Fun fact: I learned the etymology of the word “quarantine” this week. Quarantine is from the Italian “quarana”, meaning forty. From 1347 to 1350, the Black Plague ravaged Europe, killing nearly a third of the population. In an effort to keep the disease from spreading, officials in the port city of Ragusa established a policy of “quarantino,” a forty day period that ships arriving from plague-ridden areas were required to stay in isolation before being allowed ashore. It is important to note that even in medieval times, the system of quarantine was imperfect and rife with inequality. One article I read noted: “For [some], especially those with money, quarantine could be optional. “There are people who are able to evade quarantine, there are people who were able to buy their way out of quarantine, there are people who were able to just leave when a quarantine was imposed and not come back until it was over,” says [historian Karl] Appuhn. “So, the people who suffered under quarantine tended for the most part to be poor—people who had no choice.”[1] Coronavirus too, is having an inequitable effect. While all of us are equally vulnerable to infection—the virus itself does not register differences in race, class, or socioeconomic status—the effects of the economic shutdown are being born on the shoulders of those with the least to spare. It is the cruel irony of poverty that staying home to protect the vulnerable most hurts the vulnerable we are trying to protect.
But, why forty days? Why aren’t we all in “trentino” or “cinquatino”? I want to make a joke here about Quentin Tarantino, but I can’t come up with one, so just know there’s a pun here waiting to emerge. Anyway, the question at hand, why forty? According to Appuhn, the reason was probably arbitrary. It may have had something to do with the cultural weight of the number forty. Noah was aboard the ark forty days, Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years, Jesus fasted forty days, there are forty days of Lent. The Bible is full of stories in which the number forty is the mark of completion.
Biblical basis or not, I think this quarantine is hard because staying home and doing nothing is so antithetical to who we are as people of faith. Our faith is born out of following a man who regularly broke social norms to be with those cast out of their communities. Jesus regularly ate with sinners and outcasts, healed lepers, touched—and raised—the death, and generally did all the things a good, law-abiding person was not supposed to do. In Jesus we see someone for whom healing was contagious. The scriptural mandates against associating with lepers, the dead, and other deemed unclean were not made in cruelty but out of concern for the health of the greater community, yet when Jesus broke those barriers he didn’t become ill, the ill became well.
This practice of Jesus associating with the outcasts is baked into who we are as Christians. On my better days, when I am able to give those congregations who choose to gather unlawfully and despite CDC guidelines the benefit of the doubt, I remember that not being together in the midst of crisis is so antithetical to how the church has behaved for thousands of year. The early church thrived during an outbreak of the plague in the second century, when Christians put their own lives at risk to care for the sick. And Luther’s words from “On Whether One May Flee a Deadly Plague” urges care for the neighbor above all. When tragedy strikes, the church shows up, casserole dish in hand, to be with those affected. On Wednesday when the dams broke in Midland, the first announcements I got were from colleagues opening their churches to And what is so challenging about this particular pandemic is that the thing which we the church are uniquely gifted at, gathering for mutual prayer and support and being an embodied example of God’s hands and feet in the world, turn out to be the most dangerous things we could do right now. Because of the insidious nature of how this virus spreads, it is safer for us to eat at a restaurant than it is for us to sit together in our sanctuary, sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” and share the Lord’s Supper together. And that’s weird, and hard, and painful.
Which is why these particular texts are a gift to us in this time and place, when the world around us is beginning to crack open and we the church are being urged to stay closed. Because these texts are about being in that uncomfortable period of waiting on God, and about trusting that there is work to do, and gifts to receive, in the waiting.
Our first reading today was from the first chapter of Acts. Acts, you might recall, is the continuation of the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells the story of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, while Acts is the story of how the early church emerged after Jesus’ ministry. Luke, like the other Gospels, ended with a series of resurrection appearances of the crucified Jesus to his followers. Acts starts during one of those appearances, with the disciples demonstrating that despite all that had taken place over the three days of Jesus betray, death, and resurrection, they still have no idea what Jesus ministry was about, when they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The question asked here is basically, ‘Jesus, we know that you just literally rose from the dead, but we’re still waiting for you to ride in on a white stallion like the emperor and become king of the world, so, when is that going to take place?” To which Jesus responded, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
It is not for you to know the times or the periods. What Jesus says here to his eager beaver followers is, wait. Wait. The thing you want, the action you crave, now is not the time for that. The work for now is waiting. How long and for what, that is not for you to know. But… “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Wait, but you will be my witnesses. Wait, because there will be—there is—work for you to do.
And the disciples waited. Not patiently maybe, but they’d just seen Jesus “lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight,” and then “two men in which robes stood by them [and said] “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” so really what else were they to do? They returned to Jerusalem and “went to the room where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthews, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James… constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”
They waited. They waited, they prayed, and they studied. They did those things together, yes, but together just the group of them, not unlike us in our houses in this time. And what we see in this passage is that waiting was not wasted time. It’s not that the disciples were just sitting around playing whatever the first century equivalent of Candy Crush was while the world fell apart around them. I mean, they may well have been playing the first century equivalent of Candy Crush, because you have to pass the time somehow, but that time of waiting, that time of quarantine, was sacred time. It was the time necessary for God to act.
Our Gospel reading for this morning is one of those that is just so achingly beautiful that I’m hesitant to even bring it up in a sermon because how could I hope to expand on words as powerful as Jesus’ prayer to the Father on behalf of his disciples, on behalf of us who are known to the Father through Jesus. What I’d encourage you to do today at some point is read Joh chapter seventeen aloud to yourself, and let these words sink over you. Read these words aloud and hear Jesus praying for you, because that is what Jesus is doing in this passage. Jesus’ last act as the Word made flesh, before going to the cross, was to pray to the Father on behalf of we his people, that we may be protected and saved and known. But the one part from here I will raise up here is verse eleven. “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
Dear people of God, this waiting, this watching, this praying, and sitting still, and holding off, this is sacred work. This is God’s work right now. This, counterintuitive as it seems, is what it means to be the hands and feet of God in the world right now. So wait. But as you wait, know that you do not wait alone. For you are protected by the one who is as close as breathing, one with the Father as Jesus is one. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Johanna Meyer, “The Origin of the Word ‘Quarantine,’” Science Friday, < https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-word-quarantine/>, accessed: 21 May 2020.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, May 25, 2020
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
"Abandoned" Cats and a Very Present God: A Sermon on John 14:15-21
A couple of weekends ago I was downstairs reading the paper when I heard Dugan scratching on something and meowing sadly. I went upstairs to make sure he wasn’t locked in the closet. Which has happened a few times. He likes to sneak into the back corner of the closet and then because, he’s all black and hard to see in the dark, we shut the door on him not knowing he’s in there.
The problem was a closed door, not one that was keeping him in, but one that was keeping him out. Travis had shut the bathroom door so he could take a shower and Dugan decided that he had been abandoned. Never mind that I was downstairs, less than fifteen feet away, or that Travis has never once gone into the bathroom and never returned, Dugan was completely convinced that Travis had left him forever, that he was never coming back through that door, and he was irreconcilable. The sound I heard was Dugan, lying on his side, alternating between scratching at the bathroom door and reaching his paw under it trying to coax Travis to come back out, meowing sadly. Travis, of course, was in the shower throughout this whole ordeal, completely unaware of the pathetic tableau unfolding in the hallway. Cat emotions, friends, are real, complex, and powerful. Illogical. But powerful.
While I don’t feel compelled to lay on my side meowing sadly and trying to stick my hand out the front door, I admit a similar complexity of emotions these days as Dugan felt at Travis’s abandoning him out of the bathroom. I know the world is out there, I know everyone I love is just a phone call, a text message, even a Zoom conference away, but the distance feels immeasurable. I don’t completely understand it. I’ve moved a lot, which means I’m pretty experienced with being physically distanced from the people I love, but this feels different somehow. My family has started a weekly Zoom call. Every Sunday night my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and Travis and I all log into Zoom from our living rooms and visit with each other. My family and I are close, but this regular weekly check in is more communication than we’d normally have with one another. And I certainly wouldn’t see them, we’d normally just call. Yet despite the regular communication, the fact that they cannot come makes the distance between us feel larger. My two best friends live in Wisconsin, I’ll regularly go a long time without seeing either of them, but that I can’t, that I don’t know when that gap will lift, makes the distance seem unbearable. Even you all, even people in Battle Creek feel far. Ellis was in the garage at church fixing the lawn mower the other day when I stopped by to check the mail, and I was careful to keep space between us. There was nothing strange about this interaction. I’ve never made a habit of inspecting Ellis’s lawnmower repairs. I own a push-reel mower, what do I know about the baby tractors that he and Bill ride, but just knowing that I needed to stay at a safe distance made him feel far off and distant.
I was thinking about all this this week, because our Gospel text for this morning is about the abiding presence of God through the person of Jesus and soon through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the work of the beloved community. This text is Jesus telling his disciples, I know you feel alone but I promise you, you’re not. So let’s take some time to walk through this text and hear this assurance of Christ’s presence that Jesus is proclaiming here.
Our text this morning, which follows immediately on the heels of the one we read last week, is all about Jesus stressing for his disciples two crucial points. Point one – loving Jesus and keeping Jesus’ commands are inseparable experiences. You cannot love Jesus without keeping his commands, you cannot keep his commands without loving Jesus. We’ll circle back to what we mean by “loving Jesus” and “keeping his commands” in a minute here, but first let me go on. Point two of this section is this is not the end of the relationship between God and Jesus’ followers, because God continues to dwell with Jesus’ own even after Jesus has gone. In verse sixteen, Jesus told his disciples that God would send them, “another Advocate.” The word translated as “advocate” here is a great one. The Greek word is parakletos, which means “one who exhorts,” “one who comforts,” one who helps,” and “one who makes appeals on one’s behalf.” There isn’t an English equivalent that captures all of its meaning. The NRSV translation uses advocate, with a footnote that “helper” would also be a possible choice. The King James Version goes with “Comforter,” the NIV tries “Counselor,” The Message uses “Friend,” and the Common English Bible, “Companion,” you get the point. There’s so much packed into this one word that some translations give up all together and just go with the English transliteration of the Greek word, Paraclete. This complexity coupled with the fact that our English translations tend to capitalize the word as if it was a proper noun. Like Jesus is introducing someone by their name, “I’d like you all to the spirit of truth, her name is Paraclete.” But Paraclete or Advocate or Helper or Friend, none of these are names, rather they are functions. They are descriptions of the work. This would be like if we all stopped calling Kendra, Kendra, and started referring to her exclusively as Occupational Therapist. Or we only called Ellis, “guy who fixes the lawn mower when the blade falls off.” Those are jobs they hold, but they’re not who they are. I make this point because Jesus said he was asking the Father to send us “another Paraclete.” Another tells us we had one already. Those roles I rattled off, counselor, helper, advocate, companion, friend, “one who exhorts,” “one who comforts,” “one who appeals on another’s behalf,” all of those are roles held by Jesus when he was with them. Now that he would be leaving, he promised there would be another who would continue to play all those roles for them.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus told his disciples, “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me.” I’d always read that passage as being about Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples, or maybe a reference to Jesus return at the end of days. But I heard a theologian this week who said this promise that they will see Jesus is more immediate than even the resurrection. They will see Jesus because of the Spirit. Just as they know the Father because they know Jesus, and Jesus and the Father are one, so too do they see Jesus, even when Jesus is gone, because they have another who is continuing in all the roles which Jesus held for them. Roles of teacher, friend, advocate, helper, comforter, yes. But even more than that, role of holder of the relationship between Jesus and the Father, the relationship which we learned last week that the disciples too are now a part of because of their relationship with Jesus.
Which gets us back to Point One of this section. Point One remember being what Jesus laid out in verses fifteen and twenty-one. Verse fifteen, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” My Bible has a note that some translations read “If you love me, you keep my commands.” And then verse twenty-one, “those who have my commands and keep them are those that love me.” It’s the great chicken and the egg problem here, are the ones who love Jesus the ones who keep his commands? Or is that the ones who keep his commands the ones who love Jesus? Which comes first, loving Jesus or doing Jesus’ work? Yes is the very Lutheran response to this clearly not a yes or no question. The other question here also is what are Jesus’ commands? We talked about that last week, the command we are to keep is that we love each another as Jesus has loved us. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus told them, told us, just a chapter before, “if you have love for one another.”
So dear people of God, here’s the good news. Here’s the promise. This loneliness we feel right now. This sense of isolation, fear for each other and our world, our concern for our neighbors, that, really, is a sign of God’s presence with us, a sign of God’s love for us. This is a bit of a curveball, I know, but bear with me here. Because think about it. All those things I just described, loneliness, fear for others, concern for our neighbor, those are signs of love, of us having love for others, just as Jesus commanded us to do. Our love for others and Jesus’ love for us are in inseparable realities.
Dear people of God, there are not words for how much you are loved by the Father. English, Greek, it doesn’t matter the language, no words could do that love justice. To borrow a line from later in John’s Gospel, if the words describing God’s love for you were written down, “I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Amen.
The problem was a closed door, not one that was keeping him in, but one that was keeping him out. Travis had shut the bathroom door so he could take a shower and Dugan decided that he had been abandoned. Never mind that I was downstairs, less than fifteen feet away, or that Travis has never once gone into the bathroom and never returned, Dugan was completely convinced that Travis had left him forever, that he was never coming back through that door, and he was irreconcilable. The sound I heard was Dugan, lying on his side, alternating between scratching at the bathroom door and reaching his paw under it trying to coax Travis to come back out, meowing sadly. Travis, of course, was in the shower throughout this whole ordeal, completely unaware of the pathetic tableau unfolding in the hallway. Cat emotions, friends, are real, complex, and powerful. Illogical. But powerful.
While I don’t feel compelled to lay on my side meowing sadly and trying to stick my hand out the front door, I admit a similar complexity of emotions these days as Dugan felt at Travis’s abandoning him out of the bathroom. I know the world is out there, I know everyone I love is just a phone call, a text message, even a Zoom conference away, but the distance feels immeasurable. I don’t completely understand it. I’ve moved a lot, which means I’m pretty experienced with being physically distanced from the people I love, but this feels different somehow. My family has started a weekly Zoom call. Every Sunday night my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and Travis and I all log into Zoom from our living rooms and visit with each other. My family and I are close, but this regular weekly check in is more communication than we’d normally have with one another. And I certainly wouldn’t see them, we’d normally just call. Yet despite the regular communication, the fact that they cannot come makes the distance between us feel larger. My two best friends live in Wisconsin, I’ll regularly go a long time without seeing either of them, but that I can’t, that I don’t know when that gap will lift, makes the distance seem unbearable. Even you all, even people in Battle Creek feel far. Ellis was in the garage at church fixing the lawn mower the other day when I stopped by to check the mail, and I was careful to keep space between us. There was nothing strange about this interaction. I’ve never made a habit of inspecting Ellis’s lawnmower repairs. I own a push-reel mower, what do I know about the baby tractors that he and Bill ride, but just knowing that I needed to stay at a safe distance made him feel far off and distant.
I was thinking about all this this week, because our Gospel text for this morning is about the abiding presence of God through the person of Jesus and soon through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the work of the beloved community. This text is Jesus telling his disciples, I know you feel alone but I promise you, you’re not. So let’s take some time to walk through this text and hear this assurance of Christ’s presence that Jesus is proclaiming here.
Our text this morning, which follows immediately on the heels of the one we read last week, is all about Jesus stressing for his disciples two crucial points. Point one – loving Jesus and keeping Jesus’ commands are inseparable experiences. You cannot love Jesus without keeping his commands, you cannot keep his commands without loving Jesus. We’ll circle back to what we mean by “loving Jesus” and “keeping his commands” in a minute here, but first let me go on. Point two of this section is this is not the end of the relationship between God and Jesus’ followers, because God continues to dwell with Jesus’ own even after Jesus has gone. In verse sixteen, Jesus told his disciples that God would send them, “another Advocate.” The word translated as “advocate” here is a great one. The Greek word is parakletos, which means “one who exhorts,” “one who comforts,” one who helps,” and “one who makes appeals on one’s behalf.” There isn’t an English equivalent that captures all of its meaning. The NRSV translation uses advocate, with a footnote that “helper” would also be a possible choice. The King James Version goes with “Comforter,” the NIV tries “Counselor,” The Message uses “Friend,” and the Common English Bible, “Companion,” you get the point. There’s so much packed into this one word that some translations give up all together and just go with the English transliteration of the Greek word, Paraclete. This complexity coupled with the fact that our English translations tend to capitalize the word as if it was a proper noun. Like Jesus is introducing someone by their name, “I’d like you all to the spirit of truth, her name is Paraclete.” But Paraclete or Advocate or Helper or Friend, none of these are names, rather they are functions. They are descriptions of the work. This would be like if we all stopped calling Kendra, Kendra, and started referring to her exclusively as Occupational Therapist. Or we only called Ellis, “guy who fixes the lawn mower when the blade falls off.” Those are jobs they hold, but they’re not who they are. I make this point because Jesus said he was asking the Father to send us “another Paraclete.” Another tells us we had one already. Those roles I rattled off, counselor, helper, advocate, companion, friend, “one who exhorts,” “one who comforts,” “one who appeals on another’s behalf,” all of those are roles held by Jesus when he was with them. Now that he would be leaving, he promised there would be another who would continue to play all those roles for them.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus told his disciples, “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me.” I’d always read that passage as being about Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples, or maybe a reference to Jesus return at the end of days. But I heard a theologian this week who said this promise that they will see Jesus is more immediate than even the resurrection. They will see Jesus because of the Spirit. Just as they know the Father because they know Jesus, and Jesus and the Father are one, so too do they see Jesus, even when Jesus is gone, because they have another who is continuing in all the roles which Jesus held for them. Roles of teacher, friend, advocate, helper, comforter, yes. But even more than that, role of holder of the relationship between Jesus and the Father, the relationship which we learned last week that the disciples too are now a part of because of their relationship with Jesus.
Which gets us back to Point One of this section. Point One remember being what Jesus laid out in verses fifteen and twenty-one. Verse fifteen, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” My Bible has a note that some translations read “If you love me, you keep my commands.” And then verse twenty-one, “those who have my commands and keep them are those that love me.” It’s the great chicken and the egg problem here, are the ones who love Jesus the ones who keep his commands? Or is that the ones who keep his commands the ones who love Jesus? Which comes first, loving Jesus or doing Jesus’ work? Yes is the very Lutheran response to this clearly not a yes or no question. The other question here also is what are Jesus’ commands? We talked about that last week, the command we are to keep is that we love each another as Jesus has loved us. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus told them, told us, just a chapter before, “if you have love for one another.”
So dear people of God, here’s the good news. Here’s the promise. This loneliness we feel right now. This sense of isolation, fear for each other and our world, our concern for our neighbors, that, really, is a sign of God’s presence with us, a sign of God’s love for us. This is a bit of a curveball, I know, but bear with me here. Because think about it. All those things I just described, loneliness, fear for others, concern for our neighbor, those are signs of love, of us having love for others, just as Jesus commanded us to do. Our love for others and Jesus’ love for us are in inseparable realities.
Dear people of God, there are not words for how much you are loved by the Father. English, Greek, it doesn’t matter the language, no words could do that love justice. To borrow a line from later in John’s Gospel, if the words describing God’s love for you were written down, “I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Amen.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Not Being Troubled in the Midst of Troubled Times: A Sermon on John 14:1-14
On Friday I ran 2.23 miles in honor of Ahmaud Arbery, the African American man who was shot in February while jogging because he quote “looked like” someone who had been seen breaking into houses in the neighborhood. Friday would have been his twenty-sixth birthday. Instead, two months after his death, Friday marked the day that charges were brought against the two men who shot him. So on Friday I did my normal workout, so
I would be tired and able to focus. Then I ran the additional 2.23 miles in circles around the park by my house, thinking about this shooting, about our text for this weekend, and about how we read this text in the midst of the world we live in.
Our reading for this morning started with Jesus saying to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Do not let your hearts be troubled. I don’t know about you, but I find my heart is troubled a lot these days. I’m troubled by the death of Arbery, and by the fact that his is not the only name I can rattle off, far from it, of someone who was killed for looking like someone who might have committed a crime. I’m troubled that assault weapons are allowed in our state building, but poster board signs are considered too much of a threat. I’m troubled that in the midst of a global pandemic some people are clamoring to go back to work because to be without work means to be without health care, while others are so enraged at the imposition of wearing a mask that they will shoot the clerk who asked them to. I’m troubled.
I’m troubled, and so on first read I struggle with this command of Jesus for the disciples to not let their “hearts be troubled.” Because that’s what it is, a command. And there is, after all, much for the disciples to be troubled about. After three years of Jesus talking about how his hour had not yet come, suddenly he’d switched his tone and now it’s all, “my hour has come” and “now my soul is troubled.” They had gathered that night for a meal, a joyful time with friends before the Passover, but Jesus first had washed their feet, then predicted one of them would betray him, leading to Judas’ departure. Then he’d told Peter that he would deny him, and now this message not to let their hearts be troubled. Jesus, our hearts had been troubled since we came back here to watch you raise Lazarus, and things are going from bad to worse, are we just to push aside these very real fears?
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said, but he did not stop there. He followed this up with two additional commands. “Believe in God, believe also in me.” On Palm Sunday we talked about the literary technique common in Hebrew poetry to say something, and then say the thing again with more detail to explain it. The example being the verse from the prophet Zechariah, “Lo, your king comes to you victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” We talked about how Zechariah was not implying the king was riding on two animals, the reference to the colt was further clarifying the age of the donkey. Fun grammar fact I learned this week, this is what’s called an appositive, which means a noun or pronoun that identifies or explains the first noun. Why am I sharing this with you other than fun with English grammar? Because the entire first verse of John chapter fourteen is an appositive phrase. We cannot understand what it means when Jesus says, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” without the additional information, “believe in God, believe also in me.” “Believe in God, believe also in me” is what makes “do not let your hearts be troubled” possible.
What do I mean? The central message of Jesus in John’s Gospel is that he and the Father are one. And because Jesus and the Father are one, the disciples can trust that everything that is about to occur, the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus is not the failure of the mission, but in fact the triumph of the mission, the culmination of the work which God through Jesus came to earth to do.
It is because of this promise, that Jesus and the Father are one, that Jesus goes to prepare a place for us in the Father’s own heart, that Jesus returned—that’s key too, notice Jesus said “will return” but I’m saying returned, because this was spoken by the pre-resurrection Jesus, but we read it with the knowledge of the resurrection, so we know already of the truth of these words, the fulfillment of the promise of his return—that Jesus returned to take us to himself, so that where he is—in relationship with the Father—where he is that we may be also. “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
If you’re confused where this is all going right now, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Thomas too at this point is like, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Bringing us to our second appositive phrase of the passage, “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Truth and life are meant to clarify for us what Jesus means when he calls himself the way. Truth – through Jesus, the Word made flesh, the truth of God is present in the world. What was once an abstract concept is now standing among us, available to see, to hear, to touch, to know. And life – in Jesus the promise of the life-giving, life- sustaining, power of God is accessible. Truth and life are what is meant by Jesus as “the way.” The way is not a road or direction, it is not a path to follow or a set of instructions. The way is relationship with God. The way is Jesus, because in knowing Jesus we know all that God has promised.
This text has the same expansiveness as Jesus’ pronouncement from last week that he is the gate. What we humans try to make so small, Jesus is the gate, and you can’t come in. Jesus is the way, we get to God and you do not, Jesus makes vast. This passage has no comment on the inness or outness of others, it is solely concerned with this promise of relationship of those who have been called out. You who have been left out of the promise, Jesus says, I am the way in, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. You are in because of me, because of what I said, who I am, what I am about to do. You now the way, because the way isn’t about what you know, but that I know you. You do not need to see the Father, because I see you, and if I see you, then you are seen and known by the Father also.
All of this is what gives “do not let your hearts be troubled” it’s robustness, it is what makes “do not let your hearts be troubled” possible. In all that followed we come to see that not having troubled hearts is not about not having feelings. It’s not about not being sad or scared or mad. Not letting our hearts be troubled is about not being paralyzed by those feelings. It is about being sad, scared, angry, alone, all the complexities of the human experience, and still knowing that God is in the midst of this world and is drawing all people to Godself, just like Jesus promised. So here is where I found hope this week. Here is where I found courage this week. Here is where I saw God in our midst, reminding me of this promise that the things of this world do not have the staying power of the promise of God. In the Sikh tradition, men are not allowed to cut their beards. But the N-95 masks which medical providers are required to wear while treating COVID-19 patients don’t fit properly if the wearer has facial hair. So in Canada, two Sikh doctors did just that, shaving off this symbol of their faith so that they could continue to serve their patients. Friends, that’s faith. It is about being sad, being scared, being angry, afraid, alone, and standing up and moving forward anyway. It is staying home, even though it’s uncomfortable. Or going out and running errands for vulnerable friends or neighbors. It is wearing a mask if you are able, and not judging those who cannot. Above all, it is about trusting that whatever we do and whoever we are, God has it, and God has us, and nothing can change that.
And here’s the other blaring good news in this passage, verse twelve, “very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” What this means, dear people of God, is that the work that we do matters. It feels so small the things we are called to right now. Staying home, running errands, wearing a mask, ordering take-out. These things are nothing. And yet, this verse promises that they are everything. That they are the hands and feet, the heart and voice of God in our midst. So do not be troubled, dear people of God. Be sad, be scared, be angry. But don’t be troubled. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Our reading for this morning started with Jesus saying to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Do not let your hearts be troubled. I don’t know about you, but I find my heart is troubled a lot these days. I’m troubled by the death of Arbery, and by the fact that his is not the only name I can rattle off, far from it, of someone who was killed for looking like someone who might have committed a crime. I’m troubled that assault weapons are allowed in our state building, but poster board signs are considered too much of a threat. I’m troubled that in the midst of a global pandemic some people are clamoring to go back to work because to be without work means to be without health care, while others are so enraged at the imposition of wearing a mask that they will shoot the clerk who asked them to. I’m troubled.
I’m troubled, and so on first read I struggle with this command of Jesus for the disciples to not let their “hearts be troubled.” Because that’s what it is, a command. And there is, after all, much for the disciples to be troubled about. After three years of Jesus talking about how his hour had not yet come, suddenly he’d switched his tone and now it’s all, “my hour has come” and “now my soul is troubled.” They had gathered that night for a meal, a joyful time with friends before the Passover, but Jesus first had washed their feet, then predicted one of them would betray him, leading to Judas’ departure. Then he’d told Peter that he would deny him, and now this message not to let their hearts be troubled. Jesus, our hearts had been troubled since we came back here to watch you raise Lazarus, and things are going from bad to worse, are we just to push aside these very real fears?
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said, but he did not stop there. He followed this up with two additional commands. “Believe in God, believe also in me.” On Palm Sunday we talked about the literary technique common in Hebrew poetry to say something, and then say the thing again with more detail to explain it. The example being the verse from the prophet Zechariah, “Lo, your king comes to you victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” We talked about how Zechariah was not implying the king was riding on two animals, the reference to the colt was further clarifying the age of the donkey. Fun grammar fact I learned this week, this is what’s called an appositive, which means a noun or pronoun that identifies or explains the first noun. Why am I sharing this with you other than fun with English grammar? Because the entire first verse of John chapter fourteen is an appositive phrase. We cannot understand what it means when Jesus says, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” without the additional information, “believe in God, believe also in me.” “Believe in God, believe also in me” is what makes “do not let your hearts be troubled” possible.
What do I mean? The central message of Jesus in John’s Gospel is that he and the Father are one. And because Jesus and the Father are one, the disciples can trust that everything that is about to occur, the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus is not the failure of the mission, but in fact the triumph of the mission, the culmination of the work which God through Jesus came to earth to do.
It is because of this promise, that Jesus and the Father are one, that Jesus goes to prepare a place for us in the Father’s own heart, that Jesus returned—that’s key too, notice Jesus said “will return” but I’m saying returned, because this was spoken by the pre-resurrection Jesus, but we read it with the knowledge of the resurrection, so we know already of the truth of these words, the fulfillment of the promise of his return—that Jesus returned to take us to himself, so that where he is—in relationship with the Father—where he is that we may be also. “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
If you’re confused where this is all going right now, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Thomas too at this point is like, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Bringing us to our second appositive phrase of the passage, “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Truth and life are meant to clarify for us what Jesus means when he calls himself the way. Truth – through Jesus, the Word made flesh, the truth of God is present in the world. What was once an abstract concept is now standing among us, available to see, to hear, to touch, to know. And life – in Jesus the promise of the life-giving, life- sustaining, power of God is accessible. Truth and life are what is meant by Jesus as “the way.” The way is not a road or direction, it is not a path to follow or a set of instructions. The way is relationship with God. The way is Jesus, because in knowing Jesus we know all that God has promised.
This text has the same expansiveness as Jesus’ pronouncement from last week that he is the gate. What we humans try to make so small, Jesus is the gate, and you can’t come in. Jesus is the way, we get to God and you do not, Jesus makes vast. This passage has no comment on the inness or outness of others, it is solely concerned with this promise of relationship of those who have been called out. You who have been left out of the promise, Jesus says, I am the way in, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. You are in because of me, because of what I said, who I am, what I am about to do. You now the way, because the way isn’t about what you know, but that I know you. You do not need to see the Father, because I see you, and if I see you, then you are seen and known by the Father also.
All of this is what gives “do not let your hearts be troubled” it’s robustness, it is what makes “do not let your hearts be troubled” possible. In all that followed we come to see that not having troubled hearts is not about not having feelings. It’s not about not being sad or scared or mad. Not letting our hearts be troubled is about not being paralyzed by those feelings. It is about being sad, scared, angry, alone, all the complexities of the human experience, and still knowing that God is in the midst of this world and is drawing all people to Godself, just like Jesus promised. So here is where I found hope this week. Here is where I found courage this week. Here is where I saw God in our midst, reminding me of this promise that the things of this world do not have the staying power of the promise of God. In the Sikh tradition, men are not allowed to cut their beards. But the N-95 masks which medical providers are required to wear while treating COVID-19 patients don’t fit properly if the wearer has facial hair. So in Canada, two Sikh doctors did just that, shaving off this symbol of their faith so that they could continue to serve their patients. Friends, that’s faith. It is about being sad, being scared, being angry, afraid, alone, and standing up and moving forward anyway. It is staying home, even though it’s uncomfortable. Or going out and running errands for vulnerable friends or neighbors. It is wearing a mask if you are able, and not judging those who cannot. Above all, it is about trusting that whatever we do and whoever we are, God has it, and God has us, and nothing can change that.
And here’s the other blaring good news in this passage, verse twelve, “very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” What this means, dear people of God, is that the work that we do matters. It feels so small the things we are called to right now. Staying home, running errands, wearing a mask, ordering take-out. These things are nothing. And yet, this verse promises that they are everything. That they are the hands and feet, the heart and voice of God in our midst. So do not be troubled, dear people of God. Be sad, be scared, be angry. But don’t be troubled. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Jesus is the Gate - A Sermon on John 10:1-10
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year on the fourth Sunday of Easter, we read a section of John chapter 10, which is known as the Good Shepherd discourse. All the other readings also have some mention of sheep in them. Though it is really next year’s Easter 4 reading, verses eleven to eighteen, that have Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In this morning’s readings, Jesus says, “I am the gate.” But as theologian Karoline Lewis pointed out, between “Gate Sunday” not having quite the same ring to it and our hymnal’s decided lack of gate themed hymns, “Good Shepherd Sunday” it is.
I’ve been thinking all week about what it means to think of Jesus as the gate. Maybe it’s human nature, but when I think of gates and gatekeeping, I think of things kept out. When we hear Jesus referred to as the gate, I think the verse we tend to read with this is John fourteen, six, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” and we make this gate exclusionary. Jesus is the way, and the only way, so you better believe in Jesus or you’re out. Now, Jesus did say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” but Jesus did not say that here. So let’s set some context for this gate metaphor to see if we can shed some light on what Jesus was getting at.
We’re reading the Gospel of John, and we’ve talked about how John uses a very particular pattern of event-dialogue-discourse. Event – Jesus does something, heals someone, reaches out to someone, meets someone, etc. Dialogue – a series of conversations ensue between Jesus and the person, onlookers, etc. Discourse – Jesus offers an extended monologue on what the event and dialogue says about who Jesus is and what his mission is about. So what is the Good Shepherd discourse a discourse for? Think back a million years ago, to the fourth Sunday of Lent, when we read the story of the man born blind in John chapter nine. Jesus was walking along the road when he met a man who had been blind from birth and restored his sight. This miracle, the event, kicked off a series of conversations between the neighbors, the man and the Pharisees, the Pharisees and the man’s parents, and the man and the Pharisees again, until finally the Pharisees drove the man out of the community.
So Jesus went and found the man, a move which only further annoyed the Pharisees. And Jesus remarked, this is chapter nine, verse thirty-nine, by the way, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, but those who do see may become blind.” To which the Pharisees responded, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” A telling question, because while the Pharisees were not physically blind in the same way the man born blind had been physically without sight, their lack of knowledge of who Jesus was indicates not blindness, but a refusal to see, in a metaphorical sense, who Jesus was. This was the jumping off point for our reading this morning, this teaching about how Jesus is the gate for the sheep.
I got to thinking about gates and the nature of gates, what they do and what they are for. And I thought about the work we recently had done at Trinity in having new door locks put on the front doors. The decision to have new locks put on the doors was a decision based on hospitality and being a more welcoming space for Woman’s Co-op and our community. Our old door locks, for those of you who aren’t familiar with our building, were original to the building. So they had served us very well, but they had seen a lot of use in their fifty years of service and they weren’t serving us well anymore. It had actually gotten to the point where one of them at first would not unlock, and we had to duct tape it open every Sunday. Then it wouldn’t lock all the way, and to secure the building we had to wire the doors shut with a coat hanger. This was obviously both not welcoming and not safe. Not welcoming because I cannot tell you the number of times either on a Sunday morning or worse at a community event, someone would try to come in the wired shut doors, and I’d have to apologetically direct them around to the other set of doors and explain, we really did want them there, that door just didn’t work right. And unsafe in a couple ways. First, if we’d had an emergency where people needed to get out of the building quickly, those doors wouldn’t be available. But also, the coat hanger was only so effective as a locking mechanism. A really determined person could probably have still gotten in if they’d wanted to. And given the nature of the work Co-op does, there are times when, for the safety of its members, those doors need to be able to be locked and locked well. And that was a level of security I never felt like we were able to offer to the degree that we needed to.
So these new door locks say several things about who we are as a congregation. The fact that all four of them can now be fully unlocked and opened says this is a building where you are welcome. We want you to be able to come in here, to make use of this space, to have your needs met. And that they can be locked when they need to says to our Co-op sisters, we care about you. We want you to feel safe here, to know that we value you, and your safety and security, and we want to be able to keep you safe if and when we need to. Our door locks aren’t about keeping people out, they’re about keeping people safe.
Friends, that’s what Jesus means when he says “I am the gate.” When Jesus says, “I am the gate,” he is not playing the role of bouncer at some exclusive nightclub, deciding who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of God. That was what the Pharisees were doing when they kicked the man born blind who could not adequately, in their minds, answer their questions out of the community. When Jesus says, “I am the gate,” what he’s talking about is protection. It is the promise that what Jesus wants for his people, what it means to be in the Kingdom of God, is to be in a place of safety and security. People who want to sneak in over the fence are not people who are feeling left out or excluded, they are people who mean harm, people who are concerned not about the community but about their own wants and privileges.
This week, council met for the first time via Zoom, and much of the conversation was around what it will look like when the Stay Home. Stay Safe. order is lifted and we are all allowed to return to church. And I want to caution you right now friends, that it is going to look different for a while, probably a long while. Until there is a vaccine or an effective treatment, we really cannot safely gather in the way that we used to. I don’t know when we will be able to come back to worship, even after the Stay Home. Stay Safe. order is lifted. Some level of social distancing will remain, and you will probably be stuck sitting in your living rooms listening to my poor singing over Facebook Live for a while. I say this not to disappoint you, but to try and not get your hopes up, this is going to be a long haul yet.
But when I get sad and discouraged about not being able to be in worship with you all, when I wonder if we’re not doing our work as church by not gathering in prayer and praise, to be fed at the table and nurtured in fellowship, I remember the last day I was in the office in March. There were rumors that the governor was going to issue a Stay Home. Stay Safe. order, and I was packing up my computer in case I would not be able to return. The building was completely empty, Co-op had already made the decision to shutter their in-person operations and work from home, and I was feeling very torn on this decision to close the church building. After all, we are the church, and we are a church committed to our neighborhood, what does it mean to close our door to our neighbors in a time of crisis. As I picked up the printer off the desk, I noticed that one of the print outs from Eileen’s Sunday school lesson from the week before had slid under it. The print out had three Lenten practices listed on it for the kids to decorate, “prayer, fasting, and acts of love.”
What we are doing, dear people of God, are acts of love. We are not gathering out of love for our neighbors, we will be slow returning to worship out of love for our neighbors, and when we return, we will worship differently out of love for our neighbors. The gates we will put up for how we will gather, how close we will stand, how we will sing, and pray, and praise, all of these things we will do will not be about exclusion, they will be about inclusion. They will be about following the model of Jesus when he said, “I am the gate” and ensuring that we create a safe space where the people of God can come and feel honored and valued and secure. So hang in there, dear people of God, hang in there. This is tough, I know. But God holds you, God loves you, and these gates are what love looks like. Amen.
I’ve been thinking all week about what it means to think of Jesus as the gate. Maybe it’s human nature, but when I think of gates and gatekeeping, I think of things kept out. When we hear Jesus referred to as the gate, I think the verse we tend to read with this is John fourteen, six, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” and we make this gate exclusionary. Jesus is the way, and the only way, so you better believe in Jesus or you’re out. Now, Jesus did say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” but Jesus did not say that here. So let’s set some context for this gate metaphor to see if we can shed some light on what Jesus was getting at.
We’re reading the Gospel of John, and we’ve talked about how John uses a very particular pattern of event-dialogue-discourse. Event – Jesus does something, heals someone, reaches out to someone, meets someone, etc. Dialogue – a series of conversations ensue between Jesus and the person, onlookers, etc. Discourse – Jesus offers an extended monologue on what the event and dialogue says about who Jesus is and what his mission is about. So what is the Good Shepherd discourse a discourse for? Think back a million years ago, to the fourth Sunday of Lent, when we read the story of the man born blind in John chapter nine. Jesus was walking along the road when he met a man who had been blind from birth and restored his sight. This miracle, the event, kicked off a series of conversations between the neighbors, the man and the Pharisees, the Pharisees and the man’s parents, and the man and the Pharisees again, until finally the Pharisees drove the man out of the community.
So Jesus went and found the man, a move which only further annoyed the Pharisees. And Jesus remarked, this is chapter nine, verse thirty-nine, by the way, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, but those who do see may become blind.” To which the Pharisees responded, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” A telling question, because while the Pharisees were not physically blind in the same way the man born blind had been physically without sight, their lack of knowledge of who Jesus was indicates not blindness, but a refusal to see, in a metaphorical sense, who Jesus was. This was the jumping off point for our reading this morning, this teaching about how Jesus is the gate for the sheep.
I got to thinking about gates and the nature of gates, what they do and what they are for. And I thought about the work we recently had done at Trinity in having new door locks put on the front doors. The decision to have new locks put on the doors was a decision based on hospitality and being a more welcoming space for Woman’s Co-op and our community. Our old door locks, for those of you who aren’t familiar with our building, were original to the building. So they had served us very well, but they had seen a lot of use in their fifty years of service and they weren’t serving us well anymore. It had actually gotten to the point where one of them at first would not unlock, and we had to duct tape it open every Sunday. Then it wouldn’t lock all the way, and to secure the building we had to wire the doors shut with a coat hanger. This was obviously both not welcoming and not safe. Not welcoming because I cannot tell you the number of times either on a Sunday morning or worse at a community event, someone would try to come in the wired shut doors, and I’d have to apologetically direct them around to the other set of doors and explain, we really did want them there, that door just didn’t work right. And unsafe in a couple ways. First, if we’d had an emergency where people needed to get out of the building quickly, those doors wouldn’t be available. But also, the coat hanger was only so effective as a locking mechanism. A really determined person could probably have still gotten in if they’d wanted to. And given the nature of the work Co-op does, there are times when, for the safety of its members, those doors need to be able to be locked and locked well. And that was a level of security I never felt like we were able to offer to the degree that we needed to.
So these new door locks say several things about who we are as a congregation. The fact that all four of them can now be fully unlocked and opened says this is a building where you are welcome. We want you to be able to come in here, to make use of this space, to have your needs met. And that they can be locked when they need to says to our Co-op sisters, we care about you. We want you to feel safe here, to know that we value you, and your safety and security, and we want to be able to keep you safe if and when we need to. Our door locks aren’t about keeping people out, they’re about keeping people safe.
Friends, that’s what Jesus means when he says “I am the gate.” When Jesus says, “I am the gate,” he is not playing the role of bouncer at some exclusive nightclub, deciding who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of God. That was what the Pharisees were doing when they kicked the man born blind who could not adequately, in their minds, answer their questions out of the community. When Jesus says, “I am the gate,” what he’s talking about is protection. It is the promise that what Jesus wants for his people, what it means to be in the Kingdom of God, is to be in a place of safety and security. People who want to sneak in over the fence are not people who are feeling left out or excluded, they are people who mean harm, people who are concerned not about the community but about their own wants and privileges.
This week, council met for the first time via Zoom, and much of the conversation was around what it will look like when the Stay Home. Stay Safe. order is lifted and we are all allowed to return to church. And I want to caution you right now friends, that it is going to look different for a while, probably a long while. Until there is a vaccine or an effective treatment, we really cannot safely gather in the way that we used to. I don’t know when we will be able to come back to worship, even after the Stay Home. Stay Safe. order is lifted. Some level of social distancing will remain, and you will probably be stuck sitting in your living rooms listening to my poor singing over Facebook Live for a while. I say this not to disappoint you, but to try and not get your hopes up, this is going to be a long haul yet.
But when I get sad and discouraged about not being able to be in worship with you all, when I wonder if we’re not doing our work as church by not gathering in prayer and praise, to be fed at the table and nurtured in fellowship, I remember the last day I was in the office in March. There were rumors that the governor was going to issue a Stay Home. Stay Safe. order, and I was packing up my computer in case I would not be able to return. The building was completely empty, Co-op had already made the decision to shutter their in-person operations and work from home, and I was feeling very torn on this decision to close the church building. After all, we are the church, and we are a church committed to our neighborhood, what does it mean to close our door to our neighbors in a time of crisis. As I picked up the printer off the desk, I noticed that one of the print outs from Eileen’s Sunday school lesson from the week before had slid under it. The print out had three Lenten practices listed on it for the kids to decorate, “prayer, fasting, and acts of love.”
What we are doing, dear people of God, are acts of love. We are not gathering out of love for our neighbors, we will be slow returning to worship out of love for our neighbors, and when we return, we will worship differently out of love for our neighbors. The gates we will put up for how we will gather, how close we will stand, how we will sing, and pray, and praise, all of these things we will do will not be about exclusion, they will be about inclusion. They will be about following the model of Jesus when he said, “I am the gate” and ensuring that we create a safe space where the people of God can come and feel honored and valued and secure. So hang in there, dear people of God, hang in there. This is tough, I know. But God holds you, God loves you, and these gates are what love looks like. Amen.
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