The Gospel of Matthew organizes Jesus’ teachings into five major lectures, and for the season of Epiphany, we will be working our way through the first and probably the most familiar of those lectures, the Sermon on the Mount. Before we get into the meat of the text we heard today, I want to set the stage a bit on what the Sermon on the Mount is, and where we’re going for the next four weeks.
I also want to start with this disclaimer. Sermons on sermons are not the easiest, because, really, how is one expected to preach on Jesus’ preaching. Things are going to get a bit heady and lecture-y this morning, as we break down some of the finer points of what Jesus was saying. There may even be some Greek. But, here’s the deal. I will end with one, super-simple, concrete thing you can do to put this into action. So, hang in there with me and I promise at the end you will have, if nothing else, one real-life application.
So, with that, let’s begin. Sermon on the Mount. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Gospel of Matthew describes Jesus as going up a mountain with his disciples, who at this point number four, and teaching them. The teaching follows a very tight organizational structure that seems to have been based on a well-known rabbinic teaching: “By three things the world is sustained: by the law, by Temple service, and by deeds of loving kindness.” Relatedly, the Sermon is organized into three sections, a section about the law, a section about worship and religious practice, and a section about how to be in relationship with others. Over the course of the next four weeks, we will only get through the section on the law, so you’ll be on your own for the rest of it.
Jesus’ teaching style in Matthew was to tell the disciples something, and then put it into practice. For the teachers in the room, I think you’d agree that Jesus’ pedagogy was pretty solid. Jesus taught them about the meaning of the law, worship, and how to be in relationship, and then he went out and healed the sick, prayed, and restored people to relationship. He taught his disciples about how to teach in chapter ten, and then he went out and taught. He told them about the challenges they would face in chapter eighteen, and then he went to Jerusalem to be crucified. He explained, then he demonstrated.
But why would Jesus go up a mountain for this teaching? Seems like not the most convenient place. And the Gospel of Luke also has a lecture by Jesus consisting of most of the same teachings, but in Luke, it happened on a plain. Plain as in flat place, not plane as in airplane. So was it a mountain or a plain? Doesn’t matter. The location tells us more about the theology of the writer than the geography of Jesus. Mountains in scripture are places of revelation, places where God reveals God’s truth. Most famous example of this was Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Matthew remembered Jesus as going up a mountain because Matthew understood Jesus as being the fulfiller of the promises of Moses. Luke, on the other hand, remembered Jesus as preaching on a plain, because Luke understood Jesus as being the great leveler of the field, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. Where Jesus said it, really doesn’t matter. What we know, because it’s in both Gospels, is that Jesus said it.
Last thought on the overall sermon before we get into the beatitudes. One of the things that the writer of Matthew was trying to do in his Gospel was to set up a structure for the church as an institution that lives on after the resurrection of Jesus. So it is a narrative account of the ministry of Jesus while he was on earth, a specific story about a specific geographic location at a specific time. But it is also lessons for how the community of believers is to exist after the resurrection when Jesus is no longer present in the flesh. So the disciples were the four disciples we heard about last week, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, but they are also stand-ins for the community of believers, the church universal, which includes us. This may be why I find preaching on the Sermon on the Mount so difficult; Jesus is preaching a sermon to you, and I am trying to interrupt and interject side commentary.
At the beginning of the sermon, Jesus starts with nine short, strange statements about who is considered blessed. They are often referred to as the beatitudes, which is a Latin word that simply means, blessed. And beatitudes aren’t unique to Jesus, you can find them throughout the Bible, most commonly in wisdom literature, like the proverbs, and in the writings of the prophets.
Here’s the super cool thing about the beatitudes. The word translated “blessed” can also be translated as “fortunate,” “happy,” privileged,” etc. But the grammatical form really insists on blessed as the only correct translation. This is because the beatitudes declare an objective reality. This isn’t a description of a feeling; it is a declaration of fact. The opposite of blessed is not unhappy, it is cursed. So those poor in spirit, or mourning, or meek, or any of the other descriptors may not feel happy, they may not be privileges, they may not feel fortunate, but they are blessed. Full stop. They are blessed because the state of being blessed does not rest on their feelings about their situation, or the world’s reaction to them, or anything of earthly origin. The state of being blessed is totally and completely dependent on the will and the action of God. And God declares them blessed, so it is so.
And these are not individual realities, but communal ones. The beatitudes aren’t a list of nine types of good people or a checklist for conversion or suggestions for better living. They are marks of the church, the whole church. Remember how I mentioned the disciples are stand-ins for the church universal. At any given time, somewhere in the body of Christ, someone is poor in spirit, mourning, meek, making peace, being persecuted. We as individuals are never all of these things, but we are always some of these things. And so, like we heard in verse eleven, when we feel reviled, persecuted, judged, we can rejoice. Not in a weird martyr complex way, like someone kicked me while I’m down, so I’m going to put on a happy face. But rejoice more in the sense of we can take comfort in the powerful promise that we are a part of the beloved community whom God has called blessed, and since that reality is outside of worldly control, there is nothing that can change the truth of that promise. Rejoicing in the face of suffering is not a platitude or some weak suggestion that we should just be happy when things are tough, rather rejoicing in the face of suffering is about the unshakeable reality that God is here. It is a conviction to cling to, that clings to us, when everything else is crumbling.
The beatitudes, as much as they are a firm declaration of current reality, are also an acknowledgement of the distance yet to go. The form of the beatitudes is “Blessed are, right here, right now, present tense X, for they will, in the future Y.” You are blessed now, and yet, there will be more. It is this tension we’ve talked about before of the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. Already the kingdom is here, in the person of Jesus. Already we meet Jesus in the water and the wine and the word. Already we know that God is with us. And yet, we look around the world and we see sickness and poverty and violence and we know that the kingdom of God has also not yet come. The beatitudes hold that tension, that uncomfortable reality that Christ is, and was, and still is yet to come.
Which means, and here’s where it gets great guys, which means there is work for us to do. Not work that is dependent on us, not work that we need to do in order to get right with God, but work we have been blessed to be a part of by the declaration of God’s word in our lives. God’s words bring into being the reality that they declare. So God’s declaration of us as blessed move us into action to live in the kingdom of God and bring the fulfillment of the kingdom on earth.
So here’s the promised “where do we go from here” piece. I could preach a whole other sermon on each of the beatitudes, but you’ve put up with a lot of theology already here today, so I’m just going to draw out one of them and let you extrapolate forward. Verse four: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Remember, these are about communal realities. So this is certainly about us in our individual mourning, about the promise of comfort when we experience personal loss and grief. But it is also a statement about a characteristic of the people of God as those who mourn the ways in which the kingdom of God has not yet come into fullness, who mourn that we still live in broken, violent, and painful world. Which, that we still live in a broken, violent, and painful world is just about the only thing that we universally agree on as a nation these days. We disagree on the causes, we disagree on the solutions, we disagree on policies and politicians, and just about everything else. I even saw a Facebook post this week disagreeing with cat videos. True story friends, we are that divided; even cat videos are now controversial.
So the good news for us, in this divided time, is that we will be comforted. Which means: we can still have hope. No, not can have hope, but do have hope. Even if we do not feel it, because remember, being blessed is not about our feelings, it is an objective reality brought into being by God. We who mourn that God’s kingdom has not yet come are not resigned to our present condition, but are empowered to bring about the coming of the kingdom.
So, call to action, here’s one thing to do this week. Super simple, won’t take you more than three minutes. Call an elected official and tell them one thing you want them to focus on during the coming year. I’ve made it easy, I listed the numbers of our senators and representative in the announcements, but you can call anyone you like. Call them up, say, hi, my name is so and so, I am a constituent of whoever you’re calling, I live in Battle Creek, and I want to share my thoughts on whatever you’re interested in.
We’re a pretty politically aware congregation, but if you’re wondering about a sermon ending with an appeal to call politicians, let me offer this thought. The Gospel is not partisan, but it is political. The beatitudes don’t tell us which candidates to vote for or what positions to hold, but they do promise us that God is at work bringing justice and grace to all God’s people, and that we get to be a part of that work.
So be a part of the work. Need an example: one hotly contested issue that our politicians will be discussing is the Affordable Care Act. To hear the coverage of it, it is either the greatest thing that’s ever happened in the history of America or is single-handedly bringing down the free world. My thought, the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are things wrong with it, and things it gets right. And this isn’t my partisan ideals talking; no two different opinions than President Obama and President Trump think parts of it need fixing and other parts are OK. They mostly disagree on those parts, but even they have some areas of agreement. For example, they both agree that people with pre-existing conditions should not be denied access to health insurance. True story, I got it from Trump’s own website. Do you agree with Trump and Obama about this? Call an elected official and tell them. Do you think people with pre-existing health conditions would be better served under another system? Call and tell them that. Or maybe healthcare isn’t your big issue; maybe you’re more concerned about education. Soon-to-be Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is from Michigan, what do you want congress to ask her to focus on? If you can’t think of anything, just call one of them up and thank them for being a public servant. Whether we agree or disagree with their ideas, I think we can all agree that being a public servant is a hard job. Then you’ll have the beginning of a relationship, and when something does come up that you are excited or concerned about, you’ll already have some experience making a call.
One phone call, three minutes of your week. Seems small, right, what kind of difference could one phone call make? But here’s the cool thing. The Beatitudes are for the community. This isn’t about what you have to do; it is about what God did and what we do together. So after you make your one phone call, make one other phone call. Call me, and tell me who you called and how it went. Or email me, or stop by the office, whatever works. I’ll keep a running tally of who we called as a congregation, so we can really see how far our voices have spread.
In the person of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God has come. And because God has declared us part of God’s beloved community, we get the awesome privilege of getting to be part of this unveiling. So, dear people of God, let us go out and be whom God has declared us to be. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, January 30, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Conversation Points for Matthew 5:1-12
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This week’s text—and the rest of the Gospel texts until Transfiguration—are from what is called the Sermon on the Mount. While presented by the writer of Matthew’s Gospel as a speech given in one setting on a hill in Galilee, it is more likely a collection of the teachings of Jesus throughout his ministry.
• Grouping the teachings of Jesus together into sections is one of the hallmarks of Matthew’s Gospel, there are five such gatherings of material with the Sermon on the Mount being the most famous. The others are the Missionary Discourse (chapter 10), the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13), the Community Discourse (chapter 18), and the Eschatological Discourse (chapters 24-25). We’ll read sections of the other speeches over the summer.
• The Sermon on the Mount is broken up into three sections, one dealing with the law (5:17-48), one with worship and religious practice (6:1-18), and the last with trusting and serving God in social relationships and actions (6:19-7:27). These seem to correspond to a well-known rabbinic saying, “By three things the world is sustained: by the law, by the Temple service, and by deeds of loving kindness.”
• The Sermon on the Mount is given before any of Jesus’ miracles are directly recorded. This is the common order in Matthew’s Gospel, first Jesus would teach, then he would demonstrate how to live out his teachings. However, the verses right before the sermon, Matthew 4:23-25, tell of Jesus going throughout the countryside teaching and healing, though no specifics are given. This places Jesus’ instructions in the context of mercy; people are healed without making any confession of faith, before they have even been taught about faith. Healing is dependent on the initiative and grace of the kingdom of God, not on any confession or understanding by the community.
• Luke also has a Great Sermon, but in Luke it is set not on a mountain, but on a plain. The mountain setting is important in Matthew to link Jesus to Moses, who went up Mount Sinai to talk to God and receive the Ten Commandments. Jesus is not the new Moses, but he is the continuation of the promise of Moses, and the Law Moses brought. Tradition (and tourism) has designated a “mount of the beatitudes,” but the mountain is more theological than geographical. Mountains in scripture are a place of revelation.
• Verses 1-2 indicate the audience for the sermon was the disciples, but Jesus had only called four at this point. Also, by the end (7:28), there is a crowd. The writer of Matthew is using the disciples not as a reference to the Twelve, but as a stand-in for the post-Easter Christian community, the church. The real hearers of the sermon are the readers of Matthew’s Gospel, so us.
• Verses 3-11 are commonly called The Beatitudes, but what is a beatitude? Beatitude comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word makarism, which is a statement in the indicative mood (verb form which states a fact) beginning with a form of the adjective makarios, meaning “fortunate,” “happy,” “in a privileged situation,” “well-off,” etc. Simply, beatitude is the Latin translation of the Greek word which in English is translated “Blessed.” Clear as mud?
• Beatitudes are not unique to Jesus, it is a common form in wisdom literature (like Proverbs) and in prophecy (like Isaiah).
• The beatitudes declare an objective reality, not a feeling. So “blessed” is the correct translation, rather than a feeling like “happy.” The opposite of blessed is not unhappy, but cursed. It is a description of one’s relation to God, not of one’s sense of their own well-being.
• Similarly, the indicative mood (statement of fact) should be taken seriously. These aren’t suggestions for living better or demands for conversion; they are marks of the church.
• There is an ethical dimension to the Beatitudes as well. There is a feeling of performative language. They do not merely describe what is, they bring into being the reality they declare. The form is not “if you will x, then y” but “those who are x will be y.” They are not entrance requirements for outsiders but declarations about insiders. And because of this, the community does not just hear itself blessed by God, but is called into action to act in accord with the coming kingdom. Because God says the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom of God, then when the church is poor in spirit, not only are they blessed, but they are moved by God into the action living in the kingdom of God and even bringing the kingdom of God on earth.
• One difference between Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel is the focus of the beatitudes. Luke’s are directed to physical realities, where Matthew’s, without leaving out the physical, also encompass the spiritual. For example in Luke, “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20) refers to literal poverty. In Matthew, “blessed are the poor in spirit” encompasses physical poverty as well as those who are spiritually poor, who lack ego or a strong sense of self-worth.
• V. 4, “blessed are those who mourn.” It is not in mourning that people are blessed, but in promise that a characteristic of the people of God is lament for the ways the kingdom of God has not yet been fulfilled. It is communal, rather than individual mourning. The community is not resigned to the present condition, but mourns that God’s kingdom has not yet come.
• V. 5 “inherit the earth” was probably a reference in OT times to the promise of land for Israel, but here it is a metaphor for participation in the renewed earth of the kingdom of God.
• V. 6, that word “righteousness” again. Righteousness, remember is doing the will of God, even if that differs from how the law of God has been interpreted by the people of God.
• V. 7, as the exception that proves the rule, “mercy” does refer to concrete acts of mercy, rather than an attitude of being merciful. The reason for this is because doing acts of mercy could be seen as a form of weakness, so not a behavior the world would reward, though God does.
• V. 8, the word “pure” has taken on in modern context a moral status, often dealing with sexual purity. However, the Greek word is more in the sense of “undivided.” An undivided commitment to monotheism, to one God, instead of the various gods who seek to parcel out our loyalties.
• V. 9 “blessed are the peacemakers” has subversive undertones. Roman emperors referred to themselves as “peacemakers” and “Sons of God.” Coupled with the rest of the beatitudes, we see how Jesus is re-meaning Roman propaganda. Being a peacemaker in the kingdom of God is not a passive attitude, but positive action for reconciliation. To simply not engage is not peace; it is acceptance of the unpeaceful status quo.
• V. 12, “rejoice” seems like an out of place response to v. 11. But rejoicing in the face of persecution is not about having a martyr complex, rather it is about the joy of being a part of the beloved community, and thus out of step with the realities of the present age.
• The two key words in all the beatitudes: “are” and “will.” This gets to that tension of the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. Already the kingdom is here, in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet not yet as the kingdom of God come into fullness. We live at the uncomfortable tension of both those realities.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Powell, Mark Allan. Fortress Introduction to the Gospels. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This week’s text—and the rest of the Gospel texts until Transfiguration—are from what is called the Sermon on the Mount. While presented by the writer of Matthew’s Gospel as a speech given in one setting on a hill in Galilee, it is more likely a collection of the teachings of Jesus throughout his ministry.
• Grouping the teachings of Jesus together into sections is one of the hallmarks of Matthew’s Gospel, there are five such gatherings of material with the Sermon on the Mount being the most famous. The others are the Missionary Discourse (chapter 10), the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13), the Community Discourse (chapter 18), and the Eschatological Discourse (chapters 24-25). We’ll read sections of the other speeches over the summer.
• The Sermon on the Mount is broken up into three sections, one dealing with the law (5:17-48), one with worship and religious practice (6:1-18), and the last with trusting and serving God in social relationships and actions (6:19-7:27). These seem to correspond to a well-known rabbinic saying, “By three things the world is sustained: by the law, by the Temple service, and by deeds of loving kindness.”
• The Sermon on the Mount is given before any of Jesus’ miracles are directly recorded. This is the common order in Matthew’s Gospel, first Jesus would teach, then he would demonstrate how to live out his teachings. However, the verses right before the sermon, Matthew 4:23-25, tell of Jesus going throughout the countryside teaching and healing, though no specifics are given. This places Jesus’ instructions in the context of mercy; people are healed without making any confession of faith, before they have even been taught about faith. Healing is dependent on the initiative and grace of the kingdom of God, not on any confession or understanding by the community.
• Luke also has a Great Sermon, but in Luke it is set not on a mountain, but on a plain. The mountain setting is important in Matthew to link Jesus to Moses, who went up Mount Sinai to talk to God and receive the Ten Commandments. Jesus is not the new Moses, but he is the continuation of the promise of Moses, and the Law Moses brought. Tradition (and tourism) has designated a “mount of the beatitudes,” but the mountain is more theological than geographical. Mountains in scripture are a place of revelation.
• Verses 1-2 indicate the audience for the sermon was the disciples, but Jesus had only called four at this point. Also, by the end (7:28), there is a crowd. The writer of Matthew is using the disciples not as a reference to the Twelve, but as a stand-in for the post-Easter Christian community, the church. The real hearers of the sermon are the readers of Matthew’s Gospel, so us.
• Verses 3-11 are commonly called The Beatitudes, but what is a beatitude? Beatitude comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word makarism, which is a statement in the indicative mood (verb form which states a fact) beginning with a form of the adjective makarios, meaning “fortunate,” “happy,” “in a privileged situation,” “well-off,” etc. Simply, beatitude is the Latin translation of the Greek word which in English is translated “Blessed.” Clear as mud?
• Beatitudes are not unique to Jesus, it is a common form in wisdom literature (like Proverbs) and in prophecy (like Isaiah).
• The beatitudes declare an objective reality, not a feeling. So “blessed” is the correct translation, rather than a feeling like “happy.” The opposite of blessed is not unhappy, but cursed. It is a description of one’s relation to God, not of one’s sense of their own well-being.
• Similarly, the indicative mood (statement of fact) should be taken seriously. These aren’t suggestions for living better or demands for conversion; they are marks of the church.
• There is an ethical dimension to the Beatitudes as well. There is a feeling of performative language. They do not merely describe what is, they bring into being the reality they declare. The form is not “if you will x, then y” but “those who are x will be y.” They are not entrance requirements for outsiders but declarations about insiders. And because of this, the community does not just hear itself blessed by God, but is called into action to act in accord with the coming kingdom. Because God says the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom of God, then when the church is poor in spirit, not only are they blessed, but they are moved by God into the action living in the kingdom of God and even bringing the kingdom of God on earth.
• One difference between Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel is the focus of the beatitudes. Luke’s are directed to physical realities, where Matthew’s, without leaving out the physical, also encompass the spiritual. For example in Luke, “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20) refers to literal poverty. In Matthew, “blessed are the poor in spirit” encompasses physical poverty as well as those who are spiritually poor, who lack ego or a strong sense of self-worth.
• V. 4, “blessed are those who mourn.” It is not in mourning that people are blessed, but in promise that a characteristic of the people of God is lament for the ways the kingdom of God has not yet been fulfilled. It is communal, rather than individual mourning. The community is not resigned to the present condition, but mourns that God’s kingdom has not yet come.
• V. 5 “inherit the earth” was probably a reference in OT times to the promise of land for Israel, but here it is a metaphor for participation in the renewed earth of the kingdom of God.
• V. 6, that word “righteousness” again. Righteousness, remember is doing the will of God, even if that differs from how the law of God has been interpreted by the people of God.
• V. 7, as the exception that proves the rule, “mercy” does refer to concrete acts of mercy, rather than an attitude of being merciful. The reason for this is because doing acts of mercy could be seen as a form of weakness, so not a behavior the world would reward, though God does.
• V. 8, the word “pure” has taken on in modern context a moral status, often dealing with sexual purity. However, the Greek word is more in the sense of “undivided.” An undivided commitment to monotheism, to one God, instead of the various gods who seek to parcel out our loyalties.
• V. 9 “blessed are the peacemakers” has subversive undertones. Roman emperors referred to themselves as “peacemakers” and “Sons of God.” Coupled with the rest of the beatitudes, we see how Jesus is re-meaning Roman propaganda. Being a peacemaker in the kingdom of God is not a passive attitude, but positive action for reconciliation. To simply not engage is not peace; it is acceptance of the unpeaceful status quo.
• V. 12, “rejoice” seems like an out of place response to v. 11. But rejoicing in the face of persecution is not about having a martyr complex, rather it is about the joy of being a part of the beloved community, and thus out of step with the realities of the present age.
• The two key words in all the beatitudes: “are” and “will.” This gets to that tension of the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. Already the kingdom is here, in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet not yet as the kingdom of God come into fullness. We live at the uncomfortable tension of both those realities.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Powell, Mark Allan. Fortress Introduction to the Gospels. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998.
Monday, January 23, 2017
You Do You: A Sermon on Matthew 4:12-23
In the Monday yoga class, we frequently do a stretch that involves sitting on the mat with one leg out straight, and the other leg crossed over it. You then twist your body in the direction of the bent leg, stretching your back. I’d demonstrate, but an alb is really not the best yoga clothing. While not quite as complicated as my description probably sounds, you do end up contorted into a bit of a pretzel. So, Monday, we’re all twisted up into this weird position, and the instructor remarks that this pose is called a “Half Lord of the Fishes.” To which, because I am pretty curious and don’t always know when to keep my mouth shut on that curiosity, I ask what would constitute a Full Lord of the Fishes. Because, quite frankly, I could not imagine any way my body could be any more contorted than it already is. The instructor was, of course, delighted by my question, and assured me and the rest of the class that next week we will attempt a Full Lord of the Fishes pose, a comment which met with universal groans from the rest of the class. I can let you know next week how that goes; my expectations are not particularly high.
One of the blessings and curses of yoga is it involves taking your body and moving it in ways that you don’t normally go. This helps strengthen and loosen muscles that don’t normally get used. Which is great because, while there is nothing in my daily life that necessitates twisting my body into a pretzel, I do spend a lot of time sitting in a desk chair, which weakens my back muscles. That pretzel position stretches and strengthens those weakened muscles. The other good thing about yoga is it is designed to be very individual. The instructor is always very quick to remind us that every body is different and every body moves in different ways. So there is no perfect way for each pose to be done. She always offers modifications for poses and encourages us to find our own modifications that work for us. Of course the curse of yoga is that, while we’re told to only do what works for us, we are in a class with other people, and despite my best efforts to focus on my own practice, I always find myself fighting the temptation to compare myself to others. The Monday class is really supportive, but I remember a class I took when I lived in LA, where I was intimidated before the class even started just by the clothing of the other students. In my preferred yoga wear, a free cotton t-shirt and basketball shorts, I looked not like a Lord of the Fishes, but like a fish out of water in a sea of perfectly coordinated Lululemon outfits. And of course, this was west LA, so they were all tall, lean, and tanned with perfectly done hair and make up. They looked like they were there to model yoga clothing, not to take a free exercise class in a 24 Hour Fitness in the back corner of a mall. In actual yoga skill and ability I could fit in, but I just didn’t look like I belonged.
Comparison is an innate human trait. It can challenge us to do our best, but it can also stop us by convincing us we could never measure up. This isn’t just true of yoga; it can also be true of faith. We have in our minds this image of what being a person of faith looks like, and I don’t know about you, but for me that person is always some sort of mystical combination of Mother Teresa and a contemplative monk. Someone who is constantly selflessly devoted to service and yet somehow at the same time has countless hours to spend in prayer, contemplation, and the uninterrupted study of scripture. Even my guy Martin Luther, patron saint of anxiety and self-doubt, lets me down on this. Luther said that he devoted an hour a day, first thing in the morning, to prayer and reflection, and on days when he didn’t have time to devote an hour, he would devote three hours, because when he was busy, he needed prayer more. Come on, Luther. I, on the other hand, tend to come dashing into Wednesday morning Bible study just a few minutes late every week, because I yet again overscheduled my day. I remember when I was discerning my call to ministry, telling my pastor that I couldn’t be a pastor, because every pastor I’d ever met got up early to spend time in prayer, and I simply wasn’t a morning person. She, rightly, laughed at my insistence. Though, it should be noted, that she herself is one of those people who just naturally doesn’t require much sleep, and she does get up every morning at five to pray and study scripture. I get up at five if the house is on fire or I have to catch an airplane, and even then all bets are off. I share this also because I get the sense that some of you have the same lofty ideals of me that I have about her, and friends, it freaks me out a bit sometimes.
Which is why, I think we all could stand to learn from this story of Jesus calling his first disciples. Last week we also heard the calling of Simon and Andrew, but you’ll notice Matthew and John had very different memories of the event. Last week, John’s Gospel had John the Baptist pointing Jesus out to Andrew. But in Matthew, John the Baptist is already in prison, and Simon and Andrew did not seem to be followers of John the Baptist anyway. They were just two guys standing on a lakeshore, going about their daily work. Sometimes in Christian circles, we use language about there being a God-shaped hole or void in our lives that we are all seeking to have filled. These guys did not seem to have any such hole. They weren’t looking for a teacher, they weren’t looking for a profession, they weren’t looking for fulfillment of any kind. They had jobs, and lives, and fulfillment enough, a lifetime of occupation eeking out an existence with their nets and their boats and the Sea of Galilee.
That is, until Jesus showed up and said, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they did. Which is crazy, because, think about it, this is Jesus’ first public appearance, they have absolutely no idea who this guy is. This isn’t John’s Gospel, where John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the one they should follow. No, this is just a stranger on the beach coming up to them and saying, “follow me.” One of the commentaries I read called this Jesus’ first miracle, that he could convince these total strangers to drop everything, leave their poor father stranded in a boat, and follow Jesus. It’s crazy, when you think about it.
But here’s something my friend Kelli pointed out, that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. Notice what Jesus called the disciples to do; he called them to fish for people. They’re fisherman, and he called them to fish for people. He didn’t call them to farm for people, or to teach people, or to be accountants for people, he called them to fish for people. He called them to take the skills and gifts they already had, that God had already given them, and use them for the betterment of others. Jesus didn’t call the disciples to become something radically different; rather he called them to be the best versions of themselves; the best versions of who God had created them to be.
This, I think, is maybe what is meant by discipleship. Not to contort ourselves into some cookie-cutter version of what we think God expects from disciples, but to recognize the skills and gifts, the talents and traits, that God has given each and every one of us, and to use those God given skills and gifts, talents and traits, to be the best version of who we already are. Which means, you may not be being called to fish for people, or to be in the streets of India like Mother Teresa, or to be a contemplative monk. God may be calling you to work at the food pantry for people or be an accountant for people or a nurse for people or to pray for people.
And if you focus on that, on being the very best person that God has created you to be, instead of trying to mold yourself into some ill-fitting version of who you think you should be, I think you will find that the same miracle that happened to those first two disciples, will have happened to you. That without knowing it, and without knowing quite why or how, you will have moved from metaphorically fishing for yourself, to metaphorically fishing for others, metaphorically fishing for God. So just do you, just be you. Because you, who you are, as you are, is exactly the sort of person Jesus is walking along the beach in search of. Thanks be to God. Amen.
One of the blessings and curses of yoga is it involves taking your body and moving it in ways that you don’t normally go. This helps strengthen and loosen muscles that don’t normally get used. Which is great because, while there is nothing in my daily life that necessitates twisting my body into a pretzel, I do spend a lot of time sitting in a desk chair, which weakens my back muscles. That pretzel position stretches and strengthens those weakened muscles. The other good thing about yoga is it is designed to be very individual. The instructor is always very quick to remind us that every body is different and every body moves in different ways. So there is no perfect way for each pose to be done. She always offers modifications for poses and encourages us to find our own modifications that work for us. Of course the curse of yoga is that, while we’re told to only do what works for us, we are in a class with other people, and despite my best efforts to focus on my own practice, I always find myself fighting the temptation to compare myself to others. The Monday class is really supportive, but I remember a class I took when I lived in LA, where I was intimidated before the class even started just by the clothing of the other students. In my preferred yoga wear, a free cotton t-shirt and basketball shorts, I looked not like a Lord of the Fishes, but like a fish out of water in a sea of perfectly coordinated Lululemon outfits. And of course, this was west LA, so they were all tall, lean, and tanned with perfectly done hair and make up. They looked like they were there to model yoga clothing, not to take a free exercise class in a 24 Hour Fitness in the back corner of a mall. In actual yoga skill and ability I could fit in, but I just didn’t look like I belonged.
Comparison is an innate human trait. It can challenge us to do our best, but it can also stop us by convincing us we could never measure up. This isn’t just true of yoga; it can also be true of faith. We have in our minds this image of what being a person of faith looks like, and I don’t know about you, but for me that person is always some sort of mystical combination of Mother Teresa and a contemplative monk. Someone who is constantly selflessly devoted to service and yet somehow at the same time has countless hours to spend in prayer, contemplation, and the uninterrupted study of scripture. Even my guy Martin Luther, patron saint of anxiety and self-doubt, lets me down on this. Luther said that he devoted an hour a day, first thing in the morning, to prayer and reflection, and on days when he didn’t have time to devote an hour, he would devote three hours, because when he was busy, he needed prayer more. Come on, Luther. I, on the other hand, tend to come dashing into Wednesday morning Bible study just a few minutes late every week, because I yet again overscheduled my day. I remember when I was discerning my call to ministry, telling my pastor that I couldn’t be a pastor, because every pastor I’d ever met got up early to spend time in prayer, and I simply wasn’t a morning person. She, rightly, laughed at my insistence. Though, it should be noted, that she herself is one of those people who just naturally doesn’t require much sleep, and she does get up every morning at five to pray and study scripture. I get up at five if the house is on fire or I have to catch an airplane, and even then all bets are off. I share this also because I get the sense that some of you have the same lofty ideals of me that I have about her, and friends, it freaks me out a bit sometimes.
Which is why, I think we all could stand to learn from this story of Jesus calling his first disciples. Last week we also heard the calling of Simon and Andrew, but you’ll notice Matthew and John had very different memories of the event. Last week, John’s Gospel had John the Baptist pointing Jesus out to Andrew. But in Matthew, John the Baptist is already in prison, and Simon and Andrew did not seem to be followers of John the Baptist anyway. They were just two guys standing on a lakeshore, going about their daily work. Sometimes in Christian circles, we use language about there being a God-shaped hole or void in our lives that we are all seeking to have filled. These guys did not seem to have any such hole. They weren’t looking for a teacher, they weren’t looking for a profession, they weren’t looking for fulfillment of any kind. They had jobs, and lives, and fulfillment enough, a lifetime of occupation eeking out an existence with their nets and their boats and the Sea of Galilee.
That is, until Jesus showed up and said, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they did. Which is crazy, because, think about it, this is Jesus’ first public appearance, they have absolutely no idea who this guy is. This isn’t John’s Gospel, where John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the one they should follow. No, this is just a stranger on the beach coming up to them and saying, “follow me.” One of the commentaries I read called this Jesus’ first miracle, that he could convince these total strangers to drop everything, leave their poor father stranded in a boat, and follow Jesus. It’s crazy, when you think about it.
But here’s something my friend Kelli pointed out, that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. Notice what Jesus called the disciples to do; he called them to fish for people. They’re fisherman, and he called them to fish for people. He didn’t call them to farm for people, or to teach people, or to be accountants for people, he called them to fish for people. He called them to take the skills and gifts they already had, that God had already given them, and use them for the betterment of others. Jesus didn’t call the disciples to become something radically different; rather he called them to be the best versions of themselves; the best versions of who God had created them to be.
This, I think, is maybe what is meant by discipleship. Not to contort ourselves into some cookie-cutter version of what we think God expects from disciples, but to recognize the skills and gifts, the talents and traits, that God has given each and every one of us, and to use those God given skills and gifts, talents and traits, to be the best version of who we already are. Which means, you may not be being called to fish for people, or to be in the streets of India like Mother Teresa, or to be a contemplative monk. God may be calling you to work at the food pantry for people or be an accountant for people or a nurse for people or to pray for people.
And if you focus on that, on being the very best person that God has created you to be, instead of trying to mold yourself into some ill-fitting version of who you think you should be, I think you will find that the same miracle that happened to those first two disciples, will have happened to you. That without knowing it, and without knowing quite why or how, you will have moved from metaphorically fishing for yourself, to metaphorically fishing for others, metaphorically fishing for God. So just do you, just be you. Because you, who you are, as you are, is exactly the sort of person Jesus is walking along the beach in search of. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Conversation Points for Matthew 4:12-23
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Unlike Luke (for whom it is really important to date events in Jesus’ life to historical events, even if it doesn’t historically work), Matthew dates events by their relation to salvation history. So we don’t know how much time has passed between Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and this event. All we know is John the Baptist has now been arrested by Herod.
• The word translated “put in prison” is the passive form of paradidomi, which means “hand over,” “betray,” or “deliver up.” It is the same word used for Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and God’s act of delivering Jesus for human sins. It relates to Isaiah 53:6, “the Lord delivered up for our sins.”
• “Withdrew” (v. 12) is used ten times in Matthew’s Gospel, almost exclusively as Jesus’ response to threats. It is not a show of cowardice, self-preservation, or strategy, but rather a representative of Jesus’ alternative vision of kingship, which is non-violent and non-retaliatory.
• Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum, both cities in the Galilee region. Galilee plays a symbolic theological role in Matthew’s Gospel as a home of gentiles. Jesus’ ministry starts in and among gentiles, and thus is more than just a ministry for the people of Israel, but for all people.
• The passage Matthew referenced in v. 15-16 is Isaiah 9:2-3. Matthew used this text both because of the promise of a coming Messiah and also because it shows the expansion of the church to the gentiles.
• V. 17 Jesus repeated the same message John the Baptist had preached. Now that John is in prison, Jesus repeating his words marks the official end of John’s ministry and the beginning of Jesus’.
• V. 17 “has come near” is a good translation for the Greek. It relates not to space but to time. The kingdom of heaven is near the way daylight comes near as the sun rises, already starting to break through the horizon.
• Repent is also a richly loaded word in scripture. It literally means “change one’s mind,” but is rich with the Hebrew undertones of “turn” and “return.” It is not sorrow or remorse, but a call to change the direction of one’s life, essentially, “get yourself a new orientation for the way you live, then act on it.”
• The call of the disciples is unique because rabbis traditionally didn’t seek out students, students sought out rabbis. But here Jesus came to Andrew and Simon, spoke to Andrew and Simon, rather than the other way around. It echoes other unexpected call stories in the Old Testament, like the call of Elisha in 1 Kings 19:19-21.
• Andrew and Simon did not know Jesus, they had not seen any miracles, heard any teachings, been present to any of John’s baptisms, yet at Jesus’ call they dropped what they were doing and followed. This could be considered the first miracle of Jesus’ ministry, that the disciples followed without knowing what or whom they were following.
• The disciples were already working when Jesus called them. They were not looking for salvation or occupation; Jesus’ call did not fill an obvious hole in their lives. Rather, like for other prophets, the call of Jesus was disruptive and intrusive. Echoes of the writing of Augustine in the Confessions, “I could not seek you, if you had not already found me.”
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Unlike Luke (for whom it is really important to date events in Jesus’ life to historical events, even if it doesn’t historically work), Matthew dates events by their relation to salvation history. So we don’t know how much time has passed between Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and this event. All we know is John the Baptist has now been arrested by Herod.
• The word translated “put in prison” is the passive form of paradidomi, which means “hand over,” “betray,” or “deliver up.” It is the same word used for Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and God’s act of delivering Jesus for human sins. It relates to Isaiah 53:6, “the Lord delivered up for our sins.”
• “Withdrew” (v. 12) is used ten times in Matthew’s Gospel, almost exclusively as Jesus’ response to threats. It is not a show of cowardice, self-preservation, or strategy, but rather a representative of Jesus’ alternative vision of kingship, which is non-violent and non-retaliatory.
• Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum, both cities in the Galilee region. Galilee plays a symbolic theological role in Matthew’s Gospel as a home of gentiles. Jesus’ ministry starts in and among gentiles, and thus is more than just a ministry for the people of Israel, but for all people.
• The passage Matthew referenced in v. 15-16 is Isaiah 9:2-3. Matthew used this text both because of the promise of a coming Messiah and also because it shows the expansion of the church to the gentiles.
• V. 17 Jesus repeated the same message John the Baptist had preached. Now that John is in prison, Jesus repeating his words marks the official end of John’s ministry and the beginning of Jesus’.
• V. 17 “has come near” is a good translation for the Greek. It relates not to space but to time. The kingdom of heaven is near the way daylight comes near as the sun rises, already starting to break through the horizon.
• Repent is also a richly loaded word in scripture. It literally means “change one’s mind,” but is rich with the Hebrew undertones of “turn” and “return.” It is not sorrow or remorse, but a call to change the direction of one’s life, essentially, “get yourself a new orientation for the way you live, then act on it.”
• The call of the disciples is unique because rabbis traditionally didn’t seek out students, students sought out rabbis. But here Jesus came to Andrew and Simon, spoke to Andrew and Simon, rather than the other way around. It echoes other unexpected call stories in the Old Testament, like the call of Elisha in 1 Kings 19:19-21.
• Andrew and Simon did not know Jesus, they had not seen any miracles, heard any teachings, been present to any of John’s baptisms, yet at Jesus’ call they dropped what they were doing and followed. This could be considered the first miracle of Jesus’ ministry, that the disciples followed without knowing what or whom they were following.
• The disciples were already working when Jesus called them. They were not looking for salvation or occupation; Jesus’ call did not fill an obvious hole in their lives. Rather, like for other prophets, the call of Jesus was disruptive and intrusive. Echoes of the writing of Augustine in the Confessions, “I could not seek you, if you had not already found me.”
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, January 16, 2017
The annual Portico Health Assessment, Sandwiches, and Jesus: A Sermon on John 1:29-42
Well, it’s a new year, and with the new year comes one of my least favorite chores, filling out the paperwork for my health insurance. Clergy health costs are notoriously high, and one of the ways the ELCA’s insurance company is trying to keep our health costs down is to encourage healthy living. It does this by having us all take a health assessment every year and then giving us a series of tasks to accomplish to help improve our health. In theory, this should be a super easy thing to do. The health assessment only takes about15 minutes to do, and the extra project this year is literally “do any healthy thing, anything at all, and tell us about it.” It is really not a big deal. And, in return, in addition to the benefit of doing something healthy, I get $400 in my health savings account, and the synod gets a 2% refund, so it really is all win.
Or, it should be, but for whatever reason it honestly never feels like a win. First off, the health assessment, even though it talks all about how it is not a judgment of our health, and is not reported to anyone but us, and is just about setting a baseline, feels like it’s judging me. And I don’t like that feeling. As far as clergy go, I think I’m pretty healthy. I exercise, I eat right, I get plenty of sleep, I always feel like fireworks should go off when I click submit, and a hand should come out of my computer screen to give me a big pat on the back and a certificate that says, thank you for being so healthy. But that is not what happens. No congratulations, no great job, no nothing. Just a list of three things I could do to improve my health. You know what number one was last year? Eat more vegetables. Eat more vegetables, health assessment, I’m a vegetarian! What do you think I eat?!
My problem with the health assessment is it feels less like helpful suggestions, and more like another thing I have to do. It feels like I’m working really hard at being healthy, and the health assessment is just trying to find ways to show that I’m not working hard enough, that I should be doing more. Do you have things like that in your life? Where you feel like you’re doing the very best you can, and someone keeps coming along and being like, hey, that’s great, but really if you did this, it would be better? I think that’s more or less true for all of us. Maybe yours is not literally your insurance company, but just the pressure of society, hey, if you exercised, or ate right, or you saved more money, or had a bigger car, or gave more time to charity or worried less or whatever, things would be better for you. The list of shoulds is endless. The things we should be doing.
And it’s the season for “shoulds” right now, it’s new year. The time for making resolutions. This is the year I’m going to exercise more, or this is the year I’m going to eat right, or, we are in church, maybe this is the year I’m going to pray more, or study scripture, or work on my relationship with God. Which, let’s get one thing out first; as your pastor, I certainly encourage you to pray, study scripture, and have a good relationship with God. But I do want to caution you about taking on “improve my faith life” as a new year’s resolution. Because, like the health assessment turns my enjoyment of exercise and healthy eating into a drudging chore; when we take on spirituality as a resolution, we run the risk of having our faith become a checklist. And Jesus wants faithful disciples; I don’t think he wants checklist disciples.
Let’s take a look at our Gospel reading for this morning. Last week we heard Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan. In John’s Gospel, and before we get too far into this, let’s just acknowledge that John the Baptist and John the writer of John’s Gospel are two separate people. It would be easier if they had different names, but they don’t, so I’m going to try my best to identify who is who. So anyway, in John’s Gospel, instead of a description of Jesus’ baptism, we hear John the Baptist’s reflections on the baptism. There is no Jesus coming to John in the Jordan for baptism, we don’t even know from John’s Gospel if John the Baptist was the one who did the physical baptizing. This is because for John, both John’s actually, John the Baptist and John the writer of the Gospel, who did the physical baptizing is unimportant. The action of Jesus being baptized was an action of God and the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist, even if he was physically standing in the river, with his hands on Jesus, dunking him in the water and speaking words over him, had nothing to do with it, he was merely the vessel God to perform God’s own action.
Which, I have to tell you as a pastor; just the act of writing that sentence was a bit of an epiphany for me. Because, when I do baptisms, let me tell you what, I have a checklist. Tell Rosemary to make sure the baptism makes it in the bulletin. Print the liturgy, checking to make sure I changed the name every time, so I don’t accidently baptize this person using the name of the last person I baptized. Check with Wayne and Rose to make sure the font is full, the candles are lit, there is a certificate and a candle and a towel. Make sure the sponsors know what they’re doing. Check with the lay assistant to make sure they know their part. And on and on. I’ve got it down to a pretty good system now, it doesn’t take all that much time, but there are a lot of little details that I run through in order to make sure the baptism goes smoothly. But as I was writing about the baptism of Jesus, it occurred to me that none of the things I do matter. Yes, it’s nice to have a certificate, and a candle, and liturgy so you all can follow along, and all the things we do at baptisms at Trinity. But truly, none of those things are necessary. If I forgot all of those things, every last one of them, we could still have a baptism. There’s always a little bit of water in the font, even if it gets a bit funky after a while, or we could fill up the font from the back, or someone would have a water bottle, we could make do. Because baptism isn’t about what we do, it isn’t about me saying words, or you singing “You Belong to Christ,” or lighting a candle, baptism is about what God does. The things we do are nice, they help set the scene, they are visual representations of God’s action, but the action is God’s. And here’s the much alluded to sandwich metaphor: If someone makes you a sandwich, you don’t thank the cutting board for being such a great surface for getting the onions chopped, and the lettuce rinsed, and the cheese sliced. No, you thank the person who actually made you the sandwich. Friends, the checklist, all the stuff we do, that’s just the cutting board. God made the sandwich.
So the next day, after John the Baptist gave this whole story about how he knew who Jesus was because the one who sent him (A.K.A. God) told him it was Jesus, John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and Jesus walked by. And John said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God,” and two of John’s own disciples left John and followed after Jesus. And John was totally OK with that, because that was the whole purpose of John’s whole ministry, to point people to Jesus. If the disciples had said, “oh, that’s interesting,” and kept following John, John would have failed in his purpose.
So these two disciples follow after Jesus, and when Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, “What are you looking for?” To which they responded, “Where are you staying?” Now, here seems like it would be a good time for Jesus to tell them a little bit about himself right? Maybe give them a little background about who he is, how important he is. Or maybe tell them what his expectations for discipleship will be, what he’ll want from them, what it will mean to be a follower. But he doesn’t do that. What he does instead is respond to their question of “Where are you staying,” with the simple statement, “come and see.” Come and see. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry is a ministry of presence. The first step to being a follower of Jesus is seeing Jesus, then being with Jesus, and then slowly one moves into knowing Jesus. There isn’t some test of faith, some proof of commitment, or show of understanding. Seeing, being in the presence of leads to believing.
The disciples went, and then one of them, Andrew, went back and told his brother, “We have found the Messiah.” Andrew testified to his brother about who Jesus was, he moved from seeing to believing. So Simon heard Andrew’s testimony and he went to Jesus, and Jesus said to Simon, not to Andrew who’d testified, but to Simon who was just seeing for the first time, “You are to be called Cephas,” which is translated Peter, meaning Rock. And naming, remember, hugely important in ancient times in claiming the identity of someone. Jesus claimed Simon, named him Peter, claimed his identity as the rock of the church, all on the power of Simon showing up. You’d think Andrew would get to be the rock, after all, he was the one who did the testifying, but no, Simon is the one who gets renamed. I mean, we can assume something great happened to Andrew too, after all, the experience was memorable enough to get him to go back to his brother and recount this experience, but the writer of John’s Gospel didn’t think Andrew’s experience was important enough to pass along. The focus of the writer of John’s Gospel is this ongoing experience of someone seeing Jesus, being in the presence of Jesus, and Jesus doing the rest.
So, dear people of God, let me urge you, and in fact, give you pastoral permission to let go of your life of faith checklists. Yes, you should pray, and read scripture, and care for the poor, and do all those things, those are great things. But, if you do them out of a sense of obligation, then they’re not about faith, they’re about crossing off chores. So just relax. See Jesus, and let Jesus figure out your action. If your prayer life isn’t working, give it a break for a while, try something different. If you’re frustrated with God, be frustrated, God’s a big God, God can certainly handle it. If things are great, and you’re cooking along in your life of faith, delight in that. If you feel God calling you to do more, to take on a new thing but you’re worried you might not know how, be bold, take the leap and give it a try. Don’t get too caught up in how to be better, just lean into God who just wants you to come and see and be in the presence of the Almighty, and let that change you. What we can take from this passage is that God is all about relationships. God wants to be in relationship with us, and that relationship will change us, and change us in ways we cannot expect or imagine. Make your resolution for your life of faith this year to just be in relationship with God, and see where it goes. God is making the sandwich. It may not be the sandwich you were expecting, but trust me, God is an excellent cook. So leave the end result to God; just be the cutting board. Amen.
Or, it should be, but for whatever reason it honestly never feels like a win. First off, the health assessment, even though it talks all about how it is not a judgment of our health, and is not reported to anyone but us, and is just about setting a baseline, feels like it’s judging me. And I don’t like that feeling. As far as clergy go, I think I’m pretty healthy. I exercise, I eat right, I get plenty of sleep, I always feel like fireworks should go off when I click submit, and a hand should come out of my computer screen to give me a big pat on the back and a certificate that says, thank you for being so healthy. But that is not what happens. No congratulations, no great job, no nothing. Just a list of three things I could do to improve my health. You know what number one was last year? Eat more vegetables. Eat more vegetables, health assessment, I’m a vegetarian! What do you think I eat?!
My problem with the health assessment is it feels less like helpful suggestions, and more like another thing I have to do. It feels like I’m working really hard at being healthy, and the health assessment is just trying to find ways to show that I’m not working hard enough, that I should be doing more. Do you have things like that in your life? Where you feel like you’re doing the very best you can, and someone keeps coming along and being like, hey, that’s great, but really if you did this, it would be better? I think that’s more or less true for all of us. Maybe yours is not literally your insurance company, but just the pressure of society, hey, if you exercised, or ate right, or you saved more money, or had a bigger car, or gave more time to charity or worried less or whatever, things would be better for you. The list of shoulds is endless. The things we should be doing.
And it’s the season for “shoulds” right now, it’s new year. The time for making resolutions. This is the year I’m going to exercise more, or this is the year I’m going to eat right, or, we are in church, maybe this is the year I’m going to pray more, or study scripture, or work on my relationship with God. Which, let’s get one thing out first; as your pastor, I certainly encourage you to pray, study scripture, and have a good relationship with God. But I do want to caution you about taking on “improve my faith life” as a new year’s resolution. Because, like the health assessment turns my enjoyment of exercise and healthy eating into a drudging chore; when we take on spirituality as a resolution, we run the risk of having our faith become a checklist. And Jesus wants faithful disciples; I don’t think he wants checklist disciples.
Let’s take a look at our Gospel reading for this morning. Last week we heard Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan. In John’s Gospel, and before we get too far into this, let’s just acknowledge that John the Baptist and John the writer of John’s Gospel are two separate people. It would be easier if they had different names, but they don’t, so I’m going to try my best to identify who is who. So anyway, in John’s Gospel, instead of a description of Jesus’ baptism, we hear John the Baptist’s reflections on the baptism. There is no Jesus coming to John in the Jordan for baptism, we don’t even know from John’s Gospel if John the Baptist was the one who did the physical baptizing. This is because for John, both John’s actually, John the Baptist and John the writer of the Gospel, who did the physical baptizing is unimportant. The action of Jesus being baptized was an action of God and the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist, even if he was physically standing in the river, with his hands on Jesus, dunking him in the water and speaking words over him, had nothing to do with it, he was merely the vessel God to perform God’s own action.
Which, I have to tell you as a pastor; just the act of writing that sentence was a bit of an epiphany for me. Because, when I do baptisms, let me tell you what, I have a checklist. Tell Rosemary to make sure the baptism makes it in the bulletin. Print the liturgy, checking to make sure I changed the name every time, so I don’t accidently baptize this person using the name of the last person I baptized. Check with Wayne and Rose to make sure the font is full, the candles are lit, there is a certificate and a candle and a towel. Make sure the sponsors know what they’re doing. Check with the lay assistant to make sure they know their part. And on and on. I’ve got it down to a pretty good system now, it doesn’t take all that much time, but there are a lot of little details that I run through in order to make sure the baptism goes smoothly. But as I was writing about the baptism of Jesus, it occurred to me that none of the things I do matter. Yes, it’s nice to have a certificate, and a candle, and liturgy so you all can follow along, and all the things we do at baptisms at Trinity. But truly, none of those things are necessary. If I forgot all of those things, every last one of them, we could still have a baptism. There’s always a little bit of water in the font, even if it gets a bit funky after a while, or we could fill up the font from the back, or someone would have a water bottle, we could make do. Because baptism isn’t about what we do, it isn’t about me saying words, or you singing “You Belong to Christ,” or lighting a candle, baptism is about what God does. The things we do are nice, they help set the scene, they are visual representations of God’s action, but the action is God’s. And here’s the much alluded to sandwich metaphor: If someone makes you a sandwich, you don’t thank the cutting board for being such a great surface for getting the onions chopped, and the lettuce rinsed, and the cheese sliced. No, you thank the person who actually made you the sandwich. Friends, the checklist, all the stuff we do, that’s just the cutting board. God made the sandwich.
So the next day, after John the Baptist gave this whole story about how he knew who Jesus was because the one who sent him (A.K.A. God) told him it was Jesus, John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and Jesus walked by. And John said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God,” and two of John’s own disciples left John and followed after Jesus. And John was totally OK with that, because that was the whole purpose of John’s whole ministry, to point people to Jesus. If the disciples had said, “oh, that’s interesting,” and kept following John, John would have failed in his purpose.
So these two disciples follow after Jesus, and when Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, “What are you looking for?” To which they responded, “Where are you staying?” Now, here seems like it would be a good time for Jesus to tell them a little bit about himself right? Maybe give them a little background about who he is, how important he is. Or maybe tell them what his expectations for discipleship will be, what he’ll want from them, what it will mean to be a follower. But he doesn’t do that. What he does instead is respond to their question of “Where are you staying,” with the simple statement, “come and see.” Come and see. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry is a ministry of presence. The first step to being a follower of Jesus is seeing Jesus, then being with Jesus, and then slowly one moves into knowing Jesus. There isn’t some test of faith, some proof of commitment, or show of understanding. Seeing, being in the presence of leads to believing.
The disciples went, and then one of them, Andrew, went back and told his brother, “We have found the Messiah.” Andrew testified to his brother about who Jesus was, he moved from seeing to believing. So Simon heard Andrew’s testimony and he went to Jesus, and Jesus said to Simon, not to Andrew who’d testified, but to Simon who was just seeing for the first time, “You are to be called Cephas,” which is translated Peter, meaning Rock. And naming, remember, hugely important in ancient times in claiming the identity of someone. Jesus claimed Simon, named him Peter, claimed his identity as the rock of the church, all on the power of Simon showing up. You’d think Andrew would get to be the rock, after all, he was the one who did the testifying, but no, Simon is the one who gets renamed. I mean, we can assume something great happened to Andrew too, after all, the experience was memorable enough to get him to go back to his brother and recount this experience, but the writer of John’s Gospel didn’t think Andrew’s experience was important enough to pass along. The focus of the writer of John’s Gospel is this ongoing experience of someone seeing Jesus, being in the presence of Jesus, and Jesus doing the rest.
So, dear people of God, let me urge you, and in fact, give you pastoral permission to let go of your life of faith checklists. Yes, you should pray, and read scripture, and care for the poor, and do all those things, those are great things. But, if you do them out of a sense of obligation, then they’re not about faith, they’re about crossing off chores. So just relax. See Jesus, and let Jesus figure out your action. If your prayer life isn’t working, give it a break for a while, try something different. If you’re frustrated with God, be frustrated, God’s a big God, God can certainly handle it. If things are great, and you’re cooking along in your life of faith, delight in that. If you feel God calling you to do more, to take on a new thing but you’re worried you might not know how, be bold, take the leap and give it a try. Don’t get too caught up in how to be better, just lean into God who just wants you to come and see and be in the presence of the Almighty, and let that change you. What we can take from this passage is that God is all about relationships. God wants to be in relationship with us, and that relationship will change us, and change us in ways we cannot expect or imagine. Make your resolution for your life of faith this year to just be in relationship with God, and see where it goes. God is making the sandwich. It may not be the sandwich you were expecting, but trust me, God is an excellent cook. So leave the end result to God; just be the cutting board. Amen.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Conversation Points for John 1:29-42
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• John the Baptist and the writer of John’s Gospel are not the same John. John is an incredibly popular name; there are at least three different Johns who play major roles in the New Testament, John the Baptist, John the writer of the Gospel of John and the Letters of John, and John of Patmos, the writer of Revelation. All are three separate Johns.
• Unlike in the synoptics, the Gospel of John does not specifically tell of John baptizing Jesus. We know John baptized, and we know John saw the dove descending on Jesus at his baptism, but there is no recounting of the actual event itself. For the writer of John’s Gospel, the importance is not the event, but John’s trustworthiness as a witness of the event. God and the Holy Spirit are the actors, whoever was doing the baptizing does not matter, what matters is John was there as a witness.
• John identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” Lamb is a multi-layered image. It probably partially refers to the servant songs in Isaiah (particularly Isa 53:7 “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth”) and to the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:1-13). In Judaism, the Passover lamb was not a symbol of sacrifice for sin, but merely a marker to let the Lord know which houses to pass over. It was the early church who quickly reinterpreted the Passover lamb as a sacrifice in light of the Eucharist. The lamb imagery is thick in John’s Gospel, for example Jesus’ legs were not broken at the crucifixion as a connection to the unblemished lamb (John 19:33, 36; Exodus 12:46).
• The role of John the Baptist in John’s Gospel is not, as it is in the synoptics, a Messianic forerunner, but a witness. Witnessing, in John’s Gospel, is the starting point for faith.
• The metaphor of seeing plays a large role in John’s Gospel, connecting to Jesus urge to “Come and see.” In just this section we have multiple words for “seeing”: blepo (1:29); ide (1:32, 38); orao/eidon (1:33-34, 39); and emblepo (1:36, 42). One of the central themes of John’s Gospel is: If you want to know God, come and see Jesus.
• The verb “to follow” (akoloutheo, v. 37) has two meanings in the Gospel of John. It has its literal meaning in the story, to follow someone, and it serves as a metaphor for discipleship. This literary style of writing with two levels of meaning is a common trait of John’s Gospel. In fact, Jesus’ entire conversation in v. 38-39 can be seen as happening on two levels.
• The first two disciples in v. 37 are initially not named. The circle of discipleship in John’s Gospel is much less formal than in the synoptics. For example, there is no formal number of twelve disciples in John.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
West, Audrey. “Commentary on John 1:29-42.” Working Preacher.. Accessed: 9 January 2017.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• John the Baptist and the writer of John’s Gospel are not the same John. John is an incredibly popular name; there are at least three different Johns who play major roles in the New Testament, John the Baptist, John the writer of the Gospel of John and the Letters of John, and John of Patmos, the writer of Revelation. All are three separate Johns.
• Unlike in the synoptics, the Gospel of John does not specifically tell of John baptizing Jesus. We know John baptized, and we know John saw the dove descending on Jesus at his baptism, but there is no recounting of the actual event itself. For the writer of John’s Gospel, the importance is not the event, but John’s trustworthiness as a witness of the event. God and the Holy Spirit are the actors, whoever was doing the baptizing does not matter, what matters is John was there as a witness.
• John identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” Lamb is a multi-layered image. It probably partially refers to the servant songs in Isaiah (particularly Isa 53:7 “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth”) and to the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:1-13). In Judaism, the Passover lamb was not a symbol of sacrifice for sin, but merely a marker to let the Lord know which houses to pass over. It was the early church who quickly reinterpreted the Passover lamb as a sacrifice in light of the Eucharist. The lamb imagery is thick in John’s Gospel, for example Jesus’ legs were not broken at the crucifixion as a connection to the unblemished lamb (John 19:33, 36; Exodus 12:46).
• The role of John the Baptist in John’s Gospel is not, as it is in the synoptics, a Messianic forerunner, but a witness. Witnessing, in John’s Gospel, is the starting point for faith.
• The metaphor of seeing plays a large role in John’s Gospel, connecting to Jesus urge to “Come and see.” In just this section we have multiple words for “seeing”: blepo (1:29); ide (1:32, 38); orao/eidon (1:33-34, 39); and emblepo (1:36, 42). One of the central themes of John’s Gospel is: If you want to know God, come and see Jesus.
• The verb “to follow” (akoloutheo, v. 37) has two meanings in the Gospel of John. It has its literal meaning in the story, to follow someone, and it serves as a metaphor for discipleship. This literary style of writing with two levels of meaning is a common trait of John’s Gospel. In fact, Jesus’ entire conversation in v. 38-39 can be seen as happening on two levels.
• The first two disciples in v. 37 are initially not named. The circle of discipleship in John’s Gospel is much less formal than in the synoptics. For example, there is no formal number of twelve disciples in John.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
West, Audrey. “Commentary on John 1:29-42.” Working Preacher.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Glitter: A Sermon on Matthew 3:13-17
I have to admit, I am particularly excited about Epiphany this year as a new homeowner. I can’t wait to take my piece of chalk and write Christe mansionem benedicat on the doorpost of my own home. I suppose I could have chalked the entrance to my apartment, but that seemed a little weird. And when I lived in LA, I rented a room in someone else’s house, and I didn’t think any of my landlords/housemates would want me writing on their walls, even in chalk. This is the first time I’ve had a place that was really my own.
I’ve been reflecting this week on the day I bought the house. My realtor and I took a final walkthrough, I followed him over to his office, signed my name what seemed like a million times and handed over a cashier’s check for the largest amount of money I’ve ever given someone in my life, and then he gave me a set of keys, and that was it. I was a homeowner. It was sort of anti-climactic; there was no test or anything. I went back to the totally empty building that I now owned and just laid on the floor staring up at the ceiling thinking, “this is my home, I own this home, I am a homeowner.” A friend and his family came over with pizza, and his four year old daughter spilled Parmesan cheese all over the floor, and I didn’t care because the floor was dirty anyway, and there was absolutely nothing else in the house, and besides, it was mine. I could spill cheese on the floor if I wanted to. Eventually I went back to the apartment where all of my belongings were, and went to bed, still with this sense of surrealness. I didn’t feel any different, I felt like the same person I’d been when I’d gotten up that morning, but now I had apparently reached the American Dream and joined the ranks of home-ownership.
That surreal feeling lasted exactly until I got up the next morning, went back to the house, and had to face the harsh reality what owning a home really meant. I immediately had to deal with the fact that the house was too filthy to actually live in, requiring a solid three weeks of serious on my hands and knees scrubbing, in addition to the normal joys of moving. Then there were, of course, the whole host of other quirks the inspector had somehow missed. Like how the ductwork for the second floor was cut in the basement, so the second floor had no heating or A/C. Or that the “new windows” were not new, and the one in the upstairs bathroom fell out if you opened it from the top. Or the time a few months into living in the house when I came downstairs one rainy morning to find it raining in my kitchen. I really love the house, don’t get me wrong, but I do have to confess the “honeymoon phase” was over after the first hour of bleaching the kitchen floor.
I got to thinking about this because in addition to Epiphany, we are also celebrating Baptism of our Lord Sunday this morning. And because of the way we sometimes read scripture sort of jumpily to get it to fit with the liturgical calendar, we miss the really weird juxtaposition of what happens immediately following Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. Let me read the last two verses of chapter three again, sixteen and seventeen, and then I’ll read the first verse of chapter four, so you can see what I mean. “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ [pause] Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Did you catch that? That’s the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, which, spoiler alert, we will read on March fifth, the First Sunday of Lent. Because the lectionary cycle sticks the entire season of Epiphany between these two stories, we often don’t realize they actually happen back to back. The image of the Holy Spirit in my mind is like one of those old cartoons, like Wylie Coyote, or something like that, you know where the Roadrunner is chasing him off into the sunset. I imagine the dove descending from heaven onto Jesus, and then immediately driving him out of the water and off into the Judean wilderness as the scene closes. The lectionary cycle gives us this long space to reflect on the baptism of Jesus, what it meant and how we understand it. Jesus himself had no such luxury. The story went from water to voice from heaven to wilderness, just that fast. Which at first seemed like a pretty raw deal for Jesus. He just had this huge heaven opening, dove descending moment, and then the dove turns out to be kind of a bully who chased him out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What gives, Holy Spirit!
But here’s a couple of thoughts on that. First, we can’t try to psychologize or come to some sort of metaphysical understanding of Jesus’ “baptismal experience.” Matthew, and more importantly, Jesus, really wasn’t interested in that. Jesus’ baptism wasn’t the moment in which Jesus became the Son of God. Remember the genealogy? This thing has been in the works since literally the beginning of time. What happened at Jesus’ baptism wasn’t that he became God’s son, but that he was declared to be God’s son, which, by the way, he already knew. Matthew makes it clear by starting the story with Jesus coming to John the Baptist in the wilderness and basically forcing John to baptize him, that Jesus was the one controlling the cards here. While the crowds might have been amazed at the voice from heaven declaring, “This is My Son the Beloved,” Jesus wasn’t. Jesus knew that already. He knew he was God’s Son, he knew he was beloved; he knew that with him God was well-pleased. Jesus didn’t get baptized in order to undergo some sort of great conversion experience. He got baptized “to fulfill all righteousness,” basically because God wanted him to. Our baptisms are this moment of joining ourselves into God’s family, but Jesus didn’t need to be joined, he already was, he was God’s son.
But something did change for Jesus at his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended on him. I think our image of it, or at least my image of it, is like clouds parting out of a blue sky, and rays of golden light shining, maybe some trumpets, and a shimmery white dove coming down in the light rays. But I think maybe instead of picturing the Holy Spirit as rays of light, or a dove, or wind, we ought to picture the Holy Spirit more like glitter. And you know how with glitter, when it gets on something, you can never get it off again. You know how you go home after doing something with glitter, and you wake up the next morning, and you take a shower, and then you go out, and someone is like, “hey, is that glitter in your hair,” and that happens for a week? The Holy Spirit is kind of like that.
And if we think of the Holy Spirit as glitter, it totally changes how we imagine Jesus’ time in the wilderness. Jesus was in the wilderness, forty days and forty nights, tempted by the devil, no food, it was hard, don’t get me wrong. And when we read this story, I wonder if we don’t think of it as some great test on the part of Jesus, a sign of his amazing ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps, or, sandalstraps, I guess, and get through. Because he’s baptized now, and he’s got this. And then how easy is it for us to take the next logical step along that track and think, well, we too are baptized, and so when we are in the wilderness, all by ourselves, we then, like Jesus, should pull ourselves up by our own metaphorical bootstraps and get it done. God helps those who help themselves, right?
Except, here’s the thing, he wasn’t alone in the wilderness, because he had the Holy Spirit with him, stuck to him like glitter. Shining in his hair, sparkling in the day, catching rays of the moon by night. Maybe Jesus’ time in the wilderness was less some great test of his ability to resist temptation, and more a reminder that wilderness isn’t about an individual struggle, it is about faith lived out in community. God’s people are constantly finding themselves in the wilderness, and they are never alone. God sent Abraham to Canaan to make a great nation, he had Sarah, and some strange visitors, and eventually a kid. The Israelites wandered forty years in the desert, and not only were there a whole nation of them, but God in the form of a pillar of fire led the way. The Babyonian Exile, you’ve got a Babylon full of Israelites, and random prophets popping up every so often to remind them, hey, God hasn’t forgotten about you.
So what does any of this have to do with my house? I tell you what, it felt, still feels sometimes, like a wilderness time. There were days where I sat alone in the totally empty living room and thought, this place will never be clean enough to live in. Or stood in the kitchen, staring up at the water pouring through the ceiling, informing the yeowling cat that he was no help at all. But I’m learning I don’t have to solve these things alone. The horrible mess I moved into? Turns out I have a friend who uses cleaning as stress relief, she spent six hours in the upstairs bathroom. It’s blue; I thought it was gray. I chatted it up with the Sims guy when he came to inspect the furnace, he figured out the heating duct was cut and jimmied it back together with a length of wire and a piece of wood. Val from the Co-op, her son does roofing; he made it so it no longer rains in my kitchen. My friends came to visit over the summer and got my box spring through the window, my dad helped hang things while he was here. Even the cat is useful at times, turns out he likes stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, which turns his whiskers into a spider web removal system. These tasks, which felt so insurmountable when I looked at doing them alone, became easy when I realized others could help.
Dear friends, faith is like that. That’s why we come together every Sunday. It’s not because God needs some certain number of people assembled in a space in order to feel sufficiently worshiped. No, it’s because we need some number of people in a space in order to feel sufficiently connected. We need to be reminded that living a life of faith, that being people of God, is not a solo activity. We have not been baptized just to be dumped out in the cold to figure out on our own. We were baptized into a community. And that Holy Spirit community is sticky, like glitter. You can’t get it out of your hair, no matter how much you try. Which means, you are not alone. You are never alone. Because God, through the alighting of the Spirit at your baptism is stuck to you, sending out little rays of light every time you move. And that sticky, glittery Spirit is bigger even than this place. Since Advent, and all through the rest of the year, we will be praying for places on our map where the sticky, glittery love of the Spirit has spread. So, when you find yourselves in what feels like wilderness, you can come here, or to any of the people here, or you can just look at this map, and maybe you will see that slightest hint of glitter twinkling back at you. Because you are God’s child, Beloved. And you cannot shake that off; it’s like glitter for your soul. Amen.
I’ve been reflecting this week on the day I bought the house. My realtor and I took a final walkthrough, I followed him over to his office, signed my name what seemed like a million times and handed over a cashier’s check for the largest amount of money I’ve ever given someone in my life, and then he gave me a set of keys, and that was it. I was a homeowner. It was sort of anti-climactic; there was no test or anything. I went back to the totally empty building that I now owned and just laid on the floor staring up at the ceiling thinking, “this is my home, I own this home, I am a homeowner.” A friend and his family came over with pizza, and his four year old daughter spilled Parmesan cheese all over the floor, and I didn’t care because the floor was dirty anyway, and there was absolutely nothing else in the house, and besides, it was mine. I could spill cheese on the floor if I wanted to. Eventually I went back to the apartment where all of my belongings were, and went to bed, still with this sense of surrealness. I didn’t feel any different, I felt like the same person I’d been when I’d gotten up that morning, but now I had apparently reached the American Dream and joined the ranks of home-ownership.
That surreal feeling lasted exactly until I got up the next morning, went back to the house, and had to face the harsh reality what owning a home really meant. I immediately had to deal with the fact that the house was too filthy to actually live in, requiring a solid three weeks of serious on my hands and knees scrubbing, in addition to the normal joys of moving. Then there were, of course, the whole host of other quirks the inspector had somehow missed. Like how the ductwork for the second floor was cut in the basement, so the second floor had no heating or A/C. Or that the “new windows” were not new, and the one in the upstairs bathroom fell out if you opened it from the top. Or the time a few months into living in the house when I came downstairs one rainy morning to find it raining in my kitchen. I really love the house, don’t get me wrong, but I do have to confess the “honeymoon phase” was over after the first hour of bleaching the kitchen floor.
I got to thinking about this because in addition to Epiphany, we are also celebrating Baptism of our Lord Sunday this morning. And because of the way we sometimes read scripture sort of jumpily to get it to fit with the liturgical calendar, we miss the really weird juxtaposition of what happens immediately following Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. Let me read the last two verses of chapter three again, sixteen and seventeen, and then I’ll read the first verse of chapter four, so you can see what I mean. “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ [pause] Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Did you catch that? That’s the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, which, spoiler alert, we will read on March fifth, the First Sunday of Lent. Because the lectionary cycle sticks the entire season of Epiphany between these two stories, we often don’t realize they actually happen back to back. The image of the Holy Spirit in my mind is like one of those old cartoons, like Wylie Coyote, or something like that, you know where the Roadrunner is chasing him off into the sunset. I imagine the dove descending from heaven onto Jesus, and then immediately driving him out of the water and off into the Judean wilderness as the scene closes. The lectionary cycle gives us this long space to reflect on the baptism of Jesus, what it meant and how we understand it. Jesus himself had no such luxury. The story went from water to voice from heaven to wilderness, just that fast. Which at first seemed like a pretty raw deal for Jesus. He just had this huge heaven opening, dove descending moment, and then the dove turns out to be kind of a bully who chased him out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What gives, Holy Spirit!
But here’s a couple of thoughts on that. First, we can’t try to psychologize or come to some sort of metaphysical understanding of Jesus’ “baptismal experience.” Matthew, and more importantly, Jesus, really wasn’t interested in that. Jesus’ baptism wasn’t the moment in which Jesus became the Son of God. Remember the genealogy? This thing has been in the works since literally the beginning of time. What happened at Jesus’ baptism wasn’t that he became God’s son, but that he was declared to be God’s son, which, by the way, he already knew. Matthew makes it clear by starting the story with Jesus coming to John the Baptist in the wilderness and basically forcing John to baptize him, that Jesus was the one controlling the cards here. While the crowds might have been amazed at the voice from heaven declaring, “This is My Son the Beloved,” Jesus wasn’t. Jesus knew that already. He knew he was God’s Son, he knew he was beloved; he knew that with him God was well-pleased. Jesus didn’t get baptized in order to undergo some sort of great conversion experience. He got baptized “to fulfill all righteousness,” basically because God wanted him to. Our baptisms are this moment of joining ourselves into God’s family, but Jesus didn’t need to be joined, he already was, he was God’s son.
But something did change for Jesus at his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended on him. I think our image of it, or at least my image of it, is like clouds parting out of a blue sky, and rays of golden light shining, maybe some trumpets, and a shimmery white dove coming down in the light rays. But I think maybe instead of picturing the Holy Spirit as rays of light, or a dove, or wind, we ought to picture the Holy Spirit more like glitter. And you know how with glitter, when it gets on something, you can never get it off again. You know how you go home after doing something with glitter, and you wake up the next morning, and you take a shower, and then you go out, and someone is like, “hey, is that glitter in your hair,” and that happens for a week? The Holy Spirit is kind of like that.
And if we think of the Holy Spirit as glitter, it totally changes how we imagine Jesus’ time in the wilderness. Jesus was in the wilderness, forty days and forty nights, tempted by the devil, no food, it was hard, don’t get me wrong. And when we read this story, I wonder if we don’t think of it as some great test on the part of Jesus, a sign of his amazing ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps, or, sandalstraps, I guess, and get through. Because he’s baptized now, and he’s got this. And then how easy is it for us to take the next logical step along that track and think, well, we too are baptized, and so when we are in the wilderness, all by ourselves, we then, like Jesus, should pull ourselves up by our own metaphorical bootstraps and get it done. God helps those who help themselves, right?
Except, here’s the thing, he wasn’t alone in the wilderness, because he had the Holy Spirit with him, stuck to him like glitter. Shining in his hair, sparkling in the day, catching rays of the moon by night. Maybe Jesus’ time in the wilderness was less some great test of his ability to resist temptation, and more a reminder that wilderness isn’t about an individual struggle, it is about faith lived out in community. God’s people are constantly finding themselves in the wilderness, and they are never alone. God sent Abraham to Canaan to make a great nation, he had Sarah, and some strange visitors, and eventually a kid. The Israelites wandered forty years in the desert, and not only were there a whole nation of them, but God in the form of a pillar of fire led the way. The Babyonian Exile, you’ve got a Babylon full of Israelites, and random prophets popping up every so often to remind them, hey, God hasn’t forgotten about you.
So what does any of this have to do with my house? I tell you what, it felt, still feels sometimes, like a wilderness time. There were days where I sat alone in the totally empty living room and thought, this place will never be clean enough to live in. Or stood in the kitchen, staring up at the water pouring through the ceiling, informing the yeowling cat that he was no help at all. But I’m learning I don’t have to solve these things alone. The horrible mess I moved into? Turns out I have a friend who uses cleaning as stress relief, she spent six hours in the upstairs bathroom. It’s blue; I thought it was gray. I chatted it up with the Sims guy when he came to inspect the furnace, he figured out the heating duct was cut and jimmied it back together with a length of wire and a piece of wood. Val from the Co-op, her son does roofing; he made it so it no longer rains in my kitchen. My friends came to visit over the summer and got my box spring through the window, my dad helped hang things while he was here. Even the cat is useful at times, turns out he likes stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, which turns his whiskers into a spider web removal system. These tasks, which felt so insurmountable when I looked at doing them alone, became easy when I realized others could help.
Dear friends, faith is like that. That’s why we come together every Sunday. It’s not because God needs some certain number of people assembled in a space in order to feel sufficiently worshiped. No, it’s because we need some number of people in a space in order to feel sufficiently connected. We need to be reminded that living a life of faith, that being people of God, is not a solo activity. We have not been baptized just to be dumped out in the cold to figure out on our own. We were baptized into a community. And that Holy Spirit community is sticky, like glitter. You can’t get it out of your hair, no matter how much you try. Which means, you are not alone. You are never alone. Because God, through the alighting of the Spirit at your baptism is stuck to you, sending out little rays of light every time you move. And that sticky, glittery Spirit is bigger even than this place. Since Advent, and all through the rest of the year, we will be praying for places on our map where the sticky, glittery love of the Spirit has spread. So, when you find yourselves in what feels like wilderness, you can come here, or to any of the people here, or you can just look at this map, and maybe you will see that slightest hint of glitter twinkling back at you. Because you are God’s child, Beloved. And you cannot shake that off; it’s like glitter for your soul. Amen.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Conversation Points for Matthew 3:13-17
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• John the Baptist appears in all four Gospels (though the baptism itself not described in John, only John’s response to it). The baptism introduces the adult Jesus for the first time. Matthew brings Jesus to the Jordan, where John and the audience already are, preserving the history of salvation narrative from the Old Testament through John to Jesus. By having Jesus appear in John’s scene, Matthew portrays Jesus as in control.
• In Matthew’s Gospel, there has been no earlier connection between John and Jesus (in contrast with Luke’s Gospel, where they are described as relatives), yet John immediately recognized Jesus as his superior and tried not to baptize him.
• Jesus demanded baptism “to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness literally means following the law. But, as we saw by how Joseph, “because he was a righteous man,” decided not to divorce Mary, so we will see righteousness being redefined by Matthew as doing the revealed will of God.
• There is a lot of imagery describing who Jesus was in the baptism story. The heavens opened, a voice comes from heaven, the Spirit is given. Matthew then placed Jesus as the beginning of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The dove represents, among other possibilities, the dove-like movement of the Spirit over the waters at creation. The voice from heaven spoke words from Scripture, a combination of Ps 2:7 (“I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’”) and Isa 42:1 (“Here is my servant, who I uphold, my chosen, in who my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations”).
• Unlike in Mark, where the announcement is only to Jesus, preserving the Messianic secret, in Matthew, the announcement is to a wider audience.
• For Matthew, Jesus’ baptism is not about what went on inside Jesus’ soul or if Jesus changed at baptism. Matthew is clear that Jesus already was who he was, and already knew who he was. Rather, the baptism of Jesus was about introducing Jesus on the world’s stage. The voice from heaven introduced Jesus as both the Son of God and the Suffering Servant.
• The baptism of Jesus is also an ecclesiological (about the church) message. But the message is not, since Jesus is baptized, so should we be. No, the idea is as Christians are declared God’s children at their baptism, so too was Jesus declared God’s son at his.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• John the Baptist appears in all four Gospels (though the baptism itself not described in John, only John’s response to it). The baptism introduces the adult Jesus for the first time. Matthew brings Jesus to the Jordan, where John and the audience already are, preserving the history of salvation narrative from the Old Testament through John to Jesus. By having Jesus appear in John’s scene, Matthew portrays Jesus as in control.
• In Matthew’s Gospel, there has been no earlier connection between John and Jesus (in contrast with Luke’s Gospel, where they are described as relatives), yet John immediately recognized Jesus as his superior and tried not to baptize him.
• Jesus demanded baptism “to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness literally means following the law. But, as we saw by how Joseph, “because he was a righteous man,” decided not to divorce Mary, so we will see righteousness being redefined by Matthew as doing the revealed will of God.
• There is a lot of imagery describing who Jesus was in the baptism story. The heavens opened, a voice comes from heaven, the Spirit is given. Matthew then placed Jesus as the beginning of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The dove represents, among other possibilities, the dove-like movement of the Spirit over the waters at creation. The voice from heaven spoke words from Scripture, a combination of Ps 2:7 (“I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’”) and Isa 42:1 (“Here is my servant, who I uphold, my chosen, in who my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations”).
• Unlike in Mark, where the announcement is only to Jesus, preserving the Messianic secret, in Matthew, the announcement is to a wider audience.
• For Matthew, Jesus’ baptism is not about what went on inside Jesus’ soul or if Jesus changed at baptism. Matthew is clear that Jesus already was who he was, and already knew who he was. Rather, the baptism of Jesus was about introducing Jesus on the world’s stage. The voice from heaven introduced Jesus as both the Son of God and the Suffering Servant.
• The baptism of Jesus is also an ecclesiological (about the church) message. But the message is not, since Jesus is baptized, so should we be. No, the idea is as Christians are declared God’s children at their baptism, so too was Jesus declared God’s son at his.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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