It’s been a strangely busy Holy Week for me this year. Most years I’m able to put aside all additional work and focus solely on the movements of the season. Any task not directly and specifically related to these four worship services get tabled, to be dug off my desk and conquered next week. And that feels good and right. Easter is, after all, what we are about as a community of the faithful. We are Easter people.
But this year I joked with a colleague that the world did not seem to have gotten the memo that this was Holy Week and I had more important and sacred work to handle. The world chugged along as normal, and I tried to fit Easter planning in and amidst community meetings. Most confusingly, the work I was doing outside of worship planning, meeting with community partners around the future of Triangle Trailer Park, going to forums about the fire station on Cliff Street, making plans to support efforts to make Battle Creek a more welcoming community, meeting with the council as we continue to move forward on redevelopment plans for this congregation, all of this felt too like good and holy and important work, and none of it felt like work that could be put aside for this blip of liturgical activity known as Holy Week. I’ve had this itch all week for Easter to be over so I could get back to the important tasks that it seemed like God was calling me to, which felt like a strange and unfaithful place to be as a pastor.
I wonder if any of you come to this Easter Sunday a similar itch. If any of you bring with you a sense of distraction or discomfort. Are there thoughts that leave you feeling confused and unfaithful, wondering if this is the place you should be this morning? The story of Christ’s resurrection is such a miraculous story that it can be a lot to take in. And when we are engaged in the deaths of the world, illness or oppression, violence or fear, the miracle that we proclaim this morning can feel, like the disciples felt, like an idle tale.
I’ve read the resurrection story from Luke’s Gospel probably one hundred times, but it was the discomfort I felt this week that led me to read this text again as if for the first time. As I was reading, I was caught by the feelings of the women in verse four, that when they came to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, they entered the tomb, discovered the body was missing, and were perplexed at what they saw. Perplexed is a great word. It comes from the Latin per “on account of,” plexus, “many strands or cords.” I love the imagery of that word. It is more than being confused or puzzled, it is like there were so many thoughts running through their heads, so many ideas coming together. They had come for one task, the anointing of Jesus body for burial, so there were the steps of that work in their minds. There was also grief and shock from the events of the days before, when they’d watched Jesus beaten, mocked, and hung on a cross. There was confusion in the words he’d said in the months leading up to his death, about how he would rise again. There was disappointment that the one whom they thought was the Messiah had not done what they thought a Messiah would do. All of these hopes and fears and dreams and dreads so filled their minds that they could not make sense of the truth revealed in front of them, the meaning of a rolled away stone and cast off grave clothes.
But there was something holy in their perplexity. There was something sacred in their distraction. There was something of the Spirit moving in the midst of their confusion and fear and disbelief that drew them to make the strange decision to continue forward and enter into the tomb. I’m not sure it is a choice I would make, were I to suddenly come across the gaping open door of a tomb where I have on good evidence that a body should be, to investigate the problem on my own. Peter doesn’t. Scripture tells us that when the women told the disciples of what they had seen, most dismissed it as an “idle tale.” Peter got up and ran to the tomb, but even he did not go inside. Instead he stooped down, looked in, and then went home. Amazed, but not changed, by what he observed.
But the women went in. And as they stood, hunched in the dark, dank, dampness of the newly emptied tomb, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified, but the men said, “Remember.” Remember. Remember is always an active word in the Bible. Remembering in scripture is not about nostalgia, remembering instead is the act of being re-connected, being re-minded, it is being re-rooted from the source of our being to be moved forward into a new and different reality. God remembered Noah and the flood waters receded, God remembered Abraham and Sara, and they bore a son, God remembered the Israelites in Egypt, and Moses came forward to lead God’s people from slavery to freedom. Remembering is always an act on God’s part of bringing God’s people forward into the place where God already is, out of the bondage of the past and into the new life of the future.
And that experience of remembering, of being reminded, changed the women. All of a sudden the perplexing things that had drawn them forward into the tomb of death were cleared away, and they ran out from the tomb, back to the eleven and to all the rest, to tell of all they had seen and had heard. There is something almost baptismal in this transformation, something definitely resurrectional, as the women are drawn into the tomb, the holding place for death, and in this place of death are remembered, are reborn and are sent out into the world to proclaim the good news that Christ is not here, for he has risen.
It took the rest of disciples a little bit longer to get what had happened, as I mentioned earlier. They were a little less perplexed, which left them a little less open to be transformed by the remembering of what Jesus had said to them, but they will get there. The next few Sundays we will hear stories of the disciples’ slow journey into remembering. Culminating on Pentecost Sunday, when the Holy Spirit will descend in tongues of fire upon them and they will be sent out into the world to bear witness to the Gospel, to remember the teachings of Jesus and to proclaim resurrection to all God’s creation. They will get there, but they’re not there today. Today it is only the women who experience the strange paradox of being so lost as to be found.
And so this morning I invite you to dwell in the glorious perplexity of Easter morning. Let the beautiful confusion of this day hold you and challenge you and confront you. I invite you to bring this day all your questions and fears, doubts and disbeliefs, the places you wish you could see God working, and the places you thought you should find God and couldn’t. Bring your distractions, your complications, the things you should be doing, the work left undone. Don’t stay away until you have all the answers figured out, even the disciples themselves dismissed resurrection as nothing more than an idle tale. Just come. Eat bread, drink wine, proclaim “He is risen,” sing hymns with familiar words. Let the movements of this holy day carry you past understanding to remembering. Remembering not the past but the future, not what is gone but what is yet to be. On this Easter morning, we are reminded to no longer dwell in what has gone, to no longer look for the living among the dead. Resurrection, life, has gone on ahead of us, and in the holy contradictions of our God, it is in the midst of our perplexity that God meets us. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Saturday, March 26, 2016
People Love Bunnies!: A Sermon on John 20:1-18
I bought a bunny cake again this year. It is not quite as cool as the bunny cake last year, but it is still a pretty amazing cake. For those of you who weren’t here last year, or for those of you who were but missed the cake story, let me tell you what I’m referring to. So last year was the first year we did a joint Easter vigil. And I wanted it to be special. So I decided to buy a sheet cake for the reception afterwards, because in my experience of growing up in the church, that is what we do for special occasions. Nothing says “Party” in the church like a sheet cake. So I went to the bakery and I ordered this cake. I wanted it simple, I told the bakery, I just want it to say “This is the night” in pastels, Easter colors. “OK,” they said. “No problem, come back Saturday.”
So I went back on Saturday to pick up the cake. It’s three-thirty, I’m meeting the bishop at four, I have a very short window of time to pick up this cake. So I go to the front and I ask for my cake, and this very excited bakery worker comes out carrying this cake. He’s beaming from ear to ear. I should maybe haven taken this as a sign that something is amiss, but I did not. “Do you want to see it?” he asked. Now, truthfully, I did not care at this point, I had half an hour to get this cake back to Trinity, plus I just asked for four words in Easter colors, how exciting could this cake possibly be, right? But he was so excited that, “Sure,” I told him. “Show me the cake.” He carefully opened up the top of the box, I peered in, and a small army of frosting bunnies and chicks stared back at me. Now, in fairness, the cake did say “this is the night,” in small white letters in the corner, but the entire rest of the cake was covered with bunnies and chicks gleefully hiding jelly bean Easter eggs. It was, and remains to this day, the single most secular Easter cake I have ever seen in my whole life, it was like attack of the cartoon bunny. This is the cake I now have to serve to our bishop, at this our first ever Easter vigil. The bakery kid took my hesitation for amazement. “Do you like it?” he prodded. “Um, yes,” I replied uneasily. After all, it was three-thirty, what was I going to do at that point, I would be taking this cake. But I had enough self-respect to comment softly, “sure are an awful lot of bunnies on that cake…” “There ARE a lot of bunnies on the cake,” the bakery kid agreed delightedly. And then, with great confidence, “people love bunnies!”
And by the time I drove that cake the ten minutes from the bakery to Trinity, I had fallen in love with that cake. I have a picture of it on my phone, I can show it to you after the service, it was really an amazing piece of art. I mean, you couldn’t order a cake like this; it was the sort of thing that could only come from a happy accident. And the cake was so goofy, so joyful, that it filled me with joy. I’d been pretty anxious in the days and weeks leading up to our Easter vigil last year. I knew it was a new thing to our communities, and I was worried that it wouldn’t go over well. I wanted you to love it; I wanted it to be perfect. But as soon as the ridiculous bunny cake was in my car, I knew I had to let the whole thing go. This is going to sound weird, but the cake felt like God whispering in my ear, “this is out of your control. Resurrection is my gig, not yours. Your best efforts are like this cake, trying too hard. So just go with it. It’s going to be ok.” It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. “I have seen resurrection,” I told the bishop when he arrived, and it looks like an army of bunnies.
And something else you may not know, our bunny cake went viral. The bishop tweeted a picture of our amazing cake, and it got picked up and passed around the ELCA. People from all over were talking about those two Lutheran churches in Battle Creek, this great vigil they’d done together, and their amazing vigil bunny cake. It was strange, it was goofy, and it felt like new life.
Strange, amazing, and just a little bit goofy is how the resurrection story in John’s Gospel always feels to me. It starts out so unassuming, with Mary going to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning, while it was still dark. She went empty-handed and alone. She was not going to anoint his body, Joseph and Nicodemus had already done that, she was not going to witness resurrection, she saw Jesus die, she knew the stone had been placed in front of the tomb, but something, something she could not yet put a finger on, drew her out of bed and to the tomb, in the dark before dawn of that spring Sunday morning. And almost immediately, the story gets weird. See the stone that should have been blocking the entrance to the tomb, was gone. So Mary ran and got Simon Peter and the other disciple to come and see what she had found. And Simon Peter and the other disciple set off in some sort of a strange footrace, which Peter looses, a detail which always seemed kind of unnecessary. One of the early church fathers, Ishodad of Merv, attributed the other disciple’s greater speed to the fact that he was unmarried, do with that fun tidbit of information whatever you wish. So anyway, the other disciple got there first, but then he just hung out outside of the tomb. So Peter arrived, huffing and puffing, and he blundered into the tomb, which blundering, if you think about it, is kind of how poor Peter does everything in the scriptures. Peter is like the over-excited puppy of the Gospels, he’s got the attention span of a four-year-old squirrel. So Peter bumbled into the tomb, saw the linen wrappings and that’s all we get. So then the other disciple went in, and he saw and believed, whatever that meant, because the Bible immediately followed up by saying, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture…” And then they both went home. We all have different ways of responding to shock, and for the disciples it seems this new surprise was too much to process. Believing or not, they were going back home.
So Mary found herself alone again, outside the tomb, weeping. I always wonder what was behind her response. Was it grief over the death of Jesus? Shock at the disciples’ weird behavior? Exhaustion from too many days and nights of struggling to sleep? Anxiety over what would come next? As Mary stood there weeping, the grave clothes were replaced by angels. And you know when you reach that point in grief or exhaustion or pain or whatever, when something else happens, and you don’t even have the emotional energy to get upset anymore? Mary seems to be there. Two angels appeared, and she’s just like, sure, whatever, now this. And proceeded to have a totally normal conversation with the two angelic figures who just popped up in the enclosed space she’s peering into.
So then Jesus appeared, but Mary mistook him for the gardener. Which again I think is an interesting description for John in include. The angels she just rolled with, but the appearance of Jesus himself, he must be the gardener. She begged him, “sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” And then Jesus said a single word to her. Mary. Her name. And all at once, she realized to whom she spoke. “Rabbouni,” she declared, which means teacher. “Do not hold onto me,” Jesus commanded, “but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Do not hold onto me, I am ascending; there is a lightness, an airiness, in Jesus’ words to Mary. And even in the text you can feel the weight lifting off Mary’s shoulders. You can feel the burden of grief, of pain, of fear, lifted away. And Mary ran. In my mind I imagine her running with reckless abandon down the same worn path that Peter and the other disciples had gone ahead of her, hair flying loose behind her in the first rays of sunlight, feet kicking up dust in the fresh morning breeze, busting in into the house where the disciples sat, neither waiting nor wondering, because there was nothing to wait and wonder for, until Mary declared, “I have seen the Lord!”
Belief of resurrection did not come immediately to them, but it came. In the Sundays following Easter we will hear the other resurrection appearances of Jesus, we will see how the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection dawns on the disciples one at a time. It came to the disciples in the upper room, it came to Thomas in the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, it came to Peter in questions, and on through the list, until it comes even to us. From Mary’s declaration, news of the resurrection went viral across time and space. We gather this evening because Jesus convinced Mary that he was not, in fact, the gardener, and she went out and told the world.
I don’t know how this resurrection miracle will come to you. If it will come in the waters of baptism, in the wine of communion, in the fellowship of friends, or the words of a song. If you receive it with weeping or running or walking away. For me, oddly, it seems to show up in bunny cakes. What I know about resurrection is it is persistent. In this Gospel, and in all the stories we read leading up to this Gospel, we see a God who continually shows up again and again. Each day declaring creation good, each day leading Noah through the flood, each day calling come to the water, come and buy milk without price, each day delivering us to the places we need to go, each day shutting the mouths of the lions who stand against us, each day standing beside us and calling our names until we know the one who stands beside us. So this evening, I invite you to lean into the glorious absurdity of it all. Christ is risen. Alleluia. Alleluia. Amen.
So I went back on Saturday to pick up the cake. It’s three-thirty, I’m meeting the bishop at four, I have a very short window of time to pick up this cake. So I go to the front and I ask for my cake, and this very excited bakery worker comes out carrying this cake. He’s beaming from ear to ear. I should maybe haven taken this as a sign that something is amiss, but I did not. “Do you want to see it?” he asked. Now, truthfully, I did not care at this point, I had half an hour to get this cake back to Trinity, plus I just asked for four words in Easter colors, how exciting could this cake possibly be, right? But he was so excited that, “Sure,” I told him. “Show me the cake.” He carefully opened up the top of the box, I peered in, and a small army of frosting bunnies and chicks stared back at me. Now, in fairness, the cake did say “this is the night,” in small white letters in the corner, but the entire rest of the cake was covered with bunnies and chicks gleefully hiding jelly bean Easter eggs. It was, and remains to this day, the single most secular Easter cake I have ever seen in my whole life, it was like attack of the cartoon bunny. This is the cake I now have to serve to our bishop, at this our first ever Easter vigil. The bakery kid took my hesitation for amazement. “Do you like it?” he prodded. “Um, yes,” I replied uneasily. After all, it was three-thirty, what was I going to do at that point, I would be taking this cake. But I had enough self-respect to comment softly, “sure are an awful lot of bunnies on that cake…” “There ARE a lot of bunnies on the cake,” the bakery kid agreed delightedly. And then, with great confidence, “people love bunnies!”
And by the time I drove that cake the ten minutes from the bakery to Trinity, I had fallen in love with that cake. I have a picture of it on my phone, I can show it to you after the service, it was really an amazing piece of art. I mean, you couldn’t order a cake like this; it was the sort of thing that could only come from a happy accident. And the cake was so goofy, so joyful, that it filled me with joy. I’d been pretty anxious in the days and weeks leading up to our Easter vigil last year. I knew it was a new thing to our communities, and I was worried that it wouldn’t go over well. I wanted you to love it; I wanted it to be perfect. But as soon as the ridiculous bunny cake was in my car, I knew I had to let the whole thing go. This is going to sound weird, but the cake felt like God whispering in my ear, “this is out of your control. Resurrection is my gig, not yours. Your best efforts are like this cake, trying too hard. So just go with it. It’s going to be ok.” It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. “I have seen resurrection,” I told the bishop when he arrived, and it looks like an army of bunnies.
And something else you may not know, our bunny cake went viral. The bishop tweeted a picture of our amazing cake, and it got picked up and passed around the ELCA. People from all over were talking about those two Lutheran churches in Battle Creek, this great vigil they’d done together, and their amazing vigil bunny cake. It was strange, it was goofy, and it felt like new life.
Strange, amazing, and just a little bit goofy is how the resurrection story in John’s Gospel always feels to me. It starts out so unassuming, with Mary going to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning, while it was still dark. She went empty-handed and alone. She was not going to anoint his body, Joseph and Nicodemus had already done that, she was not going to witness resurrection, she saw Jesus die, she knew the stone had been placed in front of the tomb, but something, something she could not yet put a finger on, drew her out of bed and to the tomb, in the dark before dawn of that spring Sunday morning. And almost immediately, the story gets weird. See the stone that should have been blocking the entrance to the tomb, was gone. So Mary ran and got Simon Peter and the other disciple to come and see what she had found. And Simon Peter and the other disciple set off in some sort of a strange footrace, which Peter looses, a detail which always seemed kind of unnecessary. One of the early church fathers, Ishodad of Merv, attributed the other disciple’s greater speed to the fact that he was unmarried, do with that fun tidbit of information whatever you wish. So anyway, the other disciple got there first, but then he just hung out outside of the tomb. So Peter arrived, huffing and puffing, and he blundered into the tomb, which blundering, if you think about it, is kind of how poor Peter does everything in the scriptures. Peter is like the over-excited puppy of the Gospels, he’s got the attention span of a four-year-old squirrel. So Peter bumbled into the tomb, saw the linen wrappings and that’s all we get. So then the other disciple went in, and he saw and believed, whatever that meant, because the Bible immediately followed up by saying, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture…” And then they both went home. We all have different ways of responding to shock, and for the disciples it seems this new surprise was too much to process. Believing or not, they were going back home.
So Mary found herself alone again, outside the tomb, weeping. I always wonder what was behind her response. Was it grief over the death of Jesus? Shock at the disciples’ weird behavior? Exhaustion from too many days and nights of struggling to sleep? Anxiety over what would come next? As Mary stood there weeping, the grave clothes were replaced by angels. And you know when you reach that point in grief or exhaustion or pain or whatever, when something else happens, and you don’t even have the emotional energy to get upset anymore? Mary seems to be there. Two angels appeared, and she’s just like, sure, whatever, now this. And proceeded to have a totally normal conversation with the two angelic figures who just popped up in the enclosed space she’s peering into.
So then Jesus appeared, but Mary mistook him for the gardener. Which again I think is an interesting description for John in include. The angels she just rolled with, but the appearance of Jesus himself, he must be the gardener. She begged him, “sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” And then Jesus said a single word to her. Mary. Her name. And all at once, she realized to whom she spoke. “Rabbouni,” she declared, which means teacher. “Do not hold onto me,” Jesus commanded, “but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Do not hold onto me, I am ascending; there is a lightness, an airiness, in Jesus’ words to Mary. And even in the text you can feel the weight lifting off Mary’s shoulders. You can feel the burden of grief, of pain, of fear, lifted away. And Mary ran. In my mind I imagine her running with reckless abandon down the same worn path that Peter and the other disciples had gone ahead of her, hair flying loose behind her in the first rays of sunlight, feet kicking up dust in the fresh morning breeze, busting in into the house where the disciples sat, neither waiting nor wondering, because there was nothing to wait and wonder for, until Mary declared, “I have seen the Lord!”
Belief of resurrection did not come immediately to them, but it came. In the Sundays following Easter we will hear the other resurrection appearances of Jesus, we will see how the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection dawns on the disciples one at a time. It came to the disciples in the upper room, it came to Thomas in the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, it came to Peter in questions, and on through the list, until it comes even to us. From Mary’s declaration, news of the resurrection went viral across time and space. We gather this evening because Jesus convinced Mary that he was not, in fact, the gardener, and she went out and told the world.
I don’t know how this resurrection miracle will come to you. If it will come in the waters of baptism, in the wine of communion, in the fellowship of friends, or the words of a song. If you receive it with weeping or running or walking away. For me, oddly, it seems to show up in bunny cakes. What I know about resurrection is it is persistent. In this Gospel, and in all the stories we read leading up to this Gospel, we see a God who continually shows up again and again. Each day declaring creation good, each day leading Noah through the flood, each day calling come to the water, come and buy milk without price, each day delivering us to the places we need to go, each day shutting the mouths of the lions who stand against us, each day standing beside us and calling our names until we know the one who stands beside us. So this evening, I invite you to lean into the glorious absurdity of it all. Christ is risen. Alleluia. Alleluia. Amen.
Vigil Cake 2015
Vigil Cake 2016
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 19:28-40
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Entrance processions were common practice in the first century. Numerous kings and conquering generals had paraded through Jerusalem over the years. Paul Brooks Duff summarizes the characteristic pattern of such a procession as having these four parts: 1) The conqueror/ruler is escorted into the city by the citizenry or army of the conqueror. 2) The procession is accompanied by hymns and/or acclamations. 3) Various elements of the procession symbolically depict the authority of the ruler. 4) The entrance is followed by a ritual of appropriation where the ruler symbolically takes control of the city. Jesus entrance fits that pattern. 1) Jesus is escorted by people and “the whole multitude of the disciples” (v. 37). 2) Procession accompanied by chants of Psalm 118:26. 3) Elements depicting Jesus authority include commanding the disciples to bring him a colt, crowd spreading coats on the road, praise of Jesus for “deeds of power” and as the bringer of peace. 4) Appropriation rituals include weeping over the city, entering the Temple as God’s emissary, and driving the merchants out of the Temple.
• There are clear differences between Jesus’ entrance procession and the entrance procession of conquering rulers. Jesus rides on a borrowed donkey, a show of humility. The cloaks thrown were not expensive garments, but the tattering clothing of the poor.
• The donkey reflects also serves to demonstrate how Jesus is the fulfillment of scripture. Zechariah 9:9-10, “your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey…” Gen 49:10-11, the donkey is tied, the “scepter shall not depart from Judah. Solomon rode a donkey before he was crowned king (1 Kings 1:33-37).
• The “multitude of the disciples” echoes the “multitude of the heavenly host” who announced Christ’s birth (2:13), the multitude he taught in Galilee (6:17), the multitude from Gerasa (8:7), and the multitude who would take him to Pilate and to his crucifixion (23:1, 27).
• The first part of the multitude’s praise, “Blessed is the king, who comes in the name of the Lord” is from the Hallel psalms used to welcome pilgrims to Jerusalem. But the Lukan author has inserted “the king” as a reference to the theme of Jesus Sonship throughout Luke’s Gospel.
• The second part of the multitude’s praise “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven” echoes the songs of the multitude of the heavenly host at his birth.
Works Sourced:
Brown, Michael Joseph. “Commentary on Luke 19:28-40.” Working Preacher. < https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2801>. Accessed 14 March 2016.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Entrance processions were common practice in the first century. Numerous kings and conquering generals had paraded through Jerusalem over the years. Paul Brooks Duff summarizes the characteristic pattern of such a procession as having these four parts: 1) The conqueror/ruler is escorted into the city by the citizenry or army of the conqueror. 2) The procession is accompanied by hymns and/or acclamations. 3) Various elements of the procession symbolically depict the authority of the ruler. 4) The entrance is followed by a ritual of appropriation where the ruler symbolically takes control of the city. Jesus entrance fits that pattern. 1) Jesus is escorted by people and “the whole multitude of the disciples” (v. 37). 2) Procession accompanied by chants of Psalm 118:26. 3) Elements depicting Jesus authority include commanding the disciples to bring him a colt, crowd spreading coats on the road, praise of Jesus for “deeds of power” and as the bringer of peace. 4) Appropriation rituals include weeping over the city, entering the Temple as God’s emissary, and driving the merchants out of the Temple.
• There are clear differences between Jesus’ entrance procession and the entrance procession of conquering rulers. Jesus rides on a borrowed donkey, a show of humility. The cloaks thrown were not expensive garments, but the tattering clothing of the poor.
• The donkey reflects also serves to demonstrate how Jesus is the fulfillment of scripture. Zechariah 9:9-10, “your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey…” Gen 49:10-11, the donkey is tied, the “scepter shall not depart from Judah. Solomon rode a donkey before he was crowned king (1 Kings 1:33-37).
• The “multitude of the disciples” echoes the “multitude of the heavenly host” who announced Christ’s birth (2:13), the multitude he taught in Galilee (6:17), the multitude from Gerasa (8:7), and the multitude who would take him to Pilate and to his crucifixion (23:1, 27).
• The first part of the multitude’s praise, “Blessed is the king, who comes in the name of the Lord” is from the Hallel psalms used to welcome pilgrims to Jerusalem. But the Lukan author has inserted “the king” as a reference to the theme of Jesus Sonship throughout Luke’s Gospel.
• The second part of the multitude’s praise “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven” echoes the songs of the multitude of the heavenly host at his birth.
Works Sourced:
Brown, Michael Joseph. “Commentary on Luke 19:28-40.” Working Preacher. < https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2801>. Accessed 14 March 2016.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Healing Action: A Sermon on John 12:1-8
Last weekend when I was driving back from Iowa, I entertained myself by catching up on podcasts of On Being. On Being, if you’re not familiar, is a radio program where host Krista Tippett interviews a variety of guests about spirituality and what it means to be human. It’s on Michigan Radio on Sunday mornings at 7 am, but I always listen to it on podcast so I can listen to the unedited cuts. The episode I was listening to was a three-way conversation between Tippett, Dr. Robert Ross, and Patrisse Cullors. Dr. Ross is a pediatrician and the executive director of a foundation in California that funds public health initiatives, and Cullors is the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was an amazing conversation, I highly recommend listening to it. I’ll post a link to the episode at the end of this sermon. But one part of the conversation especially struck me, and I thought, I have to share this in a sermon sometime.
So at one, Tippett raised a question about the role of anger in activism, anger being one of the main critiques of the Black Lives Matter movement. Dr. Ross responded that activism is by its very nature a form of strategic outrage, and activists are always criticized as being outrageous. In fact, Dr. Ross remarked, if activism is not making people uncomfortable, it is probably not activism. Cullors highlighted in several stories how strategic outrage is in fact not rooted in anger but in love, it is loving the community so much that you demand better from it, better for it. And then, and here’s the part I found fascinating and beautiful. Ross, remember, is a pediatrician and runs a foundation that works to improve public health. So there’s all sorts of research about trauma and the long-term, physical effects trauma has on our bodies. People who live under high degrees of stress for long periods of time experience a whole host of physical ailments. There is much less research on the resiliency side, but the limited research there is, Dr. Ross shared, seems to suggest that activism, that civic engagement, is actually healthy for people. There is a wellness, a wholeness that comes with civic engagement, it somehow acts as a immunizing force that helps people heal from the trauma they have experienced. I could not get the beautiful balance of that idea out of my head, that somehow we have been created in such a way that the way to recover from the things that hurt us is actually to work so that those things do not hurt other people. That we actually heal ourselves by healing others.
So in our Gospel reading for this morning, we join Jesus at a dinner party in his honor, at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Just the chapter before, this family had experienced unspeakable trauma, as their brother Lazarus became deathly ill and Jesus, who they knew could save him, showed up too late, four days after Lazarus’ death. But then, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Thus, this celebratory dinner party. And certainly, Lazarus sitting among them is a reason to celebrate. But one can imagine even as they rejoice, everyone is still pretty shaken from the events of the days before. You don’t just get over a trauma like that. So they’re sitting there in the uncomfortable awkwardness of not exactly knowing how to feel. When suddenly, Mary did something dramatic. She got up, took a pound of costly perfume, pure nard the scripture tells us, worth about a year’s wages for a day laborer, and poured it all over Jesus’ feet, wiping his feet with her hair. There is something so uncomfortable, so disturbing intimate about this scene, even as readers we find ourselves kind of wanting to look away, like there’s something happening between Mary and Jesus that we shouldn’t be watching. But we cannot look away, we cannot not notice what is happening here. The scripture tells us the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. I don’t have an experience of spilling a pound of nard, but commentaries assure me it is not the sort of smell you can miss. It would be overwhelming, so thick you could almost feel it. In the chapter before, when Lazarus was dead and Jesus requested that the stone over the mouth of the tomb be rolled away, Martha protested, “Lord, it has been four days and already there is a stench.” This is one of the few times where I think the King James Version gets it better, “Lord, he stinketh.” But now that stinketh, that stench of death, has been physically overwhelmed by the overpowering aroma of love and devotion demonstrated by Mary’s costly show of service.
But that’s not the only thing that’s going on here. Mary’s action was not just an undoing of Lazarus’ death; it was also a foretelling of Jesus’. We are told that this dinner happened “six days before the Passover, a reminder that in just six days Jesus will be dead, and because of the holiday, the women will be unable to anoint his body. Mary understood what none of the other disciples did yet, that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die, and these were among the last few precious moments that she would have to serve him in the flesh. Yes, it was an outrageous action, an action that makes us, and the others around the table, uncomfortable, but love is outrageous, and if it is not a little bit uncomfortable, it is probably not love.
The word the writer of John used for “dinner” at the beginning of this passage shows up one other time in John’s Gospel, at the dinner that Jesus held with his disciples on the night before he was betrayed. When he gathered them together in an upper room and washed their feet, wiping, also the same word, wiping them dry with a towel draped around his waist. He would then command them to love each other as he had loved them. That the way to live after he was gone, the way to continue to walk in the way he had instructed them, was to love, to serve, each other. Discipleship in the days after the death of Jesus would be about living a life of service and love for the world. “By this, they will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus would tell them, “if you have love for one another.” The model of discipleship as healing ourselves and the world through love and service that Mary demonstrated by service Jesus will be expanded from Jesus to the world in Jesus’ last days.
Mary’s outrageous act of devotion was too uncomfortable for Judas Iscariot. “But why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?” he asked. The scriptures tell us that this is a loaded question. Judas, we are told, is a thief who is known to steal from the common purse, selling the perfume then would put more money in his pocket. Jesus response is at first confusing. “Leave her alone... You always have the poor among you, but you do not always have me.” Some have used these words of Jesus to ask the question of if we are to serve the poor then, or are we to serve Jesus? I think Jesus’ actions at the last supper demonstrate that the answer to that question is yes, that it is not an either/or question, we in fact serve Jesus by serving the poor. I don’t think this is a comment that systemic poverty is an impossible problem that is not worth working on, I think it is more a commentary on the human experience, that there will always be someone in need up help, always someone who has fallen on hard times, been in an accident, experienced a disaster, who is sick or hurt or depressed, there will always be “poor.” But more than that, I think this is not even the question Jesus was answering when he addressed Judas. “Leave her alone,” Jesus told Judas, this is none of your business. This is her act of service, her work of healing, her journey back to wholeness. Her work is none of your business; you keep track of your own healing, and leave her to hers. And Judas will, in a most backwards way. In just a few chapters we will be told how the devil entered Judas and he betrayed Jesus to the authorities, a move that set into motion the unstoppable chain of events that led to Jesus defeating death by dying, and in doing so, bringing salvation and healing to the entire world. Judas in fact became an essential cog in Jesus’ carefully constructed Rub Goldberg machine to redeem creation. A machine set in motion when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, pushing over the first domino, an miracle that led Mary to express her love in an act of gratuitous devotion, which enraged Judas to question the action, which led Jesus to teach his disciples to serve each other, which pushed Judas to betray him, which led to Jesus death, his resurrection, and the power of this love propelling his disciples out into the world to remake creation in the love Christ had taught them. Even Judas could not escape being caught up in God’s great miracle of redemption.
At the end of the interview with Ross and Cullors, an Episcopal priest from a small church in Los Angeles got up and asked what the first, best step would be for a small church wanting to engage in this work of healing and wholeness with the oppressed in their community. Patrisse Cullors’ answer was so beautifully simple. Have conversations. Get out, get to know people, ask questions, how is this current moment affecting you, what are you concerned about, what are you hopeful for? Dr. Ross took it a step further, urging the audience to understand the meta, the systems in place that have led to the injustice, the brokenness, the trauma of the world. And then, with these two pieces in place, with conversation and with understanding, congregations can truly be about the work that we have literally been created for, to heal ourselves by healing the world. Because, as Jesus promised the disciples in a dinner party so long ago, there will always be an opportunity for healing for us, because there will always be someone who needs to be healed. And so creatively, so wonderfully, were we formed by our God, that healing the world is literally the work that heals us. By being God’s people in the world, we experience God’s presence in our lives. Thanks be to God. Amen.
To hear On Being episode, click the link below. In the unedited version, Dr. Ross talks about the effects of activism at 36:10 and the question from the Episcopal priest occurs at 1:15:00. http://www.onbeing.org/program/patrisse-cullors-and-robert-ross-the-resilient-world-were-building-now/8425
So at one, Tippett raised a question about the role of anger in activism, anger being one of the main critiques of the Black Lives Matter movement. Dr. Ross responded that activism is by its very nature a form of strategic outrage, and activists are always criticized as being outrageous. In fact, Dr. Ross remarked, if activism is not making people uncomfortable, it is probably not activism. Cullors highlighted in several stories how strategic outrage is in fact not rooted in anger but in love, it is loving the community so much that you demand better from it, better for it. And then, and here’s the part I found fascinating and beautiful. Ross, remember, is a pediatrician and runs a foundation that works to improve public health. So there’s all sorts of research about trauma and the long-term, physical effects trauma has on our bodies. People who live under high degrees of stress for long periods of time experience a whole host of physical ailments. There is much less research on the resiliency side, but the limited research there is, Dr. Ross shared, seems to suggest that activism, that civic engagement, is actually healthy for people. There is a wellness, a wholeness that comes with civic engagement, it somehow acts as a immunizing force that helps people heal from the trauma they have experienced. I could not get the beautiful balance of that idea out of my head, that somehow we have been created in such a way that the way to recover from the things that hurt us is actually to work so that those things do not hurt other people. That we actually heal ourselves by healing others.
So in our Gospel reading for this morning, we join Jesus at a dinner party in his honor, at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Just the chapter before, this family had experienced unspeakable trauma, as their brother Lazarus became deathly ill and Jesus, who they knew could save him, showed up too late, four days after Lazarus’ death. But then, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Thus, this celebratory dinner party. And certainly, Lazarus sitting among them is a reason to celebrate. But one can imagine even as they rejoice, everyone is still pretty shaken from the events of the days before. You don’t just get over a trauma like that. So they’re sitting there in the uncomfortable awkwardness of not exactly knowing how to feel. When suddenly, Mary did something dramatic. She got up, took a pound of costly perfume, pure nard the scripture tells us, worth about a year’s wages for a day laborer, and poured it all over Jesus’ feet, wiping his feet with her hair. There is something so uncomfortable, so disturbing intimate about this scene, even as readers we find ourselves kind of wanting to look away, like there’s something happening between Mary and Jesus that we shouldn’t be watching. But we cannot look away, we cannot not notice what is happening here. The scripture tells us the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. I don’t have an experience of spilling a pound of nard, but commentaries assure me it is not the sort of smell you can miss. It would be overwhelming, so thick you could almost feel it. In the chapter before, when Lazarus was dead and Jesus requested that the stone over the mouth of the tomb be rolled away, Martha protested, “Lord, it has been four days and already there is a stench.” This is one of the few times where I think the King James Version gets it better, “Lord, he stinketh.” But now that stinketh, that stench of death, has been physically overwhelmed by the overpowering aroma of love and devotion demonstrated by Mary’s costly show of service.
But that’s not the only thing that’s going on here. Mary’s action was not just an undoing of Lazarus’ death; it was also a foretelling of Jesus’. We are told that this dinner happened “six days before the Passover, a reminder that in just six days Jesus will be dead, and because of the holiday, the women will be unable to anoint his body. Mary understood what none of the other disciples did yet, that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die, and these were among the last few precious moments that she would have to serve him in the flesh. Yes, it was an outrageous action, an action that makes us, and the others around the table, uncomfortable, but love is outrageous, and if it is not a little bit uncomfortable, it is probably not love.
The word the writer of John used for “dinner” at the beginning of this passage shows up one other time in John’s Gospel, at the dinner that Jesus held with his disciples on the night before he was betrayed. When he gathered them together in an upper room and washed their feet, wiping, also the same word, wiping them dry with a towel draped around his waist. He would then command them to love each other as he had loved them. That the way to live after he was gone, the way to continue to walk in the way he had instructed them, was to love, to serve, each other. Discipleship in the days after the death of Jesus would be about living a life of service and love for the world. “By this, they will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus would tell them, “if you have love for one another.” The model of discipleship as healing ourselves and the world through love and service that Mary demonstrated by service Jesus will be expanded from Jesus to the world in Jesus’ last days.
Mary’s outrageous act of devotion was too uncomfortable for Judas Iscariot. “But why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?” he asked. The scriptures tell us that this is a loaded question. Judas, we are told, is a thief who is known to steal from the common purse, selling the perfume then would put more money in his pocket. Jesus response is at first confusing. “Leave her alone... You always have the poor among you, but you do not always have me.” Some have used these words of Jesus to ask the question of if we are to serve the poor then, or are we to serve Jesus? I think Jesus’ actions at the last supper demonstrate that the answer to that question is yes, that it is not an either/or question, we in fact serve Jesus by serving the poor. I don’t think this is a comment that systemic poverty is an impossible problem that is not worth working on, I think it is more a commentary on the human experience, that there will always be someone in need up help, always someone who has fallen on hard times, been in an accident, experienced a disaster, who is sick or hurt or depressed, there will always be “poor.” But more than that, I think this is not even the question Jesus was answering when he addressed Judas. “Leave her alone,” Jesus told Judas, this is none of your business. This is her act of service, her work of healing, her journey back to wholeness. Her work is none of your business; you keep track of your own healing, and leave her to hers. And Judas will, in a most backwards way. In just a few chapters we will be told how the devil entered Judas and he betrayed Jesus to the authorities, a move that set into motion the unstoppable chain of events that led to Jesus defeating death by dying, and in doing so, bringing salvation and healing to the entire world. Judas in fact became an essential cog in Jesus’ carefully constructed Rub Goldberg machine to redeem creation. A machine set in motion when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, pushing over the first domino, an miracle that led Mary to express her love in an act of gratuitous devotion, which enraged Judas to question the action, which led Jesus to teach his disciples to serve each other, which pushed Judas to betray him, which led to Jesus death, his resurrection, and the power of this love propelling his disciples out into the world to remake creation in the love Christ had taught them. Even Judas could not escape being caught up in God’s great miracle of redemption.
At the end of the interview with Ross and Cullors, an Episcopal priest from a small church in Los Angeles got up and asked what the first, best step would be for a small church wanting to engage in this work of healing and wholeness with the oppressed in their community. Patrisse Cullors’ answer was so beautifully simple. Have conversations. Get out, get to know people, ask questions, how is this current moment affecting you, what are you concerned about, what are you hopeful for? Dr. Ross took it a step further, urging the audience to understand the meta, the systems in place that have led to the injustice, the brokenness, the trauma of the world. And then, with these two pieces in place, with conversation and with understanding, congregations can truly be about the work that we have literally been created for, to heal ourselves by healing the world. Because, as Jesus promised the disciples in a dinner party so long ago, there will always be an opportunity for healing for us, because there will always be someone who needs to be healed. And so creatively, so wonderfully, were we formed by our God, that healing the world is literally the work that heals us. By being God’s people in the world, we experience God’s presence in our lives. Thanks be to God. Amen.
To hear On Being episode, click the link below. In the unedited version, Dr. Ross talks about the effects of activism at 36:10 and the question from the Episcopal priest occurs at 1:15:00. http://www.onbeing.org/program/patrisse-cullors-and-robert-ross-the-resilient-world-were-building-now/8425
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Conversation Points for John 12:1-8
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The raising of Lazarus acts as the hinge point in John’s Gospel, when the focus switches from Jesus earthly ministry to Jesus’ journey to the cross. In the language of John’s gospel, Jesus’ “hour has come.” The raising of Lazarus, and the excitement that caused throughout the crowds, was the break point for the religious leaders, from then on, they were looking for ways to kill Jesus (Luke 11:45-54).
• Luke 12:1 situated the anointing of Jesus in the week of the Passover, a reminder of the nearness of Jesus hour.
• “Dinner” in 12:2 is the same word in the Greek as used to describe Jesus’ last supper with his disciples in 12:2, 4; 21:20. This alerts us to many echoes between the two meals.
• “to wipe” 12:3, is the same word to describe Jesus wiping his disciples feet in 13:5. Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet as an act of discipleship points to Jesus’ demonstration of discipleship by washing his disciples feet. Mary’s act of service toward Jesus is a model of discipleship, which the disciples are to demonstrate towards one another and the world after Jesus is no longer with them.
• In 11:39, when Jesus told them to roll the stone away from Lazarus tomb, Martha protested “Lord, already there is a stench.” Now in 12:3, the stench of death is replaced by the fragrance of love and devotion.
• 12:7 we see a double meaning in the perfume, it is also a reminder of Jesus’ death, and the anointing of bodies for burial.
• Judas is referred to as “a thief,” who “used to steal.” It harkens to John 10, Jesus teachings about the good shepherd. “The thief comes only to steal and destroy…” John 10:10.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The raising of Lazarus acts as the hinge point in John’s Gospel, when the focus switches from Jesus earthly ministry to Jesus’ journey to the cross. In the language of John’s gospel, Jesus’ “hour has come.” The raising of Lazarus, and the excitement that caused throughout the crowds, was the break point for the religious leaders, from then on, they were looking for ways to kill Jesus (Luke 11:45-54).
• Luke 12:1 situated the anointing of Jesus in the week of the Passover, a reminder of the nearness of Jesus hour.
• “Dinner” in 12:2 is the same word in the Greek as used to describe Jesus’ last supper with his disciples in 12:2, 4; 21:20. This alerts us to many echoes between the two meals.
• “to wipe” 12:3, is the same word to describe Jesus wiping his disciples feet in 13:5. Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet as an act of discipleship points to Jesus’ demonstration of discipleship by washing his disciples feet. Mary’s act of service toward Jesus is a model of discipleship, which the disciples are to demonstrate towards one another and the world after Jesus is no longer with them.
• In 11:39, when Jesus told them to roll the stone away from Lazarus tomb, Martha protested “Lord, already there is a stench.” Now in 12:3, the stench of death is replaced by the fragrance of love and devotion.
• 12:7 we see a double meaning in the perfume, it is also a reminder of Jesus’ death, and the anointing of bodies for burial.
• Judas is referred to as “a thief,” who “used to steal.” It harkens to John 10, Jesus teachings about the good shepherd. “The thief comes only to steal and destroy…” John 10:10.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, March 7, 2016
"A Man Who Had Two Sons": A Sermon on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Man, this is a great story! One of the favorite parables for sure. And I know it’s certainly a story we are very familiar with, but it’s such a good one that I think it’s worth it this morning for us to walk through it again slowly and unpack the richness Jesus layered into it.
So the reading starts with setting the scene of the telling. In Luke chapter fourteen, Jesus was invited to eat at the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. We think of dinner parties as private affairs, but that was not so much the case in the first century. It’s more like, how many of you watched the Oscars last week? Think about what the Oscars is, it’s a glamorous party of famous wealthy people celebrating their wealth and fame, and we are not invited to the actual party, but we do get to watch it on TV. That is what dinner parties in the first century would have been like. The invited guests would recline in the center, and all around them the crowds would gather to get a glimpse of the powerful and overhear the conversation and gossip. So that’s the setting we find ourselves in this morning. Jesus was sitting with the scribes and Pharisees who invited him, and all around them, crowding in closer than would be considered appropriate, are the sinners and tax collectors. It would be as if the masses lining the red carpet last week had found their way into the theater and instead of standing quietly against the wall, had pushed closer and closer to the stage, clogging the aisles so that the invited movie professionals couldn’t see or hear. Except worse, because of course the issue here isn’t just about wealth and fame. “Sinners” included not just people who broke the moral laws, but also those who failed to keep the same religious purity practiced by the Pharisees, the “unclean.” Eating with such people would render the Pharisees also unclean, requiring them to go through the long ritual process of cleansing. The Pharisees didn’t want the effort, or the knock on their good name, so they grumbled, “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Interesting, grumbled is the same word used to describe the Israelites response to Moses, when they were rescued from Pharaoh only to find themselves in the desert without any food. There’s a theme developing here with people being so close to salvation that they cannot see it.
And in response to their grumbling, Jesus told them a parable. “There was a man who had two sons.” This story has historically been referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, but right off the bat we see that title falls a little short. The man does not have one son, he has two. It’s also key to notice that these two are introduced not as brothers, but as sons. The word brother doesn’t even show up until verse twenty-seven. The key relationship here is not the brothers to each other, but the sons to their father.
So, there was a man who had two sons. And the younger son, right off the bat, we discover is kind of a selfish punk. He asked his father to be given his share of the inheritance. Now, there’s a couple reasons why this is both a jerk move and a dumb move. First off, it’s super disrespectful. The younger son is basically treating his father like he was dead. Also, by inheritance laws, whatever didn’t go to the younger son by default then belonged to the elder son. If the elder son also decided to leave, the father would have no recourse and would be left destitute. Now this is also a foolish move, because the younger son cut himself off from any opportunity for further profit. There is nothing to suggest that the land was not successful, and had the son waited, he would have in fact inherited more wealth than he received by cashing in early. Nevertheless, the younger son was impatient; he wanted his money now so he took his inheritance and sped off to the city. Where, scripture tells us, he “squandered his property in dissolute living.” Not a huge surprise, considering the not exactly financially sound maneuver he’d done to get the money in the first place. We are not working with a shrewd business mind here.
Penniless and alone in a foreign land, the younger son was desperate. He even sunk to the level of taking a job as a tender of pigs. Quite the fall from grace for the once-proud son of a Israelite landowner, to find himself in the employ of a gentile caring for swine, which were seen as an abomination in Israelite culture. Finally, he’s like, look. Even my father’s servants have better lives than this. So he decided to return to his father and beg to be taken back, not as a son, but as a hired hand.
And of course, we all know what happened after that. The prodigal son returned, and the father was waiting by the gate to meet him. And seeing his son, the father threw dignity to the wind and did what no self-respecting patriarch would do, he ran out to greet him. The son started his speech about repentance, but before he could finish, the father cut him off, sending his servants to get a robe, the best one, a ring for his fingers and sandals for his feet, and to kill the fatted calf in celebration, because the son who once was lost now is found.
And as shocking and boundary breaking is this story is; I think we are familiar enough with it and with God, that we believe it. We might forget it sometimes, we certainly need to be reminded again and again, but for the most part, I think we’re all pretty clear on the idea that our God is the sort of God who offers unconditional forgiveness, welcome, and grace to those who turn back and ask for forgiveness. I think we’re on board with the idea that there is nothing that God will not forgive, that God waits patiently from us to turn from our sinful ways and return to him, that God in fact is waiting by the gate, so that God can run out to greet us, divine arms outstretched, to welcome back God’s wayward children, and drape us once again in the robe, ring, and sandals of our inheritance. We certainly forget it sometimes, and maybe we don’t really internalize how overwhelming that welcome is, but I think intellectually, we are pretty familiar with the idea that God is a God of grace and love and forgiveness.
But remember, this is a story about “a man who had two sons.” So a celebration was thrown for the one son who had sinned and repented. And while everyone was partying; eat rich foods and drinking fine wines, the other son, the elder son came in from the fields. And when the elder son found out about the party being thrown in his wayward brother’s honor, he was mad! And really, legally, he had a right to be mad. And the elder son, he’d always done everything right. When his father split the estate and gave the younger son his share, the elder son kept working for his father, even though technically it all belonged to him now. This also means that this party the father threw, it was paid for with the elder son’s inheritance. The father didn’t just give the younger son all his wealth, now he was giving the elder son’s wealth away too. So the elder son refused to go in to the party.
And what did the father do in response? The father, for the second time, does something no self-respecting landowner would do. He went out and met his wayward son. He didn’t command his son to enter; he didn’t send a servant out to demand his son’s presence. No the father went outside himself, to plead for his elder son’s obedience. So much does the father love his sons, that when his wayward son comes back up the road to ask for forgiveness, the father runs to meet him and welcome him back to the family. So much does the father love his sons, that when his son turned away and refused to come in, the father went and found him and begged for the son to be rejoined to the family. The elder son’s words were full of the calculations and judgments, “all these years…,” “you never…,” “that son of yours…,” but the father did not, could not, respond to this. Instead, the father went to the heart of the matter, to the root of relationship. “Son—while the son started with “Listen,” the father begins by declaring the relationship—Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours”—notice not “my son” but “this brother of yours”—“was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.”
Sisters and brothers, the point of this parable is that God’s love is for the tax collectors and the sinners, yes, but that is not all it is for. God’s love is also for the Pharisees and the scribes. Because Jesus didn’t just eat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus also ate with Pharisees and scribes. That’s how the love of God works. God’s love is for when we totally screw it up, and we turn and repent. God’s love is for when we act totally right, and are still totally wrong. God’s love is for the broken and the angry, the hurt and the hurter, the seeker and the one who does not think they need to be sought. There is literally nothing you can do to get God to stop coming after you and bringing you back in with forgiveness and repentance and love. The elder brother knows, he tried. But even as he sat outside in justified and self-righteous anger with no intention of ever turning around, even then the Father came and pursued him and brought him back into the family. Our God is a God who runs out to meet us, whether we have any intention of turning around or not. Thanks be to God. Amen.
So the reading starts with setting the scene of the telling. In Luke chapter fourteen, Jesus was invited to eat at the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. We think of dinner parties as private affairs, but that was not so much the case in the first century. It’s more like, how many of you watched the Oscars last week? Think about what the Oscars is, it’s a glamorous party of famous wealthy people celebrating their wealth and fame, and we are not invited to the actual party, but we do get to watch it on TV. That is what dinner parties in the first century would have been like. The invited guests would recline in the center, and all around them the crowds would gather to get a glimpse of the powerful and overhear the conversation and gossip. So that’s the setting we find ourselves in this morning. Jesus was sitting with the scribes and Pharisees who invited him, and all around them, crowding in closer than would be considered appropriate, are the sinners and tax collectors. It would be as if the masses lining the red carpet last week had found their way into the theater and instead of standing quietly against the wall, had pushed closer and closer to the stage, clogging the aisles so that the invited movie professionals couldn’t see or hear. Except worse, because of course the issue here isn’t just about wealth and fame. “Sinners” included not just people who broke the moral laws, but also those who failed to keep the same religious purity practiced by the Pharisees, the “unclean.” Eating with such people would render the Pharisees also unclean, requiring them to go through the long ritual process of cleansing. The Pharisees didn’t want the effort, or the knock on their good name, so they grumbled, “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Interesting, grumbled is the same word used to describe the Israelites response to Moses, when they were rescued from Pharaoh only to find themselves in the desert without any food. There’s a theme developing here with people being so close to salvation that they cannot see it.
And in response to their grumbling, Jesus told them a parable. “There was a man who had two sons.” This story has historically been referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, but right off the bat we see that title falls a little short. The man does not have one son, he has two. It’s also key to notice that these two are introduced not as brothers, but as sons. The word brother doesn’t even show up until verse twenty-seven. The key relationship here is not the brothers to each other, but the sons to their father.
So, there was a man who had two sons. And the younger son, right off the bat, we discover is kind of a selfish punk. He asked his father to be given his share of the inheritance. Now, there’s a couple reasons why this is both a jerk move and a dumb move. First off, it’s super disrespectful. The younger son is basically treating his father like he was dead. Also, by inheritance laws, whatever didn’t go to the younger son by default then belonged to the elder son. If the elder son also decided to leave, the father would have no recourse and would be left destitute. Now this is also a foolish move, because the younger son cut himself off from any opportunity for further profit. There is nothing to suggest that the land was not successful, and had the son waited, he would have in fact inherited more wealth than he received by cashing in early. Nevertheless, the younger son was impatient; he wanted his money now so he took his inheritance and sped off to the city. Where, scripture tells us, he “squandered his property in dissolute living.” Not a huge surprise, considering the not exactly financially sound maneuver he’d done to get the money in the first place. We are not working with a shrewd business mind here.
Penniless and alone in a foreign land, the younger son was desperate. He even sunk to the level of taking a job as a tender of pigs. Quite the fall from grace for the once-proud son of a Israelite landowner, to find himself in the employ of a gentile caring for swine, which were seen as an abomination in Israelite culture. Finally, he’s like, look. Even my father’s servants have better lives than this. So he decided to return to his father and beg to be taken back, not as a son, but as a hired hand.
And of course, we all know what happened after that. The prodigal son returned, and the father was waiting by the gate to meet him. And seeing his son, the father threw dignity to the wind and did what no self-respecting patriarch would do, he ran out to greet him. The son started his speech about repentance, but before he could finish, the father cut him off, sending his servants to get a robe, the best one, a ring for his fingers and sandals for his feet, and to kill the fatted calf in celebration, because the son who once was lost now is found.
And as shocking and boundary breaking is this story is; I think we are familiar enough with it and with God, that we believe it. We might forget it sometimes, we certainly need to be reminded again and again, but for the most part, I think we’re all pretty clear on the idea that our God is the sort of God who offers unconditional forgiveness, welcome, and grace to those who turn back and ask for forgiveness. I think we’re on board with the idea that there is nothing that God will not forgive, that God waits patiently from us to turn from our sinful ways and return to him, that God in fact is waiting by the gate, so that God can run out to greet us, divine arms outstretched, to welcome back God’s wayward children, and drape us once again in the robe, ring, and sandals of our inheritance. We certainly forget it sometimes, and maybe we don’t really internalize how overwhelming that welcome is, but I think intellectually, we are pretty familiar with the idea that God is a God of grace and love and forgiveness.
But remember, this is a story about “a man who had two sons.” So a celebration was thrown for the one son who had sinned and repented. And while everyone was partying; eat rich foods and drinking fine wines, the other son, the elder son came in from the fields. And when the elder son found out about the party being thrown in his wayward brother’s honor, he was mad! And really, legally, he had a right to be mad. And the elder son, he’d always done everything right. When his father split the estate and gave the younger son his share, the elder son kept working for his father, even though technically it all belonged to him now. This also means that this party the father threw, it was paid for with the elder son’s inheritance. The father didn’t just give the younger son all his wealth, now he was giving the elder son’s wealth away too. So the elder son refused to go in to the party.
And what did the father do in response? The father, for the second time, does something no self-respecting landowner would do. He went out and met his wayward son. He didn’t command his son to enter; he didn’t send a servant out to demand his son’s presence. No the father went outside himself, to plead for his elder son’s obedience. So much does the father love his sons, that when his wayward son comes back up the road to ask for forgiveness, the father runs to meet him and welcome him back to the family. So much does the father love his sons, that when his son turned away and refused to come in, the father went and found him and begged for the son to be rejoined to the family. The elder son’s words were full of the calculations and judgments, “all these years…,” “you never…,” “that son of yours…,” but the father did not, could not, respond to this. Instead, the father went to the heart of the matter, to the root of relationship. “Son—while the son started with “Listen,” the father begins by declaring the relationship—Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours”—notice not “my son” but “this brother of yours”—“was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.”
Sisters and brothers, the point of this parable is that God’s love is for the tax collectors and the sinners, yes, but that is not all it is for. God’s love is also for the Pharisees and the scribes. Because Jesus didn’t just eat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus also ate with Pharisees and scribes. That’s how the love of God works. God’s love is for when we totally screw it up, and we turn and repent. God’s love is for when we act totally right, and are still totally wrong. God’s love is for the broken and the angry, the hurt and the hurter, the seeker and the one who does not think they need to be sought. There is literally nothing you can do to get God to stop coming after you and bringing you back in with forgiveness and repentance and love. The elder brother knows, he tried. But even as he sat outside in justified and self-righteous anger with no intention of ever turning around, even then the Father came and pursued him and brought him back into the family. Our God is a God who runs out to meet us, whether we have any intention of turning around or not. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In Luke 14:1, Jesus was going to eat with a leader of the Pharisees. Now, those leaders were grumbling because tax collectors and sinners were also coming to Jesus. “Sinners” would include both those who broke moral laws and those who did not keep the ritual purity the Pharisees kept, thus eating with such people would make one “unclean.”
• “Grumbling” or “murmuring” in v. 2 is dia-gongyzo in the Greek. The sound of the word suggests the meaning. It is related to the Hebrew word used in Exodus 16:7-12, when the Israelites murmured against Moses because they were in the wilderness without any food.
• This parable is often called “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Culpepper remarks that such title only focuses on half the story. He titles it “The Prodigal Son, the Waiting Father, and the Elder Brother.” How do the different titles change how you might read the parable?
• The siblings are introduced as “sons” rather than “brothers.” The focus being on their relationship to the father rather than their relationship to each other.
• By asking the father for his share of the inheritance, the younger son is treating his father as if he was already dead. It would be both disrespectful and irregular. It would also permanently cut him off from any further resources from his father. Inheritance laws essentially mean the father would be giving away everything by making this move, because what didn’t go to the younger son was then entitled to the older son.
• The younger son becomes beholden to a Gentile who then orders him to tend swine. This is doubly sinful, being beholden to someone not from Israel, and then associating with swine, which were an abomination in first century Jewish culture.
• The younger son then “came to himself” and made plans to return to his father. In doing so, he followed the guidance of the prophets of Israel who spoke of repentance as returning.
• The father ran to meet his son returning. In ancient Palestine, it would have been unbecoming, undignified, for a grown man to run. The father publicly receives his younger son back, giving him a robe, a ring, and sandals, and killing the fatten calf. Meat was not a part of the daily diet, so this is a show of real lavishness.
• Verse 25 the story shifts to the elder son. When he heard the celebration and that his brother has returned; he refused to enter the house. This signifies the separation. Once again, the father left the house in search of a wayward son.
• The elder son never addressed his father as “father,” but the father began his response with “son,” thus cementing the familial relationship yet again.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In Luke 14:1, Jesus was going to eat with a leader of the Pharisees. Now, those leaders were grumbling because tax collectors and sinners were also coming to Jesus. “Sinners” would include both those who broke moral laws and those who did not keep the ritual purity the Pharisees kept, thus eating with such people would make one “unclean.”
• “Grumbling” or “murmuring” in v. 2 is dia-gongyzo in the Greek. The sound of the word suggests the meaning. It is related to the Hebrew word used in Exodus 16:7-12, when the Israelites murmured against Moses because they were in the wilderness without any food.
• This parable is often called “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Culpepper remarks that such title only focuses on half the story. He titles it “The Prodigal Son, the Waiting Father, and the Elder Brother.” How do the different titles change how you might read the parable?
• The siblings are introduced as “sons” rather than “brothers.” The focus being on their relationship to the father rather than their relationship to each other.
• By asking the father for his share of the inheritance, the younger son is treating his father as if he was already dead. It would be both disrespectful and irregular. It would also permanently cut him off from any further resources from his father. Inheritance laws essentially mean the father would be giving away everything by making this move, because what didn’t go to the younger son was then entitled to the older son.
• The younger son becomes beholden to a Gentile who then orders him to tend swine. This is doubly sinful, being beholden to someone not from Israel, and then associating with swine, which were an abomination in first century Jewish culture.
• The younger son then “came to himself” and made plans to return to his father. In doing so, he followed the guidance of the prophets of Israel who spoke of repentance as returning.
• The father ran to meet his son returning. In ancient Palestine, it would have been unbecoming, undignified, for a grown man to run. The father publicly receives his younger son back, giving him a robe, a ring, and sandals, and killing the fatten calf. Meat was not a part of the daily diet, so this is a show of real lavishness.
• Verse 25 the story shifts to the elder son. When he heard the celebration and that his brother has returned; he refused to enter the house. This signifies the separation. Once again, the father left the house in search of a wayward son.
• The elder son never addressed his father as “father,” but the father began his response with “son,” thus cementing the familial relationship yet again.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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