Born

a Sermon for Christmas Day A
Text: Luke 2:1-20

[Note: the original sermon was preached from sparse notes. What follows is a reinvisioning based on those notes.]

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you gave us the greatest gift of the season: yourself. Be with us as a parent and child, that we might love you and one another so unconditionally. Amen.

Origins
We love origin stories. We love to know where things come from, and what in our past drives us today. Comics shoot up in price when a character’s origin is featured. The most popular episodes of TV shows are the ones that flashback to a poignant moment in a character’s life.

Jesus’s origin story is no different. We love responding to the question of where Jesus came from. What is interesting is that the four canonical gospels give us very different options.

1. Mark has no origin story, beginning with Jesus as an adult.
2. John begins with the creation of the world and speaks about the origin of Jesus’s ministry.
3. Matthew gives the birth story and then speaks of the wisemen and the flight into Egypt.
4. Luke offers the birth story (this time with shepherds) as well as a later trip to Jerusalem for the 12 year-old Jesus and his parents.

Because of this devotion to origin stories, we might give more interest to the beginnings of things, than where they actually go.

The Reason
I’m sure you’ve seen this cliché somewhere or heard someone say it. I saw this week on the sign outside of a real estate office. It says “Jesus is the reason for the season”. Reason for the season? What does Jesus really have to do with Santa Clause and mistletoe and gift giving? This season in which we storm the stores and gobble up ridiculous stuff and then give it to people who don’t need one more thing cluttering their lives: Jesus is the reason for that? Really?

Okay, that may be a bit cheeky, but so is a little rhyme that is supposed to remind us, not of our faith, but of that pastoral image of a little baby born. But this story isn’t supposed to be the beginning—the origin story—but the middle chapter. The story is a story of relationship between GOD and the people, and the introduction of Jesus serves as an important moment in the midst of that relationship.

The Event
So let’s put on our thinking caps for a moment. Let’s all pretend to be world-class theologians and think about this actual event. And ponder what it really means. We might drift a little close to heresy, but what fun would it be if we didn’t?

Let’s think about what the second person of the trinity is doing with these observant Jews that accept GOD’s call for them, to bring the king into this world.

1. GOD chose to give up omnipotence to be human
2. GOD didn’t become an adult, but a small, vulnerable child

GOD accepted the human process, of growing in the womb, coming through the birth canal, and facing the cold, bright, frightening reality of birth. The divine deity accepted complete and total vulnerability and utter dependence on its chosen parents. Part of me believes we don’t have stories of Jesus’s early life in the canonical gospels because we don’t want to envision our GOD as helpless, swaddled, and crying for milk or attention.

And just as profound, GOD chose to be a child to Mary, not just a parent to her.

Our Event
We celebrate this day a GOD who loves us enough to share in our experience.
Who came to us 2000 years ago and still comes to us today.
Who invites us to love each other with familial love.
Who loves the poor and unlovable—and yet still has room to love us.

May GOD’s peace be with you this day and always.

Where's the Fire?

a Sermon for Advent 3A
Text: Matthew 11:2-11

[Note: the original sermon was preached from sparse notes. What follows is a reinvisioning based on those notes.]

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you invite us into waiting and watching. Help us to see in our expectations true joy and new understanding. Amen.

John
Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire, Jesus? You promised me a fire and a cleansing of the world. You said it! So where’s the fire, Jesus?

John speaks from anger, hurt, anxiety, fear—has he wasted all this time? Has his ministry of preparing the way for this Messiah, this liberator and conqueror been in vain? Because…well…look at this guy. Jesus sure wasn’t matching John’s expectations of a liberator and a conqueror. The very word

Messiah=military leader.

And let’s speak plainly here: John is a man of action. He most certainly would do the work of GOD himself—not send his disciples instead. What kind of Messiah is this Jesus, that lets the disciples do the dirty work?

The Baby
In this season of expectation, we have the opposite expectation. Who are we expecting? A fragile baby. An innocent, innocuous baby that can’t threaten us or frighten us or challenge us or transform us. We expect the innocent pastoral image of a baby welcomed into the world by loving parents.

So John expected a powerful conqueror and received a healer.
We expect a healer and forget about the conqueror.

Jesus
After John’s people leave, Jesus turns to the crowd and asks them about John. He asks three times: “What did you go out [into the wilderness] to see?”
A prophet!
And what did you find?
A prophet!

Jesus isn’t just messing with our expectations, he is inviting us to deal with them. Because, once we see something, we are changed by it. He says that what they found was more than a prophet—a way prepared for them to follow. A road is being paved for us.

Advent is a season of waiting and watching, of expecting and seeing.

The opportunity to watch something is the opportunity to process something. To prepare ourselves for that road. It is the opportunity to be changed—and transformed forever.

Mark Bozzuti-Jones, in his Advent devotional, compares Advent to an expectant mother. That this season of waiting and anticipation is also a season of planning and dreaming and hoping; a season of cleaning and building and gathering. We are changed in the waiting.

For many of us that have had the fortune of being part of a child’s birth, it isn’t in the birth where the real transformation occurs, it is in the expectation.

Be Perfect

We celebrated Veteran's Day this week, so we used the readings for the Independence Day liturgy. As you will notice in the homily, the text comes from Matthew (not Luke) and is in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. I chose to focus on an aspect of the reading, recognizing what we were lifting up in the context of the service.

a Sermon for Proper 28C
Text: Matthew 5:43-48

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you reveal your dreams and desires to us and invite us to take them up and make them real. Please continue to trust in us. Amen.

We know that it can be a pretty tall order to be a Christian sometimes, don’t we? Our gospel this morning is at the end of the first act of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon in which Jesus lays out the standards pretty thoroughly: Blessed are the poor, for instance. After a few minutes, he talks about how much more he is expecting than the Law: he says that we know the Law tells us not to mess around with someone else, but Jesus argues that if you even think about messing around, you have sinned. And then he says to not only love the people you like, but the people you don’t! Well! And as if it couldn’t get any worse, he says: “Be perfect.”

Are you kidding me Jesus? Be perfect. Man, that’s just ridiculous.

So what does it mean to be perfect? Perfect is, well…perfect. We know it as something impossibly true—the pinnacle of what can be perceived. We know that it is impossible to be perfect.

Our modern understanding goes back well over 2000 years to Plato. Two of the things that drove Plato’s understanding were dualism and perfection. To him, the world was structured in pairs: you’re in or you’re out; good or bad; right or wrong. If you had one, then you must have the other. And he saw humans as representing that dualism. We are made of a body and a soul. The soul is perfect and incorruptible, so our bodies, therefore, are entirely imperfect and completely corruptible. Disgusting flesh to go along with the truly perfect soul within. You can see how this has messed with Christian understanding from the beginning!

We might be tempted, then to see Jesus’s encouragement as suggesting we strive for perfection, since Jesus would understand that being perfect would be impossible. But Jesus doesn’t say “try to be perfect” or “drive toward perfection,” but “be perfect.”

But what does Jesus actually say? “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Jesus isn’t a Platonist-he sees this as relational. Our perfection is related to GOD’s.

We are made in the image of GOD and we believe that GOD is perfect. For Plato, perfect is an abstraction—separate. To be perfect or to strive to be perfect would be our confronting GOD, elevating ourselves to GOD. We know from Scripture that this practice is wrong. And yet, Jesus seems to be encouraging this.

We ignore the character of the speaker at our own peril, however. Isn’t it Jesus who is preaching? Isn’t it GOD incarnate, come down to earth? Is it not GOD accepting that evil, corrupting, imperfect human flesh? And his words ring powerfully through the imperfect mouth of the human GOD: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.”

For Jesus, being perfect isn’t about some existential notion of who we are physically, but how we act. To be perfect is to act perfectly—and to act perfectly is to act as GOD acts—as Jesus acts among us.

Stanley Hauerwas, in a commentary discussing the Sermon on the Mount, describes it this way:

“Accordingly the sermon is not addressed to individuals but to the community that Jesus begins and portends through the calling of the disciples. The sermon is not a heroic ethic. It is the constitution of a people. You cannot live by the demands of the sermon on your own, but that is the point.” p. 61

Jesus doesn’t tell us to live as perfect copies of one another in happy harmony with Western culture. We are called to be real together and love one another, recruit weirdos to join us, and to love them too. We are called to change the world so that the sons and daughters of these veterans—and all succeeding generations don’t face the horrors of war. We are called to bring the dream of GOD to this very place at this very moment.

It is a bold GOD that shares perfection with its children.




NOTE: This homily was preached from simple notes and represents not only an approximation of what I said, but some of what I intended to say. In other words, it might sound different.

Gotta Have Faith

a Sermon for Proper 22C
Text: Luke 17:5-10

GOD of Hope and Wonder, open our minds to your generosity and love, that we may be transformed by your faith. Amen.

Our gospel contains a word that I don’t like very much: Faith. Funny, right? I don’t dislike the word itself, and I don’t have an unreasonable problem with the concept. It’s just…I don’t think we get it.

When I was younger, I hated the way some would use certain ‘churchy’ words, like faith, belief, and all that because I never felt like I really understood what they were trying to say. One particular time in college, this one woman was going on and on and I counted the number of churchy words she was using and about the time she got to 40 or so, I decided to give up. It’s why I try to push people to express their beliefs (spiritual foundation?) with non-churchy words: because we need to be adept at expressing ourselves, not parroting church words.

We also seem to have the wrong idea about faith, because we want to quantify it. Because if we quantify it, then we can compare each other. We act like we have a gauge that measures our faith: “I’m only a four today; maybe we should go to church so I can raise it to seven or eight.” Or as if we had a faith thermometer: “Hmmm. 98.6; average faith, today!” But really its that we see people using the churchy words and we think they have more faith. Rick Warren must have more faith than I since he talks about it so much! Or we look at people doing stuff that we don’t want to do and we assume it is because they have more faith: Mother Theresa amongst the people with leprosy: I certainly don’t have enough faith to do that.

Mustard Seed Extract
This is where the disciples are at: they ask Jesus to increase their faith. Jesus has given them all of this stuff to worry about and do, so they certainly don’t have enough faith to accomplish it all. And how does Jesus respond? By blowing up this notion. He teaches them this about faith: if you have the smallest speck of faith, you could throw a tree into the sea. In Matthew, it’s move a mountain, but here, it’s a tree. If we think about what the disciples were asking, Jesus’s response doesn’t make sense:

Jesus, we only have X amount of faith, but what you are asking for requires X+Y!

The system they are operating from is this: if you have a little faith, you can get a little action; middle faith—middle action; big faith—big action; but Jesus says if you have the teensiest, weensiest bit of faith, you can do the most amazing miracle: apparently a type of spiritual telekinesis.

He seems to be saying:

“It isn’t about how much, and it certainly isn’t about the quality, either. You’ve got the faith you need.”

GOD and the slaves
Then Jesus seems to shift gears and starts talking about slaves. It goes something like this: Let’s say you are a landowner and your slave comes to you after a long day to see what you want for dinner. Would you invite the slave to sit down? No! Of course not! You’ll send him into the kitchen to make dinner, serve you, clean it up, then he can eat! Do you expect a pat on the back for doing what’s told of you? Now think of it this way: GOD is the landowner and you are the slave. Would you expect any different treatment?

There is something about this that doesn’t compute. I read it over a bunch of times and I couldn’t make sense of it. That doesn’t seem like the picture of GOD that we’ve been working through in Luke. That seems like GOD, the micro-manager.

Jesus begins by saying “Would you say [this]”? As you are—in the world as it is.

How does the story Jesus tells change if we do,
not what we would normally do,
but what he hopes we will do?

Because as I was reading it, I really wanted to say “yes!” I want to be a person that does invite the slave in to sit down. So I re-imagined the story this way.

A different story
The slave comes to you to ask what you want for dinner and you say “sit, please.” And because he is a good slave, he will follow your instructions, though he is confused by your behavior. You notice right away that he is hot and sweaty and that he has been in the field all day, so you offer him a drink. You walk to the kitchen and pour two glasses and place one in front of him and one in front of you. Since he does all of the cooking, you are afraid to offer him anything to eat, but you can make a sandwich, so you go back to the kitchen, make some sandwiches and place one in front of him and one in front of yourself. And then you eat.

While you are sitting there, you ask him a question. You want to get to know him better. And you realize quickly that you don’t really know him all that well. So you keep asking questions and he begins to open up, telling you about his life and his beliefs and his dreams and his hopes for the world and as he is about to take the last bite, you run to the kitchen for some chips because you don’t want the conversation to end, so you open the bag and put it in front of him and he keeps going. And about the time that you are content and happy, he stands up and clears the table. He returns with a pitcher to fill your glass and he says this:

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. You are so generous. This meant a lot to me.”

And then you respond by saying “The pleasure was all mine. Let’s do this again soon.”

“OK.”

Doesn’t that feel right? Doesn’t that fit better with what Jesus has just been saying? And just as Jesus changes the characters over here, we can change these characters around. God is that landowner and we are that slave. How does this match the previous chapters of Luke? It was only a chapter ago that Jesus told the three parables of the lost things: the sheep, coin, and son(s). In that, we get a picture of GOD that comes to us in our weakness and out of ridiculous generosity. Does GOD really expect us to meet the minimum requirements to receive generously? Is GOD that obsessed with minimum standards? The GOD that runs out to greet the ungrateful and rebellious younger son and then the ungrateful dutiful one?

In fact, by giving us the question, Jesus invites us into this thinking. “Would you do [this]?” And we say “Yes!”

So what does this have to do with faith? Everything.
Because faith changes us.
Because faith makes everything new.
Faith is found in generosity and hope and love and devotion.

May we be a people of love and generosity and GOD’s transformative grace. And may we be so changed by GOD that we can move mountains and throw trees into the sea.



NOTE: The actual sermon was preached from very simple notes. This is a recreation posted on October 13th.

Risking Cooties

a Sermon for Proper 19C
Text: Luke 15:1-10


GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give and give and give to us. Help replace the jealousy we feel when you give to others with joy. Amen.


I have an irrational fear of garbage. It isn’t really compulsive or that I’m afraid that the garbage itself will do anything to me. It’s just that I’m worried about contamination. When I touch the garbage bag, I feel like my hand is contaminated. I want to clean it and I don't want to touch anything with it. So when I take the garbage out, I prefer to do it one bag at-a-time because then I don’t turn the doorknob with a contaminated hand—I keep one free. I know its irrational.

In many ways, this morning’s gospel lesson deals with that same irrational fear of contamination. Let’s call it what we have been calling that stuff since we were kids: cooties. It’s a fear of cooties. And the pious people are afraid of the cooties. So they obsess about staying clean and pure. This gospel, then, isn’t just about the cooties, but the risk: its about being pure and keeping space and sharing intimacy.

Before the story begins, Jesus was walking. We know the story. He starts out in the north by himself and along the way, he collects 12 stooges: Larry, Moe, and ten Curlys. Then a bunch more stooges start following him that don't get to be counted as official stooges because Jesus wants 12 (to represent the 12 tribes, I suppose). Then people start following him that heard, saw, and met Jesus along the way and want to be a part of what He is doing. But of course, this isn’t only one type of people: Jesus is followed by all sorts: which includes the riffraff. So tax collectors, prostitutes, and other people that always have cooties come along. And of course, he also collects the pious: the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees. All of these people are following Jesus: thousands following him.

So what happens from the start? Jesus “welcomes” and eats with the sinners. Now, this doesn’t sound so bad to us, but the word translated as “welcome” is more literally “to bring into one’s arms”. So Jesus is hugging and kissing these people…these people with cooties. It isn’t like he’s giving a handshake that can be easily wiped off. He’s getting them all over his arms and his chest and his face. He might even be kissing these people on the mouth, getting the cooties all over the place. And after this, he doesn’t sit with them for a couple of minutes then go take a shower—to clean all of that stuff off of him. He stays there. He lives there where they are. He lives in the dirt and impurity. This is the radical nearness that Jesus was practicing.

Now, the Pharisees, of course, get mad at him. And we know the main reason: because Jesus broke the rules. This is par for the course by now. Jesus is flaunting his rule breaking. But let’s be honest: it isn’t just that, is it? Many today would be horrified by this action, too. Because we want Jesus to remain pure. He can’t have cooties; he can’t be compromised; he must remain purely divine. So I imagine them pleading with Jesus: “let the disciples do that. Don’t get yourself dirty; we need you. Send them.” Jesus must remain untainted.

Jesus responds to this with three parables about lost things: a sheep, coin, and son(s) because he wants to talk about intimacy. Each of these parables is about separation and distance. Each is about our distance from GOD. And yet, in each, GOD comes to the lost. GOD searches for us. And isn’t that what Jesus was doing? He was going to the lost, and sharing intimacy with those that weren’t on the inside, weren’t safe at home or being responsible? He went to them and risked everything to be with them and to share in that space with us.

It seems to me that Jesus is calling on us to go to each other. He answers the question about his own intimacy by talking about GOD. He means for us to go to one another as GOD comes to us. Even though we might not want to or we’re scared or we have pious people telling us not to, we’re to go. I’m reminded of prison ministry programs or ministries amidst the diseased and dying. I’m reminded of inner city ministries and ministries with the rural poor.

Jesus encourages us to think about a dangerous concept: to put ourselves at risk for the gospel. It’s going to hurt. It isn’t going to be easy. But it’s right.

It’s about risking cooties.


NOTE: The actual sermon was preached from very simple notes. This is a recreation posted over a month later on October 13th.

The Gift

a Sermon for Proper 17C
Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you have given us the most amazing gifts: in our world and in baptism. Help us to know and feel the generosity of giving that you dream for us. Amen.

We all know what it is like to give presents. Searching for the perfect gift. For me, I turn the page on the calendar to December 1st and an alarm goes off in my head: time to start looking for Christmas. Sure, 3 ½ weeks isn’t enough time to discover the perfect gift, but getting good gifts is important, too.

What’s a good gift? A gift you know they will like…because they’ve told you. You get the wishlist out and you buy from it. You’re both happy. After a couple of years, you’ll forget what you’ve given and they’ll forget that you gave it to them, but so what? In the giving, you’re both happy. That’s a good gift.

The perfect gift, on the other hand, is something you know they’ll like because you know them well. And chances are, they didn’t know that they even wanted it until you gave it to them. They can determine your love and appreciation for them through the gift. This begins to get at the perfect gift.

'The Gift'
Do you like puzzles? There is one that the French philosopher Jacques Derrida gives us called ‘The Gift’. It goes something like this:

Alex gives a gift to Bob. But as soon as Bob receives it, he receives something else: an encumbrance or a debt. He now, because of protocol, must give a gift to Alex in return. This debt is made worse by the fact that he is required to put as much into giving the return gift as Alex put into giving it: it has to cost the same in both money and effort. He also can’t give the return gift the next day—it has to be given spontaneously, so Bob must search out the day that expresses the same amount of spontaneity.

Let’s say Alex figures this out and decided to save Bob some of this headache, so he chooses to give his gift anonymously, since Scripture seems to encourage that. But that makes it even worse for Bob, since he still gains the debt, but no means of getting rid of it, and has to search for who gave him the gift. At the same time, Alex gets extra self-esteem for having done something really generous.

And what if Alex’s gift is met ungraciously by Bob, wouldn’t that fix the problem? No, because then Alex recognizes his own superiority in selflessly giving this gift—that Bob just isn’t capable of recognizing its value.

Many might think the conversation ends here. Either there is no way to solve it or Derrida is being too cynical in his description of gift-giving. But Derrida doesn’t actually end here. Derrida recognizes the problem, what he calls “the Impossibility”. That we are stuck in an arrangement that truly is unsolvable, so he gives us two important responses:

1. Give the gift anyway and accept that this is the arrangement. Strive to give without expecting anything in return, while knowing that you will. But it is the gift itself—and the circle filled with generosity and reciprocation—that begets a deep connection between people.
2. Trust in our economies. This means that we know that they system works this way, but people don’t. Alex gives a gift out of love and generosity and Bob receives it and feels it and is compelled, not out of duty, but that love and generosity, to give a beautiful gift in return.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus reveals the very same notion about ‘The Gift’. He says to be generous and give without thinking about what you are going to get in return. Give. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Give.

Then he throws us for a loop, because he tells us what we are going to receive: grace. He says to us: here’s what you’re going to get; but don’t do it for that reason. Do it to do it. Give generously.

Baptism
What this means is symbolized in what we’ll be doing in just a few minutes: we’ll be baptizing this beautiful little girl. She will receive a gift today that comes in three parts. The first part comes from GOD and it is one that we all comprehend: she gets GOD’s grace. That’s the one we all think of first. The other two are gifts that we get to participate in. We give the gift of membership. In just a few minutes, in baptism, she gets to be one of us. She’ll get all of the rights and responsibilities that each of us has as Christians. She is a full member of the club. The third part of the gift, and perhaps the most important is what we all get to do for her. Her parents and godparents will stand up and vow to her and to GOD to raise her well to spiritual maturity. Then all of us will do the same—vowing that we will care for her spiritual well-being.

When Derrida talked about ‘The Gift’, he was speaking about relationship and obligation, but we’re giving this girl a gift she can’t repay. There is no way that she can give us all a gift in return. But in a few years, if we all do our jobs, she’ll be standing up and vowing to help another little girl grow up in the Spirit. Just as many of us have been given that opportunity.

Jesus gave us a gift that we couldn’t hope to repay in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. We can’t hope to repay that kind of gift.

Dr. King's Gift
We received a gift 47 years ago yesterday in an event known simply as “The March” or “The March on Washington.” And at the end of the march, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most important speeches in the history of the western world; a speech that rocked the world and motivates people half a century later. A speech that is now referred to by its iconic image: “I have a dream”. There’s a lot about the speech that we remember, including the second most recognizable line; in reference to his daughter, he dreams of the day in which she will be judged “not by the color of her skin, but the content of her character.”

But this speech isn’t just a speech. It is a sermon. And we know this because Dr. King quotes the prophets Amos and Isaiah. This one I read to you this morning is from Isaiah:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

At the first level, Dr. King is talking about race. At the second, he’s talking about equality. But where Dr. King, in quoting the prophets, is dwelling is up here, at the third level: the Kingdom of GOD.

The Kingdom isn’t about being color-blind or post-racial; it isn’t simply about getting along well with everybody. It’s about loving and sharing with everybody regardless of what it means.

My last image, and I’m not sure where it came from, goes like this. When somebody asks us for some money, and we want to give it to them, we reach into our pockets, and we hand it over [demonstrating]. When our arm stops moving—when we’ve offered the money over to the other person—is the moment that the money is no longer ours. Even though it hasn’t left our hand yet, it is no longer ours. It’s GOD’s. If the other person takes it or not. What they do or don’t do with it. It isn’t ours. In giving generously, we give up possession and we hand it over.

The Kingdom, baptism, gifts to strangers and to friends and family are all opportunities for our generosity. For us to not only feel good for doing it and to be good in the eyes of others, but to live in the way Jesus instructs us to live. We’re asked to be generous without concern for what we get out of it.

To show generosity in spite of receiving.

Looking for the Law

a Sermon for Proper 16C
Text: Luke 13:10-17

[This is a written-out version of what I preached without notes. It is a pretty accurate recreation of the flow and wording.]


GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give us your Law and we feel the need to blind ourselves with rules. Help us to see the Law and what it truly means for us. Amen.

The story begins back in seminary. I had this professor named Jay that told us a story. It was a story about a new rector taking over in an Anglican church in Ontario, Canada. The names of the people were withheld, so I’m going to give some names to these characters. The previous rector we’ll call Fr. James. We’ll call the new rector Fr. Dan. Neither of these names has any theological meaning or deep importance for this story, they are simply names that came to me, except for Dan. This story isn’t the story of one my classmates (Dan), but I wanted to put him into this story in homage to him.

So, the story begins on Fr. Dan’s first Sunday. He does the service in the normal way. After Communion, he clears the table, comes out in front of the altar, blesses the people, dismisses them, and then processes out into the world. The second Sunday, he does the same thing. The third Sunday goes the same way. Only this time, as he is standing out in the narthex, shaking hands, a kind, older gentleman pats him on the shoulder and says:

“I hate to tell you this…[words which actually mean something else to us] but you are doing it wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Fr. Dan is confused.
“You are forgetting the special bow,” the man says. “C’mere. I’ll show you.” And the two walk back to the sanctuary so that the gentleman could demonstrate. “It goes like this. You do what you do from behind the altar, see? Then you turn to the back wall, and you bow.”

Dan, being a smart priest, tries to make sense of this. There is no cross on the wall, but the consecrated elements are kept off to the side so he asks if the bow is to the elements. “No—the middle of the wall,” the man says.

So Dan goes into the Parish Hall to ask the people at coffee hour about this “special bow” and person after person says “Oh yeah! The bow! You have to do it—I love the bow!” Dan, still completely clueless, decides to call Fr. James first thing, Monday morning to ask him what was going on.

“Fr. James. This is Dan from St. Paul’s. I know we have a lot to talk about, and we’ll do that soon, but I have to ask you about one thing: what is with the special bow?”
“What bow?”
“The special bow,” Dan says. “You would bless the people, turn to the back wall, and bow, and then process out.”
There is silence on the other end for a moment until Dan hears a deep laugh. “Dan, I wasn’t bowing. I was turning off the radiator.”

This old church used steam heat, of course, and there was a radiator right behind the altar. Fr. James would bend over, turn the cap, and turn off the heat to the nave.

Our professor told us this story for two reasons:

1. How quickly actions become liturgy. You do it a couple of times and it becomes “what we do here” and then do it a couple more times and it becomes “what we’ve always done”.
2. How we give importance to actions, regardless of their purpose. There were probably only a couple of people in the church that new what Fr. James was doing, but the rest of the congregation believed that he was doing something important and symbolic. They decided that it was important and each person concocted some deep, theological reason behind this bow. The truth was that Fr. James was just being lazy.

This is what our gospel is about today. But first, let me introduce you to the characters.

Again, these characters don’t have names and I just came up with them because I wanted them to have names.

The first character is Lucy. She is a beautiful, happy woman, who 18 years ago had a spirit come into her body and bend her over. She can’t look up; she can’t look into other people’s eyes. She can look at the floor and the ground. This is her life today.

The second character is Sam. Ignore for a minute what Jesus says about him. Sam is a good guy. He is pious; a rule follower. We would like him. He would no doubt be the president of Rotary and a well-liked member of the community. A good man. But he has one problem: he loves Lucy, but he sees her and thinks that there is nothing he can do. It is what it is.

The third character is a wandering preacher. Let’s call him…Jesus. And he is preaching away, and Lucy catches his eye. He sees her and stops mid-sentence. “This won’t do,” he says to himself and in moments, he puts his hands on her and tells her that today is a new day. All she needs to do is stand up.

And Lucy listens to him…and she stands up…and she praises GOD.

Now Sam sees this and he is irate. He is mad because 1) Jesus broke the rules and 2) he’ll catch the blowback for this. So he yells at Jesus, telling him to “Stop! You’ve broken the rules!” And, we know that if he were a good Episcopalian, there would be a second condemnation: “Lucy! What are you doing shouting in the middle of the service? Who said you could praise GOD in a church?”

And Jesus responds, not with the semantic argument that we think he does: but instead with a simple chastisement of his own: “you are breaking the law by following the rules.”

If we look at what GOD says about the Sabbath, we go back to Exodus and Deuteronomy: the two places Sabbath is described in the Ten Commandments. In Exodus it tells us that we are to keep the Sabbath day (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) holy and we are not to work because GOD created the world in 6 days and on the 7th he rested.

So Sabbath is about rest.

Then in Deuteronomy 5, it says that we are to keep the Sabbath day holy and we are not to work because GOD liberated his people from Egypt and redeemed them.

So Sabbath is about redemption.

Rest and Redemption.

So, in the couple thousand years between Moses’s arrival with the Ten Commandments and the day Jesus walked into that synagogue, good, well intentioned people tried to figure out what GOD meant by having us not work. So they started with the farmers, the slaves, and the livestock (since they were specifically mentioned in the commandment). Then they added the housekeepers and the cooks and the shopkeepers and everybody else until they had created rules making it so everybody had to rest on the Sabbath. Whew! And they felt good about this until some smart aleck in the back asks the room “what about ______?” For us, that would be “what about doctors? Or police? Or firefighters? We have to work on our Sabbath day. So they started adding page after page of exemptions to the hundreds of rules. And Jesus knows these rules and picks out of the myriad choices—a really juicy one—and he throws it out into the middle of the room for everybody to see. It deals with livestock. Now, they aren’t talking about cute, cuddly sheep in the field necessarily. They’re talking about oxen that pull the plow or carts and goats that produce milk.

Now does anyone know the first two changes to your body when you fast? You lose water and muscle mass.

They knew that the livestock wouldn’t die with a fasting day, so this isn’t a life-or-death decision. But they wanted their livestock to be in tip-top shape for Sunday morning. They didn’t want their oxen weak or their goats to be dry and not producing milk. Jesus, mindful of the Law which says that the Sabbath is about rest and redemption looks at this rule and he says to himself “this exemption is about money.”

So he compares this exemption to the state of this woman. The livestock exemption isn’t life-or-death, but about health and vitality. There is no such exemption for the health and vitality of a woman. It is important for us to recognize that this is a woman—that she is imprisoned and in need of redemption. That she is symbolic of all of those people that are locked up, not by GOD’s Law, but by human rules based in prejudice and hatred. That Sam, in supporting the status quo, even telling her to come back tomorrow, is trying to refuse her rest and redemption on the Sabbath. But Jesus won’t wait—he does it the moment he sees her. He says “what better day than the Sabbath to give this woman rest and redemption? You have it, Sam. The people in this room have it. And now she has it.”

We’re given this wonderful example today to show us how we, by trying to be good people, condemn them instead. That we have a whole bunch of rules that we bring into this space with us: the special bows, the types of music we like, the times we stand and the times we kneel. These are all our rules, not GOD’s Law. It isn’t Jesus’s teaching. It isn’t the Kingdom of GOD. It’s our stuff.

Today, we can be mindful of all of our rules that blind us from GOD’s dreams for us. That our Sabbath might be truly about rest and redemption. And that we make time to ask ourselves and one another “who needs rest today? And who needs to be redeemed?”

Reflections

I didn't preach the last few weeks, but I wrote a couple of reflections on the gospels.

This one is for the Compassionate Samaritan parable.
This one is for the Martha and Mary story.

Enjoy!

Accepting vulnerability

a Sermon for Proper 9C
Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

GOD of Hope and Wonder, the mission you have given us is dangerous and deeply rewarding. May we have the courage to accept the challenge you give us. Amen.

Sometimes Jesus doesn’t make it easy for us, does he? The instructions that he gives the 70 are to go out, taking nothing with them, and travel to all of the places Jesus wanted to go. These are not easy expectations. What if we left here and some headed to Peachtree City and others to Roscoe and others Fayatteville. You leave from here without stopping at home and without your cars. All right everybody, stand up and get moving! You’re not excited by this prospect? You don’t want to walk all that way without clear expectations for what you are to do when you actually do get there? And considering he also says to leave your purse at home, when you arrive there at about dinner time, you’re going to be pretty hungry and have no money…I can’t understand why you aren’t motivated by these prospects! Huh…I’m going to have to rethink my expectations.

What I was asking you to do is no more out of character for us than it would have been for them. Jesus was asking a lot of these people. He asked them to leave everything behind. Everything. One set of clothes. That’s it. He even makes it tougher on them: they’re to go barefoot. This is a high demand.

Why does he ask this of them? To remove what prevents them from relying on GOD. He is putting these people in danger, in a position of complete dependence on something other than themselves. This is what Jesus is expecting of the 70.

What does Jesus expect of the people they will meet? These 70 people will arrive in their various towns in pairs. They will be hungry, dirty, tired, and with nothing of value—no means of helping themselves. If the people the 70 meet are Jews, they are likely to take them in and offer to clean their feet, offer them food and a place to stay, and demonstrate a profound sense of welcome, that everybody that walks through their door deserves their help. This is a profound sense of hospitality that few of us could imagine happening today.

Jesus is expecting these 70 to depend on GOD to provide for them and depend on the hospitality of others. Those are some pretty lofty expectations.

Few of us are comfortable with this subject; with this part of the expectation because Jesus is asking us to be vulnerable. In a world of strength, being vulnerable puts us at the bottom.
Jesus asks us to voluntarily empty ourselves of worth and power and influence and become dependent on GOD and our neighbor for our very survival. I highly doubt that Jesus only intends for us to hear this metaphorically. I am also not saying we’re supposed to literally walk to Peachtree City shoeless to stay in a stranger’s house and hang out for a few days, but I don’t think that such a vulnerable position is only supposed to happen inside us. What would it mean in today’s terms to empty ourselves in this way: to make ourselves that vulnerable to GOD and one another? Does it mean living without a savings account to protect us? Does it mean selling a car and asking others to take us where we need to go? Does it mean giving away the excess—the stuff and the money that goes beyond putting clothes on our backs and food on our tables? Does it mean abandoning our glorious homes and living in a state of physical and economic poverty? If we are honest to Jesus’s teaching, none of these questions is ridiculous. And this puts a lot of pressure on the way we do live—on our Western obsession with personal and corporate security. We want assurance of safety in the moment and for tomorrow. And deep down, we know better. We know that no amount of border guards and no amount of weaponry can ever keep us entirely safe. No amount of “cushion” in the bank will ever bring us complete economic security. Jesus shows his followers that the only assurance of safety we have comes from being entirely dependent on GOD and one another.

These words aren’t easy to hear any more than they are easy to say. If we trust in GOD, we will receive abundantly. But that trust is shown through vulnerability.

The assurance we have comes from Jesus. This gospel comes immediately after the pericope in which Jesus “turns his face toward Jerusalem”—an act of confidence and certainty of purpose and focus in direction. These 70 followers are sent out to the places that Jesus wants to go. In this new direction for Jesus, there is urgency. And in this morning’s pericope, there is similar urgency placed, not on the disciples, but on 70 of his followers. Jesus is calling on them to “get vulnerable already! It’s time to go!”

We talked about this on Wednesday at the Bible Study, about that number, 70; that it is likely a reference to a list of nations from Genesis 10, in which the nations of the world numbered 70. So Jesus is sending out all the nations of the world, a precursor to what would happen later at Pentecost. It also helps us to see this as our call—as something that Jesus asks of each of us.

But this expectation comes with a second expectation: an expectation of what those followers will find when they reach the towns and cities. Some that the 70 will visit will show uncommon welcome, feeding and clothing and caring for their needs, while others will not, receiving the dust from the followers’ feet.

The hope is that enough places will show that welcome so that all 70 will be cared for and that their needs will be met.

The lesson that I take away from this pericope involves how like the 70 we are—called into vulnerability by GOD—and how like those townspeople St. Paul’s is. We have the opportunity to go out into the world vulnerably and the opportunity to provide for those charged to this vulnerable life. Because if Jesus expects us to be so vulnerable, doesn’t he expect everyone to do the same? And if someone comes among us who is stripped down to the metaphoric shirt on her back, are we not the householder that should invite her in? Are we not the ones that should feed her and wash her feet and give her a place to stay?

The life of the Christian is to be vulnerable and to protect others; to allow ourselves to be weak in the face of our enemies and strong in defending the poor and the abused—concepts that are so opposite our cultural priorities and alien to our usual modes of thinking. And let’s be honest, even being the protector requires vulnerability—to let someone into your house, to eat your food, to live with you—is to share in an uncommon intimacy that few of us could truly understand.

We are challenged this week by a charge that is uncomfortable and frightening: to be vulnerable to GOD, to friends, and to strangers. To show uncommon hospitality to those that need love and nourishment of all kinds: spiritual, psychological, emotional, theological, intellectual, inspirational, and on and on. To show a profound intimacy that comes from believing Jesus when he suggests we put all of our trust in GOD. To extend that invitation of profound welcome to others knowing that doing so may well change the very foundation of our faith and the very core of our being. We are those townspeople that Jesus is hoping to transform.

Sharing in the reconciliation

a Sermon for Proper 7C
Text: Luke 8:26-39

GOD of Hope and Wonder, it is often so easy for us to see the brokenness and separation—that we can’t see your work in us and for us. Help us to better see and know your dream for us. Amen.

GOD longs to reconcile the world. GOD longs to make us whole and bring us back together. Verna Dozier calls this “The Dream of God” in her book of the same name. This dream is to reunite the people in a profound new kingdom that is very different from the way the world is now. It’s a beautiful dream—a dream that GOD invites us to share in over and over…in Scripture, in revelation, in worship. We might not want to think of GOD as a used car salesman, but He keeps pitching it to us, talking it up, wanting us to want it too. And to be perfectly blunt, the Kingdom of GOD is actually a pretty good deal.

This work of reconciling has been everywhere in our Scripture readings lately, especially in the gospel lessons from Luke. Last week—the woman who cleaned Jesus’s feet with her hair and Jesus forgives her of her sins—that’s about reconciliation. Two weeks ago—Jesus raises the widow’s only son from the dead—that’s about reconciliation. Actually, that’s a double reconciliation, restoring both the son to the community, and also the mother. A reconciling two-fer. Today’s gospel about a man possessed by demons is about reconciliation: about restoring this man to his community. This is a big part of GOD’s dream: our reconciling with one another. GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We know separation, don’t we? Separation here, separation in the world, separation between one another, and separation from GOD. We know separation. We don’t like it and we don’t want it. We know Jesus doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. We know GOD doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. That’s where the Spirit comes in. That’s why we can trust: GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We get in this reading from Luke a picture of reconciliation. A man possessed by demons is healed and restored to community. We know this is complete because toward the end of the gospel, these people, who hear about this crazy event are brought out to see this man, who was naked and talking craziness was now “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” Resist the temptation to ask where the clothes come from—think about the visual here, the symbolism. The man, who was naked, is now freshly clothed and restored to humanity. He is brought back in. All that separates him from the community is gone. The very picture of reconciliation.

This man was once like everybody else. He no doubt has a family, maybe kids, maybe a good job and a home in the good part of town, but when Jesus shows up, he’s naked and living in the tombs. Could there be a more vivid image of this man’s separation from the community than his living among the dead?

For us, this naked man lives on in the lives of those victims to evil and injustice who also at one time had families and loved ones and a job and home and mattered to people until that fateful day in which they looked around and they were living in the subway tunnel and don’t remember the last time they saw their children or the last time they wore a suit or the last time someone looked at them with respect and love. Many of us have seen that person and felt pity or repulsion or perhaps both at the same time. And almost in the same way, that person remains to us as nameless as the man in the gospel lesson—but just like him, we probably still remember them—or at least our brief time together. A nameless man becomes our anecdote—the easy reference for a person that has lost everything. But GOD promises reconciliation: which may or may not be in that person’s lifetime, but is eternal and hoped for here on earth. He can be reconciled with his family and the world just as surely as we can be reconciled with one another and with GOD: right here, this morning. All it takes is a first step.

When Jesus set foot on the soil, at the beginning of this pericope, this was soon after a crazy boat ride from Capernaum that rocked the little fishing boats that they crossed in and Jesus had calmed the storms—another big miracle. But when he steps out of the boat and onto this shore, he has left the safety of his home territory and, for the first time in the gospel of Luke, walks into gentile territory. He is met by a gentile, filled to the brim with demons, naked, living in tombs, and the demons are frightened and want to make a bargain. And Jesus gives them permission to leave the man, and the demons are soon vanquished. But after saving this man and restoring him to his community and reconciling him with GOD, other gentiles come back to Jesus and tell him to get out.

It might be easy for us to see in Jesus’s ministry an obviousness that everyone would get him, and see his miraculous acts as the very works of GOD. But not necessarily to gentiles and not to all of the people that lost a bunch of pigs in a mass swine slaughter. They don’t yet see a benefit to keeping Jesus around. But the man with the new clothes does. He wants to be with Him. Makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Stick with the person that saved you. Jesus has a different idea.

Just as the man is restored to his full humanity—reconciled with the world community—he is restored to his home community. As much as he wants to travel out into the world with Jesus, he is reconciled to a specific community—to these particular people from whom he was separated. And then Jesus went home.

We are a community of reconcilers. In baptism, we are called to a ministry of reconciliation. In gathering every Sunday, hearing the word, confessing our sins, receiving absolution and then sharing in a great act of reconciliation—we greet each other with the sign of GOD’s peace. Each Sunday, we reconcile with one another and we bring the kingdom closer. This is our bold proclamation.

GOD longs to reconcile the world; all of it. The big parts and the small parts; the cities and the farming communities; the mega-churches and the people meeting in a living room; the down-and-out and the people that are just down; everyone gets to be a part of it. There is even the promise of sending someone to make it happen, even in hostile territory.

Like the man sent home to proclaim the good news of what was done to him, we are called to do that very thing—to share what GOD does for us. We all have a place in this bold and beautiful dream that is both simple and challenging: to love one another and describe what GOD has done for us. To love and to share. Remember that the man was naked? He was vulnerable. The good news requires our own vulnerability—our own metaphoric nakedness. This is the first step, our chance to get out of the boat onto foreign soil and, with GOD’s help, begin the great reconciliation of the world.

From dead to living

a Sermon for Proper 5C
Text: Luke 7:11-17

GOD of Hope and Wonder, your compassion for us is immeasurable; continue to bless us with compassion and community. Amen.

If ever there was a ‘Wow!’ event in Jesus’s ministry, this would be it. That’s what Bill called it on Wednesday: a ‘Wow!’ event. Jesus strolls into town and raises a man from the dead. I’m thinking something on par with a Western where the hero rides in, sees the damsel in tears, and tells the man to “get up” and the man springs to life. He then asks for directions to the nearest saloon.

From dead to living.

What catches me as I read this story, however, isn’t the miracle: it’s where Jesus’s attention is. Jesus has compassion for the mother and then does what he does. He does it for her.

Who is worth this?

Worth a ‘Wow!’ event?
Worth being given her son back?
Worth the transformation from dead to living?

Who is worth this?

A woman with no name. Apparently nobody bothered remembering her name—just her condition. She goes by ‘the widow’.

For Jesus, The Widow is worth this.

There is a bunch of stuff that we know about widows, right? We know that they were married to a spouse who has since died. Historically, the moniker of ‘widow’ has been given primarily to a woman. This says a great deal about cultural priorities. In the patriarchal Palestine of the 1st Century, men were the primary source of work, ownership, and representation. Therefore, if a man’s wife were to die, he still remains a man—his social worth is unchanged. But for a wife, that connection to society evaporates.

We also should note the attempts made to help widows. One example is the Jewish law that allowed for a widow to marry her husband’s brother, granting her the ability to return to society. The Widow’s son apparently afforded her some place, even without a husband. For as strange as this sounds, they were actually trying their best to help.

What else do we know about widows? There is a further clue in the word’s origin which essentially means a woman who is “separated” or “solitary”.

For the 1st Century Jewish woman from Nain, this couldn’t be truer: she was in political solitary. For a 21st Century Christian woman from Newnan, we might have a closer understanding as emotional solitary.

It seems to me that these ideas: ‘separated’ and ‘solitary’: represent the reason Jesus believes the widow is worth this ‘Wow!’ event. “How can we change solitary into community? How can we regain community?”

Jesus answers this with resurrection.

Truthfully, I’m not sure whether Jesus thought of his own mother when he saw The Widow or not. I’m sure he thought of her in that ‘what if’ sense that we do when we think of scenarios that make it easy for us to plug in ourselves and loved ones. In the same way, though, death precedes a ‘Wow!’ event: when Jesus goes from dead to living.


Moving from solitary to community—

Placing people out of solitary and into community—

Changing community to eliminate solitary.


Just as Jesus restores The Widow to the community by resurrecting her connection to community, GOD longs to restore each of us to community from the solitary that confines us. From the stuff that separates us from grace. The health issues, soccer practice, chauffeuring kids, preparing for guests to arrive, work and more work, and all of the distractions—all these things separate us—they are our solitary. And truth be told, we know, deep down, that this is honestly more sin-full than taking a drink of scotch. Sin isn’t an act—it is that which separates us from GOD. This is GOD’s hope for us—to be back—to leave the exile we put on ourselves. To rejoin community. And for those of us in the community, to make room in ourselves for those that aren’t.

And we know that GOD wants something else. This something else has to do with the community. For me, the most important words in the Gospel are these: “and with her was a large crowd from the town.” By the common interpretation of the law, The Widow was now destitute and subject to the mercy of the city. But here was a large crowd that were there out of support, out of love, out of compassion for her. In resurrecting a dead son, Jesus doesn’t simply restore this community, he breaks the established order: the dead can become the living.

We know that GOD doesn’t want us to put our interpretation of the Law before our love of Him or one another. And that interpretation created separation and solitary more than the death of the husband or the only son. GOD wants us to be a certain community: a community of compassion and reconciliation, where none are relegated to solitary because of human reasons, even because of life and death.

I’ve only been in this community now for eight months, but St. Paul’s radiates that compassion. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, and sometimes some of us get off track, but the heart of St. Paul’s is this compassion. I’ve been a part of moments of welcome and of support—in which the Spirit moves us to act as Christ to one another. I’m reminded daily of the hunger for justice and missional opportunities here, near here, and far away from here. This is the St. Paul’s I know. This is the community GOD continues to call us to be.

GOD has big plans for us: all of us. That’s the Kingdom; and it gets closer every time we show compassion; every time we do things out of love for GOD and our neighbor. We pull the Kingdom a little bit closer. This is why we are worth it.

Crazy Glory / Crazy Love

a Sermon for Easter 5C
Text: John 13:31-35

GOD of Hope and Wonder, we thank you for Jesus, the incarnation, and the love that he shared with the disciples. Help us to realize that same love you have for us. Amen.

We have a gospel this morning from Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus died. Kind of a strange thing for our lectionary to jump backwards, and stranger still to jump to one of Jesus’s final moments; a moment of Jesus foretelling his own death and departure. We tell ourselves that this is Eastertide: the time when we revel in the risen Christ! We shout “Alleluia!” and praise his name. And to go back to this dark day seems…inappropriate.

We often think about time as following a line, meaning events that happen are relegated to the past and there are only two ways to go: forward and backward. Or, for us to deal with events in our recent past, we have to stop time so that we can give all of our attention to the event, abandoning that forward momentum that is inherent to this view of time.

We sometimes recast the time line as a circle, as we find ourselves repeating past behaviors or missed opportunities. Then the scientists in the room get involved and imagine that time isn’t a line or a circle, but a spiral in which we do the same things again, but they’re different each time as we circle up. Or perhaps time is a Möbius strip in an infinite loop—not a circle, which is replaying the old pattern, but a picture of infinity that is both the same and perpetually different. All of these ideas are interesting and share some insights about the nature of time that force us to address the parts that make up time: past, present, and future.

I think time is more like an art museum. The museum is often set up in chronological order, so those looking for progress can see how artists built on and expanded on what came before them. Paintings are often grouped by style or movement so that those looking at behaviors and a social view can see the influence of peers on one another or to dwell on particular movements that affect them personally. There’s a reason people are drawn to the Impressionists. Those interested in the history of humanity can look at the subjects of the art and learn about what was most important to the people of the time and recognize what is different in each room. And those learning to appreciate art can walk from gallery to gallery, finding inspiration, confusion, and surprise in each one, finding virtue in art from every era. For me, the real reason time is like an art museum is that we all walk in with our own values and we decide for ourselves what is the greatest moment and who the most talented artists are or were. We have access to our history and our future at any moment without having to relive it—we just need to have the ability to see those moments with integrity in light of the now.

It is in that spirit that we find this moment, in light of the crucifixion and resurrection. One of my favorite plays is The Betrayal by Harold Pinter, about a couple’s relationship told in reverse order from ending to beginning, and the audience is haunted by each event in light of the events that came later. We learn about the troubles and then the decision that led them there. It is powerful and teaches in a way wholly different than if it were told in chronological order. This morning, we learn about Jesus’s death and resurrection through one of Jesus’s final moments. We shout “Alleluiah!” not just because Jesus is risen, but because of all of those things that Jesus told us and all of the things we learn and know and even for the mysteries that continue to go unanswered. In other words, for us to shout “Alleluiah!” without the cross is to degrade Jesus’s sacrifice.

For John, the cross—that moment—is Jesus’s finest hour. In Matthew and Luke, we focus on the resurrection as the expression of victory over death, but for John, it’s the cross. This may seem strange to us—that some horrific moment could be Jesus’s moment of glory, but to John, this is the victory. As Jesus is a king without an army and a conqueror without a sword, his victory over Rome comes in being executed by them. This is Jesus’s finest moment, his moment of greatest glory. In fact, on the cross, he is even raised up.

So it comes as strange that in today’s gospel, Jesus says “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,” since the glorification is to come on the cross. John’s twisted sense of glory comes as Judas betrays him, as Jesus prepares his followers for the days ahead, and as Jesus gives them the greatest lesson of their coming ministry. This is Jesus glorified.

How alien that glorification seems, even now. Almost two thousand years of Christian history and we still have trouble with glory, with seeing Jesus’s glory in death, seeing the expression of glory in sacrifice, in being lesser servants. We still want our earthly glory with fancy shoes and watches, and prominence in our community, and a bank account full of cash. But Jesus’s glory is humble and humiliating. Jesus’s glory is in being betrayed by a close friend, stripped naked, abused, and killed.

But Jesus’s mission isn’t only about this strange glory, but about love. We might hear his instruction: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” as a restatement of previous teaching, but this one is new and for them. Thomas Troeger translates the passage this way: “I have loved you in order that you also love one another.” Removing the “should” removes the duty and reveals Jesus’s relationship to the love. Pushing it further, Scott Hoezee points out that our translation misses the power in that small word “as”. In the Greek, the word kathos, translated as “as”, isn’t meant to say that we imitate Jesus, but carries the connotation of the love actually coming from Jesus. “I have loved you so you can love.”

Our place isn’t to love, but to be loved. To allow Jesus’s love in…and you know what; it might come right out of us. And what comes out of us is reflective of the love we receive from Him. See, the badge we wear, the uniform we’re in that says “Christian” [or if we’re in sweat pants, its across our butt] isn’t bought at a good Christian store or from a Christian music festival or from a St. Paul’s gift shop, and it isn’t even something that we can pick out in certain colors or styles [like Christian / est. 30 on it]. It isn’t something that your friends or your parents can give to you for your birthday or Christmas. It isn’t even something you can hope for. It comes from within you because it was put there from the outside. The uniform is your love—love that’s yours because it was Jesus’s and he gave it to you. Love. Love that is felt in your heart and in your soul because you are worth loving. Because you are beautiful. You are loved. So love.

Jesus’s love isn’t bigger than your love and isn’t the love of Hallmark cards or Lifetime movies, but a strange and crazy love that says “I win when he thinks he’s won.” It’s a crazy/weird love. It’s about feeling love to express love. It’s about giving love to people that want it and to those who don’t want it or don’t deserve it. It’s a love that angers our puritanical side and confuses our permissive side. It’s a love that isn’t human, but divine: not merely bigger—but different and awesome.

May we all feel GOD’s love, accept it, and allow it to transform us, sharing its strangeness and brilliance with all those who need it most. Amen.

Throw away that “Do Not Touch” sign

a Sermon for Easter 2C
Text: John 20:19-31

GOD of Hope and Wonder, creator of the world we experience and enjoy, come among us this morning, so that we might know and understand and share your love. Amen.

In the gospels, there are individuals with whom many of us naturally sympathize. For many, it’s Martha, the hardworking hostess that is irritated by her indulgent sister Mary. For others, it’s Peter, who responds to Jesus’s questions eagerly, though dimly—sometimes even shouting out “how high?” before Jesus has even asked him to jump. And there are individuals with whom we know we’re supposed to sympathize. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we know that we can tend to be the pious Jews that pass the helpless victim by and that we ought to be that individual that picks him up and carries him to safety. And, of course there are the individuals with whom we would naturally sympathize if we hadn’t been conditioned to condemn. This last case is typified by Thomas.

If we were to think back about these last two weeks in Thomas’s life, and of our life, what becomes readily clear is how the playground of theory and practice that characterized discipleship was turned upside down and replaced by cruel, human forces of betrayal, trial, crucifixion, persecution, and hiding from hunters. As one of the named disciples, he learned theory and its application; he learned about the nature of the world and of GOD; and the world was his laboratory, giving him the chance to apply all that he was learning from Jesus. And then, in a flash, his protector and spiritual guide was gone and the world was transformed. What he thought he knew wasn’t true. Or at least didn’t seem to be true.

And further, there were things that he had observed and knew to be true. He observed the way the Temple authorities treated Jesus, the increasingly edginess of Jesus as the week progressed, he ate and drank and watched the Last Supper, he went with Jesus to the Garden in which he was betrayed. He saw the reflection of the moonlight off of steel blades, witnessing actions and their bloody consequences. And even though he wasn’t at the crucifixion and didn’t remove the body from the cross, he knew what that meant. All of these things were observable and we can be sure that Thomas absorbed them all.

So, as Jesus appears to the disciples as he said he would, we can understand why Thomas would need to experience it, too. Why he would need that empirical data. That he would reserve judgment of what happened until he had all of the facts himself—so that he could make his own decision.

That’s why I think we ought to sympathize with him: because we’re all about empirical data. We want to know about the experience and the moment. It gives us some sense of the rational and the objective. ‘Such and such happened so I know X to be true.’ We do this with our friends and our government and our church. Why should we condemn Thomas for wanting to gather some empirical data? Jesus was dead. We know from science class what is supposed to happen next. That which is dead decays. So, Jesus’s body, unless treated with chemicals and mummified, would start to rot. AND if He were revived magically, as Jesus brought Lazarus from the dead, that body would certainly look a certain way. Even restored to full health, he would still look like Jesus and be bound by physics.

But our brains are complex. We respond to multiple stimuli and integrate them into an experience. A while back, I watched this program on the history of photojournalism and they talked about how different the world became when photographs began to accompany stories. We began to understand stories in a more personal way, because we became exposed to a wider sense of the story. In 1963, a Vietnamese monk named Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the oppressive South Vietnamese government. The iconic image in profile of this man silently burning to death is haunting and captivating. Another photo, taken in 1972 in the height of the Vietnam War, made a similar impact. The picture’s most compelling subject is Phan Thị Kim Phúc, a 9 year-old girl running naked, her flesh burning from napalm dropped by South Vietnamese forces. Many elements of the picture are striking: her nakedness, the way her body is positioned at the moment the photograph was taken, and that horrified expression on her face. Both of these pictures, like countless others, continue to shape the way we experience the events of our life. We learn from them in ways that words cannot express.

We experience by hearing and seeing…and touching…and smelling…and tasting. And all of these elements come to tell us about the world around us. And Thomas, hoping to experience the risen Christ, asks to see and touch him, as the other disciples did. This isn’t doubt—it isn’t even skepticism—in the way we think of it. Maybe it is selfishly pragmatic, but only fair. He didn’t want to hear about Jesus, he wanted to actually hear Jesus. And a week goes by, and it is the one week anniversary of the resurrection, and Jesus shows up again. And if we are being honest to the text, we’ll see what happens: Jesus walks right up to Thomas, who hasn’t said anything, by the way, and says to him “See me and touch me. Believe.” And Thomas exclaims “My Lord and my God!” The gospel never says that Thomas touches him—it clearly suggests the contrary—that Thomas sensed Jesus and was moved by Him. Jesus was there with them and he knew what the others had said was true. And Jesus addresses him personally, directly, looking him square in the eye and offering to share in this humble moment in which his wounds are exposed to this loved one, this disciple to touch, to feel.
And no sooner is this offer made than Thomas declares that he is in the presence of the holy. This is a truly intimate moment of personal relationship and spiritual revelation that occurs in this room full of people! And for us to be privy to it means that we must respect the dignity of this moment.

And perhaps it is to our detriment that we so cast aside the power of Jesus’s final statement:
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Words often used to criticize Thomas for his “non-belief”. But this statement serves a different purpose. Jesus is demonstrating two ways of entering into faith: those that have faith because they have seen GOD’s work themselves and those that have only heard about it. The phrasing (“blessed are those”) is reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount (“blessed are the poor/the peacemakers/the meek”).

This is good news for us because Jesus frees us from a faith that is dependent: dependent on physical or historical proof or dependent on blind or ignorant leaps of faith. In fact, the very idea that he made himself known to all of the disciples, that he appeared to the group twice shows that he wanted to get them all. Perhaps even appearing the second time as a means of going after the lost sheep.

What this gospel says about faith, therefore, is not merely about possessing it, but sharing it. Jesus was heading out and needed to pass on this one piece: The disciples must have faith, but they also must share it; to go out and make disciples as he did. And it seems to me that all of the tools at our disposal are necessary. Our ability to experience faith through all of our senses helps us to not only deepen our own faith, but give us a means to describe it and share it with others. Our senses help us tell better stories and share relevant experiences with others. They help us describe, demonstrate, or depict our own relationships so that GOD might help us forge new ones. They help us better tell The Story.

May the GOD that gives us all of these ways of experiencing the world, and shared in our humanity, to experience the world like we do, grant us heightened senses; and may we use them to better understand GOD in our midst and share GOD's love with others. Amen

Telling Her

a Sermon for Good Friday, Year C
Text: John 18:1-19:42

God of Hope and Wonder, you give us this day that hurts us each year as a reminder and as an opportunity. Be with us now and through the weekend as we mourn the loss of your Son. Amen.

If you have ever had to follow a tough act—you can begin to understand what it is like to stand here at this moment. To follow the reading of the Passion. This gospel humbles and silences us.

Perhaps because it is haunting and frightening that many are moved on Good Friday to talk theologically about sin and forgiveness, using big words like atonement and Christology; using this talk to pull us away from feeling sad and guilty. Even the name Good Friday comes to us with a cruel irony that is certainly unavoidable in this space. The cross, our symbol begins to feel heavy on our chests and burn in our eyes when we think about it. When we hear those words: “There they crucified him,” we can’t help but think about the grim reality of what is going on this story. We can’t help but see in this the earthy, human reality of what took place. Humans put our human-born Messiah on a human-made torture device and killed him.

Sunday, I mentioned a book, The Last Week, which covers the final days of Jesus’s life. When the authors get to Good Friday, they describe the crucifix itself. We might envision it as tall planks of wood, rising high into the air. The cruel truth is that the victims are only a couple of feet off of the ground. The upper body high enough to draw carrion birds to pick at the flesh, while the lower limbs close enough for stray dogs to tear at the feet. The reality of crucifixion is that it is disgusting. It is demoralizing. It is torture. And in Roman occupied territory, as Jerusalem was, it was the most frightening act the state could use against the people.

I’ll tell you today is the hardest day to be a Christian. Not because I have to endure this story, the emotions, the fears; but I have to think of some way to tell my daughter this story. This time around, she’s a week away from 2 and I know she won’t get it. I’ll tell her something about God’s generosity and Rose and I will go about our year feeling thankful that we don’t have to really talk about this. But when do I tell her? When do I tell her that people killed God? When she’s four or five? And when do I try to explain this story that is both sacrifice on Jesus’s part and cruel viciousness on humanity’s part? That we can’t really tell the story without both parts. When will she be mature enough to understand it?

Perhaps in a more basic sense, part of the reason most of us are afraid to talk about the crucifixion is that it isn’t “appropriate subject matter”. This story isn’t G-rated. In our culture, there is no proper place for us to have a conversation that involves talking about torture, mockery, and execution to a general audience. Even the evening news makes close-to-home cases a mixture of scintillating true crime and clinical depictions of tragic events. We can’t talk about the ugliness of humanity in the way it deals with difficult subjects. One memory that is etched in my mind was back in ’96 (I think). It was after the final game of the NBA finals when the Bulls beat the Jazz and the 11:00 News came on and they were covering the sentencing of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber. He had been given a sentence of execution and they were showing this crowd that was pushing against this chain link fence, apparently there to keep the crowds away from the proceedings and I remember hearing the words screamed with hate; faces distorted in hunger for the kill. They were giddy and joyful and had crazy animal eyes. And I sat down overwhelmed with shock and sadness and shared guilt that maybe I could be part of this. Maybe I could be transformed into a being of pure evil and hate. And I cried…confused and hurt. I shut the TV off and sat in silence and I cried.

Today is the day we confront death. We have to. We confront death in the form of loved ones that we’ve sat with, we’ve cried over, we’ve held in our arms. It’s the day we confront all of the stages: knowledge of impending death, the torture of the coming death, the strange details of death, and finally, loss. Maybe that’s why we feel compelled to skip on to Easter. But don’t. Not this time. Stay for a little longer in this moment. Because its here, in loss, in grief, that we get to experience anew this “Good” day.

So let’s stay away from theology and explanations of why this had to happen, just this once. And let us sit with ourselves in this moment, in all of these emotions.

As I see it, I won’t be able to talk to my daughter about Good Friday with integrity without learning how to feel it. How to feel death and loss. Until I can share with her some of my experiences. And to do that, I have to deal with my own stuff. And I don’t think we’ll ever do that if we simply see Good Friday as the day God balanced the checkbook or the day Jesus rescued prisoners from the Underworld or whatever interpretation you want to throw out. At its root, at its deepest level, Good Friday is about death—and talking about death. It’s about sharing in a story that is hard to tell and hard to hear. But we share it anyway.

May our own experiences of death and loss give us a new sliver of wisdom of God’s sacrifice for us. Amen.

A matter of trust

a Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C
Text: Luke 19:28-40

GOD of Hope and Wonder, we gather this morning in joy and confusion, to celebrate this bittersweet day once again. Help us to see how much you trust in us—and that we might return the favor. Amen.

Today is a strange day in which we commemorate both the Palms and the Passion. It may seem a bit confusing since we start on a Sunday, skip to Friday; only to rewind to Thursday later in the week and do the Passion all over again on Good Friday. The chronology alone is a headscratcher.

Some of you might be asking yourselves why we do it then. Why read the Passion gospel now if we are going to read it again in a few days? The answer is simple: the church doesn’t trust us. It doesn’t trust that we’re going to come back Friday to actually hear that part of the story. It wants to make sure that every one of us hears the Passion, so we read it now and again in five days. The church doesn’t trust us. But let’s be honest, why should it? Many of us won’t come out Friday. Many will stay at home, treating Good Friday as any other day. The church knows this because we don’t have a very good track record. So, yeah, the church has a right to not trust us.

Me? I trust you! I know you will all come back on Friday. So I’m not going to preach on the Passion—I’ll save it for Good Friday. We’re going to talk about the Palm Gospel instead. We’re going to talk about Jesus finally arriving at his destination, walking into a Jerusalem suburb and riding a donkey up to the gates of the city. We’re going to talk about this happy day that caused such joyous response.

But first let’s look at the first thing that happens. Jesus gives his disciples some pretty specific instructions: go to this particular place, steal a donkey, and when you are asked what you’re doing, simply say “The Lord needs it.” Now, if I were one of those disciples, and I was given that, I’m not sure I’d simply say “OK!” and keep moving! Would you? Where’s the bargaining? “Um…Jesus, I get that you want this donkey but I think I’m gonna need something a little more tangible to give them.” Right? But they dutifully follow Jesus’s instructions—a miracle for the disciples, really—and when it goes down like Jesus said, we get to a second strange part: the owners actually ask the disciples what they’re doing, and trusting Jesus, (GOD bless ‘em) they say “The Lord needs it.” The text doesn’t say what happens next—but they get Jesus the donkey. Apparently the owners trusted in Jesus too! I can’t explain it. It seems absolutely crazy. But I’ll tell you this: it says something to us about Jesus, about this moment, and about trust.

The reason I bring up the donkey isn’t just because of its strange place in this story, but because of what it represents to the larger story. We know that Jesus was called Messiah— GOD’s anointed. We know that many disciples were following Him because they thought he was the new King, the descendant of David—the great unifier. Jesus—later laughed at as King of the Jews—was making his grand entrance…on a donkey. For the disciples, this must have been a bit confusing.

In their excellent book, The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan refer to Jesus’s arrival at Jerusalem as ‘the other’ Triumphal Entry. See, Pilate didn’t live in Jerusalem. He came from the west, bringing with him a large escort of Roman soldiers. He would come to Jerusalem in advance of the big holy days, knowing that a big show of Roman might would keep the natives in line. So you can imagine this Roman officer showing up with all of the accoutrement of Imperial power. Soldiers on horseback, many more marching with these tall banners to demonstrate the majesty of the Roman Empire. Pilate, of course riding along like the Grand Marshall of this ancient parade. So here comes Pilate, showing up in Jerusalem for Passover from the west, while on the other side of town, approaching from the east, is this poor, ragged man, riding on a donkey—the polar opposite of imperial power.

Jesus’ entrance was visually symbolic—symbolic of the leadership of heaven (as shown by Jesus) and the leadership of earth (as shown by Rome). Jesus didn’t just tell people parables, he demonstrated them—he revealed truths that can only be attested to visually, with our eyes. When we close our eyes and imagine all of the pomp and circumstance of a Roman parade, all of those elements, things that make us look skyward, that makes us sense the sheer numbers of soldiers, that make us see their weapons and the various tools by which victory can be claimed, we know that this wasn’t just a celebration of victory, it was a celebration of power and strength. These things make Rome seem bigger and stronger and scarier then anybody else. And in the midst of this is Pilate, the stand-in for Caesar, bringing all of the Emperor’s authority with him…authority that was larger than life…authority that spoke of intimidation, domination, and control over people through acts of military strength and economic coercion. All of this would come to mind in Jesus’s symbolic entrance.

But also coming to mind is that Jesus shows up, representing not the powerful, but the poor. A king and conqueror who enters without a weapon or armor, but with open palms and dusty robes. He didn’t enter on a stallion, but a donkey. He didn’t have the big military escort, but an entourage of peasant disciples. Nothing about Jesus intimidates or coerces; frightens or dominates…except for the wealthy and powerful. Except for Temple leadership that were on the Roman payroll and Roman authorities that didn’t want anything messing up the good thing they had going. For them, the biggest threat wasn’t someone bigger or stronger, but someone not swayed by the riches of earth. Jesus showing up on a donkey with joyous supporters was the very thing that frightened them the most.

For us, Palm Sunday may simply be seen as the kickoff to Holy Week. The day that leads to a strange paradox several days later when joy turns to outrage. The day of bittersweet exuberance. But it’s so much more. It is the day in which we see what real courage looks like. The day we see what it really means to stand up for our convictions. The day we see the true nature of our world, revealed in its ugly, naked quest for earthly power and dominance. And the day we catch a glimpse of what the Kingdom of GOD looks like when practiced on earth. And at its center, this requires trust.

All of that Roman coercion displays a lack of trust, but Jesus expected and reinforced trust. Trust in Him and trust in GOD. It is easy for us to trust in the world. We trust in gravity. If I drop an apple from my hand, it will fall to the floor. We trust that will happen. We’ve done it and continue to do it. But trust really only matters when it’s tested. It only matters when we enter the city as the disciples did, knowing what we’ll find their and hoping that it isn’t true.

To truly trust GOD, we must have faith in the Spirit’s direction for St. Paul’s. That in spite of things that upset us, we trust that the Spirit can, will, and more radically, does lead us. That’s trust.

Think of the trust-fall. It’s a team-building exercise that requires one person to fall back, trusting that the person behind them will catch them. When done in a group, the person not only falls back, but trusts that the group will keep her up as she is passed around the team. As one who has done this many times, it is still difficult to do. Because here’s the thing about trust—we have to start it. If we were falling down anyway, it’s easy to trust the person behind us, because either way, we’re falling. But we have to put our bodies out of balance. We have to shift the weight to the heels of our feet and lean back. We have to start the falling. The only time I’ve seen well-prepared trust-falls fail is when the person falling doesn’t let themselves fall.

More than anything, Palm Sunday represents trust in GOD. Jesus’s last chance to turn around and skip the Passion. Our own last chance to skip committing ourselves to this incredible relationship with our maker, our guide, and our courage. In light of all that has been thrown at us we have been given this shot. This opportunity. This chance to shift our weight, lean back, and…

“There was a man who had two sons”

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

God, Father, we know that we don’t always listen, we don’t always follow, and we don’t always come home when you call. But please help us come in from the cold and share our lives with you. Amen.

“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins. Three figures: a father, an elder son, and a younger son. We know the story pretty well and we refer to it by a very recognizable name. And the way we deal with what it says is to focus most of our energy in the first part, about a younger son that is lost, who deeply offends his father, runs out into the world recklessly and comes home penniless. We focus also on the father who runs out to this lost son and we marvel at the amazing forgiveness offered by the father. This no doubt leads us to better understand God’s relationship with us and to see God as practicing radical forgiveness, which is comforting. We might even be encouraged to practice that radical forgiveness with our children, which is a bit challenging.

But, as we all noticed, there is a second son. A man that represents right living and hard work. Unlike his brother, he stayed home with his father and took responsibility for the land. He demonstrated that he is of good character and will be an honest and quality caretaker of his inheritance—which is two thirds of the family’s original land—now all of what’s left. We look at this character and we say “what a good man.” We probably even explain away his outrage at his father’s generosity—because it doesn’t seem fair.

The way Jesus tells the story is to treat both of these brothers as taking action—each is the primary figure in his part of the story. In the first half, the brother rejects his father, leaves, and comes home broken. In the second half, the brother rejects the father’s feast, doesn’t enter the home, and stands on the outside as his father comes to him. The most telling statement of the older son’s is this: “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you”. ‘Like a slave.’ We might hear that as a euphemism—because we actually use it that way—as we “slave all day in the kitchen”. But I think the brother actually means it. Even though they are working the same farm, the older son feels separated from his father. He doesn’t feel like family. He doesn’t feel like the heir of a fortune. He feels like a slave, as one with no self-identity and no hope, following someone else’s rules. The irony of this son’s life is that his proximity to the father and his own sense of responsibility leave him feeling isolated and alone. This sense of separation causes the older brother to reject his father’s dream on the happiest day of his life.

Earlier in the week, I was looking through a book I picked up a year or so ago called The Father & His Two Sons. It is a collection of artwork depicting this classic parable. Many of the works were stunning, giving me insight into the nature of the story, and some have forever changed the way I visualize it. But one struck me personally. The second-to-last one in the book is a painting by Jonathan Quist called Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son Revisited. In Rembrandt’s depiction of the story, the artist uses light sources to first draw your attention to the father’s reconciliation with the younger son and then your eyes are drawn to the face of the unhappy older son as he watches on. Quist puts himself in this recasting. In his own words, he describes his place in the painting:

“I have replaced the elder son with an image of myself as an artist, painting the staged embrace between the father and prodigal son. In this way, I have full control of the situation. I am not required to participate in the embrace because I am going about the prestigious task of painting. The large canvas, tools, and easel ensure this separation.”[1]

In the painting, you can really feel the separation—the easel divides the painting in half. What affects me is that Quist observes in himself something of which I am completely afraid: that I put up barriers that separate me from God. My barrier isn’t the canvas, but that I could make God theoretical. I build up this wall of theory and belief and emotional or rational certainty that sometimes prevents me from truly loving God. I’ve been staring at this picture all week, my eyes drawn to this artist in his green work clothes, so as not to get his “real” clothes dirty, his expressionless face and stiff posture showing how seriously he takes his work. His detachment, both physically and emotionally, from this moment that represents complete joy, satisfaction, and the very grace of God reminds me of the ways I detach myself and the ways I sometimes allow my familiarity with our practices get in the way of my ability to worship, to personally join in the embrace.

This is the problem of the older son: his separation from the father comes from his belief that he has been behaving properly. When given a choice in his life to do the right thing or stray from it, he chose to do the right thing. He did what he was supposed to. He followed the rules. But those rules became too important. They became the very thing that separated him from his father. His own selfish righteousness led him to become lost in his own home. Now we don’t know what happens next. The parable ends with the father reasoning with the older son. Since Jesus is telling this story to the Pharisees, it is clear from the beginning that he sees the younger brother as the tax collectors and the sinners with whom he was just eating and the Pharisees are the older brother.

Timothy Keller suggests that this parable teaches us three things about our relationship with God, whether we are a younger or older brother.

1. “The Initiating love of God”

For both of his sons, the father leaves the home to get them. The younger as he returns, and for the older as he disobeys. God makes the first move toward reconciliation.

2. “Repent for something other than sins”

Jesus is showing us that we can be in need of repentance without having sinned. In the younger son, you have the example of someone whose very life becomes representative of sinfulness, but in the older, you have one who has done nothing wrong, and yet needs to repent and share with God.

3. We must be “melted and moved by what it costs to bring us home”[2]

For the reconciliation that Jesus does to bring us back to God to work, we must let it affect us. For us, this means taking to heart the sacrifice that Jesus makes on our behalf. It means confronting that sacrifice as freely-given grace and allowing that grace in, letting it seep into our pores and letting it change us and make us new.

I think that’s the real reason we stick to the first part of the story. Like the pious young man, we can easily feel comfortable in our own righteousness and smug superiority. And kind of like Ruby Turpin, the character Matt+ mentioned last week who obviously knows the right thing to do and the right way to behave…except that she really doesn’t. We want doing the right thing or dare I say, merely believing the right things to stand in place of loving God and living with God. But Jesus wants us to see that living in God’s house is as simple as accepting the invitation—because He comes running to get us. It means getting over our own righteousness—even if it means cleaning out the pigsty. It means letting the grace touch us—worthy or unworthy—and permanently change us.

Who we are is defined in our relationship with God. The text doesn’t say what happens after the father comes to get the older son. Just as our future isn’t written. But what would it be do you think if we let the father open that door for us, holding it and bowing his head as we enter the house to see the whole town drinking wine and making music? What would it be to walk in through the kitchen, into the living room, someone shoving a glass in our hand as we pass the table and we see under the big bay window a couch—and sitting in the middle cushion is our little brother, back from the dead? And what would it be to sit down in the empty space next to him and say simply “welcome home”?

I think that’s a little bit like what Jesus does for us.




[1] The Father & His Two Sons: The Art of Forgiveness. (Eyekons Publishing: Grand Rapids, 2008) p. 56

[2] Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God. DVD, Zondervan.