Hello again.

In honour of joining Twitter, I'm re-opening this blog.  And since it's the feast of the Epiphany, I'm posting a sermon I never posted here because I never preached it.

It was an assignment for a class about the embeddedness of anti-Judaism in Christian theology and preaching.  It is so habitual and, quite frankly, lazy of Christian preachers to use "Jews" or Jewish characters in the Bible as examples of the other, the non-Christian, the culture and worldview that Jesus fought against or left behind.  This is, of course, sociologically impossible.  As a Jew, Jesus was just as Jewish as his Jewish audience, and shared with them the same culture and worldview.  This has become the focus of my research (maybe I'll post an excerpt or abstract of a paper later), but this sermon was the first place where I was really challenged to tackle it in a non-academic context consciously.  I do naturally, as a Jewish Christian, avoid explicit anti-Judaism and supersessionism when I preach, but those habits of thinking and theologizing hover in the background, even for me.

So here is the sermon.  The text is Matthew 2:1-12.  The particular anti-Jewish tendency in preaching this text is to vilify Herod and the Jerusalem Jews as those who got it wrong while praising the Gentile Magi as those who got it right.  It's hugely easy, and presents a challenge for the preacher to break out of that pattern.

The sermon was written as if it was to be preached to the church where I was a pastoral intern at the time, a moderately conservative Episcopal church.

The Epiphany

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, also known as the twelfth day of Christmas.  You will be glad to know we have dispensed with the lords-a-leaping and maids-a-milking.  And we couldn’t fit five gold rings for everyone into the church budget.  But today is the day Christians traditionally celebrate the arrival of the magi, and it may have been where the whole gift-giving thing started.  So, this church festival might be the root of the consumerism of Christmas.

And this is really both a shame and very ironic, because it obscures what Epiphany is about.  An “epiphany” is a revelation - and sometimes the word is still used in that sense in language today.  You might have an epiphany after spending all day on a problem at work, then finally coming home and going to bed.  Neuroscientists tell us that our sleeping brains often re-order data so that when we wake up, the problem is solved.   But according to our gospel passage today, there are other ways to receive epiphanies.

The magi saw a star in the east.  The language is imprecise here, and there are disagreements regarding exactly who the magi were, but there are two conclusions that seem to be pretty accurate: 1) the magi were astrologers, because they saw the star and drew meaning from it, and 2) they were Gentiles, both because they came “from the east” and because God’s Law outlawed astrology and other forms of predicting the future.  But nevertheless, they received an epiphany, a revelation, in God’s creation as they watched and tried to read the stars.

Isn’t that funny?  God uses astrology, something he has outlawed, as a way to get a hold of their attention.  But you might notice the star does not lead them straight to Jesus.  No, they know the “king of the Jews” has been born, but they are not sure where.  So once they get to Judea, they go to the current king, Herod, and ask about this new king.

And Herod - well - Herod gets a little freaked out.  This is not too surprising.  For one, Herod is not a legitimate king.  He doesn’t come from the historic royal line, and he isn’t really a Jew; he comes from an area to the east called Idumea, which was conquered and forcibly converted to Judaism about a hundred and fifty years before.  And we also know that Herod became paranoid in his old age, even going so far as to kill two of his sons and his favorite wife because he suspected they were plotting against him.  The third reason Herod is not entirely a legitimate king was because he held onto his power by being backed by the Romans.  The Jewish people hated the Romans and thought of them as Gentile oppressors, mostly because they were.  Roman justice in its provinces was notoriously violent, and Roman leaders had on more than one occasion tried to force the Jewish people to worship their gods.

So Herod is not happy at all to hear there is another king of the Jews.  For one, it means a threat to his own personal power.  And for another, this new king might become a rallying point and cause a rebellion against Rome, a rebellion that Herod knows will be put down brutally and violently.  And Herod also knows who the true king of the Jews is.  Remember what the text said: when Herod called together all the chief priests and scribes, he asks them where the Messiah was to be born.  The true, legitimate king of the Jews, one whose birth would be heralded by God with a star, is the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed one.

How did Herod know that?  Well, Herod obviously knew some of his Bible. 

“The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD’s anointed, or lay my hand on him; for he is the anointed of the LORD.”

Do you know who said that? 

David said it after he had crept up behind King Saul and cut off a corner of his cloak.  You see, the LORD’s anointed, the messiah, is the king.  Even though David had already been anointed as the next king by that time, he still respected the status of Saul as the LORD’s anointed. 

So Herod had paid attention enough to that part of his Bible. By this time, the Messiah had taken on a special meaning, that of another king like David who would be the anointed one to drive the Gentiles out and save God’s people.  Maybe Herod concentrated on the bits about kings and ignored the rest of it, so he had to ask where the Messiah would be born.  We’re all a little guilty of that, aren’t we?  We listen to the readings that are interesting to us and don’t really pay attention to the other ones.  So Herod turns to the experts: the chief priests and scribes, people who study the Bible for a living.  And they tell him where the Messiah is to be born as it is written in the prophets, in this case, in the prophet Micah. 

We did read from the prophet Isaiah today as well, but he comes in later.  You see, this little passage from Matthew is crammed to the brim with allusions to, and quotes from, Israel’s scripture, what we call the Old Testament.  Since there was no New Testament yet, this was the only Bible that existed.  And here is another way to experience an epiphany: through the Bible.  The magi saw the star, but they needed more.  They needed the Bible as well, the written record of God’s interaction with God’s people, especially through the prophets.

So, back to Herod.  Remember, Herod is a paranoid old man, but he’s also a savvy politician.  So after talking to his experts, he secretly sends for the magi to find out precisely when the star appeared.  By talking to the magi secretly, he can find out for himself, and only for himself, how old this “king of the Jews” is, and how realistic the political threat is.  If word gets out that the Messiah is here now, maybe a grown man already anointed by a priest somewhere, then there is a serious issue on Herod’s hands.  There is a very good possibility that an armed revolt will take place.  Several, in fact, already had.

Herod finds out from the magi that this “king of the Jews” is likely just a baby.  This is alright.  No one who is ready now  to pick up their sword and try to fight Rome is going to follow a baby into battle.  There’s time.  So Herod sends the magi on and says, hey, once you find this king of the Jews, come back at tell me exactly where he is so I can go pay him homage too.  And the magi go off.

And they find the house, and the baby and Mary his mother, and they fall down and pay homage.  This, by the way, is an old fashioned word which means to reverence and declare loyalty to a king.  And after the magi have acknowledged the baby as a king, they give him gifts worthy of a king. 

Especially at this Christmas season, we like to think about “the baby Jesus.”  As the song “away in a manger” says, “The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.”  We have a cute manger scene with the adoring parents, shepherds, and the magi of today’s story, all crowded around the perfect little baby Jesus. 

But this story of Matthew does not depict a peaceful manger scene.  The birth of this baby excites the paranoia of a violent tyrant.  The “little Lord Jesus” is a threat to the most powerful man in the land.  It does not take much imagination to guess that Mary was startled by the appearance of these foreign astrologers who declared that her son was a king and gave him gifts, but I wonder, was she afraid too?  Herod’s reputation was known.  If her baby was a king, then he was also a danger, a threat to the established power order.  Mary might have seen the armed revolt coming the same as Herod did.  

We should not forget that “the little Lord Jesus” is the Lord Jesus.  He is king, he is ruler.  He is threatening and carries with him shadows of violence.  Herod, the representative king of Rome is threatened by his birth, and it will be Rome that eventually orders Jesus’ death and executes him.

I once worked with a pastor named Rob who was given the topic “God is all-powerful” to preach on in December, during Advent.  He focused his sermon on Jesus on the cross, because he felt that there was the place that God’s power was really shown.  You should have seen the comment cards that were dropped in the offering after that morning.  People complained that Rob had ruined their Christmas by preaching about Jesus’ death.  They said how horrible to bring up death when we want to hear about the baby Jesus!

You know what?  These people were all good, sincere Christians, but they had missed the last place of the epiphany of the magi.  The epiphany was complete in the presence of Jesus himself: the magi declared that he was a king, that he was worthy of ruling and of having power and wealth.  You cannot talk about Jesus’s birth without talking about his kingship.  Luke’s narrative is just as political, if not even more so, than Matthew’s. 

And you cannot really talk about Jesus being a king without talking about his death.  This story of the magi is the last time Jesus is ever treated like a king until the Roman soldiers mock him with a purple cloak and a crown of thorns and cry “Hail, king of the Jews!”  Some scholars believe that this birth narrative in the gospel of Matthew is purposely foreshadowing Jesus’ death.  Jesus was not a king who lived in luxury and who dripped gold like Herod, nor was he a king who had incense burned in his honor, like Caesar.  He was not a king who even had somewhere to lay his head. 

And if anything, that makes Jesus more threatening.  Because he insists that this is what a king looks like.  It looks like a man beaten raw, mocked, spit on, and nailed to a cross. 

Matthew’s gospel contains the Sermon on the Mount, which I once heard summarized as “you’re dead, and you don’t count, and everyone else is more important than you.”

Can you live like that? 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t. 

This is the amazing epiphany: that Jesus is a king and that his way of being king is one of self-emptying and service.  The epiphany of Jesus tears down our own self-importance and our own power-hungry selfishness.  And it forces us to look for the magi in our world; for the ones who are doing everything wrong and yet, against all our expectations, they find the king, and maybe they lead us to him. 

I do challenge you today, and I challenge me too: who is getting it all wrong?  Who is threatening our self-importance?  Who is threatening the careful balance of power we have collected for ourselves?

On this day, the feast of the Epiphany of our Lord, first and foremost, Jesus is.  But Jesus may have sent magi into your life and into my life who are offering us epiphanies as well.  May we see the epiphany of the Lord Jesus wherever he may appear: in his presence, in scripture, and in the one who is getting everything wrong.

Amen.

doubting thomas.

so i just moved and don't have internet regularly except when i'm at school.  and i preached the second sunday after easter again this year.  as with me, this sermon goes all over the place, but people said afterwards they really appreciated it.  so here it is.

every year for the past few years, i have either taught or co-taught a class for "skeptics," people who are honestly interested in christianity, but have questions. very often, one of those questions is, "is it ok if i have questions?" this class always works my own faith pretty hard, but i really value the experience and would not give any of the past few years up. this sermon came out of some of that reflection.

Doubting Thomas

Have you ever had anyone ask you if you have “accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior”? If you haven’t, let me say that you are lucky. It seems to happen to me with uncomfortable regularity. I guess I just don’t look like someone who has. Once, I just had someone mutter, “There’s hope in Jesus” as they walked past me.

Every time this happens, I think to myself, is that what Christianity is? Accepting Jesus as personal Lord and Savior? Getting some kind of nebulous hope? Going to heaven when we die? This sounds so different from our gospel reading today, doesn’t it? “But these [signs] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.”

Man! Someone call the Bible translation committees! John got it so wrong! We’re not supposed to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. We’re supposed to believe that he is our personal Savior, right? And “life in his name”? Where’s heaven? Where’s what happens after I die? That’s what Christianity is all about. Heaven or hell. Right? ...Right?

My point here is not to belittle street evangelists. They are obviously sincere enough about their faith in Jesus to go up to complete strangers and try to share that faith. They believe what they’re doing is the right thing, and I won’t say that street evangelism has never had any effect. God uses us all in different ways, and God can use anything to build the kingdom of heaven.

But what I am saying is that the “don’t you want to go to heaven when you die” gospel that the street evangelists share with people is only part of the gospel. It’s a compressed, simplified, and to some extent, a reduced gospel.

What does John’s gospel say today? Notice that there is no mention of heaven in the statement where the writer says why he’s written this book. John says only, “that through believing, you may have life in his name.” Heaven isn’t mentioned anywhere. And this statement comes right after the story of “doubting Thomas.” And before that story is the story of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance in John to the disciples where he says to them, “receive the Holy Spirit.” And then he gives them some instructions that seem strangely this-worldly, doesn’t he? Again, nothing about heaven or what’s going to happen after you die.

We are now in this period between Easter and Ascension Day, between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension into heaven. In studying this text, I kind of noticed something for the first time: Jesus didn’t go to heaven after he died! He came back to the world for a while. He taught his disciples more, he ate with them, he had a body they could touch. And after he did go to heaven, he left them with a promise that he would come back to this world. So there’s something more to this than going to heaven when you die.

On the other hand, it’s easy to go the other way from the street evangelist and make the gospel all about this world. Jesus’ teaching certainly concentrates on how we should live for God in this world, in the here and now. But again, the gospel of John does not quite fit that either. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. There is a spiritual reality that also cannot be lost from believing in Jesus. And that spiritual reality contains a word we don’t like very much: sin. Now the church has disagreed over Jesus’ saying here for centuries, and to be honest it baffles me as well, because Jesus also says that only God can judge sin. But at least it must mean that there is a spiritual reality that we engage as Christians as well as a physical one rooted in this world. To lose either side is to shrink Jesus. It may be easier to get people to sign on to a shrunken Jesus, but then, who are they believing in?

And what does it mean to believe? I recently read an article that talked about Protestant problems with doubt. As you might know, one of the key pushes during the Protestant Reformation was to ground salvation in “faith alone.” “Sola fide” as it’s often quoted in Latin. There are a few of these grounding elements of the Reformation; some people call them the “solas.” But since the reformers put such an emphasis on faith, on belief, doubt became an enemy. We all know what a “doubting Thomas” is, right? And we all know that it’s not a compliment.

After the Reformation, the Enlightenment made certainty its holy grail. If you could just be certain about something, you had a place to stand. If you could just be certain about your faith, you are saved. It’s simple. It’s easy.

And it’s totally unrealistic.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That sure makes it seem like doubt can’t be part of your life if you follow Jesus, doesn’t it? And yet what often gets missed in this story is Thomas’ shocking answer: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas may have doubted, but he came to such an amazing declaration of faith.

Many scholars see an echo of the Shema in Thomas’ answer. The Shema is the basic prayer of Judaism. It is one of the first things an observant Jew will say in the morning after waking up, and one of the last things said at night before going to bed. It is called the “Shema” because that is the first word of the prayer in Hebrew. We know it in English as “Hear O Israel: The LORD your God, the LORD is one.” In Hebrew, LORD stands in for the proper name of God, and the Greek Jewish writings carry that tradition over. When Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” he is making an extreme declaration of faith for any Jew.

And tradition tells us that Thomas went to India to spread belief in Jesus there. There are still churches in India today that trace their heritage back to Thomas. And of course, Thomas’ tradition was strong enough in the first two centuries of Christianity that we have a collection of Jesus’ sayings named after him: the gospel of Thomas. Regardless of its later reception by the church, you do not get a gospel named after you if you are considered the paramount example of someone who failed in your Christian journey.

If doubt is the enemy of faith, we would have to not only disqualify Thomas, but a huge number of the Psalms as well. Many, many Psalms express doubt about God and God’s purposes. They cry from the darkness of despair and depression. Just last week on Good Friday, we heard Jesus cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If that is not doubt, I don’t know what is. If even Jesus doubt, and not only Jesus, but the psalm-writer before him, how can we say doubt is the enemy of faith?

Notice Jesus’ response to Thomas: “Stop doubting and believe.” Doubt is normal. A faith that never doubts, that never wrestles with questions like the possibility or impossibility of resurrection is not much of a belief. But a faith that never stops doubting is not much of a belief either. Chronic, constant doubt kills our belief. On one side, we have to lose our affection for certainty and realize that we will never have it. Faith, belief, trust - these are not certainty. They are instead the voice that says, “My LORD and my God!” even in the dark times. But on the other hand, if we can never say that either because we are too concerned with getting something right, with missing something, with something being impossible, we do not have faith either.

Remember where Jesus appears: in the middle of the disciples. They are all in a group, relying on each other to get them through this dark time. And it is the group that bears witness to Thomas. One of the promises of Jesus is that he formed a community to carry on his work and his teaching. Everyone receives the Holy Spirit. In the dark, in the doubting times, we never have to go it alone. Thomas might doubt, but he sticks with his fellow disciples anyway. When our own faith is falling to pieces, the church picks us up and carries us until we can see Jesus again in our lives.

Jesus isn’t my personal savior. He is all our savior! And he is not just “my Lord” but all our Lord. And sometimes we might get something wrong, but there is always someone else to offer another viewpoint. Jesus is not just spiritual and not just of this world. We question and we doubt, but we gather with Christians every week or month or year to fall on our knees and say, “my LORD and my God!”

Amen.

radical hospitality.

i know i just preached, but since i didn't preach at all january and february, i guess i have some making up to do :) what actually happened was the rector was coordinating a diocesan retreat yesterday and they had a drama at the later, more popular service, so i volunteered to write a sermon for the small early service, which is where i've been preaching about once a month for the past year.

and the passage was John 12:1-8 which is one of my favourite gospel passages out of all of them.

Radical Hospitality

Did everyone see the media frenzy back in the fall about the whole “Jesus’ wife” thing? A scholar at Harvard discovered an ancient papyrus fragment from Egypt that had the words “Jesus said, ‘my wife...’” written on it. The whole thing was hard to miss... It was on CNN, ABC, NBC, all the news stations. People were speculating and commenting. Even the Vatican came out with a strong statement accusing it of being a modern forgery.

The whole thing got me thinking, you know, why is this such a frenzy? Why are the mass media, companies with budgets in the millions of dollars, spending so much time and energy on a little fragment of papyrus, a couple inches square, and an obscure researcher at Harvard working in the incredibly obscure field known as “papyrology”? You know, the down-to-brass-tacks practical question of what makes them think they’re going to get their money back from this story?

Let’s face it: Christianity is big news. And not only things that appear to question orthodox Christian belief like this papyrus. The media frenzy and circus around the election of the new Pope is pretty much identical. Pope Francis gave an audience just yesterday to 6900 reporters and media staff. Almost seven thousand men and women came to hear the Pope, not to receive spiritual guidance or wisdom, but because it’s their job, and they are getting paid to send news of this man all over the world.

But what struck me as almost funny about the coverage of that little papyrus was the superficiality of it. As I said, papyrology is a pretty obscure field, and you really can’t expect journalists to dig into the nuances and details of this field that they report on maybe once or twice in five years. But it wasn’t only papyrology that got a superficial coverage, it was Christianity itself. No one, at least that I saw, bothered to talk about early Coptic Christianity in Egypt, the community that probably created the papyrus. Is it because this is also an obscure branch of Christianity, or is it because this community is currently being threatened by the new Islamist government in Egypt, and contemporary politics are too much of a hot potato to be in a story about Jesus and his wife?

And no one, again, at least that I saw, ever commented about one of the names for the church in the Bible itself. Do you know what the church is called in the New Testament? Yeah, it’s called Christ’s bride. The author of Ephesians compares the relationship of a husband and wife with Jesus and the church. In fact, he gets so enraptured with his metaphor that he actually has to stop halfway through this exalted rhetoric to comment “oh wait, but I am talking about Christ and the church.” At the end of the visions in the book of Revelation, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’” They invite everyone to “take the water of life as a gift.” This image seems to parallel the visions in Isaiah of Israel welcoming the nations to Jerusalem to worship the one God of Israel, with the church as the inviting bride.

Is it so surprising, then, that we might find an ancient writing from a tradition that scholars know was heavily mystical, where Jesus refers to his wife? A professor last semester, who has his Ph.D. in papyrology suggested just that: that this fragment might not be written about a human wife for Jesus, but it might have been written to encourage the church as the bride of Christ. Especially considering that the rest of the sentence has been torn off the papyrus fragment, we really have no idea. Even the Harvard researcher who made the discovery was cautious, commenting that this proves nothing one way or the other about the historical, human Jesus. Her voice did tend to be downed out, however, by the excitement!

But the other thing that struck me in the coverage is that whenever anyone goes searching the gospels fro a wife for Jesus, the inevitably latch on to Mary Magdalene. And it makes me wonder, why not this Mary in our gospel passage today? She is not Mary Magdalene, but Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Imagine the scene. There is a banquet. People are reclining on couches. They are probably all getting ready for the Passover which will start in a few days. Maybe they are talking about the trip to Jerusalem, tensions with the Roman military occupiers, gossiping about the priests in Jerusalem. Maybe Martha is encouraging them to eat up all the bread, because you cannot have anything with yeast in the house during Passover. Lazarus and his family may have been giving the banquet to thank Jesus for raising him from the dead. And in the middle of the dinner, Mary, the sister of the host, in fact probably one of the hosts herself, comes in, breaks a stone jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet, and then unveils her hair and wipes his feet with it.

Do you know how intimate an act that is? She is touching, caressing him. She has unveiled her hair in the presence of all the guests, especially all the unrelated men in her house, and she is wiping the feet of her rabbi with it. A woman’s hair in the Middle East is a symbol of her sexuality. It is no coincidence that, even at its most minimal, the Islamic hijab covers a woman’s hair, or that observant orthodox Jewish women cover their hair so that after they are married, no man sees their hair but their husband.

And what is the objection to her act? It is not, as it is in a slightly different version in Luke, that the woman is sexually impure. There is no comment on her sexuality at all. And it is not the objection about status which Peter gives in the very next chapter when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. Much has been made in commentaries about Jesus washing feet that it was a slave’s job. But that is not the objection here. Instead what Judas objects to is the financial impropriety of her act. Not even Mary’s brother comments at the way she is opening herself and her family up for accusations of dishonor. No, all anyone seems to care about is the waste of money.

The financial equivalent is actually quite hard to work out in this case. A denarius was a silver coin of the Roman Empire, and it was what a daily laborer would get paid. These are like the people who are hired to work in the vineyards, in Jesus’ parables. There was no middle class as we think of it in the Roman Empire, so to call something like this “minimum wage” would be misleading. It would be enough to keep a family on. So something more like a construction contractor’s yearly income, maybe. According to the U.S. government, that would be something around $35,000. Mary pours $35,000 worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet.

So when I think about the intimacy and the extravagance of this event, not just the financial extravagance but also the personal risk involved, do I think this Mary was Jesus’ wife?

No, not really. For one, this is the only hint of any kind of relationship between these two. For another, we don’t know if her brother and sister berated her in private afterwards. For a third reason, I think this extravagance can be explained by the fact that just in the previous chapter, Jesus raised her brother from the dead. This does not seem an unrealistic response of gratitude to me. Her family is already giving a dinner for Jesus and all his disciples. We can surmise both from the apparent size of the party to the fact that the family owned a jar of perfume worth that much money that they were very wealthy. It is even possible that the nard had been meant for Lazarus, and when Jesus raised him from the dead, the siblings decided to anoint Jesus with it out of gratitude. I think, though, that we can rule out that they expected Mary to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair. That was her own offering, her own sacrifice of her dignity and honor for Jesus’ sake.

And what is Jesus’ response? Does he protect her sexual honor? No again. He simply accepts her sacrifice and protects her from criticism of her financial decision. “Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’”

Many scholars see an echo of Deuteronomy 15:11 in Jesus’ reply here, so like a good seminary student, like a good preacher, I went and looked it up. And indeed, the two comments are remarkably similar. But what was even more interesting was the context of Deuteronomy 15. Deuteronomy 15:11 comments that there will always be poor in the land, but the chapter is not about the poor, but it is about the Sabbath year. Every seventh year, ancient Israel was supposed to cancel everyone’s debts. Deuteronomy chapter 15 is mostly concerned with laying down the procedure for loans to be cancelled from repayment. 15:11 comes at the end of an instruction not to take the proximity of the Sabbath year into account when making a loan. “Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, 'The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,' and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing.”

God turns our economic practices on their heads. The Israelites are instructed to give loans, not only without consideration of interest income, but even without consideration of ever being paid back! Mary’s personal risk in this story takes it even further. Not only does she give extravagantly financially, but she also gives extravagantly of her own dignity, personal status, and sexual reputation.

Every week, when the gospel passage is read here, we affirm that it is the gospel of the Lord. And we praise Christ for giving us his gospel. This is a gospel that calls us to an uncomfortable, a radically uncomfortable re-ordering of the way things work. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to extravagant hospitality and extravagant personal and financial risk without any consideration of what we might “get back,” or even, in some cases, what consequences we might suffer. Mary could not know that Jesus would defend her, although she surely knew that someone would object to her actions. And she did it anyway.

May our own risks and gifts be made, not with the risk-reward, “how am I going to make my money back” calculations, but with obedience to the gospel and such love of our rabbi and our Lord.

Amen.

Here I am.

yeah, i haven't blogged in a while.  mostly because i haven't preached in a while.  life has been crazy and hectic and also i was sick and today was the first preaching date that made sense in my calendar.

this sermon on Exodus 3 is based on one i preached for Encounter back in July 2011.  i like this version better.  i always felt fake shoehorning in down-to-earth, practical advice into my sermons.  and partly i had to do that to make the sermon at least 30 minutes, which was what they expected.  i much prefer preaching shorter, 1-point teaching sermons.  this one was about 15 minutes instead of the original 30-plus.  it also avoids the transcendent/immanent theophany bit that i tried to include in the original version and then gutted because someone who read it before i preached it didn't like it.

what i did also add to this one instead of a reference to John 8 is some of the language of this morning's gospel passage from Luke 13.

Here I am

Do you ever feel like Moses in this passage?. When he appears here in Exodus 3, he has murdered a man and run away from being an Egyptian prince, but you know, here he’s doing pretty well for himself. He has a wife, a kid, a job, even a rich father-in-law... maybe it’s not as exciting or luxurious as it used to be in Egypt’s royal court, but hey, no one’s trying to kill him.

He’s a shepherd for his father-in-law. And then... God shows up.

It’s funny, we usually think that when things are going pretty well, that’s evidence that God has shown up in our lives. But sometimes in the bible, it’s the opposite. Things are going well and then God shows up and your life takes a left turn.

When I first learned about seminary, I thought, “I’m a Classics major. I don’t need another useless degree!” But here I am. In the past month, my husband Chris got offered a job in Manhattan. Talk about life taking a left turn! We’re now getting ready to move again, in the middle of the semester as I finish out at Princeton and at All Saints’. The next few months are going to be crazy and busy and full of work, but faith says God is involved in this somehow.

And our story is not nearly as dramatic as Moses’. In this case, Moses is out with his sheep, and “the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, 'I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.'”

So, something out of the ordinary is happening. The bush was on fire, but it did not burn up. Bushes usually burn up. I remember once driving through California, the hillsides were black with the remains of bushes and trees that had been completely consumed by wildfire. So Moses, quite logically, goes over to check this out.

And then God calls to Moses: When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

I don’t know about you, but if a burning bush called my name, I’m not sure “Here I am” would be my response.

But Moses’ response - “Here I am” - is a very important one in the Bible. It’s used several times throughout the whole Bible. In Hebrew, it’s just one word. The rabbis traditionally interpret this word not just to mean, “Here I am,” but, “Here I am, ready to do whatever you command me.”

Abraham says it in Genesis 22, and God tells him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Samuel answers with the word in 1 Samuel 3, when god is calling him to be his prophet.

Isaiah says it in Isaiah 6, when God asks, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

In Acts 9, God calls a Christian named Ananias in a vision and he answers with the Greek version of this same word. And then God tells him to go meet a young Pharisee who has been killing Christians, but who had a mystical experience on the road to Damascus and is struck blind. Ananias’ job will be to restore this man’s sight.

And I love Ananias’ response. Ananias’ response to God’s command is, well, he’s not so sure. He kind of says, “God, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” ‘“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."“

In the gospel of Luke, Mary asks her questions to the angel first, but she gives the same answer as well. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

You see, this is kind of the pattern. Life is going along, and the -rrrt! God calls your name. Abraham finally has his promised son. Samuel has a pretty good thing going serving in the temple. So does Isaiah, he’s an honored priest. Ananias is living comfortably far away from the persecution going on in Jerusalem. Mary is all ready to get married. And God shows up in all these lives and says, I’m going to pull you out of your comfort zone.

Even Moses is afraid isn’t so sure God has the right person.

And very often the people who have just responded to God in faith take this opportunity to push back, to ask questions, to engage in real dialogue with God.

After telling Moses who he is, God gives him this divine plan. He says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now I am going to keep my promises to them. Their descendants are already a nation; now I am going to give them the land I promised.” And then he says to Moses, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And what does Moses say? Does he say, “Wow, I’m so honored”? No.

Does he say, “I’m ready to serve wherever you need me”? No.

First, he is afraid and he hides his face. When God finally tells Moses what he is to do, Moses says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Ananias comes by his doubts of God honestly. Even Moses wasn’t sure God was getting it right. But, spoiler alert! All these people end up doing what God asked them to do. Moses and Ananias argue about it for a while, and it takes three times before Samuel’s teacher Eli finally figures out what’s going on, God wins.

And I take great comfort in God’s reply to Moses. When Moses asks, “who am I?” God doesn’t say, “You’re Moses! You got saved from the massacre of infant boys! You were raised as an Egyptian prince!” No, God says, “I will be with you.”

God will be with me. God will be with us. God did not leave Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Mary, Ananias, or any other person he’s ever called. And, did you know, we’re all called?

We are call by a God who appears as a burning bush in the middle of the desert.

We are called by a God who will always be with us.

We are called by a God who became a human like us, who walked and taught, ate and died, like we do.

But Moses, Abraham, Ananias, Mary, you and me … we argue with him, we question him, and we’ve run away from him. God looks on the Israelites as they groan in slavery. He is concerned. He remembers his promise to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. He wants to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. He talks with Moses and promises to be with him.

His name is an entry point into knowing him. If God wanted to stay majestic and all-powerful and incomprehensible, he would not have given a name at all.

But this God wants to be known!

When God first introduces himself, even before God’s name is revealed, God is simply “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And Moses is afraid and hides his face. What is Moses afraid of?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of the United Kingdom says that his teacher told him what Moses was afraid of was seeing the suffering of the innocent from God’s perspective, and that Moses was rewarded for it. He writes, “If he could ‘look at the face of God,’ if he could understand history from the perspective of heaven, he would have to make his peace with the suffering of human beings… He would understand the ultimate justice of history. That is what Moses refused to do, because the price of such knowledge was simply too high… He preferred to fight injustice as he saw it, than to accept it by seeing its role in the script of eternity…” That refusal, which Rabbi Sacks describes as, “born not out of a lack of faith but precisely the opposite, the conviction that God wants us to be in active in the pursuit of justice” that drives everyone who answers God’s call with, “Here I am.”

When God shows up in our lives and calls us, God calls us to live in a new way for God’s creation. Moses is taken out of his comfortable life and sent back to his own people, his former home, to fight for freedom and liberation, to fight against the oppressor and for the oppressed.

It’s so easy to think that wealth and smooth sailing in life are signs of God’s divine favor and hard times are signs of God’s punishment. But Scripture is not sure that is true. Are those who suffer oppression and injustice, violence and death, worse sinners than everyone else?

God’s call to us contains a warning: we only have a little time. God enters a dialogue with us; we question and push back and bargain, but by our very human nature, we only have a little time. Lent may be when the days are getting longer, but it begins with Ash Wednesday, which reminds us that “you will all perish just as they did.”

When God calls us to fight injustice, to struggle with and for the oppressed, to carry his message of liberation to the world, we have a choice. We can answer, “Here I am,” or we can run away. “Here I am” does not mean unquestioning, silent, unthinking obedience. Abraham and Isaiah answered with that, but Moses, and Mary, and Ananias did not. And they stand for us as examples in the faith. Even Jesus, praying in the garden before his own death, struggles with God. Without Jesus’ death, there would be no resurrection, the resurrection that began to bring God’s new creation, that inspires and drives and fertilizes our lives to bear fruit for God.

God calls us to go out into the world, outside of our comfort zones, to leave behind the things we thought were signs of his blessing, and to change the world, to get rid of injustice, racism, sexism, violence, and all kinds of discrimination and oppression.

And God will be with us.

Amen.



Quote taken from: Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2010), 38-40.

before they're gone...

very sadly, my former church was forced this year by the load of an unpayable mortgage to merge with another one.  and the new church doesn't have much use for women in a teaching ministry.

from 2005 to 2011, my husband and i were part of the emergent community that existed there.  they were our friends, our family, our congregation.  and eventually, as i learned and matured in seminary, i was given the wonderful priviledge of being one of their preachers.

i discovered a few days ago that some of the last sermons i preached there are still available on the website. this website will go away sometime this month, probably, in favour of the one from the new church, so this will only be relevant for a few more weeks.

the church i am currently attending does not have recording capabilities, and of course this blog is mostly my sermon manuscripts, but if any readers here would like to actually hear me preach, go ahead and click the link.

the sermons are much longer than the ones i have posted here; that community was used to 30-45 minute sermons.  i find i much prefer writing and preaching shorter sermons, but most of these hit the 30 minute mark. 

i'm not actually very proud of these.  they have significant flaws, and they represent a growing stage for me as a preacher and, really, pastor.  i disagree with some of the theology i preached in these, but they reflect the dominant theology of the community and the founding pastor (who always reviewed my sermons with me after i preached them).  in my humble opinion, the earliest one available there, from April 14, is the best, although today if i preached it, it would be less supersessionist.  the latest one, from September 4, is the same as this post.

with the change to a new year, sometimes it's good to look back and see where we've been.  this is where i've been.  it's an unalterable part of my story.

Advent light

i volunteered to preach this morning because originally it was going to be an elderly british priest who needs a magnifying glass to read his own sermons. but without telling me, the rector decided to preach all 4 sundays in advent as a series on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. when i said i didn't have to preach, he said he thought i ought to have the learning experience, so i did anyway. and i even managed to keep with the Bonhoeffer theme.

at first i had no idea what i was going to preach on, because all the lectionary passages this morning seemed so freaking short, and the gospel bit is first just a list of names and then a quote from Isaiah. and i couldn't extend the selection (it's only part of the pericope) because next week takes up the text right where this week's leaves off.

and then in one of those weird things that happens when you're writing a sermon, i realized exactly how much Luke was cramming into these short verses and i ended up with this incredibly dense sermon. it really wants to be about double this length with some lighter bits to break it up. but they like their sermons short and sweet at the 8am service.

Advent Light

Happy Hanukkah!

Today is the second Sunday of Advent, but it is also the first day of Hanukkah. We lit the first candles last night. Like Christmas, Hanukkah is a winter holiday celebrated with light. It commemorates the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple after Antiochus Epiphanes put up statues of Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes and sacrificed a pig on the altar in order to force the Jews to stop worshipping their God.

It may not be surprising, then, that the books that record this story, the books of Maccabees which are found in the Apocrypha of our Bibles, are books that look forward intensely to the coming of God into the world. This is a viewpoint we often call “apocalyptic.” The books of Maccabees also record some of the clearest references to the hope of resurrection and the life of the world to come in any of the literature we have. We even know that Jesus observed Hanukkah, because John’s gospel tells us in chapter 10, “At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.” It’s not surprising that Jesus would be associated in the gospel with a holiday about God’s intervention in the world and resurrection, is it?

Hanukkah is very like Advent, that way. They are both times of looking both forward and backwards. Hanukkah looks backwards to the miracle of the restoration of the Temple, and forwards to God’s ultimate restoration of the world, resurrection. In Advent, we look back to Jesus’ birth, his first coming, and forward… To God’s ultimate restoration of the world, resurrection.

It is the desire for this restoration, this ultimate point of God’s contact with the world, that seems to be motivating John the Baptist in Luke’s gospel today. Luke begins by listing all the human rulers of the world, beginning with Tiberias, the emperor in far-off Rome, and going through governors and “tetrarchs,” which is the word simply translated as “ruler” here, all the way down to the high priest in Jerusalem. Luke’s inclusion of the high priest in this list of other rulers tells us that they ought to be lumped in the same category with them, oppressors and corrupt. The corruption of the world extends all the way to Jerusalem, to God’s own Temple.

And then…. What? ”the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” The word of God doesn’t come to Rome. It doesn’t come to the Jewish rulers in Galilee, Ituraea, or Abilene. It doesn’t come to the high priest in Jerusalem. It comes to a man in the wilderness. This is a further indictment of the power structures and hierarchies of this world, both secular and religious. Although, that’s not a division ancient people would have recognized. One of the titles the emperor in Rome held was “pontifex maximus,” high priest. And the high priests in Jerusalem were as much political powers and leaders as they were religious leaders. God passes over both pagan and Jewish powers by human structures, and he sends his word to a man in the wilderness.

This is a powerful statement about how God works. God doesn’t care about human power, about the people humans think are important. Keep in mind that the situation here is the Pax Romana. Augustus, Tiberius’ step-father had welded together an empire that stretched from Spain and Morocco, encompassing all the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, on past Turkey, Syria, and Palestine all the way to what today we call Iraq. And not only had he merged this huge amount of land and disparate peoples, each with their own religion, language, and culture, but he had, in the end, established peace. The wars that had convulsed the Mediterranean world were over. Roads stretched from Barcelona to Rome, from Alexandria to Jerusalem and on north to Byzantium. Jerusalem sat at a crossroads of the ancient east-west road from Baghdad and the north-south road from Alexandria. In this peace, made possible by the Roman emperor and the Roman armies, wealth was being created and cultural exchange was happening on a scale that not even Alexander the Great, 300 years earlier, had ever accomplished.

And God said, you know what? I don’t care. It’s all wrong. The Roman peace came at the cost of thousands of lives, oppression, taxation, and religious compromise. The Jewish people had rioted against Pontius Pilate when he came to Jerusalem because he put Roman eagles inside the Jewish Temple there. We know from Josephus, himself a Jerusalem aristocrat, that the Jewish high priesthood at the time were more politicians than priests, more concerned with power and Roman politics than serving God.

Do we know anything about corruption today? Do we know about peace, wealth, and good living bought at the cost of lives? Do you know how hard it is these days to find a product not built, assembled, or manufactured in a factory in China somewhere? Or many of the other countries with minimal labour and environmental protection laws? Do we know about trying to change these things through human power?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized the incompatibility of God’s coming into the world with human power structures. As someone who took the step of defying the human authorities of the Nazi government and the official church they had authorized, he knew the risks. He was eventually executed for taking part in a failed plan to assassinate Hitler himself.

Bonhoeffer believed with all his life that sometimes human power is so corrupt, God will stand against it. In one of his Advent sermons, he said this:

“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

"Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. God makes us happy as only children can be happy.”

God lays claim to the world, he says, and that should frighten us! It is this same sense that causes John to begin proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” God is coming! John says. We ought to feel terror because the evil in us is going to be judged. In this way, John fills the role of the prophet of God, the “voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’”

That, of course, is the famous quote from the prophet Isaiah. What is a prophet? Is it just someone who tells the future? Isaiah is a prophet because he “predicted” there would be a voice calling in the wilderness and now John the Baptist is doing it?

Well… partly. The prophets in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, do often predict things in the future. But their primary function is to remind people of their relationship with their God, and to call them out of living in the world’s corruption to living the way God has told them to live. This is why John the Baptist fits the prophet profile, not because he is predicting something, but because he is preaching “a baptism of repentance.” This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “the serious aspect” of Advent. God is coming to judge the corruption and evil of the world, not just “out there” in Rome and Galilee and Abilene, but also right here, in Jerusalem, in his holy Temple itself. The corruption and evil in us.

And then the terror turns around into hope, peace, joy, and love. God comes to us as a child, a crying, helpless infant who will grow up to judge the evil of the world and its powers, the evil that all humanity is capable of, by suffering that evil himself. From prison awaiting his execution, Bonhoeffer himself wrote, “only the suffering God can help.”

The suffering God who came to us as one of us, who was born a human infant and died a man at the hands of humans themselves teaches us a different way. Not a way of power, of armies, of roads and wealth, but a way of repentance, love, peace. In this dark season of the year, the Advent candles remind us of many things, but especially they remind me of when Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” And he knows how hard life in this world can be because he did it! He lived it. He died. In this Advent season, as we look forward to the coming of Jesus the baby, may we not forget the light that we are, the light of his death and resurrection, the light of hope, peace, joy, and love, the light of reconciling and restoring the world the way he taught us.

Amen.

is the prophet still speaking?

one of my deep and abiding convictions is that there is no such thing as a "God of wrath in the Old Testament" and a "God of love in the New Testament." the God of the bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus is the same God and his character does not change.

another conviction is that Jesus did not preach a different ethical message than one already embodied in the jewish religion, although certainly that message had been corrupted in some quarters, just as it has in both judaism and christianity today.

when given the lectionary passages for this week, i thought both of these things were worth pointing out.

Is the Prophet Still Speaking?

When I met with Pastor Hugh earlier this week, I joked to him that I bet these are the Scripture readings he would have liked to have had last week for Stewardship Sunday. And he laughed and said yes.

But as we talked, we realized that these passages are certainly not any easier to read or preach on than Jesus’ teaching on divorce from last week. Jesus is not any less radical about wealth than he is about divorce. “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Ok, wow! I don’t want to preach on that! Even the rich young man did not want to hear it. Ok, let’s check the other readings.

Whoops. Amos is not any better. The ancient prophet is certainly not any easier to preach, with his excoriation against the wealthy. Speaking of preaching! Can’t you just imagine the prophet declaiming, delivering this harsh criticism to the wealthy nobles in Bethel?

The situation Amos was preaching to was actually kind of similar to the one we faced here a few years ago. Other biblical sources as well as archaeology confirm that Israel was enjoying a time of peace and prosperity. The international situation had calmed down, and the economy had picked up. People were taking advantage of this, apparently, financially manipulating things to line their pockets.

And when Amos says, “They hate the one who reproves in the gate/ and they abhor the one who speaks the truth” he is referring to judicial corruption. In ancient times, court cases were heard at the city gate. This is why this verse hangs on to the one that talks about justice. The people Amos is preaching to were not interested in fair claims or real justice, he’s saying, but they were more interested in protecting their wealth. Shouldn’t money and standing in the community have some influence? Let’s pass some laws that make it easier to increase our wealth!

Is this ancient preacher saying something to us that we can hear today?

You know, I really struggled with these passages. For one, no one likes it when the church talks about money. I have to say, I am really impressed with how All Saints’ is carrying out its capital campaign and annual fund drive because I have seen those kinds of things handled very badly in other contexts. But between Amos and Mark’s story of Jesus and the rich young man, it does not sound like the Bible speaks in a voice that is all that admiring of wealth. And, let’s face it, just by living in the United States, we are wealthy.

Even minimum wage in this country is a fortune by the standards of African subsistence farmers that make maybe a dollar or a dollar-fifty a day. Seven twenty five an hour doesn’t sound too bad against that. Yes, we can take into account relative living expenses, but this whole country is cris-crossed with pipes that allow running water, cables that allow electricity, and now increasingly towers that allow cellphone access even to the poorest. The only thing an African farmer might share with us is the cellphone access, and she certainly won’t have an iPhone!

Is this just about our wealth on an international level? I do think both Amos and Jesus are speaking to systems here, and they are both certianly delivering messages about handling wealth in a local context. Amos is obviously speaking to the general culture in Israel at the time, but when Jesus says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” he is certainly speaking of more than just that rich young man. You know, one of the ways that is very popular to get around Jesus’ radical statement there is to say, oh, well, Jesus only meant that selling all he had was what that young man needed, it’s not a command for Christians of all time. But Jesus immediately follows it up with a statement about “those who have wealth.” Jesus’ call to radical sacrifice and care for our fellow humans is to everyone, not to one specific person in a story from thousands of years ago.

Both Amos and Jesus agree: concentrating on money makes it hard to find God. Our passasge starts today with Amos saying, “Seek the LORD and live.” Right before it, he has told his audience, “Do not seek Bethel, nor go to Gilgal, nor cross over to Beersheba.” Those three cities were alternative worship sites in ancient Israel. Bethel especially became famous in the Bible as a place where the kings erected idols to other gods and a place where worship to the God of Israel was mixed with worship of these other gods. It was a deeply ironic development, because Bethel was where Jacob had his famous dream of the ladder going up to heaven. He was the one who named the place “Bethel,” which means “house of God.” Amos is drawing a clear tie here between the practices of the wealthy corrupt and their desertion of the pure worship of their God.

The warning seems obvious, though, doesn’t it? When you worship other gods and their idols, you are breaking the first and second of the Ten Commandments. When you use your wealth for your own gain, when you are grasping and selfish, you are not following God. I mean, duh, right? But Amos keeps bringing it back to legal structures. When you get laws passed to make it easier to take from people, maybe some risky financial ventures because some things got deregulated, he is saying there is no difference. Legality does not necessarily equal justice.

Ouch. That hurts. Ok, so I did not happen to get involved with any of the crazy trading stuff that happened in the mortgage crisis. I don’t even understand most of what is going on. Am I innocent? I have an IRA. It does not have a lot of money in it, but I have one. So somewhere, I have money in the stock market. A few weeks ago, I saw a news report about the damaging environmental practices of a company that I know is held by my IRA. Did I call up someone at Vanguard and ask them to sell those shares and not put them in the account again? No. It’s too intimidating. Who am I, this impractical, academic liberal arts major and seminary student to tell my investment person what to do? Is it even possible to sell one group of shares in a fund like that? I have no idea. So I did nothing.

Maybe I should try.

Is wealth bad?

No. Neither Jesus nor Amos are preaching against wealth here. We even know that wealthy women supported Jesus’ ministry through Palestine. Wealth is necessary to get God’s work done! Joseph of Aramathea, who buried Jesus, was apparently incredibly wealthy because the gospel of John records Jesus being buried like a prince. Without his wealth, Solomon would never have been able to build the Temple in Jerusalem, the very Temple where Amos wants people to go worship God instead of with their idols at Bethel. Wealth can be used for God’s work, and there is certainly nothing about wealth itself that makes it incompatible with following Jesus.

Where wealth gets us into trouble is when we stop worshiping God because our wealth is more important. When we push aside justice because it would decrease our returns. When we cannot care for the poor because that would lower our bank balance. When we cannot give to God’s work in the world, our community, and our local church because we want the newest gadget, that really nice car, that pretty sparkly thing, that night out at that really expensive restaurant we love. When we cannot spend on God because we just feel more comfortable with that cash cushion, we are not trusting God.

Following Jesus is not easy, and it costs. It costs money, and as Peter starts to point out, and Jesus finishes for him, it might cost family, career, and a sense of stability. Above all, it costs our self-reliance. When we say “yes” to Jesus, in a very radical way, we are really saying “no” to a lot of other things, including the world’s call to get all you can, keep all you get, and always look out for number one. That is not, and has never been, the way of the God that we worship. Jesus says, “come, follow me.” Don’t follow your wallet. Don’t follow the power it gives you.

It’s not easy to hear. It’s not easy to say. Jesus makes a radical claim on our treasure here on earth, and it’s not a claim that anyone has ever liked to hear. But it is God’s claim. “Hate evil and love good and establish justice.”

Amen.

yom kippur

today was yom kippur, and it was also the day i (accidentally) volunteered to preach my senior sermon at the seminary's daily chapel.

so, given the choices of leviticus 16, or the book of jonah, i chose jonah.

the text was Jonah 3:10, 4:5-11.  Or here's the whole passage in context.

Jonah’s story ends so unresolved that can we even speak of it ending? Thousands of years later, are we still waiting for Jonah’s answer? He has been arguing with God, and God gets the last word here, but the question lingers, waiting for an answer? “Should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Jonah knows from personal experience that God is loving, forgiving, righteous, merciful, filled with loving-kindness. We sang his song a bit ago. “In my trouble I cried out to the Lord my God... from the depths you heard my cry.” He’s glad when God’s saving grace and mercy are offered to him. But not so much when the same God treats Nineveh the same way.

Today is the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In synagogues all over the world this afternoon, the Book of Jonah will be read. Why Jonah’s story?

I will tell you a secret: it’s not because of the fish. Sometimes, I think we do our kids a disservice by telling them the story of “Jonah and the whale” and leaving out the rest of it. Although, really, the rest of it doesn’t make a really good story, does it?

Jonah goes to Nineveh, and he preaches destruction, the people repent, and Jonah gets cranky and argues with God. “No! NO! I didn’t want you to be righteous and loving towards them! They’re my enemies!” He goes out from the city, and made a booth so he could see what would become of the city. He’s prepared to camp out for as long as it takes until God does what Jonah wants God to do, not what God does by God’s very nature. And then there’s the weird part with the plant, and the worm, and God’s question. No resolution, no denouement, just the question echoing in our minds. “Should I not care?”

You know, when I first read through Jonah quickly, I thought, oh, he’s forgotten what God did for him when he was rescued from the storm on the sea. He forgot his prayer of despair that turned into thanksgiving. But then I realized, he absolutely did not forget. Jonah knew exactly what kind of God the Lord is. He doesn’t forget and he doesn’t need to be reminded. In fact, he doesn’t want to be reminded, because that would mean seeing God’s grace and kindness and compassion extended to Jonah’s enemies.

That’s a big reason the book of Jonah is read on the Day of Atonement. It reminds us, because sometimes we forget, or we don’t want to see, that God’s nature is to forgive, to be gracious in the face of repentance. God is creator of everything, and all people are made in God’s image, even them.

Who are they? Are they the people who have the wrong view of the Bible? The people who have bad theology? The people who vote for the wrong person? ... The people who fly planes into buildings?

Jonah’s story reminds us that God’s atonement is for everyone. And it reminds us how like Jonah we are. There is always someone on whom we want to see God’s wrath come down, not God’s love. And God’s question echoes in our ears. Is it right for you to be angry? Should I not care?

As followers of Jesus we are reminded of God’s gracious love and forgiveness, not only by the story of Jonah and Nineveh, but also by the letter of 1 John, which reminds its readers, “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

As followers of Jesus we can say with Jonah, “You heard me!” We have our atonement. We rest in God’s amazing love and grace. We are baptized into death and resurrection, as Jonah journeyed into the sea, the fish, and then back onto land, as Jesus died and rose. This is who we are: forgiven, atoned for, resurrected people. And we are confronted with that question: “Should I not care?”

Maybe we don’t need to be reminded of who God is, maybe we need to be reminded of who we are. We are forgiven, atoned for, resurrected, loved as God’s own children. Isn’t that too good to keep to ourselves? Even Jonah, overwhelmed with his salvation from the depths, went and preached to Nineveh, knowing the probable outcome. May we be as overwhelmed with the joy of our own forgiveness!

May we learn the lesson of Jonah, not about a big fish, but about how loving and gracious God is to all of God’s good creation.

Amen.

what's the point?

while in japan last month for their wedding, we went to church with my brother and new sister-in-law. i am still processing that experience, but the trip also gave me some fodder for my sermon this morning.

What's the point of following Jesus?

Last month, my husband Chris and I were lucky enough to be able to go to Japan for my little brother’s wedding. One of the problems was that with the exception of my brother, no one in my family spoke much Japanese, and with the exception of his bride, no one in her family spoke much English. However, Chris and her brother became friends at the reception by mostly avoiding language and simply pouring each other sake. On the other hand, a few days later, it took Chris and me twenty minutes just to figure out how to buy train tickets. Twenty minutes just for train tickets. If I ever go back to Japan, I’m going to ask my brother for a crash course first.

The sheer power of words for humans is uncontested. It was the development of sophisticated language, scientists believe, that was one of the key skills that allowed homo sapiens to become the dominant species on this planet. Language allows for communication and cooperation far beyond what is achievable by any other method.

In one of the few moments of levity in Hamlet, there’s an exchange between Hamlet and Polonius while Hamlet is pretending to be insane. Polonius comes across the prince in the castle and asks him, “what do you read, my lord?” And Hamlet answers, “words, words, words.” Polonius then attempts to disentangle himself from this apparent misunderstanding, which allows Hamlet to mock him and wander off continuing in his apparent insanity.

Shakespeare’s plays, of course, are treasuries of words, containing some of the most carefully crafted English ever written, and, at least at one time, coming in only second to the bible itself in the sources of common quotations for English-speakers.

And yet, language isn’t all good. If I asked, probably everyone sitting here today could, within a few seconds, come up with an insult, a cutting word, a verbal takedown that someone said to us in our lives somewhere that still stick with us. Especially if said by a parent or a close friend, such words can be deeply wounding. And language can simply be a barrier as well, because there are thousands of languages spoken in the world.

Today we reach the end of this long, confusing dialogue between Jesus and the people in the synagogue at Capernaum. Just look at the confusion that can be caused even when people do speak the same language! Like many of Jesus’ conversations that the gospel of John gives us, this one has not only confused its hearers at the time, but continues to stump not only the church, but also people who don’t follow Jesus. John’s gospel seems to include this passage instead of recording Jesus’ words at the last supper, but Christian scholars have debated for centuries whether or how much of John 6 refers to the Eucharist.

Martin Luther mocked one of his Catholic interlocutors for appealing to this passage in their debate about the Eucharist, but the command to eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood seems unmissable. Also, it was this passage combined with the traditional “institution” passages in the other gospels that led people to charge the early church with cannibalism and to accuse them of murdering and eating babies in their worship rites. Even today, some anti-Christian writers have accused the church of trying to gloss over its own cannibalistic history by insisting this passage is Eucharistic, against its apparent plain meaning, and even the way the crowd in the text is recorded as having reacting.

Has Jesus purposely set out to confuse people?

I don’t think so. His answer here is different than, say, to Nicodemus in chapter 3. When Nicodemus can’t understand being “born again” or “born from above,” Jesus does not explain himself, but simply asks Nicodemus, “how come you’re not getting this?” Nicodemus is an educated man, a Pharisee, Jesus even calls him “Israel’s teacher.” But here, Jesus is talking to a crowd of people who have been following him, and probably also to those who have just come to the synagogue for services that evening. Jesus leaves the realm of the metaphorical and says, “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Jesus seems to have been using a rabbinic style of teaching here, with extended metaphor taken from the Exodus passage on manna. Since the people are thinking about manna and bread, Jesus uses that to launch his teaching. But people are obviously confused. If Jesus were a pastor, people would probably be complaining that his sermons are too unfocused. And, indeed, some of his disciples leave here. Even when he says, Ok, it’s not about flesh, it’s about my words, what I’m teaching you, people still can’t get over it and they bail.

Can we blame them? You think you’re following a miracle-worker, a healer, a teacher who has something new to say, and then he comes out with this crazy-sounding sermon in front of everyone at the synagogue. Who can accept this teaching?

It’s passages like that that make scholars think that the community to whom this gospel was written were asking the same question. Who can accept this teaching? Why are we bothering to follow this weird guy? People are kicking us out, accusing us of cannibalism!

What’s the point of following Jesus?

You can almost hear the sadness in Jesus’ voice when he says, “But among you are some who do not believe.” Even though maybe he knew people would not believe, he also says, again going back to chapter 3, that he has not come to condemn the world, but to save it. And then again, he turns to those closest to him, and he asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” The writer of the gospel is asking the same question of his readers. Some have already left us. Do you also wish to go away?

Is the journey getting too hard? Is the mocking getting too much? Do you just hate getting up early in the morning for some superstitious nonsense?

As in the other gospels, Peter gives a clear answer that rests on the identity of Jesus. “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” They get Jesus’ turn away from the confusing bread and flesh. Remember, Jesus said, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” But Peter says “eternal life.” Is that something special?

After the first and second Great Awakenings in this country and the revivalist Christianity that resulted, most of us would answer yes, it is! It’s about life after death, or something, right? It’s about “going to heaven when you die.” Jesus is a fire insurance salesman, right? That’s the whole point of following Jesus. You get to “go to heaven.”

Not really. In Jewish thought of this period, and especially in John’s writings in the New Testament, eternal life is about living now. It’s not some vision of playing harps and sitting on clouds after death. It’s about living now, following Jesus’ teachings, his words, living in this crazy new radically expanded community of God. Jesus brought God’s teaching about how things were supposed to be - life empowered by God’s Spirit as promised in John 3, all people united in worshipping God as promised in John 4, celebrating God’s creation and taking care of each other promised by Jesus’ miracles of wine and bread in John 2 and 6. When Jesus sets out to feed people, he doesn’t hold back! The best wine at a wedding, where people had already been drinking for days, and enough food for 5000 people. This is what eternal life looks like.

This is what Jesus promises. This, John says, is the point. This is the power of these words. Follow Jesus and live like this. Live life worshipping God with those who were your enemies, celebrating together with them and feeding and caring for each other.

The cost for those earliest Christians was high. The cost for some Christians today is still very high. Jesus never promised a life of material wealth or success, or a perfect family, and he definitely never promised that things would all make sense. The power of Jesus’ words is that when meditated on, eaten, absorbed into us, they give us a new way to live.

The second century church father Tertullian encouraged his home church, “We ought to devour him with the ear, and to ruminate on him with the mind and to digest him by faith.” Or as we say at the Eucharist, “feed on him in your heart with thanksgiving.” Words are powerful. May we take Jesus’ words into us as food to live the life he promises.

Amen.

we are all individuals.

i preached this morning at the request of my ordination committee.  unfortunately, this sermon suffers from a lack of tight organization; some of the transitions are rough, and in one case, nonexistent.  i tried to fix it on the fly when i was actually speaking, but now i can't remember what i said, so you just get the manuscript version.

i do preach from a full manuscript because i'm nervous enough that if i didn't, i'd be even more disorganized and would forget things.  it usually does change in the moment, but not a whole lot.

the text is Mark 6:1-13, with an allusion to the collect for the day.

Born into community

The image of the completely independent human individual has been a powerful one in western civilization since the eighteenth century. The person who stands alone, dependent on no one, completely determining their own fate - this image has guided art, literature, philosophy...most areas of human endeavor for the last three hundred years or so.

Unfortunately, that image, like so many others, is just that: an image. It does not reflect an accessible reality. We as people are dependent on our parents, first, for life, food, the beginnings of education. Even someone who moves “off the grid” as we say, was still at one point dependent on and shaped by their parents, or the people who kept them alive through the extraordinarily helpless early years as a human infant and toddler. Where a horse, for example, can walk shortly after birth, think of how little a human infant can do, and for how long. From our birth, not only do we need to depend on other people, but we learn to depend on them.

And when one reflects on this, the question might arise, is the image of the independent person a desirable one? Should we try to throw off as much dependence on each other as we can? Is dependence some kind of infantilism?

The answer from the Christian tradition has generally been... no. No, utter independence is not desirable. And it is not a symptom of an arrested childhood.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus commands a radical dependence on his disciples. Do not make even the most basic preparations for your own comfort or survival, but rely on strangers who welcome you generously. This is how to be a disciple of Jesus.

That’s pretty... unrealistic, isn’t it? Does it really mean that we should never take thought to providing for ourselves? Well, we can say what it doesn’t mean. We know it doesn’t mean that Christians should be lazy and rely on everyone else for day to day needs. Paul has to remind the Thessalonian church of this: that someone who just leeches off the community is not living the way Jesus commands.

And in the second century, we have a document called “The Teachings of the Apostles” or it’s Greek name, the Didache. In there, it tells a church that they should be welcoming and generous to a visiting prophet, but a prophet who stays more than 3 days, and by implication, eats your food, drinks your wine, and borrows your clothing and spare room for more than three days, is a false prophet. True followers of Jesus don’t abuse the community’s interdependence or generosity.

And, logically, if everyone just relied on everyone else, nothing would ever get done and we’d all starve to death, wouldn’t we? This isn’t a command to sit around waiting for food and clothes to drop from heaven. The disciples cast out many demons and cured many who were sick in exchange for being taken care of physically. We even find out from this passage that Jesus was a carpenter, that he worked “for a living” so to speak, before he transitioned to being a rabbi, a teacher.

And by the way, just because I found this interesting, being a carpenter did not disqualify you from being a rabbi. One of the most famous rabbis in all of Judaism, a man named Shammai, started his life as a carpenter. The comment here by the crowd is an attempt to identify him as someone known and controlled, not necessarily to disqualify him from being someone who can teach. That’s just a freebie there.

But still, this kind of radical generosity and dependence is built into the Christian message. It’s not just about us as individuals going about the work of Jesus in the world, it’s about us forming a community, a radically generous and interdependent community that as more than the sum of its parts carries Jesus’ message and his presence into the world to change it.

You know, one of the things that really strikes me about this passage is Jesus’ own dependence on people. “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.” This statement is all the more striking because this passage comes right after about three chapters of miracle stories. Jesus has been healing people, casting out demons, even raising the dead, and suddenly he can do no deed of power in this town. Somehow, even Jesus is dependent on the faith of the people of that town to do his miracles. The saddest part of this story is that they crippled their own ability to experience the amazing things that Jesus offered.

And a realistic take on dependence and independence cannot ignore the fact that we are all separate people. Humans are not joined at the hip to each other, and dependence can be very unhealthy when a person loses their sense of self and identity. Dependence among the community of Jesus-followers should be life-giving, not taking selfishly or giving until the self is lost. Jesus knew who he was, and he stood by it. Loving your neighbor does not mean losing yourself to them.

Independence and dependence are alike that way. Some of each is needed, and too much of one or the other is unhealthy. Where Jesus’ instructions here in Mark prick us is that what Jesus defines as a healthy amount of dependence has been defined by our culture as unhealthy. This is the radical, world-changing side of Christianity that often gets pushed away the same way the crowd tried to domesticate Jesus, we as Christians often try to domesticate and control his message.

We can still cripple the power Jesus gives, both as the church, the community of people who follow Jesus, and individually in our own lives. We are given the power of the Holy Spirit, who gives life and who unites the church, but just as Jesus could do no deeds of power in his hometown, as individual Christians, we can cripple the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.

And I think we all do this, at least a little. Jesus’ message hurts. It changes us. Change is always scary. How can we possibly live like this? The gospel of Mark is a great place to go for examples of this, because it seems every time you turn the page, the disciples are back-to-back getting it right and wrong. Here, in our passage today, they’re getting it right, healing people, casting out demons, calling for repentance. In a few chapters, they’re arguing selfishly about who gets the most honor in Jesus’ coming kingdom. Jesus’ call is a hard way to live.

And as the disciples’ bickering and miracle-working show, when we stop the change, when we domesticate and tame Jesus and his message, we don’t just hurt ourselves. We hurt the whole community we’ve been joined to through Jesus, and we hurt the rest of the world, because they don’t get to see us bring Jesus to them.

Jesus teaches a message of radical dependence and generosity, and not just in terms of spiritual gifts, but in intensely practical and physical ways as well. This is easier to do as a group; it’s easy to point at the ministries and community service and social justice acts of a local church than it is to either give or receive this in our own lives. But the radical, rugged independent individualist that we have come to see as a powerful guiding image is not the image that Jesus holds out for us. Jesus holds out the image of someone who knows who they are, but who also knows they are part of a community, that they are in a dramatic way dependent on that community. Jesus calls us to be a radically generous and interdependent community carries Jesus’ message and his presence into the world to change it. And instead of insisting we determine our own fate, we pray, Thy will be done. Even unto the cross.

Amen.

not a mother's day sermon.

this sermon was for two weeks ago, which i only realized was mother's day after i wrote it.

so one line got shoved in there real fast to acknowledge that fact.

one of the lectionary texts for the day was 1 John 5:1-6. i already happened to have a sermon written on 1 John 5:4-12, so that formed the jumping off point, and the "application" bit was taken pretty much straight from that one. but this was a different sermon. it was the one i would have liked to have written the first time (march 2011). but i wasn't a good enough preacher/sermon writer back then to have been able to pull it off, and i had only just fallen in love with Desiderius Erasmus then. the combination of trying to write (and giving up on) a paper on Erasmus and just getting better at more tightly organizing sermons, and having a very different audience let me pull it off this time around. this version of it actually should be longer, and could definitely have been a lot longer, but at an 8am service, they like the sermons short and sweet *grin*

Love and Faith Conquer All

Today’s reading from 1 John happened to intersect with two of my favorite topics, so I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to preach on it.

Despite possibly being the most bizarre book in the Bible after Revelation, 1 John is one of my favorites. I really love 1 John for its emphasis on how to live in Christian community. Even in the passage today, which is about the power of faith in Jesus Christ, 1 John can’t resist throwing in the comment that “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” If you love God, you will love the children of God, each other!

It manages to pack in a ton of theology, encouragement about how to follow Jesus, and confusing language all in such a short space. It’s also regularly given to New Testament Greek students, partly because the Greek is so strange, so you’re never sure if what you’re translating is correct or not because sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.

And speaking of the Greek, one of my favorite people in church history was Desiderius Erasmus. He was a monk who hated being a monk and ran away from his monastery to become a scholar and writer in the fifteenth century. One of my favorite quotes of his is also one of his most famous: “when I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food and clothing.” He was dedicated to his work as a scholar and dreamed that everyone would have a Bible of their own to read. Erasmus shocked the church by publishing a new translation of the Bible in Greek that disagreed with the Latin Vulgate, the official, approved Bible of the medieval church. His boldness in publishing and his vision of a Bible for the masses was a huge influence on Martin Luther and many of the other people who became the reformers.

Erasmus never joined the reformers, though. He knew the church needed reforming, but he was horrified when it became clear that Luther’s reforms would lead to a schism in the church. Although Luther wrote Erasmus asking for support, Erasmus refused and told Luther to back down in the face of Rome and work for less radical reform. In the words of my church history professor, “Erasmus died a Catholic, but a depressed Catholic.”

And this particular passage in 1 John became something of a real problem for him. The writers of the Vulgate saw three things: The water and the blood and the Spirit, and they couldn’t resist putting in an extra verse that supported Trinitarian theology. Erasmus looked at the Greek manuscripts available to him and realized it had been added. So he took it out.

The uproar was fierce. How dared he change the words of the sacred scripture? When Erasmus pointed out that they had been changed to add the verse in the first place, no one was appeased. How dared he question the wisdom of the church? Erasmus’ reply to that was that he wasn’t questioning the wisdom of the church, he was simply being faithful to the manuscripts. If, he said, someone could prove to him that the verse was original, he would add it back in. And the leadership of the church was so desperate to put it back in the Bible that they had someone forge a manuscript and present it to Erasmus so that he was forced to add it back in. If you look up 1 John 5 in a King James Version of the Bible, you will find it there.

But today, Erasmus has won. And in one way, his story is a wonderful example of exactly what is being spoken about in this passage. Erasmus not only loved the parent, but he loved the children. Out of love for the church, he wanted the church to have the most accurate Bible it could have because that is where our faith comes from. When we read the Bible, we hear God’s Spirit speaking to us, telling us about God, and giving us the strength to have faith.

But out of love for his fellow Christians, Erasmus also wanted as many people as possible to have a Bible that they could read so that the Spirit could speak to everyone, not just the rich and powerful and educated. Before the reformation, the church leadership controlled who was allowed to read the Bible and who was not. Erasmus intended his Greek Bible to be the basis for translations into every language, and indeed, the King James Version is based in a large part on Erasmus’ Greek text.

And Erasmus had faith. He believed that God was guiding the church, especially in this newly discovered wave of manuscripts and the recovery of knowledge of Greek in Western Europe. He truly believed that our faith would conquer the world.

Of course, when a late medieval ex-monk thought of faith conquering the world, he thought of something quite different than what we think of today, or what the original readers of 1 John would have thought of at the end of the first century. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the promise for today. In fact, today, we probably read it much more closely to the original audience, partly because of what we have learned from Erasmus and other scholars of his era: go back to the text. “Ad fontes” was their slogan: Back to the sources! Not only the biblical text, but as many other ancient sources as we can find.

The community that 1 John was written to, and probably the gospel of John as well, had undergone some kind of trauma. Just as Erasmus feared would happen to the medieval church, this ancient community of Christians had split, and they felt betrayed. So the writer reminds them of Jesus’ commandment: “love one another as I have loved you.” And when we obey this commandment, which is not burdensome, we love God, and our faith in Jesus Christ and our love for God and each other is what conquers the world.

This is not a victory through military might, or through rhetoric and manipulation, or even through a voting majority. This is a victory through love. It’s an amazing, upside-down, backwards idea. But this is the lesson of Jesus. And the Spirit of God who speaks to us and in us and through us testifies to this love and to Jesus because the Spirit is truth.

What does it look like to live like this, to live following the commandment to love each other as Jesus loved us?

How you act when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store or at the coffeeshop?

Or when someone else’s kid throws a tempter tantrum in the middle of the mall?

Or when a call goes out to volunteer here at All Saints’ or in one of the many ministries here that serves the community?

Or when the global NGO Save the Children comes out with its annual list of the worst places in the world to be a mother?

It shows in how we act towards people, yes, but it’s not just about people. In his book “Surprised by Hope,” N. T. Wright, a bishop in the Church of England and another of my favorite authors, says, “Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation…”

All of these things can be part of our faith which conquers the world. The activities themselves don’t conquer the world; it’s why we do it. We are inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation.

Living this way won’t automatically come naturally to us. It would be nice if they did, but we have to consciously listen for the Spirit in our lives. These are habits we have to build. For some of you, maybe writing things down is your way to go. Jotting notes during the day, or if you do daily devotions could help. I go through journaling phases in my own life; sometimes I write every day and then I stop for months. Something constant is what helps us build habits.

Put a sticky note on the dashboard of your car. “Love each other as I have loved you.” Make it your iPhone’s wallpaper :) Put a note on your cubicle wall at work. Make art or music or find an activity that speaks both to your heart and from your heart as it’s inspired by the love of God and the delight in the beauty of his creation. Maybe learn about a person in the history of the church who exemplifies this for you and then learn from them. There are some amazing people tucked away in our family over the course of two thousand years, and many of them are inspiring as well.

Maybe you’re already serving in a ministry and trying to love each other and listen for the Spirit. The problem is, if you’re still alive, God is still working on you. Keep listening, for the Spirit in your own heart and in the voices of those around you, and you can be sure eventually God will push you on to your next step.

But the promise is there for us. As we abide in the love of Jesus, we are children of God, and whatever is born of God conquers the world. Victory through love. Love God and love his children.

Amen.