With our new core values identified, and our welcome statement, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this idea of inclusion. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how ridiculously hard it is! I mean it’s nice, it’s a nice idea. But to really, truly be inclusive, to welcome everyone. Friends, not going to lie, there are some people that I just find hard to be around.
While I was thinking about this I read a commentary this week that flipped this parable on its head for me and forced me to read it in a way I never had before. And I want to share it with you, because I’ve read this parable a million times, and I’m sure many of you have too, and I’ve seen it like this before.
So this commentary started out by challenging one of the very basic assumptions I’ve made about the parable, why the younger son left. “Jesus told them a parable: ‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.”’” The question then is why, why did the younger son ask for his half of the inheritance? Why did the younger son want to leave? Every time I’ve read this parable my working assumption has always been some combination of greed or arrogance. The younger son was impatient, he wanted his money now, he wanted to go out have a good time. I have always read the younger son as a spoiled, entitled brat who thought only about himself.
But what if I’ve been reading the younger son wrong? What if the son didn’t want to leave, what if he had to? What if he was being threatened by a gang, and the choice was join or die? What if he was gay in a community where that wasn’t a safe way to be identified? There are so many reasons why people are forced to leave their homes and communities against their will, to seek refuge in another place. Why people take tremendous risks and leave a place they call home, because that home is no longer safe for them. What if the father let the son go not because he was appeasing the son’s selfish desires, but because he knew that sending his son away was the boy’s only hope for survival?
But wait, you might wonder, the text does go on that when the younger son traveled to this distant country he “squandered his property in dissolute living.” Doesn’t that justify the read that the younger son was a punk kid? Does it? First off, there’s the question, what does the parable mean by “dissolute living.” Other times this word shows up in the Bible it’s related to over-indulgence, but in this story the younger brother’s actions were really only defined by the older brother’s perceptions. And perceptions of how others ought to be responding based on your own experience of the world are dangerous things. I’ve been around Woman’s Co-op long enough to have learned, over and over and over again, that the way that I might approach a problem with the privileges I bring as white, middle-class, and well-educated, don’t work in the world of their members. Good financial planning says your housing costs shouldn’t exceed thirty percent of your income. I remember discussing with Teresa the difference in rental cost for the apartment I had at Pine Knoll when I first moved to town, and some of the places members were living. “These places are terrible,” I told her, “and they’re super expensive, why are members choosing to live there?” She paused: “Did you pay a deposit when you moved in?” Yes. “First and last month’s rent?” Yes. “Have you ever been evicted?” No. “How about a credit check or a background check, did they run those?” I guess so. “David Herdman drove you around looking at apartments; did he vouch for your employment?” He did. “Those questions,” she reminded me, “not everyone can answer those the way you just did. And if you couldn’t, you wouldn’t be renting at Pine Knoll either.” And this still doesn’t address the problem of housing discrimination based on race, disability, or sexual orientation. So the question of the younger son, was it squandering if it really was his best, or only, option?
Eventually, as it so often does, the bottom dropped out on this young man. The house of cards he was carefully holding together couldn’t withstand the outside forces of a famine sweeping through the land, and he found himself taking the only job he could find, feeding pigs that ate better than he did. Faced yet again with no good options, the boy returned home. Not because this choice was better, but because there was no other choice.
So here’s where the story gets weird. The younger son returned home, dejected, defeated, abused, ashamed, guilty, uncertain, and was met by the father. Not just met, but like, was actually charged by the father. The text says the father ran out to his son, which means the father who had earlier willingly allowed the boy to leave, and in fact under the reading we’ve been doing, even understood the boy’s reasons for leaving, never gave up hope that the boy might return again, had stood out by the gate day after day in the faint hope that his son might return. The father ran out to his son, and when the son tried to apologize, tried to slide quietly into some lesser place, the father brushed his words aside, instead calling for the best robe, the ring, the sandals, to celebrate that his son who was lost is home again. There is no shame from the father toward the boy’s actions, to who he was, to his leaving, or to the failures which brought him back again.
And if the story ended here, that would be a wonderful story. Because that’s inclusion embodied, isn’t it. The father running to meet his son, welcoming him home, giving him the best things, throwing the huge party. The world may have judged the boy, cast him aside, thrown him away, but the father welcomed him in with open arms, you, who you are, as you are, are my beloved. Amen.
But the story didn’t end here. Because there’s still the older son. The son who didn’t have to leave, who was able to get by, to fit in, to hang around. Maybe he had to conform to the community, maybe he didn’t, but he’d been there all along. And now he had to make space again for the younger brother. Inclusion is nice in theory, but in practice it’s uncomfortable because it forces us to make space for those who don’t sidle in as smoothly as we do. And the older brother, he just didn’t want to have to do that again.
This parable is, as parables are, both good news, and challenge, and good news again. The good news is when we feel like the younger son. When we don’t fit, are forced out, don’t belong, when others belittle or demean or judge us, the good news is that God who is the father, does not. God may let us go, if that is the thing that we need, but God is also running to meet us, to bring us in, to welcome us home, to call us beloved. Welcome and inclusion are nice words, but they’re not powerful enough words for the sort of rushing to gather us, tripping over his robes in his haste, best robes, rings, and feasts that is how God includes, embraces, enfolds us. Friends the good news of this parable is whether you walked away, were walked away, or just found yourself outside, God is running up to you to bring you back home. This isn’t inclusion; this is so much more than that.
The challenge is that while sometimes we’re the younger son, a lot of times, we’re the older one. Which means, we’re going to be uncomfortable. We’re going to have to change. Because, let’s face it, what happened to the older son wasn’t fair. His brother took everything he had, and then came back and took even more. The older brother had to give a lot to make this relationship work, and if we really want to be inclusive, we will too. People aren’t going to fit nicely into our family, just like the younger brother didn’t fit nicely in his. And sometimes, a lot of times, those folk who don’t fit in, they can’t change all that much, so we’re going to have to be the ones who make space. You know this, you’ve done this already. It gets crazy in here sometimes. We had a rather lively neighbor come to Bible study last week. There’s a three-year-old who steals cookies and makes a huge mess. I don’t know why there are still giant auctioneers stands by the garage; Trinity is not your grandmother’s silent, pristine church. But this is the family of God. It’s big, and messy, and loud, and sometimes uncomfortable. Good, yes, but also hard.
And because this is God’s story, there is of course also good news for the older son. Because when he wasn’t able to change. When he was sick of the noise, and the chaos, and the people tracking mud across the carpets AGAIN, the father came out to meet him too. Came out to invite him back in, not just to the party but to the family. To remind him of his own place of value, of how his sharp edges could still fit, and how others would move to make space for him.
Dear people of God, you have a place here. And, delightfully, because that’s what makes this place so fun, so do all these other weirdos. And if any of this is hard for you, that’s totally cool. It’s ok to sit out for a bit, to get used to the changes. But don’t sit out too long, because yeah it’s loud and weird and chaotic. But this is the beloved community, in all its eccentricity. And you belong. Amen.
Note: The commentary that so changed my reading of this text was from the Disrupt Worship Project. A link to the article is here: https://www.disruptworshipproject.com/rcl/lent-4?fbclid=IwAR0SBOq4pilJmZkdIeSwWXb6SjWiD_NAKuTqWRlodtWHzdnlughNPtA9rqY
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Monday, March 25, 2019
Repent and Transform: A Sermon on Luke 13:1-9
A rewriting of the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of Luke for March 24th, 2019:
“At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Muslims in New Zealand, who had been killed in their mosques during Friday prayer. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Muslims suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other New Zealanders? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or the twenty-six transgender people who were killed in hate crimes in 2018—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in America? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or the people of Mozambique affected by the cyclone or those in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, or elsewhere whose homes were destroyed by flooding, do you think they were worse sinners? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.’”
Friends, it has yet again been a heavy news week, month, year. Hate crimes are on the rise across all different groups, natural disasters continue to wreck havoc, and the political cycle is just beginning to kick up again, offering a lot of talk and very little action. And the question all too often becomes, whose fault is this? Who’s to blame that these tragedies occurred? Who missed the signs, who failed to intervene? Who is the offender that permitted this atrocity? Who sinned?
We’re not new in asking these questions, the desire to assign guilt or blame is not unique to our time. But it’s also the wrong question, because it’s an unanswerable question. Theodicy, the problem of evil, is impossibly complex. There are layers upon layers of failings, mistakes, greed, power, pride, guilt, in any one of the tragedies I listed above that there is no way to narrow it down to a single guilty party. And to blame the whole thing on God’s Divine Hand, I’m sorry friends, but I refuse to buy it. Claiming God’s Plan is a cop-out allowing us to wash our hands of our own complicity.
And so when Jesus was approached by those who asked the same questions of tragedies in their own time, he was quick to respond, “no, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” [Pause] “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Ouch. Those are harsh words from Jesus. Words of judgment. Repent or perish. Now, in fairness, there are plenty of churches out there who are all in on that message. And those churches buy a lot of billboards. But we’re Lutheran, so how do we read this text? Well friends, I’m not going to be soft with you, this text is Law. Which means it’s that hard good news that’s going to hurt before it heals. But it will heal, because alongside Law always comes Grace. Let’s dig in.
“Repent”, metanoia in the Greek literally means turn around, go in a different direction. So repentance is NOT about moral uprightness, it is not about some code of beliefs and behaviors that need to be ascribed to in order to live in the so-called “right” way. No, repentance is a radical reorientation of our lives. It is a new form of seeing, a new perspective, a new way of being in the world. Such a dramatic change will inevitably have moral implications, it will mean that our actions inevitably change, but that is the effect of repentance, not the cause. This is Luther’s Freedom of a Christian. As Christians we are called to serve, not as a way to earn God’s forgiveness, but as a response to that forgiveness. We serve not so God will love us, but because once we know God loves us, what else could we possibly do but love others.
What this means, dear people of God, is that repentance is larger than feeling sorry for our own individual sins. Dr. Ronald Allen defines biblical repentance as “individuals and communities turning away from things that violate God’s purposes (such as idolatry, injustice, and exploitation) and turning towards faithful living centered in worship of the most-high God and in the practice of justice, mutual commitment, and other values of living in covenant.”
As individuals and as a community, we certainly have plenty of things for which we need repent. Our silence in the face of injustice, instead of calling a thing a thing and doing something about it. Our desire to make excuses and find others to blame instead of addressing the real issues that create the sort of climate where mass shootings are no longer if, but when. Our turning inward, afraid of the world around us, a world we forget that God has already saved. Our tendency to create regulations for whom this salvation was truly for. Our complicity, our complacency, our explanations and enabling. That long long long list of things for which we asked for God’s mercy on Ash Wednesday. Yeah, it’s a lot.
And here’s the good news friends, repentance is freedom. Because repentance changes us, frees us, empowers us to make change. If we don’t repent, if we don’t recognize the ways our actions—or inactions—are in some way involved, then yeah maybe it’s a little comforting that it’s someone else’s fault, but it’s also demoralizing because it means we’re powerless. But when we repent, when we recognize the small ways in which we have allowed hatred or violence or exploitation to persist, the ways we’ve even benefited from it, then we can be different, then we can live different, and then we can make change.
Friends, change starts with us, because we are the only people we can change. And don’t think that change that you make doesn’t matter. Don’t think that you are just one person, that you cannot make a difference. Because you can and you do. One of the nominees for this year’s Noble Peace Prize is sixteen year old Greta Thunberg. Small, shy, soft-spoken, and someone who struggles with crippling depression, Thunberg is maybe not the image of the leader of a movement. And yet, she has mobilized youth in one-hundred and five countries to get involved in advocating for climate action. And yeah, we can’t all have that kind of name recognition, but think about it this way. If those youth hadn’t stepped up and joined Thunberg’s movement, we wouldn’t know her name either. Each of those hundreds of thousands of kids is important, because without their individual action there would be no collective.
The Muslim worshipers killed in prayer, the people killed for being trans, our own Jewish neighbors on North Capital who’s synagogue has been vandalized twice this year, were no worse sinners. But when we repent of our own internalized fear of the other, we can be a part of building bridges between communities and ending hate crimes. The people of Mozambique or the plains states were no worse sinners. But when we repent of our own consumption, we can advocate for climate actions to stop the fueling of super storms, we can support nation building in third world places so that natural disasters are less catastrophic, we can find ways to be generous with our own time, talents, and treasures to help those around us in need. Dear friends in Christ, these are the things we can do, the changes we can make, the power we have, that is the gift of repentance.
And to close this teaching, Jesus told a parable. “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ The gardener replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” When Jesus told parables, he always cast himself as the gardener. Which means, dear people, while we are the fig tree, we are also probably the impatient landowner. We long for immediate actions, immediate results, from ourselves and others. This tree has no figs; it cannot and will not ever bear figs, what’s the use in its survival, repent or perish. But Jesus is both patient and optimistic. It can, we will, as Paul will say, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” So Jesus tends the growth that is us, and friends, that’s what worship is. We are pruned through confession and forgiveness, we are nourished with the word and around the table, we are sent out to grow, and brought back in again next week to repeat the process. Over and over and over again. For as long as it takes.
So dear people of God, yeah, it’s scary out there. But you are not powerless. So repent, be transformed, and then go transform. Amen.
Friends, it has yet again been a heavy news week, month, year. Hate crimes are on the rise across all different groups, natural disasters continue to wreck havoc, and the political cycle is just beginning to kick up again, offering a lot of talk and very little action. And the question all too often becomes, whose fault is this? Who’s to blame that these tragedies occurred? Who missed the signs, who failed to intervene? Who is the offender that permitted this atrocity? Who sinned?
We’re not new in asking these questions, the desire to assign guilt or blame is not unique to our time. But it’s also the wrong question, because it’s an unanswerable question. Theodicy, the problem of evil, is impossibly complex. There are layers upon layers of failings, mistakes, greed, power, pride, guilt, in any one of the tragedies I listed above that there is no way to narrow it down to a single guilty party. And to blame the whole thing on God’s Divine Hand, I’m sorry friends, but I refuse to buy it. Claiming God’s Plan is a cop-out allowing us to wash our hands of our own complicity.
And so when Jesus was approached by those who asked the same questions of tragedies in their own time, he was quick to respond, “no, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” [Pause] “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Ouch. Those are harsh words from Jesus. Words of judgment. Repent or perish. Now, in fairness, there are plenty of churches out there who are all in on that message. And those churches buy a lot of billboards. But we’re Lutheran, so how do we read this text? Well friends, I’m not going to be soft with you, this text is Law. Which means it’s that hard good news that’s going to hurt before it heals. But it will heal, because alongside Law always comes Grace. Let’s dig in.
“Repent”, metanoia in the Greek literally means turn around, go in a different direction. So repentance is NOT about moral uprightness, it is not about some code of beliefs and behaviors that need to be ascribed to in order to live in the so-called “right” way. No, repentance is a radical reorientation of our lives. It is a new form of seeing, a new perspective, a new way of being in the world. Such a dramatic change will inevitably have moral implications, it will mean that our actions inevitably change, but that is the effect of repentance, not the cause. This is Luther’s Freedom of a Christian. As Christians we are called to serve, not as a way to earn God’s forgiveness, but as a response to that forgiveness. We serve not so God will love us, but because once we know God loves us, what else could we possibly do but love others.
What this means, dear people of God, is that repentance is larger than feeling sorry for our own individual sins. Dr. Ronald Allen defines biblical repentance as “individuals and communities turning away from things that violate God’s purposes (such as idolatry, injustice, and exploitation) and turning towards faithful living centered in worship of the most-high God and in the practice of justice, mutual commitment, and other values of living in covenant.”
As individuals and as a community, we certainly have plenty of things for which we need repent. Our silence in the face of injustice, instead of calling a thing a thing and doing something about it. Our desire to make excuses and find others to blame instead of addressing the real issues that create the sort of climate where mass shootings are no longer if, but when. Our turning inward, afraid of the world around us, a world we forget that God has already saved. Our tendency to create regulations for whom this salvation was truly for. Our complicity, our complacency, our explanations and enabling. That long long long list of things for which we asked for God’s mercy on Ash Wednesday. Yeah, it’s a lot.
And here’s the good news friends, repentance is freedom. Because repentance changes us, frees us, empowers us to make change. If we don’t repent, if we don’t recognize the ways our actions—or inactions—are in some way involved, then yeah maybe it’s a little comforting that it’s someone else’s fault, but it’s also demoralizing because it means we’re powerless. But when we repent, when we recognize the small ways in which we have allowed hatred or violence or exploitation to persist, the ways we’ve even benefited from it, then we can be different, then we can live different, and then we can make change.
Friends, change starts with us, because we are the only people we can change. And don’t think that change that you make doesn’t matter. Don’t think that you are just one person, that you cannot make a difference. Because you can and you do. One of the nominees for this year’s Noble Peace Prize is sixteen year old Greta Thunberg. Small, shy, soft-spoken, and someone who struggles with crippling depression, Thunberg is maybe not the image of the leader of a movement. And yet, she has mobilized youth in one-hundred and five countries to get involved in advocating for climate action. And yeah, we can’t all have that kind of name recognition, but think about it this way. If those youth hadn’t stepped up and joined Thunberg’s movement, we wouldn’t know her name either. Each of those hundreds of thousands of kids is important, because without their individual action there would be no collective.
The Muslim worshipers killed in prayer, the people killed for being trans, our own Jewish neighbors on North Capital who’s synagogue has been vandalized twice this year, were no worse sinners. But when we repent of our own internalized fear of the other, we can be a part of building bridges between communities and ending hate crimes. The people of Mozambique or the plains states were no worse sinners. But when we repent of our own consumption, we can advocate for climate actions to stop the fueling of super storms, we can support nation building in third world places so that natural disasters are less catastrophic, we can find ways to be generous with our own time, talents, and treasures to help those around us in need. Dear friends in Christ, these are the things we can do, the changes we can make, the power we have, that is the gift of repentance.
And to close this teaching, Jesus told a parable. “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ The gardener replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” When Jesus told parables, he always cast himself as the gardener. Which means, dear people, while we are the fig tree, we are also probably the impatient landowner. We long for immediate actions, immediate results, from ourselves and others. This tree has no figs; it cannot and will not ever bear figs, what’s the use in its survival, repent or perish. But Jesus is both patient and optimistic. It can, we will, as Paul will say, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” So Jesus tends the growth that is us, and friends, that’s what worship is. We are pruned through confession and forgiveness, we are nourished with the word and around the table, we are sent out to grow, and brought back in again next week to repeat the process. Over and over and over again. For as long as it takes.
So dear people of God, yeah, it’s scary out there. But you are not powerless. So repent, be transformed, and then go transform. Amen.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Angry, Misdirected Geese - A Sermon on Luke 13:31-35
Once I was walking along the Rockville Pike, a four lane major thoroughfare through the center of suburban Washington, DC, when I noticed the traffic had stopped in both directions. I walked a little further and discovered the source of the congestion, a family of geese had decided to cross the road, and were taking their sweet time doing so, causing a major traffic jam. So severe was the congestion, that soon I heard sirens, police had been called to move the geese along and get traffic moving again. The office got out of his cruiser and walked behind the geese to encourage them to cross. It was going fairly well until the geese reached the curb. The adults hoped right up, but the goslings were pretty little and a couple of them were struggling to make the jump. So the officer reached down to lift them up onto the curb, and one of the adult geese went crazy, spread its wings and came at the officer, kicking and flapping and pecking. The officer put his arms up to shield his face, trying to pop the baby geese up with the toe of his shoe. Eventually, he got all the babies up on the curb. And as soon as he’d done that, the adult goose immediately stopped attacking him and began herding the babies off the sidewalk and on their way.
This incident happened several years ago, and I think of it every three years when this reading of Jesus longing to gather Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her brood.” The ferocity of the goose towards the officer, determined to defend the goslings at any cost, reminds me of the ferocity of Jesus who will go to any length, even to death, to protect and defend us. That’s still a good working image, and there’s still a lot of weight to that. But this year when I was thinking about that story and this text, I noticed something else about the goose, something much more human, something that reminded me a lot less of Jesus and a lot more of us. And that is that the goose was ferociously attacking the wrong thing. Because the officer wanted the same thing the goose wanted, for the goslings to be safely across the street. And the goslings were in real danger. There were four lanes of rush hour traffic lining up on either side, traffic that didn’t intentionally want to kill a gosling, but could have easily not seen them and done just that if they didn’t get out of the street. But the goose couldn’t see the actual danger, all the goose could see was this man who was uncomfortably close to its babies, and who seemed to pose a threat to them. So instead of accepting the officer’s help, the goose lashed out at its protector, while the officer continued to pop the babies up the curb, now with the added complication of trying to do this, defend himself, AND not hurt a furious adult goose. So while the goose’s fierceness still reminds me of Jesus, the goose’s misdirected anger reminds me of us.
What really got me thinking in this direction was Jesus’ lament before the mother hen metaphor: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” I started wondering what Jesus meant by Jerusalem. Because if Jesus was talking about Jerusalem only as a fixed place in time, a first century city in a remote Roman outpost, then this passage doesn’t really matter all that much to us. After all, we live nowhere near Jerusalem, and even if we did, the Jerusalem of today is nothing like the Jerusalem of Jesus’ time. So let’s talk for a minute about the role Jerusalem played in the culture Jesus lived in, and what might play a similar role in our lives today.
Jerusalem is an ancient city. First settled as early as 4500 BCE and established as a city in 2800 BCE, it is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Not the oldest, that honor probably belongs to Damascus, which has settlements dating all the way back to 9000 BCE, but still Jerusalem, pretty old. Some traditions hold it to be the place where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, but Jerusalem really came into our faith tradition when King David captured it as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. It was under David and his successor Solomon that Israel, and by connection its capital, Jerusalem, reached their high point. After Solomon’s death, Israel and Judea split to form two kingdoms, Israel fell to the Assyrians, Judea to the Babylonians. Then Jerusalem fell to the Greeks, then to the Selucids, and then to the Romans. In modern times, it was ruled by the Ottomans, then the British, and it’s currently a city divided between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I share this history not because the dates are important, but so you get a sense of the changing powers. In its history Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice. So, you know, a lot of conflict.
What made Jerusalem so important during the time of King David, and also so vulnerable to conquest, was its location at the center of what was then the known world. Located where the shipping lanes of the Mediterranean Sea met the silk road to the East, and between the powerful Assyrians to the north and Egyptians to the south, whoever controlled Jerusalem controlled the trade routes, and whoever controlled trade controlled the world. But by the time of Jesus, Jerusalem was an outpost city. The center of power having shifted west to Rome, Jerusalem was mostly overlooked by the Romans unless it caused trouble, and full of formerly powerful people longing for a past glory.
And while we’re talking history, let’s talk for a bit about one of the reasons Jerusalem had been so vulnerable to conquest. Those prophets Jesus talked about; they’re the Old Testament prophets. They were killed because of the message they brought. Back in what was called the golden age of Israel under David and Solomon, it wasn’t golden for everyone. It was great if you were David or Solomon, or other members of the aristocracy, or a merchant, or someone else with some money. But if you were a peasant, a slave, a worker, life wasn’t so great. If you read the prophets, and I recommend Isaiah, you’ll notice that the warnings are always about economic injustice. The prophets come to tell those in power, just because things are great for you doesn’t mean they’re great for everyone. There’s real, serious suffering going on, and people are hurting, and if you don’t start caring about the least of God’s people, your society will collapse. The Old Testament prophets aren’t prophesy as it sometimes gets defined today, as people who predicted random facts about the future, the prophets were truth-tellers, they spoke truth about how the world really was. We sometimes think of prophets like that old-timey arcade game “The Great Zoltar,” where you put in a quarter and it tells you a fortune. But the Old Testament prophets were more like Martin Luther King Jr., speaking out about the evils of segregation or Sojourner Truth or Harvey Milk. People who saw oppression and pointed it out, often at great personal risk.
Given that history, here’s how I’m starting to read this passage in our context. Jerusalem represents the places, people, institutions who are concerned only with their own power, prestige, and self-preservation. These are cosmic, certainly systemic racism is an example of Jerusalem, or economic inequality, or the destruction of creation for profit. But there are also smaller, more personal examples. I think about in my own life, my own struggles with greed, or my lack of patience, or my desire for consistency even when that consistency is harmful to others and even to myself, because staying the same is less scary then facing the fact that I need to change. And the prophets are heroes like King or Milk, or the reporters who risk their lives to bring us news about the refugee crisis in Syria, or Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha who first brought attention to the Flint Water Crisis. But prophets are also people who are willing to call us out on our own failings. Teresa’s been a prophet to me, teaching me more about people in poverty. I also have a great mentor, who I talk to regularly, who loves me to death and isn’t afraid to tell me, Kjersten, you’re kind of being a jerk right now, when I deserve it.
Those people are important, but we don’t always like them very much. It hurts to be called out for something we’re doing wrong. Teresa and I actually have a verbal agreement that we’ll call on if one of us feels the need to speak a hard truth to the other, as a check to remind us that it’s not personal. But that takes vulnerability and trust, things which are hard and take time.
So here’s the really good news of this passage. The good news of Jesus, in fact. In this passage, Jesus spoke of desiring to gather God’s people like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but in just a couple chapters he’s going to do just that. This passage started with the Pharisees urging Jesus to skip Jerusalem and save himself, but Jesus retorted that he must finish his work. That work being dying so that death might be defeated.
Dear friends in Christ, Jesus is committed to us with the fierceness of a goose ready to take on a full-grown club wielding police officer if it threatens their chicks. And when we, like a misdirected goose taking on a police officer trying to protect the goslings from the actual threat of traffic, lash out and refuse to be gathered. So, and this is maybe the weirdest closing line I’ve ever come up with, but it oddly seems to fit the working image, I invite you this Lent to let God nudge you in a direction you may not trust at first, to pop you back up on the curb, like the officer popped the goslings. Thanks be to God, who is determined to love us. Amen.
This incident happened several years ago, and I think of it every three years when this reading of Jesus longing to gather Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her brood.” The ferocity of the goose towards the officer, determined to defend the goslings at any cost, reminds me of the ferocity of Jesus who will go to any length, even to death, to protect and defend us. That’s still a good working image, and there’s still a lot of weight to that. But this year when I was thinking about that story and this text, I noticed something else about the goose, something much more human, something that reminded me a lot less of Jesus and a lot more of us. And that is that the goose was ferociously attacking the wrong thing. Because the officer wanted the same thing the goose wanted, for the goslings to be safely across the street. And the goslings were in real danger. There were four lanes of rush hour traffic lining up on either side, traffic that didn’t intentionally want to kill a gosling, but could have easily not seen them and done just that if they didn’t get out of the street. But the goose couldn’t see the actual danger, all the goose could see was this man who was uncomfortably close to its babies, and who seemed to pose a threat to them. So instead of accepting the officer’s help, the goose lashed out at its protector, while the officer continued to pop the babies up the curb, now with the added complication of trying to do this, defend himself, AND not hurt a furious adult goose. So while the goose’s fierceness still reminds me of Jesus, the goose’s misdirected anger reminds me of us.
What really got me thinking in this direction was Jesus’ lament before the mother hen metaphor: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” I started wondering what Jesus meant by Jerusalem. Because if Jesus was talking about Jerusalem only as a fixed place in time, a first century city in a remote Roman outpost, then this passage doesn’t really matter all that much to us. After all, we live nowhere near Jerusalem, and even if we did, the Jerusalem of today is nothing like the Jerusalem of Jesus’ time. So let’s talk for a minute about the role Jerusalem played in the culture Jesus lived in, and what might play a similar role in our lives today.
Jerusalem is an ancient city. First settled as early as 4500 BCE and established as a city in 2800 BCE, it is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Not the oldest, that honor probably belongs to Damascus, which has settlements dating all the way back to 9000 BCE, but still Jerusalem, pretty old. Some traditions hold it to be the place where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, but Jerusalem really came into our faith tradition when King David captured it as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. It was under David and his successor Solomon that Israel, and by connection its capital, Jerusalem, reached their high point. After Solomon’s death, Israel and Judea split to form two kingdoms, Israel fell to the Assyrians, Judea to the Babylonians. Then Jerusalem fell to the Greeks, then to the Selucids, and then to the Romans. In modern times, it was ruled by the Ottomans, then the British, and it’s currently a city divided between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I share this history not because the dates are important, but so you get a sense of the changing powers. In its history Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice. So, you know, a lot of conflict.
What made Jerusalem so important during the time of King David, and also so vulnerable to conquest, was its location at the center of what was then the known world. Located where the shipping lanes of the Mediterranean Sea met the silk road to the East, and between the powerful Assyrians to the north and Egyptians to the south, whoever controlled Jerusalem controlled the trade routes, and whoever controlled trade controlled the world. But by the time of Jesus, Jerusalem was an outpost city. The center of power having shifted west to Rome, Jerusalem was mostly overlooked by the Romans unless it caused trouble, and full of formerly powerful people longing for a past glory.
And while we’re talking history, let’s talk for a bit about one of the reasons Jerusalem had been so vulnerable to conquest. Those prophets Jesus talked about; they’re the Old Testament prophets. They were killed because of the message they brought. Back in what was called the golden age of Israel under David and Solomon, it wasn’t golden for everyone. It was great if you were David or Solomon, or other members of the aristocracy, or a merchant, or someone else with some money. But if you were a peasant, a slave, a worker, life wasn’t so great. If you read the prophets, and I recommend Isaiah, you’ll notice that the warnings are always about economic injustice. The prophets come to tell those in power, just because things are great for you doesn’t mean they’re great for everyone. There’s real, serious suffering going on, and people are hurting, and if you don’t start caring about the least of God’s people, your society will collapse. The Old Testament prophets aren’t prophesy as it sometimes gets defined today, as people who predicted random facts about the future, the prophets were truth-tellers, they spoke truth about how the world really was. We sometimes think of prophets like that old-timey arcade game “The Great Zoltar,” where you put in a quarter and it tells you a fortune. But the Old Testament prophets were more like Martin Luther King Jr., speaking out about the evils of segregation or Sojourner Truth or Harvey Milk. People who saw oppression and pointed it out, often at great personal risk.
Given that history, here’s how I’m starting to read this passage in our context. Jerusalem represents the places, people, institutions who are concerned only with their own power, prestige, and self-preservation. These are cosmic, certainly systemic racism is an example of Jerusalem, or economic inequality, or the destruction of creation for profit. But there are also smaller, more personal examples. I think about in my own life, my own struggles with greed, or my lack of patience, or my desire for consistency even when that consistency is harmful to others and even to myself, because staying the same is less scary then facing the fact that I need to change. And the prophets are heroes like King or Milk, or the reporters who risk their lives to bring us news about the refugee crisis in Syria, or Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha who first brought attention to the Flint Water Crisis. But prophets are also people who are willing to call us out on our own failings. Teresa’s been a prophet to me, teaching me more about people in poverty. I also have a great mentor, who I talk to regularly, who loves me to death and isn’t afraid to tell me, Kjersten, you’re kind of being a jerk right now, when I deserve it.
Those people are important, but we don’t always like them very much. It hurts to be called out for something we’re doing wrong. Teresa and I actually have a verbal agreement that we’ll call on if one of us feels the need to speak a hard truth to the other, as a check to remind us that it’s not personal. But that takes vulnerability and trust, things which are hard and take time.
So here’s the really good news of this passage. The good news of Jesus, in fact. In this passage, Jesus spoke of desiring to gather God’s people like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but in just a couple chapters he’s going to do just that. This passage started with the Pharisees urging Jesus to skip Jerusalem and save himself, but Jesus retorted that he must finish his work. That work being dying so that death might be defeated.
Dear friends in Christ, Jesus is committed to us with the fierceness of a goose ready to take on a full-grown club wielding police officer if it threatens their chicks. And when we, like a misdirected goose taking on a police officer trying to protect the goslings from the actual threat of traffic, lash out and refuse to be gathered. So, and this is maybe the weirdest closing line I’ve ever come up with, but it oddly seems to fit the working image, I invite you this Lent to let God nudge you in a direction you may not trust at first, to pop you back up on the curb, like the officer popped the goslings. Thanks be to God, who is determined to love us. Amen.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Self-Discipline: A Sermon on Luke 4:1-13
I have excellent self-discipline. I don’t say that to brag, it’s actually a confession. My self-discipline is so strong it tips past the point of helpful into a fault. Remember over the summer when I preached about seeing a physical therapist? I was seeing said therapist because I developed an overuse injury from running. An injury I made worse by running on for a week, to the point where I could barely walk, because I was so committed to following my training schedule. That was not the first, and sadly will probably not be the last, time my above-average self-discipline literally got me injured. Self-discipline, drive, and the ability to resist temptation, like just about everything else in life, is only good to a point. Too much of it can make us rigid and inflexible, unable to adapt to changes around us.
I open with this, because this is the first Sunday of Lent, and like every first Sunday of Lent the Gospel reading this morning is one of the accounts of the scene which is commonly known as “the temptation of Jesus.” And because we read this story of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil at the beginning of Lent, a forty day period often associated with giving up something, the message of this text sometimes becomes: Jesus was fully human and he went without eating for forty days, so you should at least be able to resist that cookie, or pop, or Facebook game. Or lose twenty pounds or save money or quit smoking or whatever vice you’re trying to get over.
And let me be clear, fasting, the act of giving something up, is an excellent spiritual discipline. So if you’ve taken on some sort of fast for Lent, and that’s a good and helpful spiritual practice for you, as your pastor let me say, by all means, that’s fantastic. Let me know how I can support you, pray for you, encourage you in that practice. God wants for us to be the best versions of ourselves, and a great way to work toward that is the spiritual discipline of fasting, of an intentional break from something we’re struggling with. But if we read this text as a shaming pep talk about how we need to “Be Like Jesus,” we reduce Jesus to the role of motivational speaker or life coach. Which again, both are great, helpful things. But Jesus is more than that.
The good news about this text, about Lent, is it isn’t about us. Whether you, like me, have such powerful self discipline that your doctor has a beach house, or you chase every whim like an excited puppy has absolutely no bearing on this text. This text, and the whole season of Lent, is about Jesus. About who Jesus is, what Jesus does, and how Jesus is and will live out his identity as the Son of God and savior of the world.
The text started out with “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, return[ing] from the Jordan and [being] led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” What you may not remember, because we read it back in January, but Jesus was returning from the Jordan where he had just been baptized. At which time “the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” And after this morning’s text, verse fourteen goes on, “Then Jesus filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee,” where “he began to teach in their synagogues” and proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” I point this out to say, one of the key features of this story is that the Spirit is in charge of every move. The devil thinks he is, the devil thinks he’s caught Jesus in a moment of weakness, thinks he’s the one doing the testing, but this is, always has been, and always will be, the Spirit’s show to run. She’s hard to see, that Spirit. Rarely does she show herself in bodily form like a dove. Mostly she blows through, like fire, like wind, shaping and remaking us and we see only her effects, but make no mistake; she’s got this well in hand.
And under the Spirit’s guidance we’ve got this seeming test of wills between Jesus and the devil. One of the key things Luke shows us, by placing this story where he does, immediately after Jesus’ baptism and the revelation of his identity as the Son of God, and just prior to the start of his Galilean ministry, is that the nature of Jesus’ work as the Son of God is to oppose Satan and everything else that would seek to separate us from God. There is, throughout Luke’s Gospel, a battle going on between the Kingdom of God and those who would seek to separate others from that Kingdom, and this story is like a diorama of that overarching narrative. A battle which Jesus wins, enthroned in victory in the unlikely triumph of a cross, which we’ll read about just forty days from now. The devil’s failure here is both the opening salvos of that cosmic struggle, and a foreshadowing of its inevitable conclusion. The forces of evil never had a chance; the Holy Spirit was already holding all the cards.
But the devil doesn’t know that, cannot see that, and so the conflict unfolds. And ironically considering how this text is sometimes read, but the trap the devil falls into in this line of questioning is the same one I talked about struggling with earlier, the rigidity of determinedly reading a situation only one way. Because everything the devil asked Jesus was scriptural, and every response Jesus gave also scriptural. But the difference was in the intent, and the effect of that intent on others. The first temptation, “Since you are the Son of God,”—and if I might interject a fun fact here, the NRSV translates it as “if”, as a conditional, taunting Jesus to prove his identity, but the syntax argues a better translation here is “since.” The devil knows, acknowledges even, what Jesus’ identity is, the challenge here is not to prove who he is, but to how Jesus will live out that identity, that Sonship—“Since you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And of course we know Jesus is famished by this point, verse two told us that. But also, providing bread is a totally scripturally acceptable move. Moses called on God to provide manna in the wilderness, Jesus himself will feed five-thousand with five loaves and two fish, feeding people is certainly great. But it’s not enough. So Jesus replied with this line from Deuteronomy, “one does not live by bread alone.” The work of God is about meeting physical needs, absolutely, but its way more than that. The devil could only see one fixed, rigid path, Jesus cared about the wider story.
Then the second temptation: “If,”—and this time the “if” is conditional—“If you will worship me [all the kingdoms of the world] will be yours.” The challenge here is to Jesus’ authority, and the gain of power by compromise. The first, and obvious, problem is that the devil doesn’t have the power to give the kingdoms of the world or even the authority over them to begin with. Jesus as the Son of God will, and in fact already has that authority, a power convened on him by the Father and a power which he, Jesus, will freely give to his disciples later on in Luke.
But let’s say hypothetically, just for experiment’s sake, that the devil did have the authority over the kingdoms and could give it to Jesus if he wanted to. The problem with this deal is that power gained through such back room dealings, if you do this, then I will do this, is not a free gift, there are always strings attached. The power the devil offers is a puppet power, a life limiting power. Not the free gift of grace Jesus will give his disciples, a gift that will transform not only their lives, but the lives of all those around them.
And last, and most importantly for this Lenten season, the third temptation. “Since you are the Son of God”—notice the “since” again—“Since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for tit is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” In case you zoned out earlier, the devil is quoting the Psalm we read earlier, Psalm ninety-one, a psalm about God’s protection. The Psalm, plus the location on the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, the very heart of religious and political power, makes the challenge clear. Put God’s promise to the test. Cheat death, be saved by angels, right here in the heart of Jerusalem, in the core of the Roman outpost and the center of the Judean religious tradition, and show in an instant that you are the one to be followed. As Christian readers, and especially as Christian readers at the beginning of the season of Lent, we cannot miss the irony of the devil’s challenge. Because we know where Jesus is eventually going. He’s going to die. What’s more, he’s going to die in Jerusalem. But not, as the devil is offering, in some glorious show of power on the pinnacle of social, political, and religious power. No, Jesus will die the death of a common political prisoner, on a cross on a hill called Golgotha, little more than a trash heap on the outskirts of the city. And in the glorious reversal that is the nature of God, it is in that action, of accepting death rather than avoiding it, that the true power of Jesus’ authority is displayed and death itself is defeated.
Dear friends in Christ, the true message, the good news, of Lent that this story provides us just of snapshot of, is that the journey is hard and the way is long, but God already won. So let us walk with confidence into the wilderness of this season, knowing that we will be changed, remade, transformed by the journey, and that God has already triumphed. Amen.
I open with this, because this is the first Sunday of Lent, and like every first Sunday of Lent the Gospel reading this morning is one of the accounts of the scene which is commonly known as “the temptation of Jesus.” And because we read this story of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil at the beginning of Lent, a forty day period often associated with giving up something, the message of this text sometimes becomes: Jesus was fully human and he went without eating for forty days, so you should at least be able to resist that cookie, or pop, or Facebook game. Or lose twenty pounds or save money or quit smoking or whatever vice you’re trying to get over.
And let me be clear, fasting, the act of giving something up, is an excellent spiritual discipline. So if you’ve taken on some sort of fast for Lent, and that’s a good and helpful spiritual practice for you, as your pastor let me say, by all means, that’s fantastic. Let me know how I can support you, pray for you, encourage you in that practice. God wants for us to be the best versions of ourselves, and a great way to work toward that is the spiritual discipline of fasting, of an intentional break from something we’re struggling with. But if we read this text as a shaming pep talk about how we need to “Be Like Jesus,” we reduce Jesus to the role of motivational speaker or life coach. Which again, both are great, helpful things. But Jesus is more than that.
The good news about this text, about Lent, is it isn’t about us. Whether you, like me, have such powerful self discipline that your doctor has a beach house, or you chase every whim like an excited puppy has absolutely no bearing on this text. This text, and the whole season of Lent, is about Jesus. About who Jesus is, what Jesus does, and how Jesus is and will live out his identity as the Son of God and savior of the world.
The text started out with “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, return[ing] from the Jordan and [being] led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” What you may not remember, because we read it back in January, but Jesus was returning from the Jordan where he had just been baptized. At which time “the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” And after this morning’s text, verse fourteen goes on, “Then Jesus filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee,” where “he began to teach in their synagogues” and proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” I point this out to say, one of the key features of this story is that the Spirit is in charge of every move. The devil thinks he is, the devil thinks he’s caught Jesus in a moment of weakness, thinks he’s the one doing the testing, but this is, always has been, and always will be, the Spirit’s show to run. She’s hard to see, that Spirit. Rarely does she show herself in bodily form like a dove. Mostly she blows through, like fire, like wind, shaping and remaking us and we see only her effects, but make no mistake; she’s got this well in hand.
And under the Spirit’s guidance we’ve got this seeming test of wills between Jesus and the devil. One of the key things Luke shows us, by placing this story where he does, immediately after Jesus’ baptism and the revelation of his identity as the Son of God, and just prior to the start of his Galilean ministry, is that the nature of Jesus’ work as the Son of God is to oppose Satan and everything else that would seek to separate us from God. There is, throughout Luke’s Gospel, a battle going on between the Kingdom of God and those who would seek to separate others from that Kingdom, and this story is like a diorama of that overarching narrative. A battle which Jesus wins, enthroned in victory in the unlikely triumph of a cross, which we’ll read about just forty days from now. The devil’s failure here is both the opening salvos of that cosmic struggle, and a foreshadowing of its inevitable conclusion. The forces of evil never had a chance; the Holy Spirit was already holding all the cards.
But the devil doesn’t know that, cannot see that, and so the conflict unfolds. And ironically considering how this text is sometimes read, but the trap the devil falls into in this line of questioning is the same one I talked about struggling with earlier, the rigidity of determinedly reading a situation only one way. Because everything the devil asked Jesus was scriptural, and every response Jesus gave also scriptural. But the difference was in the intent, and the effect of that intent on others. The first temptation, “Since you are the Son of God,”—and if I might interject a fun fact here, the NRSV translates it as “if”, as a conditional, taunting Jesus to prove his identity, but the syntax argues a better translation here is “since.” The devil knows, acknowledges even, what Jesus’ identity is, the challenge here is not to prove who he is, but to how Jesus will live out that identity, that Sonship—“Since you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And of course we know Jesus is famished by this point, verse two told us that. But also, providing bread is a totally scripturally acceptable move. Moses called on God to provide manna in the wilderness, Jesus himself will feed five-thousand with five loaves and two fish, feeding people is certainly great. But it’s not enough. So Jesus replied with this line from Deuteronomy, “one does not live by bread alone.” The work of God is about meeting physical needs, absolutely, but its way more than that. The devil could only see one fixed, rigid path, Jesus cared about the wider story.
Then the second temptation: “If,”—and this time the “if” is conditional—“If you will worship me [all the kingdoms of the world] will be yours.” The challenge here is to Jesus’ authority, and the gain of power by compromise. The first, and obvious, problem is that the devil doesn’t have the power to give the kingdoms of the world or even the authority over them to begin with. Jesus as the Son of God will, and in fact already has that authority, a power convened on him by the Father and a power which he, Jesus, will freely give to his disciples later on in Luke.
But let’s say hypothetically, just for experiment’s sake, that the devil did have the authority over the kingdoms and could give it to Jesus if he wanted to. The problem with this deal is that power gained through such back room dealings, if you do this, then I will do this, is not a free gift, there are always strings attached. The power the devil offers is a puppet power, a life limiting power. Not the free gift of grace Jesus will give his disciples, a gift that will transform not only their lives, but the lives of all those around them.
And last, and most importantly for this Lenten season, the third temptation. “Since you are the Son of God”—notice the “since” again—“Since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for tit is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” In case you zoned out earlier, the devil is quoting the Psalm we read earlier, Psalm ninety-one, a psalm about God’s protection. The Psalm, plus the location on the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, the very heart of religious and political power, makes the challenge clear. Put God’s promise to the test. Cheat death, be saved by angels, right here in the heart of Jerusalem, in the core of the Roman outpost and the center of the Judean religious tradition, and show in an instant that you are the one to be followed. As Christian readers, and especially as Christian readers at the beginning of the season of Lent, we cannot miss the irony of the devil’s challenge. Because we know where Jesus is eventually going. He’s going to die. What’s more, he’s going to die in Jerusalem. But not, as the devil is offering, in some glorious show of power on the pinnacle of social, political, and religious power. No, Jesus will die the death of a common political prisoner, on a cross on a hill called Golgotha, little more than a trash heap on the outskirts of the city. And in the glorious reversal that is the nature of God, it is in that action, of accepting death rather than avoiding it, that the true power of Jesus’ authority is displayed and death itself is defeated.
Dear friends in Christ, the true message, the good news, of Lent that this story provides us just of snapshot of, is that the journey is hard and the way is long, but God already won. So let us walk with confidence into the wilderness of this season, knowing that we will be changed, remade, transformed by the journey, and that God has already triumphed. Amen.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Like the Hypocrites: An Ash Wednesday Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
On Monday morning, after listening to a sermon podcast on the Ash Wednesday texts, which repeat over and over again “don’t be like the hypocrites,” I opened the paper to an article on the recent turmoil in the Methodist, Catholic, and Southern Baptist churches, and the following quote from Rev. Jim Wallace, “The ‘nones’” – and by ‘nones’ I mean n-o-n-e-s, people who are disenchanted with institutional religion—“the nones want their lives to make a difference… They’re not going to join a religion that’s not making a difference or, worse yet, is full of hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy is not a word that just pops up all the time, yet in the span of an hour, I heard it in the Bible and the Battle Creek Enquirer. Theologian Karl Barth is famous for saying a preacher ought to approach the sermon with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. I see what you did there, Holy Spirit, clearly something needs to be said about this question of hypocrisy.
Of course, we know the sort of religious people Jesus is warning us about in this Gospel text. The annoying ones. The ones with the What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers who cut you off in traffic. Or who get all bent out of shape when someone doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” to them while showing no real sign of the selfless love that is the gift of Jesus. Or who give money or clothing or something, and want to make a huge deal about how gracious and generous they are. Or who quote scripture about who is excluded from God’s favor while conveniently ignoring the many times the Bible encourages love for ones neighbor and even ones enemies, and for the care for the stranger, the alien, the orphan, and the widow. You know, those sorts of religious people.
And there’s the rub. Because the tricky, slippery thing about hypocrisy is as soon as we start identifying it as “those other people,” people not nearly as gracious and thoughtful and well-read as ourselves, is when we start down the path to hypocrisy.
And this problem of self-congratulatory piety is not an individual problem; it is a corporate sin of the church. We in the ELCA cannot watch the struggles of our Methodist siblings or our Catholic siblings, or Southern Baptist siblings and feel detached or superior. Not only are we, as Cain once denied at the very beginning of civilization, our brother’s keeper, but we are also not immune to these same sins. In 2009, the ELCA made a different choice then the Methodists made last week and started ordaining openly gay clergy, but LGBTQ pastors still wait way longer for a call then straight clergy. Unlike the Catholic Church we allow clergy to marry, but that does not immune us from predatory pastors who take advantage of their power and seeming closeness to God. And yes unlike the Southern Baptists we’ve been ordaining women since the 70s, but as a woman I can assure you, pastoring is still very much a man’s world.
Don’t be like the hypocrites, Jesus told the disciples. But when we get down to it, when we’re truly honest with ourselves, the hypocrites are us. After I finish talking, we’re going to do the long period of Confession and Forgiveness we go through each Ash Wednesday, and if you’re anything like me, a lot of the things we’re going to confess are going to sound uncomfortably familiar. Not loving God with our whole heart, not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Shutting our ears to calls to service, pride, envy, apathy, self-indulgent appetites, negligence in prayer and worship, failing the share the faith, neglecting those in need, prejudice, contempt, the list will go on.
And this, believe it or not, is the good news of Ash Wednesday. Because a list like this, an honest accounting of our real struggles and shortfalls, this sort of truth-telling is the antidote to hypocrisy. And at the end of this whole list of things we’ve done wrong, mistakes we’ve made, people we’ve hurt, places we’ve failed, at the end of all of that is the promise that you are forgiven. That you are redeemed, that you are made new, made right, made whole, in the cross of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and that in you, through you, is the work of God’s salvation.
Today is the day that we remember that we are mortal, that we are broken, that we are human, that our time on earth and our ability to act is limited. Today we remember, we are reminded that we come from the dust, and that the promise of our mortality is that we will be dust again. And today is the day we also remember what God can do with dust. Back in the beginning, back in Genesis, the scriptures tell us of how God took dust, how God took adamah, and from that dust made humanity, made Adam, which we think of as a name but which literally translates to dirt part. This dust that we are, and to which we will return, it is the same stuff from which the galaxies are made. God made, God makes, beautiful, amazing, incredible things, out of dust.
Today is also the day that we remember that while we are mortal, broken, limited, God is not. But God became those things for us. God who is immortal, whole, divine, limitless, slipped into human skin, took on the dustiness of our flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. God became one of us to redeem God’s relationship with us. Jesus Christ died for us, so that death itself would be destroyed.
Yes, we are mortal, we are human, we are broken. But God is not. And this ashy cross is a reminder to us not just of our humanity, but of God’s divinity, and just how invested, just how in love with us, just how committed to us God is. Nothing, not even death itself can separate God from that which God formed from the dust. We cannot do this on our own, and the good news of this ashy cross is we don’t have to. God who formed us from the clay is still forming us, again and again.
And with these ashy crosses on our foreheads, we will come forward around this table again, for the meal that is nourishment for our souls. A foretaste of the heavenly feast when all are renewed at God’s own table.
So today, dear people of God, hear this invitation to let down your guard, let down the need to have it all together, to pretend you ever could, and just be in the hands of the God who formed you, who is still forming you, and who loves every broken piece of you. You are dust, formed from the stuff of God, and to that same God you have always belonged. Amen.
Of course, we know the sort of religious people Jesus is warning us about in this Gospel text. The annoying ones. The ones with the What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers who cut you off in traffic. Or who get all bent out of shape when someone doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” to them while showing no real sign of the selfless love that is the gift of Jesus. Or who give money or clothing or something, and want to make a huge deal about how gracious and generous they are. Or who quote scripture about who is excluded from God’s favor while conveniently ignoring the many times the Bible encourages love for ones neighbor and even ones enemies, and for the care for the stranger, the alien, the orphan, and the widow. You know, those sorts of religious people.
And there’s the rub. Because the tricky, slippery thing about hypocrisy is as soon as we start identifying it as “those other people,” people not nearly as gracious and thoughtful and well-read as ourselves, is when we start down the path to hypocrisy.
And this problem of self-congratulatory piety is not an individual problem; it is a corporate sin of the church. We in the ELCA cannot watch the struggles of our Methodist siblings or our Catholic siblings, or Southern Baptist siblings and feel detached or superior. Not only are we, as Cain once denied at the very beginning of civilization, our brother’s keeper, but we are also not immune to these same sins. In 2009, the ELCA made a different choice then the Methodists made last week and started ordaining openly gay clergy, but LGBTQ pastors still wait way longer for a call then straight clergy. Unlike the Catholic Church we allow clergy to marry, but that does not immune us from predatory pastors who take advantage of their power and seeming closeness to God. And yes unlike the Southern Baptists we’ve been ordaining women since the 70s, but as a woman I can assure you, pastoring is still very much a man’s world.
Don’t be like the hypocrites, Jesus told the disciples. But when we get down to it, when we’re truly honest with ourselves, the hypocrites are us. After I finish talking, we’re going to do the long period of Confession and Forgiveness we go through each Ash Wednesday, and if you’re anything like me, a lot of the things we’re going to confess are going to sound uncomfortably familiar. Not loving God with our whole heart, not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Shutting our ears to calls to service, pride, envy, apathy, self-indulgent appetites, negligence in prayer and worship, failing the share the faith, neglecting those in need, prejudice, contempt, the list will go on.
And this, believe it or not, is the good news of Ash Wednesday. Because a list like this, an honest accounting of our real struggles and shortfalls, this sort of truth-telling is the antidote to hypocrisy. And at the end of this whole list of things we’ve done wrong, mistakes we’ve made, people we’ve hurt, places we’ve failed, at the end of all of that is the promise that you are forgiven. That you are redeemed, that you are made new, made right, made whole, in the cross of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and that in you, through you, is the work of God’s salvation.
Today is the day that we remember that we are mortal, that we are broken, that we are human, that our time on earth and our ability to act is limited. Today we remember, we are reminded that we come from the dust, and that the promise of our mortality is that we will be dust again. And today is the day we also remember what God can do with dust. Back in the beginning, back in Genesis, the scriptures tell us of how God took dust, how God took adamah, and from that dust made humanity, made Adam, which we think of as a name but which literally translates to dirt part. This dust that we are, and to which we will return, it is the same stuff from which the galaxies are made. God made, God makes, beautiful, amazing, incredible things, out of dust.
Today is also the day that we remember that while we are mortal, broken, limited, God is not. But God became those things for us. God who is immortal, whole, divine, limitless, slipped into human skin, took on the dustiness of our flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. God became one of us to redeem God’s relationship with us. Jesus Christ died for us, so that death itself would be destroyed.
Yes, we are mortal, we are human, we are broken. But God is not. And this ashy cross is a reminder to us not just of our humanity, but of God’s divinity, and just how invested, just how in love with us, just how committed to us God is. Nothing, not even death itself can separate God from that which God formed from the dust. We cannot do this on our own, and the good news of this ashy cross is we don’t have to. God who formed us from the clay is still forming us, again and again.
And with these ashy crosses on our foreheads, we will come forward around this table again, for the meal that is nourishment for our souls. A foretaste of the heavenly feast when all are renewed at God’s own table.
So today, dear people of God, hear this invitation to let down your guard, let down the need to have it all together, to pretend you ever could, and just be in the hands of the God who formed you, who is still forming you, and who loves every broken piece of you. You are dust, formed from the stuff of God, and to that same God you have always belonged. Amen.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
O Lord Our God: A Sermon on Psalm 99 and Luke 9:28-43a
In Bible study, Jan does this thing that I love where we’ll read a really powerful passage or someone will come up with an insightful insight, and Jan will respond, “wow, that’s a wow.” Every time I read the Transfiguration story, I find myself also saying, wow, this is a wow. There’s just something so otherworldly about this description of Jesus sitting in prayer at the top of a mountain with his three closest disciples when suddenly his is transfigured, transformed, in front of them. The appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white. And just in case we missed the reference to Moses, who we learned from the first reading was also transformed by God atop a mountain. So much so that he had to wear a veil over his face when he came down because his face glowed so much. Which, and I have no idea if this is true but it makes me laugh, I wonder if the veil was because they all slept in tents, and Moses’ glowing face kept people up at night. But anyway, in case we missed the reference, while Jesus is dazzling away, Moses and Elijah show up too. And Peter, ah Peter, always the ‘talk first, think later’ one, is like, “Master, this is awesome. Let’s build some tents, let’s hang out up here!” Luke is quick to point out that Peter said this, “not knowing what he said.” And as soon as Peter said this, boom, a thick cloud descended and “they were terrified.” Then a voice came from the cloud saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Then the cloud lifted, leaving only the disciples and the back to normal Jesus, and they all went back down the mountain. But, Luke added, “they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.” A part of me is like, what! How could you see Jesus transfigured in front of you, like literally glowing, hanging out with Moses and Elijah, and not say anything! But another part of me is like, how could you ever put such an experience into words. Astonished silence is maybe the only response to such an incredible experience.
I love Psalm ninety-nine as a pair to this Gospel text, because the poetry of the Psalms is maybe our best chance at putting this kind of grandeur into words. Let me read part of the Psalm again: “The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!”
We’ve got earthquakes, people trembling, exaltation, greatness, awe. We’ve got cherubim. Cherubim, fun fact, is the plural of cherub. And a cherub in scripture is a lion or bull with the wings of an eagle and the face of a human, often holding a flaming sword. This is not a chubby Precious Moments baby with downy wings; these things are terrifying! That’s what we’ve got here seated beside the throne of God, flying bulls or lions with flaming swords. No wonder the earth is quaking, I’d be quaking too.
But then, and if you didn’t catch this don’t worry. I didn’t catch this until I read a really excellent commentary by J. Clinton McCann, but then the Psalm goes very quickly from cosmic to human scale. Verse four: “Mighty God, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” Justice, equity, righteousness, these are huge concepts yes, but they’re also human concepts. Flying bull-lion, he or she is probably not all that concerned about equity; they’re an angel with a flaming sword. Equity is about us, equity, righteousness, justice, these are things we long for, things in our worldview, in our scope of understanding.
And then it gets even more personal. This divine being seated on a throne of warrior angels starts calling out people by name. “Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was also among those who called on his name.” And yeah, yeah, Moses, Aaron, Samuel are heavy hitters in religious lore, but remember, these guys also had some flaws. Samuel first heard God when he was just a boy, and he thought it was his mentor Eli. Moses was afraid to speak, so God gave him Aaron. And Aaron is the one who when Moses was up on the mountain top getting the Ten Commandments and a glowing face, Aaron was back with the Israelites building a golden calf for them to worship. Yes, they’re heroes, but very human heroes. And heroes who, the Psalm goes on, “cried to the Lord, and he answered them.”
“O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them.” Notice the shift there in verse eight. No longer a third-person description, the psalmist gets personal: “O Lord our God, you answered them.” And J. Clinton McCann pointed out that the word the NRSV translated as forgiving is maybe better translated as “bearing” or “carrying.” So this forgiving here, this isn’t “hey, it’s ok, forget about it,” this is the divine being described earlier as seated on a throne of flying bull-lion angels, that same cosmic power, actually taking upon Godself the burden of human sin and brokenness, bearing, carrying that burden for us, taking the load so that we don’t have to. Friends, this is intimate stuff. And remember last week, when I talked about Evelyn and Edna and how sometimes the most graceful, loving thing we can do for each other is to call each other out, even though it would be way easier to just let it go and look the other way? The second half of verse eight, “you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.” God is in this thing with us. In the trenches, ready to carry our burdens when they need carrying, but willing to go toe-to-toe when what we really need is for someone to not be afraid to call us out on our own mistakes. This is the God whom the Psalmist ends by urging us: “Extol the Lord our God, and worship on God’s holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.” Holiness here is redefined. The holiness of God is not that God is set apart from humanity, distant and cosmic and enthroned upon the cherubim. The holiness of God is profoundly personal, grounded in grace, love, and a deep tenacity to be in relationship with us. This Lord who is king is OUR God, the one who not only calls us by name, but on who’s name we can call, and that same God will answer. That is Our God who is holy.
So back to our Gospel. When we left them, Jesus had just finished being transfigured before them, face changed, clothes dazzling, Moses and Elijah, clouds descending and voices from heaven declaring Jesus, God’s Son, the whole nine yards. And the disciples kept silent and… told no one any of the things they had seen.” Then they came down off the mountain and immediately they are met with a great crowd of people, and a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher,” and presented to Jesus his only child, a boy so overcome with a demon that he would convulse until he foamed at the mouth, “it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.” And “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.” And it was then, not after the miracle on the mountain, with Moses, Elijah, dazzling whiteness, changed faces, clouds descending, and voices from heaven, but in the act of Jesus restoring a boy to health and a father to his son, in that intimate act of healing and restoration, it was in that action that “all were astounded at the greatness of God.”
This, dear people of God, is the Lord our God, the God whom we extol. A God whose greatness is on display in relationship, in the intimate, human holiness grounded not in might and glory, but in something more powerful than that. Our God is a God whose greatness is displayed most clearly in divine grace, suffering love, and the transforming power of relationship. Amen.
I love Psalm ninety-nine as a pair to this Gospel text, because the poetry of the Psalms is maybe our best chance at putting this kind of grandeur into words. Let me read part of the Psalm again: “The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!”
We’ve got earthquakes, people trembling, exaltation, greatness, awe. We’ve got cherubim. Cherubim, fun fact, is the plural of cherub. And a cherub in scripture is a lion or bull with the wings of an eagle and the face of a human, often holding a flaming sword. This is not a chubby Precious Moments baby with downy wings; these things are terrifying! That’s what we’ve got here seated beside the throne of God, flying bulls or lions with flaming swords. No wonder the earth is quaking, I’d be quaking too.
But then, and if you didn’t catch this don’t worry. I didn’t catch this until I read a really excellent commentary by J. Clinton McCann, but then the Psalm goes very quickly from cosmic to human scale. Verse four: “Mighty God, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” Justice, equity, righteousness, these are huge concepts yes, but they’re also human concepts. Flying bull-lion, he or she is probably not all that concerned about equity; they’re an angel with a flaming sword. Equity is about us, equity, righteousness, justice, these are things we long for, things in our worldview, in our scope of understanding.
And then it gets even more personal. This divine being seated on a throne of warrior angels starts calling out people by name. “Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was also among those who called on his name.” And yeah, yeah, Moses, Aaron, Samuel are heavy hitters in religious lore, but remember, these guys also had some flaws. Samuel first heard God when he was just a boy, and he thought it was his mentor Eli. Moses was afraid to speak, so God gave him Aaron. And Aaron is the one who when Moses was up on the mountain top getting the Ten Commandments and a glowing face, Aaron was back with the Israelites building a golden calf for them to worship. Yes, they’re heroes, but very human heroes. And heroes who, the Psalm goes on, “cried to the Lord, and he answered them.”
“O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them.” Notice the shift there in verse eight. No longer a third-person description, the psalmist gets personal: “O Lord our God, you answered them.” And J. Clinton McCann pointed out that the word the NRSV translated as forgiving is maybe better translated as “bearing” or “carrying.” So this forgiving here, this isn’t “hey, it’s ok, forget about it,” this is the divine being described earlier as seated on a throne of flying bull-lion angels, that same cosmic power, actually taking upon Godself the burden of human sin and brokenness, bearing, carrying that burden for us, taking the load so that we don’t have to. Friends, this is intimate stuff. And remember last week, when I talked about Evelyn and Edna and how sometimes the most graceful, loving thing we can do for each other is to call each other out, even though it would be way easier to just let it go and look the other way? The second half of verse eight, “you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.” God is in this thing with us. In the trenches, ready to carry our burdens when they need carrying, but willing to go toe-to-toe when what we really need is for someone to not be afraid to call us out on our own mistakes. This is the God whom the Psalmist ends by urging us: “Extol the Lord our God, and worship on God’s holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.” Holiness here is redefined. The holiness of God is not that God is set apart from humanity, distant and cosmic and enthroned upon the cherubim. The holiness of God is profoundly personal, grounded in grace, love, and a deep tenacity to be in relationship with us. This Lord who is king is OUR God, the one who not only calls us by name, but on who’s name we can call, and that same God will answer. That is Our God who is holy.
So back to our Gospel. When we left them, Jesus had just finished being transfigured before them, face changed, clothes dazzling, Moses and Elijah, clouds descending and voices from heaven declaring Jesus, God’s Son, the whole nine yards. And the disciples kept silent and… told no one any of the things they had seen.” Then they came down off the mountain and immediately they are met with a great crowd of people, and a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher,” and presented to Jesus his only child, a boy so overcome with a demon that he would convulse until he foamed at the mouth, “it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.” And “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.” And it was then, not after the miracle on the mountain, with Moses, Elijah, dazzling whiteness, changed faces, clouds descending, and voices from heaven, but in the act of Jesus restoring a boy to health and a father to his son, in that intimate act of healing and restoration, it was in that action that “all were astounded at the greatness of God.”
This, dear people of God, is the Lord our God, the God whom we extol. A God whose greatness is on display in relationship, in the intimate, human holiness grounded not in might and glory, but in something more powerful than that. Our God is a God whose greatness is displayed most clearly in divine grace, suffering love, and the transforming power of relationship. Amen.
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