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.

The view from up here

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 4:21-30

Please Pray with me: God of Hope and Wonder, we long to be part of your vision for the
world; help us to see you at work in the world and within us. Amen.

Remember, this story is about the cliff.

We came to church this morning feeling that this was an ordinary Sunday. We thought that some semblance of normal was being restored to the world and we could begin to go about our lives as normal. And our first two readings might even seem to reinforce that thinking. And then we get to the gospel.

The Gospel itself looks straightforward or simple enough. Jesus says something, people get excited, then Jesus makes the people mad, so they try to kill him. We might even think that Jesus himself gives us the message of this story: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” OK. You can’t go home again. Got it. Time to move on!

Except that we can’t move on. Moving on would mean that we ignore the real cause for the outrage. It would mean that the reason for collective violence would be swept under the carpet. That isn’t the gospel. So what caused these family friends, this home congregation, to not only get upset at Jesus, but cause the collective body to intend to murder him?

He told them that they don’t get to be first. That God likes some other people better. And that many of those people would gain power and influence at the expense of the faithful. He put the mirror up to the people and said, in essence:

“When I read from Isaiah these words:

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

I didn’t mean that you are the captives or the blind or the oppressed, but that you get the short end of the stick.”

And when Jesus said this, the crowd was going to kill him as a blasphemer by stoning him to death in a way—by throwing him off of the cliff and onto the stones below.

The key, of course was his choice of examples. As long as the poor, the blind, and the oppressed are nameless, “we’re all good”. But when he names gentiles that were given favor over Jewish people in the same boat, they became outraged.

It seems as if we have a hard time with this notion, too. We like the idea of “bringing good news to the poor” as long as we still get to be wealthy (or at least middle-class—which is wealthy by international standards). We like the idea of releasing captives—if they haven’t done anything to us or aren’t considered our property. We like the idea of giving sight to the blind—as long as they don’t see something we’ve overlooked. We like the idea of letting the oppressed go free—as long as they don’t have it as good as we have it. We like to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—except that we don’t actually want that to happen, because then we all get to move to the back of the line. And after a while, our feet start to hurt because that line looks really long from back here. It seems as if, deep down, we believe that we’re the ones who are oppressed and need saving from the current state of affairs. So when Jesus’s words are only words, we feel good. But when we are asked to live them as the oppressor, we balk.

The truth is that Jesus could walk into most any church in America and grab a Bible, read that passage and say that the people chosen for salvation and authority in the new age aren’t Christian, but are homeless or displaced, are hungry and malnourished, haven’t had access to safe drinking water or doctor care in who knows how long. And the people would be furious. He’d be called a false prophet and run out of town. He’d hear the people shout “That isn’t Biblical” as they drive him away.

But remember, the story is about the cliff.

The location for the story is “the brow of the hill on which their town was built”. Luke gives us an image of a people who live on a hill. This would no doubt be the scene of some wonderful childhood stories of Jesus running through the meadows down in the valley, of clothes hung on lines in the breeze of the hilltop. The town itself could be seen from some distance away—a vision that might cause a weary traveler to want to set down some roots in this beautiful location. From the hilltop itself, an observer could get a wider view of the countryside than anywhere else. Even in military terms, the elevated location would serve as a tactical advantage. In every way, this town is in an idyllic spot.

But this hill also has a cliff—a source of danger for children running around and a temptation for the town’s more malicious members. The cliff may be the hill’s darker side—the drawback for the benefits the people get in living there.

For Luke, the location is the visual and most explanatory part of the story, because Jesus comes up from lower ground and tells the people that they’ve got a great view, that they are great people, but their position also gives them blindspots. That they can’t see everything from this hill. That this hill doesn’t help them see themselves any better or one another any better. The outrage didn’t come out because Jesus said good things about Gentiles, but that Gentiles, even Gentiles that had oppressed Jews, could better know the mind of their God.

That message is Good News, isn’t it? Jesus tells us that God’s vision for the world is bigger than we are. That to be a part of the vision doesn’t require joining an exclusive club with membership dues, name tags, or offices to be held. It merely requires relationship and participation with the vision.

It also means that we don’t have to have all of the answers—and even better—that we don’t! That we can learn from other people and other cultures. That we can gain insight from people that we don’t even know. That we aren’t all that there is, and we aren’t “the best”.

Most important, though, is that it sheds light on the inner darkness. That we like feeling special. We like knowing that someday we’ll each get a chance to give Jesus a hi-five. And we like knowing that our hard work will pay off in some way. That we like being different and we’re worried that if the outsider can have what we have, it won’t be as good.

For us, in this Epiphanytide, the cliff is the source of our great vision and our great hubris. It is the place in which we endanger our own understanding of God by squeezing it too tightly and dashing others to the rocks. But it is also the place in which we can realize that problem—our hard hearts transformed into forgiveness by the grace of God. It is the place of the revelation made blind by our own insecurity—the place in which our innersight may be restored to match or even better our physical site.

May you find yourself awakened and given new sight this day by a God that longs for your collaboration in vision and may that cliff be the site of your greatest triumph.

Being called through signs

a Sermon for Epiphany (C)
Text: Matthew 2:1-12

God of Hope and Wonder, as you gave these Magi signs, you give us signs that we might follow. We will listen as you keep calling us to service. Amen.

I have to confess that I always assumed that I would be watching cartoons as an adult. Since most of us love them as children, I assumed that would continue, and thanks to the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, adults can like cartoons. What I didn’t expect is that I would spend 30 minutes every evening watching Nick Jr., the cartoon network for preschoolers. Over the last couple of weeks, they have been advertising a new Dora the Explorer episode: “Dora Saves Three Kings Day”. Now, I’m not a big Dora fan, and I didn’t watch this particular episode, but the title points out how we often envision the day. Three kings, travel from the Orient, carrying gifts solemnly to be delivered to the baby born 12 days earlier. A fascinating story, if not altogether accurate.

Much of the story, as we remember it, has the spaces filled in by tradition. Matthew doesn’t say how many Magi there are, but we think of three—one for each gift given. The word magi has the same root as magician, but we take these individuals as men and as royalty, naming them kings. A more accurate title might be stargazer or astrologer. They are also likely to have come from Babylon, not the Orient. In other words, Three Kings Day this is not.

So let us instead consider what the original version of the story might mean for us. The word magi in other parts of scripture is actually derogatory and suggests a charlatan, like a snake-oil salesman. That Herod would enlist such a group is interesting. They were already tracking an astrological event and were looking for something or someone, the new king of Israel. Whatever the case, these were a collection of people covering a long distance with attendants and a caravan following them, traveling a long way to visit God’s son. The Jewish authorities just down the road didn’t make the trip, but people from a foreign land did.

And they came because of a prediction. They saw a sign in the place they look for signs—the sky, and specifically among the stars, it took the form of a single star.

We tend to think that signs come to us like a paddle upside the head or a loud booming voice from the heavens—kind of like the one Jesus gets at his baptism. Something big and bold and flashy. We think that is how it all works. But signs can be much more personal and elusive. They come in the places you look, but not necessarily the form you expect. This is more like the form of God’s messenging service than direct visits from angels or in natural disasters.

This morning, we celebrate the Epiphany, derived from the Greek epiphaneia which means ‘manifestation’. In common terms, we think of having an epiphany—a moment of realization or clarity—or perhaps more literally, the manifestation of incredible insight. Considering that definition, we might be tempted to go back to Dora’s ‘Three Kings Day’ and call it good. But for us, epiphany isn’t simply about the visit from the magi. The other gospel reading for today is the baptism of Jesus. Next week is the wedding at Canna and so on, concluding with the Transfiguration. These passages cover not only the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry, but include actual manifestations of the Spirit and a new vision of things to come.

And because of all of the fireworks in these passages, we might overlook one simple truth: God spoke. And he directed the Magi to the Son.

We’re often challenged by God’s speaking in our lives. Sometimes we don’t like the timing. Sometimes we don’t like the challenge given us. Sometimes we don’t think we’re worthy. But we’re all here today because, in some way, we were called to be here, coming from all over the place. It is all the more special because we are about to demonstrate our faith and commission some wonderful people to service, to respond to the call that God has given to them. Today, one of the traditional days for baptism, we will have two, Alexander and Francesca. We will commission them to lifelong service and witness of God’s love. And we will all swear to lift both of them up and raise them in a healthy and spiritual way. In this way, we are all called to this service, not only as witnesses, but as guides and supporters of a new life in faith.

We also will commission our new vestry. These leaders, called from within the church will be given responsibility for much more than the financial health of the parish, but the direction and leadership of our ministries and our future. God has touched each of them for leadership at St. Paul’s and in the Diocese of Atlanta.

It may be easy to see these baptisms and the vestry commissioning as simply public acts—things done in front of the community. In this view, the gathered people are passively witnessing the events as they unfold. But for us, and for our theology, these are powerful moments, representing the collective voice of the congregation. WE are baptizing these two beautiful Christians and vowing to stand with them and hold them up. WE are commissioning this vestry to serve this year with dignity and honor. WE are responsible for helping these magi find God’s son, in a strange town, in a strange place, by the light of a brilliant star. This is our calling today. Let us follow Him.

Looking for superpowers

a Sermon for Christmas 2C
Text: Luke 2:41-52

Please pray with me. God of Hope and Wonder we thank you for families, friends, and most of all, our relationship with you. May we continue to learn how to love you and be your children. Amen.

There are a few strange things you probably noticed this morning in our gospel from the evangelist we know as Luke: The holy parents forget Jesus in Jerusalem; Jesus just hangs out in the Temple for 3 days; Jesus talks back to Mary when she comes to collect him. OK, maybe that last one isn’t so strange, considering the Jesus of this story is a pre-teen. Sorry to those in this room in the 11-13 range, but many adults have come to see this as the unfortunate byproduct of your hormones. Hey don’t look at me—I’m just reporting what I hear! My kid’s not even 2.

These are strange things, for sure. How could Mary and Joseph be so careless with Jesus, the Son of GOD? After the strange circumstances of his conception and birth, the angel visits, and the prophecies, how can they not check whether or not he was on the caravan? That he was, in fact, playing with the other kids? But I think this reveals more about us than about them. About our priorities and the way we govern our lives.

But really, most of us don’t have our minds on Mary and Joseph, anyway. Our minds aren’t really on the 12 year-old Jesus, either, but on the 30 year-old Jesus as a 12 year-old. Like a fiancée discovering their love’s baby books, yearbooks, and family photo albums, we’re looking for clues into the Jesus we know by looking at his past. We want to know more about him; as if discovering what his favorite food was might help us to grow spiritually. So this…this is really about us. And since we treat Jesus as some kind of superhero, looking at Jesus’s past is an attempt to discover what Superhero Jesus was like as a child. We look for evidence of superpowers to answer the unanswerable theological questions that have haunted Christianity for centuries. Was he born with superpowers, or did they show up at baptism? Does Jesus know who he really is, or does he merely have a hunch? Does he understand the world at birth, or does that understanding just show up one day, or does it only happen in death? These dizzying questions circle around the Scripture and we hope that they can get answered because really, deep down, this is merely part of our own pursuit to better understand him and his nature. In this way, the story of the pre-teen Jesus is full of new confusions.

It says in verses 46-48:

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished;

This is perhaps the closest thing we have to seeing pre-teen “superpowers”. Jesus was “sitting among the teachers…And all who heard him were amazed”. We might be tempted to see that what was amazing about his teaching was his age. That the maturity of his answers were beyond the ability of a “normal” 12 year-old. But I think that’s weak. Especially in light of our modern bias against the wisdom of youth. No, I’m more inclined to see it plainly—Jesus, at any age, gave some pretty solid answers. At the same time, it also didn’t say that he answered well—it says that they were amazed. This is the same word used in later chapters in the crowd’s response to Jesus’s miracles. There is something remarkable about this adolescent, isn’t there?

It is that moment in the Scripture, when the teachers are amazed and the parents come in and are astonished that helps us understand what it means to move from the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus to the ministry of Jesus’s later life. This pre-teen Jesus is on the cusp of living into his called life. It would have been common in Jesus’s time to not see Jesus at 12 as a boy, but as a young man. The teenage years were seen as full maturity. Similarly, if Jesus were following the rabbinic traditions at the time, by the age of 12, he would have memorized all of Scripture and would soon be exploring Midrash and all of the great questions of Judaism. In other word, at 12, Jesus might reasonably be considered a budding academic. And further, those sitting around him in the Temple aren’t likely to be 70 year-old graybeards, but young men, many of which could very well be in their late teens and twenties.

What is most profound, therefore in this Scripture is not a revelation of Jesus’s childhood, but a defining moment in Jesus’s maturation and the revelation of Jesus’s adulthood. One scholar highlights an interesting textual shift in the midst of this reading. He points out that the story begins from the parent’s perspective. After they come to the Temple and find Jesus, the perspective shifts onto Jesus. In verse 51, the perspective is singularly about Jesus. It says:

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.

The story becomes centrally about Jesus. The text itself narrates Jesus’s independence from his parents, even as he succumbs to their direction and instruction. In many ways, this is a demonstration of Jesus’s maturity and adulthood—that he is able to follow his calling from GOD by being obedient to his parents, even after the point in which he no longer needs to.

In finding a ‘Father’ that takes the ‘top spot’ from Dad, Jesus is making both a deeply human and deeply spiritual decision. This is small comfort for parents that are dreading the onset of their own kids’ budding adulthood. But this is more than maturity and the passage of time; more than some imposed sense of wisdom or a practiced custom. This is, instead, the image of one who is changed through his new relationship with GOD and with the world. And each of us is given that opportunity to be changed—whether we like it or not.

As the children of parents who had trouble with our growing up; as children of parents who reluctantly allowed us to move out on our own; or as parents, with children at home or children long gone we are all in the midst of following GOD’s call and exploring the redefinition of relationship that comes with it. For many, this can be a traumatic time, full of confusion and even estrangement. But it is necessary, if not inevitable.

We often speak in our culture of growth and maturity as loss—a loss of innocence, as well as a loss of peace and harmony and a loss of dependent relationship. But rarely do we see what is gained. As each of us is separated from our families and customs, and as we bind ourselves to GOD through faith, we gain community. We gain new family. We gain the fullness of GOD’s love and a multitude of ways to love GOD back. We (St. Paul’s) are a product of that love and that relationship.

I don’t have answers to all of our questions…but I do have faith in those who ask them. I have faith that people of all ages are looking for a better relationship with GOD. I believe that in their hearts, whatever their age, resides the wisdom of GOD’s love. That, in our midst, there are apostles who will soon lead, prophets who will soon speak, and teachers, doers, and healers discovering their calling. If we are willing to cast ourselves in with God.

May we each continue to explore GOD’s work for us, help one another discover our spiritual gifts, and be a family-of-origin for world-changers. Amen.