It’s Reformation Day! If you’re new to the Lutheran tradition, or even if you’re not, you may be wondering why everyone’s wearing red, why there are red streamers on the chairs for you to wave around, and what any of this means. So, quick history lesson. Every five-hundred years or so, the church, and by church I mean the whole church, like Christianity as a collective, undergoes a major shift. Two-thousand years ago, that shift was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Which is THE shift, the one that changed human history both before and after. From that, five-hundred years later we get the Great Fall, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the disintegration of the Imperial Church established under Emperor Constantine. Then, five-hundred years after that, the Great Schism, where the Eastern and Western churches split. Five hundred years later, on October 31st, 1517, is the shift we’re celebrating today, when a German monk named Martin Luther felt that the Church had moved away from its mission to proclaim the unconditional grace and love of God for all people, and started an effort to reform the Church. That movement led to what is known as the Great Reformation. I’m tempted to go into more detail on this, because I’m a nerd, but this is a sermon and I only have twelve to fifteen minutes, so I’m going to leave it as a flyover view, but please, ask me more later, because I love to talk history. But, one of the big ideas that Luther championed was that we can never obey God’s law enough to earn our salvation. Every one of us is a sinner, every one of us is broken. Yet, also, because of what Jesus did for us at the cross, we are, to quote Paul, “united with Christ in a death like his, [and] we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Meaning, because of God’s grace and forgiveness we are set free from the bonds of sin and death, we are set free from our brokenness, and are children of God, a part of God’s family, and therefore also saints. Ready for your fancy, churchy phrase for the week? The official theological term for this is simul justus et peccator, “simultaneously saint and sinner,” we are one-hundred percent of both, all of the time. Nadia Bolz Weber, a theologian I love so much I’ve got the council reading her book for the rest of the year, talks about how this is why Lutheran theology makes sense to her, because the idea that we are both saint and sinner is the best explanation she’s heard for her own experience of being alive in this world, of how she is simultaneously capable of doing horrible things, of hurting people, of overlooking the needs of others, of being selfish, and greedy, and mean, and, insert your vice here, I can certainly insert mine, and yet at the same time she is also capable of incredible goodness. Of loving people she didn’t think she could love, of caring for others, of putting others needs above her own.
Our Gospel reading for this morning has that idea of simul justus et peccator, simultaneously saint and sinner, buried right in it. But you have to have a better grasp of ancient Biblical languages then I do to catch it, so thank God for super smart people who publish commentaries. The reading tells us that the name of the blind man who was healed is “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.” Which if you read Hebrew is a bit of Department of Redundancy Department, because the prefix “bar” in Hebrew means “son.” So in Hebrew, verse forty-six names this man, “Son of Timeaus, Son of Timaeus.” But Mark wasn’t written in Hebrew, though much of his Jewish audience would have spoken it, it was written in Greek. And Timaeus sounds a lot like the Greek word timaios, which means “highly prized.” So we’ve got Greek, we’ve got Hebrew, but there was a third language that was commonly spoke in first century Palestine, Aramaic. And Timaeus also sounds like the Aramaic word tame which means “unclean.” So we’ve got some wordplay here, Bartimaeus echoes both “unclean” and “highly prized.” Both, given the theology of the time, sinner and saint. It’s important also to remember that Mark very rarely named the person Jesus was healing in the Gospel. So that Mark chose name Bartimaeus means we are meant to pick up on the double meaning.
So Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho, about twenty miles outside of Jerusalem and, more importantly, their last stop before Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when they came across Bartimaeus, a blind beggar sitting along the side of the road. And Bartimaeus may have been blind, but he was not mute. Because immediately, “when he heard that it was Jesus he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.’” “Have mercy on me.” What a different request Bartimaeus had for Jesus then James and John from last week, “grant us to sit… in your glory,” or the rich man from three weeks ago, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Bartimaeus asked for mercy and to be able to see. And Jesus granted Bartimaeus’s request. Again, just as Jesus had with the rich man, whose question he answered, and with James and John, who he assured would drink the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism. Yet look at the difference in the responses. The rich man went away grieving, for he didn’t think he could live up to what Jesus was asking. James and John didn’t understand what they’d asked for; though history tells us they did live up to it. But Bartimaeus, when he was told, “Go, your faith has made you well,” did the opposite. Instead of going, he followed; he joined the thrones who lined the roads into Jerusalem, waving branches and shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
There’s another piece that asks us to read this story as the corollary to last week’s James and John story, and it’s the question Jesus posed. To both James and John and to Bartimaeus, Jesus asked, “what do you want me to do for you?” I read these two stories as both hope and challenge. Hope because, yet again the disciples are giving us the example of what not to do. Don’t follow Jesus as a way to fame and fortune, because that’s not where this train was headed, at least, not as the world defined it. But for all the disciples got it wrong, over and over and over again, Jesus kept them around, he loved them, he forgave them, he encouraged them, and eventually James and John got there, it just took them a while. In Mark’s Gospel the disciples function as this constant reminder to the reader that if the disciples missed the boat that many times while literally walking behind Jesus, certainly Jesus isn’t giving up on you either. And while the disciples are hope, we can’t misunderstand as badly as they did, Bartimaeus is challenge. Because Bartimaeus exemplifies the right response, the request for mercy, the courage to jump to Jesus’ invitation, the risk to ask for what was needed, and then ignoring the offer to go, choosing instead to follow.
To recap, every five-hundred years or so the church goes through a major shift, a shift so cataclysmic that those in the midst of it are led to wonder if the church will even survive. And if you were following along with my history lesson you might have caught that I said that the shift we’re celebrating today happened five-hundred and one years ago. Which means friends, we are yet again in the middle of just such a shift. If things feel unsteady right now, that fits the pattern. The Great Fall, The Great Schism, The Great Reformation, and theologian Phyllis Tickle named this time in our history as well, the Great Emergence. From each of those shifts the church emerged not as it had been before, but different, remade, renewed. We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what church is going to look like when we get to the other side of this. But on Reformation we remember, and we celebrate, that Luther really didn’t know either, but he had the courage to risk reformation anyway. He captured this in one of his evening prayers, where he wrote, “O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” For me, this prayer captures the heart of the Reformation, and the heart of our work as people still being reformed, to step out with courage, on paths we don’t know, trusting that God is guiding us. At times in my life where I have felt lost, that prayer and another one by Thomas Merton that literally starts, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going…” are the words that have given me comfort and the courage to go forward, even as I did not know where the path might lead.
So it’s Reformation Sunday, but it’s also Consecration Sunday, the Sunday when we set aside time to make financial pledges, to take the time to think about, and write down, how much we are financially going to be able to give to the work of God through the church this year. I love that the last few years these two Sundays have overlapped, because I think there are few examples of stepping forward in courage, few actions more requiring of uncertain risk, then making a financial pledge for an entire year. Because a year is a super long time. And we have no idea what that year might bring. You might make a pledge you intend to keep, and then something changes in your life and you are unable to meet the amount you wrote down. Or, in reverse, you might walk out the door today and discover you won the however many billion dollar Powerball and your pledge is suddenly incredibly low-balled. Which, by the way, if you win the Powerball, I’m not asking for a full ten-percent, but I’d love enough to buy and maintain Triangle in perpetuity. Just throwing that out there… I’ll also add that when you see the card, you’ll notice there’s a sentence at the bottom reminding you that this is an estimate of your intended giving, and you are free to raise or lower it at any time. I’m not asking you to sign a binding contract; I’m never even going to see your pledge card. This is between you and God. I’m asking you to write something down because we humans are physical beings; the physical action of writing things down is important and meaningful. But point is we have this card and we really have no idea what the year ahead might hold. Yet every year we do this anyway, as an experience at stepping out in faith, at risking something for the sake of God’s work in this place, and in gratitude for all that we have received. No, my two-hundred and thirty-one dollars a pay period is not a reformation. Unlike Luther, the world is not shifting on its axis because I’m turning a card in. At least, I don’t think it is. But Luther didn’t know he was shifting the world when he asked the questions of the Ninety Five These. And, he alone didn’t shift the world anyway, he started it and then the Holy Spirit took Luther’s action, and crazy and wonderful things followed.
So, dear friends, dear people of God. Let’s be bold. Let’s be bold as individuals, but let’s be bold as a congregation, as the church of God in this place. Because stewardship doesn’t end with putting these cards in the basket, it is then up to us to put our gathered giving into action, to move these pledges from this basket, from these doors, and out into the world. Bartimaeus didn’t stop when he received healing; he followed Jesus to Jerusalem and saw the world made new. And making this promise to give of our money, while maybe the hard part, is really not the best part, the best part is when the Holy Spirit puts these pledges at work to shift the axis of the world in a million large and small ways. Because guess what friends, that is already happening. I wish you could be a fly on the wall for one day of what I get to do in this place, what your diligent support of this congregation year after year, has allowed me to be a part of. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop me in the hall to ask for prayer, share a story, or tell me of how God is at work in their lives because you have made this space possible. The Reformation has started dear people, let’s follow the leading of our brother Bartimaeus, both unclean and highly beloved, and step forward in courage. Because Jesus is going ahead of us, and all history tells us is whatever is coming next is better than we could ever imagine. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, October 29, 2018
Monday, October 22, 2018
We don't know, but Jesus does: A Sermon on Mark 10:35-45
I heard the Bishop preach on this text on Wednesday, and he said that based on this text the mission statement for all of our churches could be as follows: “[blank] Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus.” Since we’ve been doing a lot of work around our vision statement and core values recently, his comment really stuck with me. And here let me insert an explanatory fact about the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement. Per the consulting firm Bain and Company, “A Mission Statement defines the company's business, its objectives and its approach to reach those objectives. [Whereas] a Vision Statement describes the desired future position of the company.” Basically, a vision statement is who we want to be, a mission statement is who we are as we get there. So, given that definition, if at the November fourth special meeting we adopt as our vision statement, that the thing we want to be, is “a gathering of God’s people, anchored in the Post neighborhood, reflecting God’s freeing power to our congregation, our neighborhood, and our community,” what would it mean if our mission statement, who we are as we get there is “Trinity Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus”?
In our Gospel reading for this morning James and John, whose mission statement was quite literally “on the road, to the cross, following Jesus,” verse thirty-two reads “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead on them,” clearly had a sense of the vision they thought this mission statement was out to accomplish. For James and John, the vision statement of their journey could probably be summer up as, “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.” And, let’s face it, they weren’t wrong. That was the exact vision for which the trip was headed. And they got this vision from Jesus himself. It was just a couple of months ago in Mark eight that we heard Jesus talk about “when [the Son of Man] comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Immediately before today’s reading, in verse thirty-three, Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem…” The disciples knew the Old Testament prophesies, about how a leader would emerge from the line of David who would restore the kingdom of Israel. Certainly, just a few short verses before the Passion narrative starts, they surely felt the gathering tension around Jesus. It’s easy to see how they came to catch the vision of “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.”
Of course, then Jesus told them how “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death… and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” The disciples again had clearly completely missed that part about what the vision statement “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory” was going to mean.
So James and John asked him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Jesus had to know where such a request would be headed; these two had not earned the nickname “Sons of Thunder” for nothing. These were the men who when Jesus came calling, immediately left their father sitting alone in his boat with his nets to follow, the Zebedee brothers were not known for carefully weighing pros and cons. They were all in, one-hundred percent, all the time. Yet Jesus’ response to this brazen request was amazingly calm. OK, “what is it you want me to do for you?” Given the opening, James and John dove right in, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” If I was Jesus, the response would have been an immediate face palm. Come on guys, Jesus just finished telling you he was going to suffer and die in Jerusalem, and the response you had was, OK, but when everybody’s worshiping you, let me be right up there with you.
But Jesus is not me, and Jesus kept his cool, “you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized?” This question may sound weird to us, but it would have been a familiar idiom for the disciples. “Cup” in the Old Testament was a common metaphor for suffering. And the linked baptism reference calls to mind all the imagery in the Psalms of sufferers being overwhelmed by water. So James and John had to have known Jesus was asking them if they were prepared to suffer. But they bowled right on through, “We are able.”
But here’s the incredible thing about that statement. As arrogant and misguided and big-headed as it was, as much as James and John had absolutely no idea what they were saying, it was also true. Not in the way they meant it certainly, but it was still true. James and John would both face the kind of suffering Jesus faced, they would both “drink the cup” of persecution, they would both be baptized into Christ’s death. Acts chapter twelve tells us that “James, the brother of John,” was killed by King Herod. We don’t know how John eventually died, but at least twice he ended up in prison with Peter so one can assume his life after Jesus’ resurrection also didn’t involve being worshiped and adored in the way he seemed to have envisioned when he and his brother asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left in his glory.
So yes, John and James had no idea what they were saying when they brashly told Jesus, “we are able” to suffer as he would, but also yes they were correct, they could and they would. They didn’t know what was ahead of them on that day on the road to Jerusalem, but by the time of Acts, James and John certainly knew the stakes of continuing to proclaim the good news of Jesus, and proclaim they would, all the way to the end.
And Jesus, before all of this, before the true nature of his glory was revealed, back on the road to Jerusalem, with John and James following him to the cross, knew that they were in fact able, and honored that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” Jesus knew James and John better then they knew themselves, he knew their future, he knew the great things they were capable of, the great things they would do. He knew their faith, their trust, their devotion, even though they did not know it themselves, though they did not know what they were asking. This cup that I drink, you will drink. You are more than you know.
To bring this around full circle, on November fourth we will have the opportunity as a congregation to vote on adopting our new vision statement and core values. And I admit a level of bias here, I helped write the vision statement, but I think it is a very good one. “Trinity Lutheran Church is a gathering place of God’s people, anchored in the Post neighborhood, reflecting God’s freeing power to our congregation, our neighborhood, and the wider community.” Given the earlier definition of a vision statement as a statement about who we want to be, a congregation anchored, and anchoring a neighborhood that really needs to know it is loved, reflecting the power of God to each other, to the neighborhood, and to the world, is a pretty great aspiration. I think it is the sort of vision of how we might be a part of spreading the Kingdom of God that is what we as church are called to. And while it is impossible to know what is ahead of us, your history of presence in this community, from your founding as a neighborhood church until now, seems to assert that it is a vision that we are capable of reaching. But the example of James and John is a caution, just because we are able, and just because it is the right vision, does not mean that we know the form the vision will take. We may feel we are called to be a gathering of God’s people, to be anchored in the Post neighborhood, and to reflect God’s freeing power, and that may well be true, but there are a million different forms that vision could take. Just like James and John were able to drink the cup Jesus drank, were able to be baptized in his baptism, and yet still had no idea the road that would take them. And the good news in all of this is, while James and John did not know the form of the vision, they still had the mission, who they would be as they went there. The mission to be “on the road, going up to Jerusalem, [to the cross], and Jesus was walking ahead of them.” And so, as we live out the vision to which we feel called, maybe the bishop’s suggested mission statement is a good one for us as well. “Trinity Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
In our Gospel reading for this morning James and John, whose mission statement was quite literally “on the road, to the cross, following Jesus,” verse thirty-two reads “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead on them,” clearly had a sense of the vision they thought this mission statement was out to accomplish. For James and John, the vision statement of their journey could probably be summer up as, “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.” And, let’s face it, they weren’t wrong. That was the exact vision for which the trip was headed. And they got this vision from Jesus himself. It was just a couple of months ago in Mark eight that we heard Jesus talk about “when [the Son of Man] comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Immediately before today’s reading, in verse thirty-three, Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem…” The disciples knew the Old Testament prophesies, about how a leader would emerge from the line of David who would restore the kingdom of Israel. Certainly, just a few short verses before the Passion narrative starts, they surely felt the gathering tension around Jesus. It’s easy to see how they came to catch the vision of “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.”
Of course, then Jesus told them how “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death… and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” The disciples again had clearly completely missed that part about what the vision statement “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory” was going to mean.
So James and John asked him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Jesus had to know where such a request would be headed; these two had not earned the nickname “Sons of Thunder” for nothing. These were the men who when Jesus came calling, immediately left their father sitting alone in his boat with his nets to follow, the Zebedee brothers were not known for carefully weighing pros and cons. They were all in, one-hundred percent, all the time. Yet Jesus’ response to this brazen request was amazingly calm. OK, “what is it you want me to do for you?” Given the opening, James and John dove right in, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” If I was Jesus, the response would have been an immediate face palm. Come on guys, Jesus just finished telling you he was going to suffer and die in Jerusalem, and the response you had was, OK, but when everybody’s worshiping you, let me be right up there with you.
But Jesus is not me, and Jesus kept his cool, “you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized?” This question may sound weird to us, but it would have been a familiar idiom for the disciples. “Cup” in the Old Testament was a common metaphor for suffering. And the linked baptism reference calls to mind all the imagery in the Psalms of sufferers being overwhelmed by water. So James and John had to have known Jesus was asking them if they were prepared to suffer. But they bowled right on through, “We are able.”
But here’s the incredible thing about that statement. As arrogant and misguided and big-headed as it was, as much as James and John had absolutely no idea what they were saying, it was also true. Not in the way they meant it certainly, but it was still true. James and John would both face the kind of suffering Jesus faced, they would both “drink the cup” of persecution, they would both be baptized into Christ’s death. Acts chapter twelve tells us that “James, the brother of John,” was killed by King Herod. We don’t know how John eventually died, but at least twice he ended up in prison with Peter so one can assume his life after Jesus’ resurrection also didn’t involve being worshiped and adored in the way he seemed to have envisioned when he and his brother asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left in his glory.
So yes, John and James had no idea what they were saying when they brashly told Jesus, “we are able” to suffer as he would, but also yes they were correct, they could and they would. They didn’t know what was ahead of them on that day on the road to Jerusalem, but by the time of Acts, James and John certainly knew the stakes of continuing to proclaim the good news of Jesus, and proclaim they would, all the way to the end.
And Jesus, before all of this, before the true nature of his glory was revealed, back on the road to Jerusalem, with John and James following him to the cross, knew that they were in fact able, and honored that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” Jesus knew James and John better then they knew themselves, he knew their future, he knew the great things they were capable of, the great things they would do. He knew their faith, their trust, their devotion, even though they did not know it themselves, though they did not know what they were asking. This cup that I drink, you will drink. You are more than you know.
To bring this around full circle, on November fourth we will have the opportunity as a congregation to vote on adopting our new vision statement and core values. And I admit a level of bias here, I helped write the vision statement, but I think it is a very good one. “Trinity Lutheran Church is a gathering place of God’s people, anchored in the Post neighborhood, reflecting God’s freeing power to our congregation, our neighborhood, and the wider community.” Given the earlier definition of a vision statement as a statement about who we want to be, a congregation anchored, and anchoring a neighborhood that really needs to know it is loved, reflecting the power of God to each other, to the neighborhood, and to the world, is a pretty great aspiration. I think it is the sort of vision of how we might be a part of spreading the Kingdom of God that is what we as church are called to. And while it is impossible to know what is ahead of us, your history of presence in this community, from your founding as a neighborhood church until now, seems to assert that it is a vision that we are capable of reaching. But the example of James and John is a caution, just because we are able, and just because it is the right vision, does not mean that we know the form the vision will take. We may feel we are called to be a gathering of God’s people, to be anchored in the Post neighborhood, and to reflect God’s freeing power, and that may well be true, but there are a million different forms that vision could take. Just like James and John were able to drink the cup Jesus drank, were able to be baptized in his baptism, and yet still had no idea the road that would take them. And the good news in all of this is, while James and John did not know the form of the vision, they still had the mission, who they would be as they went there. The mission to be “on the road, going up to Jerusalem, [to the cross], and Jesus was walking ahead of them.” And so, as we live out the vision to which we feel called, maybe the bishop’s suggested mission statement is a good one for us as well. “Trinity Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, October 15, 2018
Toast is Freedom: A Sermon on Mark 10:17-31
I want to start off by laying out my own baggage with this text. From the time I left for college at eighteen, until I moved to Michigan at age thirty, I changed residences at least once, sometimes two or three times, every year. The result of all that moving was for twelve years of my life, everything I owned could be, and regularly was, condensed to a single car-load. Toward the end of this period, after I graduated from seminary, while waiting for a call from the synod about whether any churches might want to interview me to be their pastor, my cousin got reflective about this transient period of my life. “It must be such a freeing feeling,” she remarked, “to have everything you own fit in your car, knowing you could just up and go anywhere in the world you wanted at a minute’s notice.” I, unemployed and with no job prospects, mired in student debt, having just moved back in with my parents while all my friends were buying houses and starting families, wasn’t in the mood for reflection. “No,” I quipped back. “You know what’s a freeing feeling? Owning more than one towel. Being able to commit to a toaster without having to worry if it will fit in the next move. Toast whenever you want it is what freedom feels like.”
All this to say, this is not going to be a sermon in which I encourage you to sell everything you own and set yourself free from worldly possessions. I have spent enough of my life in transition to know that owning nothing is not in and of itself the pathway to freedom. I now own seven towels, and I’m legitimately grateful for and appreciative of every one of them.
The other reason this is not going to be a sermon about the virtue of selling everything you own is the risk of glorifying poverty. Because here’s another thing, I have never been poor. Yes, for twelve years I owned next to nothing, but I have never been poor. I come from a background of relative generational wealth and I knew at any time I had an escape route. I could move back in with my parents, I could put my multiple degrees and robust resume to work at any number of white-collar professions, I could settle down and buy a toaster. The transient life-style I lived for twelve years was my choice, and my choice alone. And to make the choice to live without a virtue is to diminish the struggle of those for whom going without is not a choice but the result of unjust systems.
This passage places us in the same struggle as the one two weeks ago about cutting off one’s hand, where we need to resist the temptation to reduce Jesus’ hyperbolic teaching style to the realm of metaphor. Because as we saw two weeks ago with the cutting off of hands, the more hyperbolic Jesus seemed to be, the more serious the teaching. And Jesus was definitely talking about wealth in this passage, about the damages and dangers of money and possessions. Money, by the way, is one of the most frequently mentioned topics in Jesus’ teachings. Jesus talked about money more often than he talked about the law, or forgiveness, or heaven and hell combined. In fact, money is second only to the Kingdom of God in how often Jesus spoke of it. Money, possessions, and the role they play in our lives is hugely important, and it was hugely important to Jesus. As Jesus is quoted as saying in both Matthew and Luke, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and money.” So while this passage is neither a glorification of poverty nor an obligation to sell everything we have and embrace a life of austerity, it is absolutely a calling to us to take a careful look at ourselves, our lives, our wealth, and our possessions, to see what outsized role those things may be playing, how they may, like the rich man, be keeping us from recognizing what we truly lack. For twelve years, and still today, all too often the things that I thought I lacked kept me from seeing what I still had and what I still had to give. Because though I owned next to nothing and my back account regularly hovered around zero, I was never truly poor and I was never without the power that comes with being white, middle-class, and well-educated. I always had something I could give.
The other thing I learned, and am learning, is that just because someone else has less then me, does not mean I should not ask them also to think of what they have, and what they can give. Because giving of yourself, being able to contribute, that too is a gift and a privilege. And it is unfair for me to decide who is worthy of that privilege, to decide someone has less than me so I get to give my things to them, because then I get the reward of feeling good about how generous I am, and they get the obligation of being grateful for my generosity. And we both lose. I lose the opportunity to receive; they lose the power of being the one who gives.
Fall is stewardship time at Trinity, and it is also annual budget time. And while we talk about how the two are separate, how we are giving not to the budget but to our mission, and how our budget is not based on pledged giving but on a sense of God’s call, and that is true, the two seasons do overlap, and both the receipt of each individual’s estimate of financial giving to the congregation and our congregational budget are about stewardship and about addressing the question that Jesus gave to the rich man, the question of what we lack, and what we are willing and able to give.
The individual financial giving part is the easier one actually, because what we are willing and able to contribute of our own wealth is a question only each of us can answer for ourselves. I can tell you, and I will, how much that amount is for me and how I make that decision. I learned 10-10-80 as a general rule somewhere, 10 percent saved, 10 percent given away, 80 percent lived on, and that makes the math super simple. So when my paycheck comes, I move the decimal place over one, round up because I like round numbers, and done. Actually, 10-10-80 means I don’t even actually do the math, I just see how much money Bob withholds for my retirement contribution and write a check for the same amount. I guess one of those numbers is post-tax and the other pre-tax, but I’m clergy, which means my taxes are calculated by a formula only the IRS understands anyway, so I don’t get all that worked up about net vs. gross, or whatever. I go with what makes the math simple.
So that’s how I figure it out. Of course, the caveat on that is I have no dependents, my expenses are low, and I paid off my student loans while I was working under the much higher cost-of-living based salary guidelines of the Southwest California synod, so 10-10-80 is a rule that works for me. It may not work for you. Maybe you are not at a financial place where you can set aside 10 percent of your income, or maybe you’re at a place where you can set aside more. Our Muslim brothers and sisters have a different system entirely. Rather than a tithe, or ten percent of their income, they practice zakat, which means they figure out their total net wealth overall and then give two point five percent of that. The idea being if someone is living paycheck to paycheck, they may not be able to set aside a percentage of income, as that is the money they’re living on. But someone could give of their wealth, that which has moved from subsistence to sustainability. There are pros and cons to each system of course, but our Muslim siblings method may actually be more sacrificial for those of us who have accumulated generational wealth.
I offer all this as food for thought as you think about what your estimate of giving will be, when we collect estimate of giving cards during worship on the twenty-eighth. But as I mentioned, fall is also budget time, and deciding how we manage those our congregational resources is probably harder, because more of us are involved in, and affected by, the outcome. Basically, the stakes seem higher. I can more or less calculate my own income and expenses, and what I can reasonably give. I’m certainly apt to lean more on the side of caution than I probably should, one can always be more generous, but it’s still an individual decision. With the church budget, I get more antsy. Because that’s not an individual decision, and the ramifications are larger. If our money is mismanaged, either intentionally or unintentionally, and we cannot sustain ourselves, it is not just my income that suffers; it is all of us, this neighborhood, and everyone who’s given money to support our mission and ministry. I want us to be here because this is my job and I like being paid, yes. If I stop feeding him, Cat might decide to just eat me. I also want us to be here for you all, because I love watching us as a congregation grow in our faith, I love worshiping with you each week, I love visiting with you, learning from you, working with you, I love being your pastor. And I want us to be here for the people who are in and out of this building all week, who have never, and may never come here on Sunday, but who also call me pastor, and who are also a part of our faith community. What we do here is about us, but it’s also bigger than us. It drives me absolutely crazy that yet again it’s budget time and I don’t know how we’re going to make the numbers work. That you all are generous and frugal and creative, and yet we still haven’t figured out how to crack the code of the difference between your generosity and our neighborhood’s need. I don’t know what the budget numbers are going to look like, but I know that we will be looking at what we can cut. I’m tired, and I’ve only been doing it for four years, some of you have been doing it for forty.
But here’s what I do know. Jesus told the rich man to sell what he had because he lacked on thing, because he loved him. Verse twenty-one, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” And here’s something you probably didn’t know, the rich man in this story is the only person in the whole Gospel of Mark that Jesus is said to have loved. Jesus talked about love, but this is the one and only person whom Jesus specifically looked at, and loved. The command of Jesus to sell what he owned so that he could get what he lacked came not from a place of obligation, but from a place of love. This was Jesus trying to fill a need the man didn’t even know he had, a need that couldn’t be met by wealth, couldn’t be met by keeping the law, couldn’t be kept by discipline or observance or belief, but could only be met by Jesus. And the man couldn’t do it, and he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. At least, he went away grieving in the story, but here’s the wonderful open-endedness of Mark, we don’t know what happened after that. What we know is what Jesus then told his disciples, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
So here’s the thing friends. It’s budget time again, and I can already tell you, the numbers don’t work. But the fact of our continued existence is proof that if God wants us here, the numbers don’t really matter. If you all had turned in the towel every time the numbers didn’t work, I wouldn’t be here. Pastor Herdman wouldn’t even be here. There was a time in the 1940s when you were down to six; your roughest time as a congregation predates both of us. So in two weeks, when you’re writing a number on that pledge card, I’m going to reiterate what you’ve been saying for years, we are not giving to fulfill the budget. We may lack something, but that thing is not money. No, we don’t have much money, but the story of the rich man assures us that the only thing we can lack is a thing only God can give, and God has given and is giving it to us in abundance, the sustaining presence of the Spirit in this place. We will be here until God decides our work here is done, and then we won’t be. The Bishop keeps assuring me the church needs us here, so as long as we are needed, I guess this is where we’ll be.
So it’s stewardship time, and I invite you to give, and to give generously. Not because the church needs your money, but so that you may experience the grace that comes from being a part of something that is bigger then all of us, the work of God in this place. And also, please don’t give me a toaster. I got one for Christmas a few years ago, and I love it. Thanks be to God for all the many gifts we receive, and also for toasters, because sometimes freedom really is as simple as a delicious piece of toast. Amen.
All this to say, this is not going to be a sermon in which I encourage you to sell everything you own and set yourself free from worldly possessions. I have spent enough of my life in transition to know that owning nothing is not in and of itself the pathway to freedom. I now own seven towels, and I’m legitimately grateful for and appreciative of every one of them.
The other reason this is not going to be a sermon about the virtue of selling everything you own is the risk of glorifying poverty. Because here’s another thing, I have never been poor. Yes, for twelve years I owned next to nothing, but I have never been poor. I come from a background of relative generational wealth and I knew at any time I had an escape route. I could move back in with my parents, I could put my multiple degrees and robust resume to work at any number of white-collar professions, I could settle down and buy a toaster. The transient life-style I lived for twelve years was my choice, and my choice alone. And to make the choice to live without a virtue is to diminish the struggle of those for whom going without is not a choice but the result of unjust systems.
This passage places us in the same struggle as the one two weeks ago about cutting off one’s hand, where we need to resist the temptation to reduce Jesus’ hyperbolic teaching style to the realm of metaphor. Because as we saw two weeks ago with the cutting off of hands, the more hyperbolic Jesus seemed to be, the more serious the teaching. And Jesus was definitely talking about wealth in this passage, about the damages and dangers of money and possessions. Money, by the way, is one of the most frequently mentioned topics in Jesus’ teachings. Jesus talked about money more often than he talked about the law, or forgiveness, or heaven and hell combined. In fact, money is second only to the Kingdom of God in how often Jesus spoke of it. Money, possessions, and the role they play in our lives is hugely important, and it was hugely important to Jesus. As Jesus is quoted as saying in both Matthew and Luke, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and money.” So while this passage is neither a glorification of poverty nor an obligation to sell everything we have and embrace a life of austerity, it is absolutely a calling to us to take a careful look at ourselves, our lives, our wealth, and our possessions, to see what outsized role those things may be playing, how they may, like the rich man, be keeping us from recognizing what we truly lack. For twelve years, and still today, all too often the things that I thought I lacked kept me from seeing what I still had and what I still had to give. Because though I owned next to nothing and my back account regularly hovered around zero, I was never truly poor and I was never without the power that comes with being white, middle-class, and well-educated. I always had something I could give.
The other thing I learned, and am learning, is that just because someone else has less then me, does not mean I should not ask them also to think of what they have, and what they can give. Because giving of yourself, being able to contribute, that too is a gift and a privilege. And it is unfair for me to decide who is worthy of that privilege, to decide someone has less than me so I get to give my things to them, because then I get the reward of feeling good about how generous I am, and they get the obligation of being grateful for my generosity. And we both lose. I lose the opportunity to receive; they lose the power of being the one who gives.
Fall is stewardship time at Trinity, and it is also annual budget time. And while we talk about how the two are separate, how we are giving not to the budget but to our mission, and how our budget is not based on pledged giving but on a sense of God’s call, and that is true, the two seasons do overlap, and both the receipt of each individual’s estimate of financial giving to the congregation and our congregational budget are about stewardship and about addressing the question that Jesus gave to the rich man, the question of what we lack, and what we are willing and able to give.
The individual financial giving part is the easier one actually, because what we are willing and able to contribute of our own wealth is a question only each of us can answer for ourselves. I can tell you, and I will, how much that amount is for me and how I make that decision. I learned 10-10-80 as a general rule somewhere, 10 percent saved, 10 percent given away, 80 percent lived on, and that makes the math super simple. So when my paycheck comes, I move the decimal place over one, round up because I like round numbers, and done. Actually, 10-10-80 means I don’t even actually do the math, I just see how much money Bob withholds for my retirement contribution and write a check for the same amount. I guess one of those numbers is post-tax and the other pre-tax, but I’m clergy, which means my taxes are calculated by a formula only the IRS understands anyway, so I don’t get all that worked up about net vs. gross, or whatever. I go with what makes the math simple.
So that’s how I figure it out. Of course, the caveat on that is I have no dependents, my expenses are low, and I paid off my student loans while I was working under the much higher cost-of-living based salary guidelines of the Southwest California synod, so 10-10-80 is a rule that works for me. It may not work for you. Maybe you are not at a financial place where you can set aside 10 percent of your income, or maybe you’re at a place where you can set aside more. Our Muslim brothers and sisters have a different system entirely. Rather than a tithe, or ten percent of their income, they practice zakat, which means they figure out their total net wealth overall and then give two point five percent of that. The idea being if someone is living paycheck to paycheck, they may not be able to set aside a percentage of income, as that is the money they’re living on. But someone could give of their wealth, that which has moved from subsistence to sustainability. There are pros and cons to each system of course, but our Muslim siblings method may actually be more sacrificial for those of us who have accumulated generational wealth.
I offer all this as food for thought as you think about what your estimate of giving will be, when we collect estimate of giving cards during worship on the twenty-eighth. But as I mentioned, fall is also budget time, and deciding how we manage those our congregational resources is probably harder, because more of us are involved in, and affected by, the outcome. Basically, the stakes seem higher. I can more or less calculate my own income and expenses, and what I can reasonably give. I’m certainly apt to lean more on the side of caution than I probably should, one can always be more generous, but it’s still an individual decision. With the church budget, I get more antsy. Because that’s not an individual decision, and the ramifications are larger. If our money is mismanaged, either intentionally or unintentionally, and we cannot sustain ourselves, it is not just my income that suffers; it is all of us, this neighborhood, and everyone who’s given money to support our mission and ministry. I want us to be here because this is my job and I like being paid, yes. If I stop feeding him, Cat might decide to just eat me. I also want us to be here for you all, because I love watching us as a congregation grow in our faith, I love worshiping with you each week, I love visiting with you, learning from you, working with you, I love being your pastor. And I want us to be here for the people who are in and out of this building all week, who have never, and may never come here on Sunday, but who also call me pastor, and who are also a part of our faith community. What we do here is about us, but it’s also bigger than us. It drives me absolutely crazy that yet again it’s budget time and I don’t know how we’re going to make the numbers work. That you all are generous and frugal and creative, and yet we still haven’t figured out how to crack the code of the difference between your generosity and our neighborhood’s need. I don’t know what the budget numbers are going to look like, but I know that we will be looking at what we can cut. I’m tired, and I’ve only been doing it for four years, some of you have been doing it for forty.
But here’s what I do know. Jesus told the rich man to sell what he had because he lacked on thing, because he loved him. Verse twenty-one, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” And here’s something you probably didn’t know, the rich man in this story is the only person in the whole Gospel of Mark that Jesus is said to have loved. Jesus talked about love, but this is the one and only person whom Jesus specifically looked at, and loved. The command of Jesus to sell what he owned so that he could get what he lacked came not from a place of obligation, but from a place of love. This was Jesus trying to fill a need the man didn’t even know he had, a need that couldn’t be met by wealth, couldn’t be met by keeping the law, couldn’t be kept by discipline or observance or belief, but could only be met by Jesus. And the man couldn’t do it, and he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. At least, he went away grieving in the story, but here’s the wonderful open-endedness of Mark, we don’t know what happened after that. What we know is what Jesus then told his disciples, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
So here’s the thing friends. It’s budget time again, and I can already tell you, the numbers don’t work. But the fact of our continued existence is proof that if God wants us here, the numbers don’t really matter. If you all had turned in the towel every time the numbers didn’t work, I wouldn’t be here. Pastor Herdman wouldn’t even be here. There was a time in the 1940s when you were down to six; your roughest time as a congregation predates both of us. So in two weeks, when you’re writing a number on that pledge card, I’m going to reiterate what you’ve been saying for years, we are not giving to fulfill the budget. We may lack something, but that thing is not money. No, we don’t have much money, but the story of the rich man assures us that the only thing we can lack is a thing only God can give, and God has given and is giving it to us in abundance, the sustaining presence of the Spirit in this place. We will be here until God decides our work here is done, and then we won’t be. The Bishop keeps assuring me the church needs us here, so as long as we are needed, I guess this is where we’ll be.
So it’s stewardship time, and I invite you to give, and to give generously. Not because the church needs your money, but so that you may experience the grace that comes from being a part of something that is bigger then all of us, the work of God in this place. And also, please don’t give me a toaster. I got one for Christmas a few years ago, and I love it. Thanks be to God for all the many gifts we receive, and also for toasters, because sometimes freedom really is as simple as a delicious piece of toast. Amen.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Dirt Parts: A Sermon on Mark 10:2-16 and Genesis 2:18-24
There are certain texts that feel unethical as a pastor to read in worship and then not address them in the sermon. The brilliant and wonderful souls of the lectionary committee gave us two such texts this morning. Of course the Mark text about divorce is, well, loaded. And then the Genesis reading also brings along its own fun history of misuse and abuse. So hang in there friends, because we’re going right in this morning.
First let’s talk about what the Pharisees were really up to in asking Jesus about divorce. The lectionary left off the first verse, which told us Jesus left Capernaum where he’d been last week and traveled “to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” I don’t expect you to remember, because we read it way back in December and January, what else took place in “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” Mark chapter one, verse four, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness… And people from the whole Judean countryside… were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan.” That’s where we are this morning, in John the Baptist’s territory. But John isn’t in the Judean countryside anymore, and this was only a few months ago, so maybe you remember why John isn’t there, what happened to John. Mark chapter six, John was arrested, and beheaded, by Herod for calling Herod out for divorcing his wife in order to marry his brother’s wife. A move which, knowing what we know about the Herodian clan in general, certainly was not about love and certainly was about power and political maneuverings. The Pharisees didn’t ask Jesus this question because they wanted him to enlighten them on what the law says about marriage, they asked him because they were hoping Jesus would back himself into the same trap that John the Baptist ended up in, and Herod would go ahead and remove Jesus from the scene for them before Jesus could threaten their status any further.
This is interesting, sure, but still doesn’t get to the heart of why this text can be so painful and why this text has so often been misused, what Jesus actually said about divorce. One approach preachers, myself included, often take with this text, is to place it in its proper historical context. Because the experience of being married in the time of Moses, and even in the first century, was vastly different then the experience of being married today. Today’s definition of marriage is a legal agreement between two consenting adults. First century marriage was a legal bill of sale between a man and the father of his soon-to-be wife. The woman was literally sold from one home to another. And this “certificate of divorce,” the Pharisees referenced. Such a certificate could legally be issued if a man found “something objectionable” about his wife. “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or the husband simply becoming bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to a man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone.
Let’s also notice the players in the conversation. The instigators of this conversation were Pharisees, who were men, powerful men at that, and they were talking to Jesus about what the law says about whether a man can divorce his wife. The question at hand here isn’t, what do I do about this relationship that has become unhealthy. The question is: can I sell my property when I don’t want it anymore. So between the locational allusions to John the Baptist, and thus Herod, the social status of women at the time, and the male Pharisees own social status, this text is clearly power, who has it, and who wants to keep it.
But as interesting a historical lesson as all that is, I still don’t think it really deals with the pain and suffering centuries of poor interpretation of this text has left us with. I also don’t think unpacking this text in its proper historical context is all that hopeful. And believe it or not, I think Jesus is offering us a lot of hope in this challenging teaching about divorce. I found that hope in a pretty unexpected place this week. Remember at the beginning of the sermon I said there are two texts this week that make me feel an ethical responsibility to address if they are read? I found the hope for this text in diving into the other text. So let’s go there now.
Genesis two, verses eighteen to twenty-four also has a rich history of being used to justify abuse and oppression. Often the target of that abuse is women but not exclusively; LGBTQ people of all gender identities and expressions have certainly also had this text read against them. But what’s really going on here?
Verse eighteen starts right off, “The the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” That it is “not good” is immediately a problem, as again and again in chapter one God made creation and called that creation good. So if something is “not good,” then the work of that part of creation is clearly not complete yet. And we see God in verse nineteen immediately, and many commentaries added, rather humorously, go to work trying to come up with a solution to the problem of man’s aloneness.
One complicating factor in understanding this problem is the word “man.” Because man is a gendered word, it’s very definition requires it to be different from something else, from woman. But the Hebrew word here is adam, which is an abbreviation of another Hebrew word, adamah, which means ground or earth. The word that in Hebrew ends up meaning human male, thus translating man, quite literally translates “dirt part.” As in, not the whole ground, but a thing formed out of part of the ground. Adam doesn’t become a name until the end of chapter four. And even then, he’s never really formally named, it just seems to have become inconvenient once there were more dirt parts in the story to keep referring to this particular dirt part in the abstract while everyone else got a name. So the writer of Genesis simply capitalized it, and suddenly man/dirt part became Adam. Eve also didn’t get named in this section, though when she did, her name derives from the Hebrew word for “living” as a nod to women as the bearers of children and thus the propagators of life.
The point of all this is that the problem God recognized in verse eighteen was not that man didn’t have woman, but that dirt part was alone. Because when there was only one, it wasn’t gendered. The very idea of gender requires another thing to compare it to. When God saw that dirt part was alone, God created another dirt part so that dirt part would have another like it to be in relationship with. This second dirt part was different then the first, for differences are what make relationships interesting, but also the same, from the same part of dirt. Which, friends, is there a better metaphor for humanity as a species then that? We are a multiplicity of shapes and sizes, colors and hues, skills and abilities, hopes and dreams. And yet, in all this vast array of differences, our DNA is something like 99.9 percent the same. All of the differences we think of as being so massive, all that variation is contained in point one percent of our DNA.
All this to say, we are a relational species, we need to be in relationship to survive. God saw that when God first saw dirt part alone and said, “it is not good for dirt part to be alone,” so God created another dirt part, similar but different, to help dirt part, and for dirt part to help, so that those two dirt parts could thrive. Because it is not good for us to be alone. And anything that breaks that relational need, that forces someone to be without the relational connections that we require as humans to survive, that thing is not what God wants for us.
The good news I hear in both of these challenging texts is that God cares deeply about our lives now, and specifically about the quality of our relationships. Often we lump questions of faith in a very long-term view of eternal salvation, and that’s not to say Jesus doesn’t care about that, certainly Jesus does, that was after all the whole point of the resurrection. But in this text we see that Jesus cares about more than just eternity, Jesus cares deeply about the quality of our lives as we are still living them. Yes, in the scope of God’s time they are fleeting and temporal and whatever, but in the scope of ours, they are all we have, and Jesus knows that and Jesus cares about that. Jesus cares about our relationships. He cares that they are full, that they are rich, that they are rewarding and healthy and life-giving. That they nurture us, sustain us, help us and support us. In the model of dirt part one and dirt part two way back in creation, God cares that we have people in our lives who are our partners and our helpers, and we them, so that we may live rich, fulfilling, and whole lives.
Dear, beloved dirt parts, shaped from the earth of God’s creation, formed in God’s image, by God’s own hand, it is God’s will for you that you have other dear, beloved dirt parts, also created by God, in your life. Dirt parts who are like you, in that all of us were created in God’s image, but also different, for no one dirt part could encompass the whole of God. You are not alone, no matter what struggle you face, what pain other dirt parts may have caused you, for God knows that it is not good for us to be alone, so God created us, many of us, for each other. Thanks be to God, who gave us one to another, weird, beloved, beautiful and diverse, dirt parts of God. Amen.
First let’s talk about what the Pharisees were really up to in asking Jesus about divorce. The lectionary left off the first verse, which told us Jesus left Capernaum where he’d been last week and traveled “to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” I don’t expect you to remember, because we read it way back in December and January, what else took place in “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” Mark chapter one, verse four, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness… And people from the whole Judean countryside… were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan.” That’s where we are this morning, in John the Baptist’s territory. But John isn’t in the Judean countryside anymore, and this was only a few months ago, so maybe you remember why John isn’t there, what happened to John. Mark chapter six, John was arrested, and beheaded, by Herod for calling Herod out for divorcing his wife in order to marry his brother’s wife. A move which, knowing what we know about the Herodian clan in general, certainly was not about love and certainly was about power and political maneuverings. The Pharisees didn’t ask Jesus this question because they wanted him to enlighten them on what the law says about marriage, they asked him because they were hoping Jesus would back himself into the same trap that John the Baptist ended up in, and Herod would go ahead and remove Jesus from the scene for them before Jesus could threaten their status any further.
This is interesting, sure, but still doesn’t get to the heart of why this text can be so painful and why this text has so often been misused, what Jesus actually said about divorce. One approach preachers, myself included, often take with this text, is to place it in its proper historical context. Because the experience of being married in the time of Moses, and even in the first century, was vastly different then the experience of being married today. Today’s definition of marriage is a legal agreement between two consenting adults. First century marriage was a legal bill of sale between a man and the father of his soon-to-be wife. The woman was literally sold from one home to another. And this “certificate of divorce,” the Pharisees referenced. Such a certificate could legally be issued if a man found “something objectionable” about his wife. “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or the husband simply becoming bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to a man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone.
Let’s also notice the players in the conversation. The instigators of this conversation were Pharisees, who were men, powerful men at that, and they were talking to Jesus about what the law says about whether a man can divorce his wife. The question at hand here isn’t, what do I do about this relationship that has become unhealthy. The question is: can I sell my property when I don’t want it anymore. So between the locational allusions to John the Baptist, and thus Herod, the social status of women at the time, and the male Pharisees own social status, this text is clearly power, who has it, and who wants to keep it.
But as interesting a historical lesson as all that is, I still don’t think it really deals with the pain and suffering centuries of poor interpretation of this text has left us with. I also don’t think unpacking this text in its proper historical context is all that hopeful. And believe it or not, I think Jesus is offering us a lot of hope in this challenging teaching about divorce. I found that hope in a pretty unexpected place this week. Remember at the beginning of the sermon I said there are two texts this week that make me feel an ethical responsibility to address if they are read? I found the hope for this text in diving into the other text. So let’s go there now.
Genesis two, verses eighteen to twenty-four also has a rich history of being used to justify abuse and oppression. Often the target of that abuse is women but not exclusively; LGBTQ people of all gender identities and expressions have certainly also had this text read against them. But what’s really going on here?
Verse eighteen starts right off, “The the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” That it is “not good” is immediately a problem, as again and again in chapter one God made creation and called that creation good. So if something is “not good,” then the work of that part of creation is clearly not complete yet. And we see God in verse nineteen immediately, and many commentaries added, rather humorously, go to work trying to come up with a solution to the problem of man’s aloneness.
One complicating factor in understanding this problem is the word “man.” Because man is a gendered word, it’s very definition requires it to be different from something else, from woman. But the Hebrew word here is adam, which is an abbreviation of another Hebrew word, adamah, which means ground or earth. The word that in Hebrew ends up meaning human male, thus translating man, quite literally translates “dirt part.” As in, not the whole ground, but a thing formed out of part of the ground. Adam doesn’t become a name until the end of chapter four. And even then, he’s never really formally named, it just seems to have become inconvenient once there were more dirt parts in the story to keep referring to this particular dirt part in the abstract while everyone else got a name. So the writer of Genesis simply capitalized it, and suddenly man/dirt part became Adam. Eve also didn’t get named in this section, though when she did, her name derives from the Hebrew word for “living” as a nod to women as the bearers of children and thus the propagators of life.
The point of all this is that the problem God recognized in verse eighteen was not that man didn’t have woman, but that dirt part was alone. Because when there was only one, it wasn’t gendered. The very idea of gender requires another thing to compare it to. When God saw that dirt part was alone, God created another dirt part so that dirt part would have another like it to be in relationship with. This second dirt part was different then the first, for differences are what make relationships interesting, but also the same, from the same part of dirt. Which, friends, is there a better metaphor for humanity as a species then that? We are a multiplicity of shapes and sizes, colors and hues, skills and abilities, hopes and dreams. And yet, in all this vast array of differences, our DNA is something like 99.9 percent the same. All of the differences we think of as being so massive, all that variation is contained in point one percent of our DNA.
All this to say, we are a relational species, we need to be in relationship to survive. God saw that when God first saw dirt part alone and said, “it is not good for dirt part to be alone,” so God created another dirt part, similar but different, to help dirt part, and for dirt part to help, so that those two dirt parts could thrive. Because it is not good for us to be alone. And anything that breaks that relational need, that forces someone to be without the relational connections that we require as humans to survive, that thing is not what God wants for us.
The good news I hear in both of these challenging texts is that God cares deeply about our lives now, and specifically about the quality of our relationships. Often we lump questions of faith in a very long-term view of eternal salvation, and that’s not to say Jesus doesn’t care about that, certainly Jesus does, that was after all the whole point of the resurrection. But in this text we see that Jesus cares about more than just eternity, Jesus cares deeply about the quality of our lives as we are still living them. Yes, in the scope of God’s time they are fleeting and temporal and whatever, but in the scope of ours, they are all we have, and Jesus knows that and Jesus cares about that. Jesus cares about our relationships. He cares that they are full, that they are rich, that they are rewarding and healthy and life-giving. That they nurture us, sustain us, help us and support us. In the model of dirt part one and dirt part two way back in creation, God cares that we have people in our lives who are our partners and our helpers, and we them, so that we may live rich, fulfilling, and whole lives.
Dear, beloved dirt parts, shaped from the earth of God’s creation, formed in God’s image, by God’s own hand, it is God’s will for you that you have other dear, beloved dirt parts, also created by God, in your life. Dirt parts who are like you, in that all of us were created in God’s image, but also different, for no one dirt part could encompass the whole of God. You are not alone, no matter what struggle you face, what pain other dirt parts may have caused you, for God knows that it is not good for us to be alone, so God created us, many of us, for each other. Thanks be to God, who gave us one to another, weird, beloved, beautiful and diverse, dirt parts of God. Amen.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Yep, This is Also a Hard Teaching: A Sermon on Mark 9:38-50
I don’t think we really get how out of place John’s comment was unless we remember what happened immediately before. So, to recap last Sunday’s Gospel, Mark nine, thirty through thirty-seven: While traveling with Jesus, the disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest. When they got in the house, and Jesus was alone with the twelve, he rebuked them by bringing a child into the room, taking the child in his arms and saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” And then, while Jesus is still holding a kid in his arms, John said, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” This is the precursor to John’s complaint, Jesus had literally just finished telling them that the mark of greatness is service and humility, he was still holding the kid he used as the object lesson, and John butts in, “OK, but there’s this guy who’s doing this thing, and we told him to knock it off.” John should maybe take a lesson from the kid still in Jesus’ arms, whose parents have certainly told him at some point he shouldn’t be a tattletale.
But that first section is not the interesting part of the Gospel text is it? The interesting part is the part where Jesus tells us we might need to cut off our hands, or our feet, or tear out our eyes. If you will permit me a potentially judgey aside; it is interesting, is it not, that for all the eagerness to read the Bible literally, no one seems too keen on reading this part literally. Certainly Jesus meant the part about cutting off our own hands as metaphor...
And of course, he DID mean it as metaphor. Jesus was certainly not advocating self-mutilation as a requirement for forgiveness. But to stop there, to dismiss these words to the realm of metaphor, is to miss the very serious statement Jesus was making.
So I want to dig into this teaching of Jesus this morning. To take seriously his words that it is better to drown than to hinder the faith of another, and to ask what those words mean for our lives. But before I do that, I want to emphasize again the audience for this teaching. Jesus is talking to the twelve. I guess the kid is there too, but kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and certainly the kid is aware that he is the object lesson not the intended recipient of the lecture. One can assume the kid is coloring by this point, or some other activity to keep him engaged. Listening like a sponge in the way kids do, but not altogether paying attention.
The point is this is insider talk. This is teaching for those who are already in. Jesus didn’t say this standing on a mountain top, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He didn’t proclaim to the lost, the hurting, the hungry, or the oppressed, “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off,” he said it to the already initiated. This incredibly high standard of behavior is not the prerequisite for salvation; it is the expectation for those who have already been saved. So I’m going to give a warning, if you’re new to Christianity, if you’re still learning who this Jesus character is, don’t worry, this text isn’t for you yet. But if you, like me, have been around for a while, I want to invite you to let this text challenge you, let it rub you the wrong way, let it hurt. Not because your salvation is at stake, for we know from Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” but because discomfort is a mark of growth. In the same way that exercising leaves our muscles sore, a deep examination of our sins and failings leaves our souls sore. It hurts to get stronger, fitter, more spiritually in shape. Jesus knew that, but he also knew that for the disciples and for us, the stakes were too high, the time frame to short, not to push us to be better. For the disciples, this is the end of Mark chapter nine. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at the start of chapter eleven; we are almost to the cross. Jesus knew if he didn’t push them it would be too late; for who would shape them once he was gone. And for us too, the stakes are high, the time short. The fastest growing religious group in America right now are what the Pew Research Center call the “dones,” D-O-N-E-S, as in those who are leaving churches, done with religion altogether. According to a recent survey there are thirty-million “dones” in America, with another seven million on the edge of leaving. Interestingly, the “dones” are not leaving churches because they lost faith in God, they’re leaving because they lost faith in church, they lost faith in the people of God, they lost faith in an institution that feels judgmental, hypocritical, and more concerned about policing the morality of others than addressing more pressing issues of poverty, inequality, and economic injustice. Of course for some “dones,” the issue is even more personal. The news broke last week that Attorney General Schuette is opening up an investigation of seven Catholic dioceses in Michigan. And I’m going to be frank; I don’t care how long ago the abuse happened, I don’t care about the extenuating circumstances. If having never abused someone is too high an expectation to set for our leadership, the problem isn’t with the expectation, the problem is with our culture. I bring this up because I am well aware that for a lot of people, this collar I wear was the status symbol that gave power, and cover, to their abuser. So instead of sitting back, “Jesus, those people are doing this thing,” or questioning the victim, “Rabbi who sinned… that this man was born blind,” this passage forces me to examine my own complicity, the power that I gain from this piece of plastic and the silence it allows me to feel justified in keeping. I am responsible for my own actions, and for the effects those actions, or as we acknowledge in the confession, the lack of action, has on others. For silence can be just as complicit as committing the act itself.
And as we heard the disciples say to Jesus back in August at the end of the Bread of Life discourse, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it.” Yes, yes it is. But just like we talked about during that Bread of Life discourse, Jesus loves us too much to settle for less than difficult. Because again, this is not the bar for entry to the kingdom, this is the expectation of us who are already in. Keeping this expectation is about making space for others to receive what we have already been given, the love and the grace and the greatness of God. It is because we know how great the love of God is that we know just how high are the stakes that we might prevent that gift for someone else.
Yes, this teaching is difficult, but here’s the good news, we do not take on this hard work of self-examination alone. We do it in community and we do it with God. These hard teachings were made in love, and with an eye to the whole community, the disciples and those whom they would bring in.
We see this shift to relationship in the last two verses of today’s reading, which seem to be about seasoning but are actually about the gift of community. Throughout scripture salt is used as a metaphor for a bunch of different things and Jesus drew on all of them as he spoke with the disciples. Salt is a preservative, it keeps things from spoiling. It is a purifier, burning away impurities so that the best parts remain. It is a leavening agent, tempering enthusiasm to allow for long term growth, a seasoner, bringing out the best flavors. And it is the seal of promise, the mark of a relationship. It’s this last one we may be unfamiliar with, but in the Old Testament relationships were bound with the “salt of the covenant,” a metaphor Jesus’ disciples would certainly have known. When Jesus told them they would be “salted with fire,” all of these images, refinement, purification, determination, growth, hope, and promise would have been bound up in those words. They were to “have salt in themselves,” first, to watch their own problems, their own frailties, their own weaknesses, so that they could then “be at peace with one another.” Kind of a weird analogy, but it’s sort of like that announcement on airplanes to get your own oxygen mask before assisting others. You are supposed to put on your own mask first not because you are more important but because without looking out for yourself first you will be unable to look after others.
So be salted, dear sisters and brothers, and let these hard teachings of Jesus challenge you, shape you, and mold you to be more then you thought you could be. These hard teachings are hard, but they are not meant to be a test of your faith. Rather, they are hard because they are a testament to Jesus’ faith in you, and to the sort of disciple Jesus thinks you can be. Amen.
But that first section is not the interesting part of the Gospel text is it? The interesting part is the part where Jesus tells us we might need to cut off our hands, or our feet, or tear out our eyes. If you will permit me a potentially judgey aside; it is interesting, is it not, that for all the eagerness to read the Bible literally, no one seems too keen on reading this part literally. Certainly Jesus meant the part about cutting off our own hands as metaphor...
And of course, he DID mean it as metaphor. Jesus was certainly not advocating self-mutilation as a requirement for forgiveness. But to stop there, to dismiss these words to the realm of metaphor, is to miss the very serious statement Jesus was making.
So I want to dig into this teaching of Jesus this morning. To take seriously his words that it is better to drown than to hinder the faith of another, and to ask what those words mean for our lives. But before I do that, I want to emphasize again the audience for this teaching. Jesus is talking to the twelve. I guess the kid is there too, but kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and certainly the kid is aware that he is the object lesson not the intended recipient of the lecture. One can assume the kid is coloring by this point, or some other activity to keep him engaged. Listening like a sponge in the way kids do, but not altogether paying attention.
The point is this is insider talk. This is teaching for those who are already in. Jesus didn’t say this standing on a mountain top, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He didn’t proclaim to the lost, the hurting, the hungry, or the oppressed, “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off,” he said it to the already initiated. This incredibly high standard of behavior is not the prerequisite for salvation; it is the expectation for those who have already been saved. So I’m going to give a warning, if you’re new to Christianity, if you’re still learning who this Jesus character is, don’t worry, this text isn’t for you yet. But if you, like me, have been around for a while, I want to invite you to let this text challenge you, let it rub you the wrong way, let it hurt. Not because your salvation is at stake, for we know from Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” but because discomfort is a mark of growth. In the same way that exercising leaves our muscles sore, a deep examination of our sins and failings leaves our souls sore. It hurts to get stronger, fitter, more spiritually in shape. Jesus knew that, but he also knew that for the disciples and for us, the stakes were too high, the time frame to short, not to push us to be better. For the disciples, this is the end of Mark chapter nine. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at the start of chapter eleven; we are almost to the cross. Jesus knew if he didn’t push them it would be too late; for who would shape them once he was gone. And for us too, the stakes are high, the time short. The fastest growing religious group in America right now are what the Pew Research Center call the “dones,” D-O-N-E-S, as in those who are leaving churches, done with religion altogether. According to a recent survey there are thirty-million “dones” in America, with another seven million on the edge of leaving. Interestingly, the “dones” are not leaving churches because they lost faith in God, they’re leaving because they lost faith in church, they lost faith in the people of God, they lost faith in an institution that feels judgmental, hypocritical, and more concerned about policing the morality of others than addressing more pressing issues of poverty, inequality, and economic injustice. Of course for some “dones,” the issue is even more personal. The news broke last week that Attorney General Schuette is opening up an investigation of seven Catholic dioceses in Michigan. And I’m going to be frank; I don’t care how long ago the abuse happened, I don’t care about the extenuating circumstances. If having never abused someone is too high an expectation to set for our leadership, the problem isn’t with the expectation, the problem is with our culture. I bring this up because I am well aware that for a lot of people, this collar I wear was the status symbol that gave power, and cover, to their abuser. So instead of sitting back, “Jesus, those people are doing this thing,” or questioning the victim, “Rabbi who sinned… that this man was born blind,” this passage forces me to examine my own complicity, the power that I gain from this piece of plastic and the silence it allows me to feel justified in keeping. I am responsible for my own actions, and for the effects those actions, or as we acknowledge in the confession, the lack of action, has on others. For silence can be just as complicit as committing the act itself.
And as we heard the disciples say to Jesus back in August at the end of the Bread of Life discourse, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it.” Yes, yes it is. But just like we talked about during that Bread of Life discourse, Jesus loves us too much to settle for less than difficult. Because again, this is not the bar for entry to the kingdom, this is the expectation of us who are already in. Keeping this expectation is about making space for others to receive what we have already been given, the love and the grace and the greatness of God. It is because we know how great the love of God is that we know just how high are the stakes that we might prevent that gift for someone else.
Yes, this teaching is difficult, but here’s the good news, we do not take on this hard work of self-examination alone. We do it in community and we do it with God. These hard teachings were made in love, and with an eye to the whole community, the disciples and those whom they would bring in.
We see this shift to relationship in the last two verses of today’s reading, which seem to be about seasoning but are actually about the gift of community. Throughout scripture salt is used as a metaphor for a bunch of different things and Jesus drew on all of them as he spoke with the disciples. Salt is a preservative, it keeps things from spoiling. It is a purifier, burning away impurities so that the best parts remain. It is a leavening agent, tempering enthusiasm to allow for long term growth, a seasoner, bringing out the best flavors. And it is the seal of promise, the mark of a relationship. It’s this last one we may be unfamiliar with, but in the Old Testament relationships were bound with the “salt of the covenant,” a metaphor Jesus’ disciples would certainly have known. When Jesus told them they would be “salted with fire,” all of these images, refinement, purification, determination, growth, hope, and promise would have been bound up in those words. They were to “have salt in themselves,” first, to watch their own problems, their own frailties, their own weaknesses, so that they could then “be at peace with one another.” Kind of a weird analogy, but it’s sort of like that announcement on airplanes to get your own oxygen mask before assisting others. You are supposed to put on your own mask first not because you are more important but because without looking out for yourself first you will be unable to look after others.
So be salted, dear sisters and brothers, and let these hard teachings of Jesus challenge you, shape you, and mold you to be more then you thought you could be. These hard teachings are hard, but they are not meant to be a test of your faith. Rather, they are hard because they are a testament to Jesus’ faith in you, and to the sort of disciple Jesus thinks you can be. Amen.
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