not to speak of this.
In the midst of all of these visuals, it can be pretty easy to get distracted by any of them. Each piece of the story seems to be an allusion to something else.
1. There are 7 characters in it—that’s a lot.
2. Major story elements happen simultaneously
a. Jesus is transfigured
b. Elijah and Moses appear
c. The cloud speaks of Jesus
3. The events end suddenly.
It’s pretty easy for us to get distracted by everything that is going on—all the time. We have to figure out what is going on in scripture, what is going on with our budgets and all of our church stuff, what is going on with our economy, our homes, and our families. There is so much going on that it can be really difficult to cut through it all—to see what’s there.
But in the midst of all of those visual cues—all of this action in this passage—all of the things that could distract us from understanding it, we are given one strange clue.
In Mark’s depiction of Jesus’s baptism, the Spirit, descending like a dove says to Jesus: “You are my Beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” In this passage, the voice in the cloud says to the disciples “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him.” Listen. Don’t just watch or observe. Listen.
The disciples are just as likely to hear that word and catalog it as patently obvious as we are: “of course we’ll listen to Jesus!” “Makes sense; he says lots of good stuff,” we think. But for a relationship that is born out of observation, imitation, and practice, listening requires different skills. It requires the ability to reflect, and openness to not only understand what is said, but the emotional and personal background that created the words. Listening requires us to shut off that internal editor that is looking for the next appropriate thing to say, and instead, being present to hear what is said.
This statement takes even more importance when placed in its context. In the immediately preceding verses, Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, undergo suffering and persecution, and then rise again in three days. This is the first of three such pronouncements. And each time, the disciples misunderstand him. The second time, later in chapter nine, it even says: “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” (9:32).
“This is my Beloved Son; listen to him,” the voice says.
This passage is truly the crux—the transition in Jesus’s ministry when his ministry turns toward Jerusalem. His transfiguration is a physical manifestation of a changing call. But God gives us our instructions: “listen to him” God says.
Some of us act like Peter—willing to defend Jesus, despite his instructions. Some of us act like James and John—asking Jesus to elevate them as most important. And some of us act like all of the disciples—arguing over who is the greatest. We could all work on our listening skills.
But here we are, on the precipice of Lent, on World Missions Sunday, being told to listen to Jesus; perhaps more importantly, listening for Jesus. As we fast, take up new endeavors and teachings, or however each of us chooses to mark the 40 days, we certainly have the opportunity to listen. To shut out the distractions, close our eyes, and open our ears. To listen for what the Spirit has to tell us. To reflect on the needs of those around us and those we cannot see. To reflect on the great hunger of those we have met and those we will never meet. To reflect on the preventable and curable diseases that afflict those nearby and those 6,000 miles away. To hear what some of us are already doing and what each of us can do.
Listen up.
Text: Mark 9:2-9
We’re visual people, aren’t we? We watch TV and movies more than we listen to radio shows. They tell of the famous Lincoln and Douglas debates going on for seven hours—now, it can be like pulling teeth to get people to watch for an hour in their own living room!
They say that my generation is more visually oriented than its predecessor, growing up on the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Millenials are even more so.
Some suggest that if we want to communicate with the emerging generations, we need to think visually.
This morning’s gospel seems tailor-maid for a visual representation—it seems to operate solely on visuals. In the first verse, Jesus picks three disciples and hikes up a mountain to be by themselves. And, while nobody else is watching, Jesus is suddenly transformed in front of their eyes. It is easy to imagine the film adaptation, isn’t it? The quiet leader, names three people to go on this secluded hike with him. “Peter,” he says. “James, John, you’re with me.” Out into the wilderness, they hike. And as their base camp is out of sight, the leader holds up, stopping in the middle of a clearing. The three stop, wondering why they aren’t moving. Suddenly, a bright light shines around their leader, and his clothes change from dust-covered gray to a brilliant white. And the three can tell, they’re not sure how, but they can, that Jesus is different—he’s changed.
The visual examples continue, as Elijah and Moses appear, and they have a conversation with Jesus. Amazed, Peter suggests that they pitch three tents for these three special people.
Then a cloud comes over them and a voice speaks a familiar phrase: “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him!” And without warning—it’s gone. The cloud, the light, Elijah and Moses, everything. And standing there is Jesus.
Jesus then leads them down the mountain, telling them not to speak of this.
In the midst of all of these visuals, it can be pretty easy to get distracted by any of them. Each piece of the story seems to be an allusion to something else.
- Jesus’s walk up the mountain is reminiscent of Moses’s walk up Mt. Sinai.
- Elijah and Moses may be a reference to the Prophets and to the Law.
- The tents that Peter suggests are a reference to Leviticus and protection of holy and sacramental things.
- The voice in the cloud speaks some of the same words as at Jesus’s baptism.
- Selecting 3 disciples parallels the three figures (Jesus, Elijah, Moses).
- The cloud symbolizes the presence of God.
- Jesus asking the three to say nothing about it is a recurring motif in Mark.
1. There are 7 characters in it—that’s a lot.
2. Major story elements happen simultaneously
a. Jesus is transfigured
b. Elijah and Moses appear
c. The cloud speaks of Jesus
3. The events end suddenly.
It’s pretty easy for us to get distracted by everything that is going on—all the time. We have to figure out what is going on in scripture, what is going on with our budgets and all of our church stuff, what is going on with our economy, our homes, and our families. There is so much going on that it can be really difficult to cut through it all—to see what’s there.
But in the midst of all of those visual cues—all of this action in this passage—all of the things that could distract us from understanding it, we are given one strange clue.
In Mark’s depiction of Jesus’s baptism, the Spirit, descending like a dove says to Jesus: “You are my Beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” In this passage, the voice in the cloud says to the disciples “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him.” Listen. Don’t just watch or observe. Listen.
The disciples are just as likely to hear that word and catalog it as patently obvious as we are: “of course we’ll listen to Jesus!” “Makes sense; he says lots of good stuff,” we think. But for a relationship that is born out of observation, imitation, and practice, listening requires different skills. It requires the ability to reflect, and openness to not only understand what is said, but the emotional and personal background that created the words. Listening requires us to shut off that internal editor that is looking for the next appropriate thing to say, and instead, being present to hear what is said.
This statement takes even more importance when placed in its context. In the immediately preceding verses, Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, undergo suffering and persecution, and then rise again in three days. This is the first of three such pronouncements. And each time, the disciples misunderstand him. The second time, later in chapter nine, it even says: “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” (9:32).
“This is my Beloved Son; listen to him,” the voice says.
This passage is truly the crux—the transition in Jesus’s ministry when his ministry turns toward Jerusalem. His transfiguration is a physical manifestation of a changing call. But God gives us our instructions: “listen to him” God says.
Some of us act like Peter—willing to defend Jesus, despite his instructions. Some of us act like James and John—asking Jesus to elevate them as most important. And some of us act like all of the disciples—arguing over who is the greatest. We could all work on our listening skills.
But here we are, on the precipice of Lent, on World Missions Sunday, being told to listen to Jesus; perhaps more importantly, listening for Jesus. As we fast, take up new endeavors and teachings, or however each of us chooses to mark the 40 days, we certainly have the opportunity to listen. To shut out the distractions, close our eyes, and open our ears. To listen for what the Spirit has to tell us. To reflect on the needs of those around us and those we cannot see. To reflect on the great hunger of those we have met and those we will never meet. To reflect on the preventable and curable diseases that afflict those nearby and those 6,000 miles away. To hear what some of us are already doing and what each of us can do.
Listen up.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Baptism and the Birth of Story
a Sermon for Epiphany 6B
Text: Mark 1:40-45
I want to talk for a minute about water. Water is many things. We know that our bodies are composed mostly of water. We know that water is the one thing we can’t live without: without shelter, we can perhaps survive months, without food, we can potentially survive a couple of weeks, whereas for water, its days. It is our most essential element.
We are a little landlocked here in the middle of our state, but Michigan survives on water. Its abundance makes it difficult for us to see the value Israelites would have placed on it. Two of the most potent stories for Christians involve a scarcity of water. The first is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and their ensuing decades in the desert. The second, is our gospel for the first Sunday in Lent in which Jesus goes into the desert to quarantine himself. Of course, we know this as the temptation story based on what Jesus found in the desert, but Jesus’s time in the wilderness was about deprivation, cleansing; he deprived himself of this most necessary resource. Being deprived of water would no doubt lead to a great appreciation of the substance.
It is also an essential element of our spiritual faith and religious tradition, most notably in baptism. We also know of it from its place in Jewish cleansing rituals and in Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. This is our relationship to water.
In our gospel this morning, Jesus cures a man of his leprosy. At the 8:00 service, I spent time talking about the first part—about the relationship between Jesus and this man. Copies of that sermon are in the narthex. Here, I want to take time on the second part. The part in which Jesus gives the man instruction and the man seems to ignore it.
We don’t know much about this guy, right? Let’s look at what we do know.
This passage raises some real questions for us. What of the man’s ritual impurity? What of the man’s defiance of Jesus? And what of Jesus’s own ritual impurity? By curing the man of his condition, he has made himself ritually impure and he didn’t seek the ritual cleansing he commanded the man to receive. At that moment does Jesus believe he possesses the so-called ‘leprosy’ and is now in a permanent state of impurity? I don’t know.
I do know that many of us think that we are impure or that we do something, “wrong” that must be atoned. We come to church or seek out a clergyperson for a ritual cleansing. Some of us no doubt think that we have done something or embody something so “wrong” that we could never atone for that level of sin. We might see ourselves as permanently impure—that no amount of ritual cleansing could wash away that sin. For some, the belief is that we are sinful from birth—that our very flesh is sinful. Some extend this notion to baptism—as the great, permanent ritual cleansing.
But I don’t think this is Jesus’s intention, nor do I think Mark is suggesting anything like this. In last week’s gospel, just two verses before the start of this week’s, in verse 38, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ Jesus’s intentions are proclamation. So what did this man do immediately after he is cured by Jesus? He runs into town and starts blabbing. But he isn’t shouting like some crazy person, right? It said that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. The same word is there: proclaim. And spreading the word is different from gossiping or ranting or whatever. It is more like a prayer chain or some other targeted attempt to get information to many people quickly. This man’s action was the fulfillment of what Jesus just said was what he “came out to do.”
[What is perhaps most intriguing about this gospel lesson for us is that we don’t really know how Jesus responded to this experience, just how we would respond. We would be annoyed because we couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed; that someone else is doing the job that we were called to do; that people seem to be more interested in the miracles than they are in His proclamations. I’m sure that these would annoy us. I can’t help but think that Jesus was pleased.]
One of the things I take from this is that we are all storytellers. That we have received this wonderful good news that we are entrusted to pass on—not to possess or keep to ourselves—but to spread and share as God’s. That we are capable of such an act as storytelling. Telling our story, Jesus’s story, God’s story.
This is what we will be doing in a few minutes as we gather around this pool of water, inviting our newest member into the family. My wife and I will make vows, witnesses will make vows, and the entire community will make vows to raise this new member as a full and important member of the family. We are called to pray for her and support her. We are called to live, ourselves, as Christians. And we are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. In other words, we are vowing to be storytellers, because we already are storytellers.
In this baptism, within this sacred water, we are all committing to not only look after the spiritual health of this beautiful girl, but to pass on our stories to her; to continue the practices of the church with her. Through our vows and with this water, we are committing our love to her.
Text: Mark 1:40-45
I want to talk for a minute about water. Water is many things. We know that our bodies are composed mostly of water. We know that water is the one thing we can’t live without: without shelter, we can perhaps survive months, without food, we can potentially survive a couple of weeks, whereas for water, its days. It is our most essential element.
We are a little landlocked here in the middle of our state, but Michigan survives on water. Its abundance makes it difficult for us to see the value Israelites would have placed on it. Two of the most potent stories for Christians involve a scarcity of water. The first is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and their ensuing decades in the desert. The second, is our gospel for the first Sunday in Lent in which Jesus goes into the desert to quarantine himself. Of course, we know this as the temptation story based on what Jesus found in the desert, but Jesus’s time in the wilderness was about deprivation, cleansing; he deprived himself of this most necessary resource. Being deprived of water would no doubt lead to a great appreciation of the substance.
It is also an essential element of our spiritual faith and religious tradition, most notably in baptism. We also know of it from its place in Jewish cleansing rituals and in Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. This is our relationship to water.
In our gospel this morning, Jesus cures a man of his leprosy. At the 8:00 service, I spent time talking about the first part—about the relationship between Jesus and this man. Copies of that sermon are in the narthex. Here, I want to take time on the second part. The part in which Jesus gives the man instruction and the man seems to ignore it.
We don’t know much about this guy, right? Let’s look at what we do know.
- The text refers to him as a “leper”. We know that we shouldn’t call a person a leper any more than we would call someone a cancer or an AIDSer. He is a man, not a disease.
- We know that he has a skin condition. The disease we know in modern times as leprosy was unknown to them—leprosy in Scripture instead speaks of any skin condition—a rash, chickenpox, for instince—so it is entirely likely that this man’s condition may not have been permanent.
- He is ritually impure based on his condition. His status as a man with a skin condition put him as an outsider for the time in which he has the condition.
- As long as this man has a skin condition and does not seek ritual cleansing, he will be considered ritually impure. This means that any contact with him would cause another person to become ritually impure.
- A cleansing ritual would have included the man’s bathing in water.
This passage raises some real questions for us. What of the man’s ritual impurity? What of the man’s defiance of Jesus? And what of Jesus’s own ritual impurity? By curing the man of his condition, he has made himself ritually impure and he didn’t seek the ritual cleansing he commanded the man to receive. At that moment does Jesus believe he possesses the so-called ‘leprosy’ and is now in a permanent state of impurity? I don’t know.
I do know that many of us think that we are impure or that we do something, “wrong” that must be atoned. We come to church or seek out a clergyperson for a ritual cleansing. Some of us no doubt think that we have done something or embody something so “wrong” that we could never atone for that level of sin. We might see ourselves as permanently impure—that no amount of ritual cleansing could wash away that sin. For some, the belief is that we are sinful from birth—that our very flesh is sinful. Some extend this notion to baptism—as the great, permanent ritual cleansing.
But I don’t think this is Jesus’s intention, nor do I think Mark is suggesting anything like this. In last week’s gospel, just two verses before the start of this week’s, in verse 38, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ Jesus’s intentions are proclamation. So what did this man do immediately after he is cured by Jesus? He runs into town and starts blabbing. But he isn’t shouting like some crazy person, right? It said that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. The same word is there: proclaim. And spreading the word is different from gossiping or ranting or whatever. It is more like a prayer chain or some other targeted attempt to get information to many people quickly. This man’s action was the fulfillment of what Jesus just said was what he “came out to do.”
[What is perhaps most intriguing about this gospel lesson for us is that we don’t really know how Jesus responded to this experience, just how we would respond. We would be annoyed because we couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed; that someone else is doing the job that we were called to do; that people seem to be more interested in the miracles than they are in His proclamations. I’m sure that these would annoy us. I can’t help but think that Jesus was pleased.]
One of the things I take from this is that we are all storytellers. That we have received this wonderful good news that we are entrusted to pass on—not to possess or keep to ourselves—but to spread and share as God’s. That we are capable of such an act as storytelling. Telling our story, Jesus’s story, God’s story.
This is what we will be doing in a few minutes as we gather around this pool of water, inviting our newest member into the family. My wife and I will make vows, witnesses will make vows, and the entire community will make vows to raise this new member as a full and important member of the family. We are called to pray for her and support her. We are called to live, ourselves, as Christians. And we are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. In other words, we are vowing to be storytellers, because we already are storytellers.
In this baptism, within this sacred water, we are all committing to not only look after the spiritual health of this beautiful girl, but to pass on our stories to her; to continue the practices of the church with her. Through our vows and with this water, we are committing our love to her.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The inevitable response
a Sermon for Epiphany 3B
Text: Mark 1:14-20
I’m wondering if you find this gospel from the first chapter of Mark as shocking as I do. The Scripture has an innocent man arrested and a strange rabbi comes along collecting disciples like vacation spoons: “Here we’ve got Oklahoma and Texas…Oh, don’t forget that we’ve got to stop again in Nevada and California!” And the disciples go along with it. They’re like “what else are we going to do?” and so they leave everything behind and follow this stranger. Let’s acknowledge how shocking this really is.
As usual, Mark hasn’t really fleshed out this story, which makes the disciples’ response all the more bizarre. We read this gospel in the teachers’ meeting and Kevin said: “I bet Zebedee wasn’t too happy that he lost a couple of workers—couldn’t they at least stay and finish their job?” We don’t know.
Jesus is pulling families apart, demanding immediate returns, and Mark doesn’t let us in on what is really going on. He doesn’t tell us how the disciples come to say yes. Has Jesus’s reputation preceded Him? Does he give them a more compelling argument than ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people,’ such as travel, riches (in heaven), and groupies? Can you imagine a modern response to this:
We don’t know because Mark doesn’t say.
We do know, however, that Jesus is in the business of making offers that we can’t refuse, right? Jesus invites each of us to come along and follow Him—expecting us to drop everything and go—damn the consequences. For some of us, Jesus pulls us away from our families—away from husbands and wives, away from children and families, and away from parents and mentors. Jesus calls us, He gets us, but He doesn’t always get those sitting next to us—not yet anyway. And we have to deal with that choice—that choice of dropping the line, hopping out of the boat, and leaving loved ones, perhaps for ever.
And Jesus intones that this is immediate—we must act quickly. We do it now. He makes a simple request: “Follow me” and we are to make a decision. Not a “oh, I might like soup for lunch—or a sandwhich…no, soup” type of decision. We’re talking about a clean break, decisively setting off in a new direction. Getting our butts out of the boat and following Him into the unknown.
It would be one thing if Jesus sat us down and told us where we were going, right? He pulls out the map and says that we’re going to take a left at the second light, go down Saginaw a few miles, and so on. But he doesn’t. He says “Follow me.” He might throw in “don’t be afraid” for good measure. And that’s it.
John Shea, in a commentary on the lectionary, suggests that there are three elements in this gospel that seem to be coded into our DNA: call, leave, follow. Jesus calls the disciples, and their natural response is to leave. They then naturally follow. Each element of this structure is a decision, a response to external stimuli. This doesn’t imply that the disciples didn’t have a choice or that Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity that they should refuse. No, for Mark, the point is not what brought the disciples to hear the call, leave their families, and follow Jesus, but those actions in and of themselves. Those actions, call, leave, follow, are the actions of discipleship. They are the foundation of discipleship. Call, leave, follow.
This is where Jesus is clear. Remember, the destination is not the worry, it’s the following, right? Jesus gives clarity to the relationship, to what it means to be a disciple. What it means to follow a rabbi—this rabbi/teacher. Call, leave, follow.
This clarity is achieved by removing the very things that might distract us. We don’t know when John the Baptizer is arrested, but Mark gets him out of the way here so that the story’s central focus is on Jesus and His disciples. That way, we can fix our vision on the call; on that central relationship; on that moment in which the biggest decisions are made: call, leave, follow.
On Tuesday, in the midst of a most historic inauguration, the ascent of the first African-American president, a day in which millions gathered in public squares to witness an astounding, earth-moving moment, we heard our nation’s leader call us. He said: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He is asking us to respond to the needs around us: to move decisively. President Barack Obama is no messiah, but that fact makes his words no less prophetic. That he is an American president makes his words no less appropriate for our congregation, our denomination, and our church.
And when he says: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he isn’t just talking in the abstract—about D.C. or Congress or K Street—his words apply to all of us: to our culture, our society, our church—every place in which politics are perpetually present. The ground has indeed already shifted. We are truly in a defining moment. A church moment and an American moment.
We know the stuff in our DNA, the stuff that makes us anxious about the shifted ground and presidential transitions; challenges from the pulpit and from the podium; ministry concerns and economic ones. But we have something else in our DNA: that response to call: leave, follow. We have Jesus’s teaching, the Spirit’s inspiration, and God’s love. And we have the opportunity. An opportunity that is, itself, historic. An opportunity that can forever define who we are and who we are called to be. An opportunity to allow God to guide us where we need to be, not where we want to be or where we are most comfortable. We have an opportunity to live like a people called.
Today and tomorrow. This month and next year. We are called. Let’s leave and follow.
Text: Mark 1:14-20
I’m wondering if you find this gospel from the first chapter of Mark as shocking as I do. The Scripture has an innocent man arrested and a strange rabbi comes along collecting disciples like vacation spoons: “Here we’ve got Oklahoma and Texas…Oh, don’t forget that we’ve got to stop again in Nevada and California!” And the disciples go along with it. They’re like “what else are we going to do?” and so they leave everything behind and follow this stranger. Let’s acknowledge how shocking this really is.
As usual, Mark hasn’t really fleshed out this story, which makes the disciples’ response all the more bizarre. We read this gospel in the teachers’ meeting and Kevin said: “I bet Zebedee wasn’t too happy that he lost a couple of workers—couldn’t they at least stay and finish their job?” We don’t know.
Jesus is pulling families apart, demanding immediate returns, and Mark doesn’t let us in on what is really going on. He doesn’t tell us how the disciples come to say yes. Has Jesus’s reputation preceded Him? Does he give them a more compelling argument than ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people,’ such as travel, riches (in heaven), and groupies? Can you imagine a modern response to this:
As Jesus passed along the Lansing Mall, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew delivering pizzas—for they were pizza deliverypersons. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you deliver people.’ And immediately they left their pizzas and followed him.Jesus’s argument has to be more compelling than what’s here, right? Perhaps they know that Jesus is a rabbi, which would give him a special station—and that his offer to these common people is like winning the lottery.
We don’t know because Mark doesn’t say.
We do know, however, that Jesus is in the business of making offers that we can’t refuse, right? Jesus invites each of us to come along and follow Him—expecting us to drop everything and go—damn the consequences. For some of us, Jesus pulls us away from our families—away from husbands and wives, away from children and families, and away from parents and mentors. Jesus calls us, He gets us, but He doesn’t always get those sitting next to us—not yet anyway. And we have to deal with that choice—that choice of dropping the line, hopping out of the boat, and leaving loved ones, perhaps for ever.
And Jesus intones that this is immediate—we must act quickly. We do it now. He makes a simple request: “Follow me” and we are to make a decision. Not a “oh, I might like soup for lunch—or a sandwhich…no, soup” type of decision. We’re talking about a clean break, decisively setting off in a new direction. Getting our butts out of the boat and following Him into the unknown.
It would be one thing if Jesus sat us down and told us where we were going, right? He pulls out the map and says that we’re going to take a left at the second light, go down Saginaw a few miles, and so on. But he doesn’t. He says “Follow me.” He might throw in “don’t be afraid” for good measure. And that’s it.
John Shea, in a commentary on the lectionary, suggests that there are three elements in this gospel that seem to be coded into our DNA: call, leave, follow. Jesus calls the disciples, and their natural response is to leave. They then naturally follow. Each element of this structure is a decision, a response to external stimuli. This doesn’t imply that the disciples didn’t have a choice or that Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity that they should refuse. No, for Mark, the point is not what brought the disciples to hear the call, leave their families, and follow Jesus, but those actions in and of themselves. Those actions, call, leave, follow, are the actions of discipleship. They are the foundation of discipleship. Call, leave, follow.
This is where Jesus is clear. Remember, the destination is not the worry, it’s the following, right? Jesus gives clarity to the relationship, to what it means to be a disciple. What it means to follow a rabbi—this rabbi/teacher. Call, leave, follow.
This clarity is achieved by removing the very things that might distract us. We don’t know when John the Baptizer is arrested, but Mark gets him out of the way here so that the story’s central focus is on Jesus and His disciples. That way, we can fix our vision on the call; on that central relationship; on that moment in which the biggest decisions are made: call, leave, follow.
On Tuesday, in the midst of a most historic inauguration, the ascent of the first African-American president, a day in which millions gathered in public squares to witness an astounding, earth-moving moment, we heard our nation’s leader call us. He said: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He is asking us to respond to the needs around us: to move decisively. President Barack Obama is no messiah, but that fact makes his words no less prophetic. That he is an American president makes his words no less appropriate for our congregation, our denomination, and our church.
And when he says: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he isn’t just talking in the abstract—about D.C. or Congress or K Street—his words apply to all of us: to our culture, our society, our church—every place in which politics are perpetually present. The ground has indeed already shifted. We are truly in a defining moment. A church moment and an American moment.
We know the stuff in our DNA, the stuff that makes us anxious about the shifted ground and presidential transitions; challenges from the pulpit and from the podium; ministry concerns and economic ones. But we have something else in our DNA: that response to call: leave, follow. We have Jesus’s teaching, the Spirit’s inspiration, and God’s love. And we have the opportunity. An opportunity that is, itself, historic. An opportunity that can forever define who we are and who we are called to be. An opportunity to allow God to guide us where we need to be, not where we want to be or where we are most comfortable. We have an opportunity to live like a people called.
Today and tomorrow. This month and next year. We are called. Let’s leave and follow.
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