Reflections on Palm/Passion Sunday and Why We Read the Passion Story: Mark 14:1-15:47

Well, here we are friends. It’s Palm Sunday. The first day of this most holy week of our church year. The first day of the week in which we celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord. We met this morning in the social hall. We heard a reading from Mark’s Gospel about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, how the crowds gathered and waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna to the Son of David as Jesus paraded into Jerusalem. And then we too waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna, and paraded into our sanctuary with trumpets and fanfare and singing. Then we heard the beautiful Christ hymn from Philippians, all about how Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and humbled himself to the point of death, for which God highly exalted him. Now we are preparing to read the passion story, now we are preparing to see what emptying himself looks like.

It is a strange flow of events, this Palm/Passion Sunday, and you might be asking yourself why? Why do we not stay at Palm Sunday, with all its palm waving and shouting and triumph? Why read the passion now, why not save it until Good Friday? Today feels a bit like theological whiplash, as we who play the role of the crowd in this unfolding Gospel drama suddenly go from adoring fans to hostile mob, all in about twenty minutes. Why not pick a theme and ride it out?

But the important thing to remember about Palm Sunday is the crowd who shouted Hosanna had no idea what they were doing. The crowd that shouted Hosanna was not some superior class of people who hid themselves away for the rest of the week when the bad, scary, mean people came in and shouted crucify him. It’s all the same people.

We read the passion on Palm Sunday to remind ourselves that faith isn’t orderly. That we cannot compartmentalize humanity into saints and sinners, we cannot distance ourselves from the shouts of praise or the jeers of rage. We are the throngs who praised and waved palm fronds, the crowd who called for crucifixion. We are the women at the grave, Joseph who served, the Centurion who marveled. These people, this story, is us people, is our story.

Most importantly, we read the passion on Palm Sunday to remind us that this story had to happen in this way. That Jesus came for a story that was to unfold just like this. That Jesus came to save people who shouted and people who jeered, because they, because we, are all the same people. We are the people so loved by Christ that Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, exalted by God so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess. So as we read the passion story, as we enter into this story, into our story, I invite you read along, play along, shout and listen and engage, but watch Jesus. Watch Jesus who fed and blessed and loved and forgave, who carried a cross and prayed and died. Let us enter into this story by singing our Gospel acclamation.

This is the passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ, according to John. Glory to you, O Lord.

Mark 14:1-15:47

So now we wait. With Joseph and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus we wait outside the tomb with a stone rolled in front. Maybe still as confused as before as to how we got from there to here, how we got from Hosanna to the grave. But even in our confusion, we wait anyway. We wait because promises remain even when all hope is lost. We wait in the chance that God’s word is stronger than death, stronger even than hope. We wait, because this is our story.

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber ended her invitation into Holy Week with these words: “Two thousand years ago in the Middle East, there had to have been crowds who shouted praise and friends who betrayed and followers who denied and women who wept and soldiers who mocked and thieves who believed. It would have happened like this even if the Jesus event were happening now instead of then. Even if we knew everything in advance – were we the ones on the street we too would shout Hosanna and a few days later shout crucify him. And that’s the good news when it comes down to it. Because these people of the Holy Week story are we people. And we people are the likes of which God came to save. God did not become human and dwell among us as Jesus to save only an improved, doesn’t make the wrong choices kind of people. There is no improved version of humanity that could have done any differently. So go ahead. Don’t wait until you think your motivations are correct. Just wave branches. Shout praise for the wrong reason. Eat a meal. Shout Crucify him. Walk away when the cock crows.” And I will add, walk away but then come, come to the font, come to the table, come and experience that Christ is here, come and experience that this story is true, come and receive in outstretched hands the Christ who came for you. Come meet the Christ who meets us in bread and wine, in water and word, come know that you are known and loved by God. This week is a celebration of a God whose love knows no bounds, a God who came in human likeness and humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, so that we might be exalted, so that we might be saved, so that we might know love. Bolz-Weber finished her reflection, “Because we, as we are and not as some improved version of ourselves…we are who God came to save. And nothing can stop what’s going to happen.” We can't stop God from loving us. Amen.


Quote by Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber from her sermon "Palm Sunday Sermon about Morbid Reflections, Home Perms, and Fickle Crowds," http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/03/palm-sunday-sermon-about-morbid-reflection-home-perms-and-fickle-crowds/

We Wish to See Jesus: A Sermon on John 12:20-33

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks told Philip as they gathered for the festival in Jerusalem. And Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus that some Greeks, some outsiders, some beyond the scope of Jesus teachings, wished to see him, wished to meet him, wished to know of who he was, of what he meant, of all that he could do. The movement had spread outside of the Temple, outside of the synagogues, outside of the contained social circles of the Jews. This was great news for the movement, great news for the goal of liberation for the Jews from the Romans, great news for those who followed Jesus. It was with excitement and hope that Philip and Andrew rushed to Jesus to bring news of these Greeks who wished to see him. And Jesus responded, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The hour has come. The arrival of this “hour” has been an on-going theme in John’s Gospel. For so long Jesus had been saying that the hour was coming. That soon, but not yet, the Son of Man would be glorified. He said it to a Samaritan woman getting water from a well, to a man born lame who suddenly could walk, as he taught to a crowd in the treasury. Nothing could happen, nothing would happen, because Jesus’ hour had not yet come.

But now, it’s time, it’s finally time. We’ve been waiting six weeks now, since we stood with Peter, James, and John on the mountain and saw Jesus transfigured, we’ve been waiting for this moment, and now it’s come. It’s time for the Son of Man to be glorified. It’s time to see what glory looks like.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” Jesus said, and then he went on, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

And a few sentences later: “Father, glorify your name” Jesus said, and a voice from heaven responded, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Jesus went on, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

The hour has come and so Jesus starts talking about death, Jesus starts talking about judgment, Jesus starts talking about driving out the rulers of this world, Jesus starts talking about the cross. This maybe isn’t the turn of events the Greeks or Philip and Andrew were expecting. But we who have been watching this unfold from a distance throughout this Lenten season are maybe not surprised by it, because remember several weeks ago when Jesus first spoke about his death and Peter tried to rebuke him, Jesus’ dreams, Jesus’ plans, Jesus vision for the world, is always about more than we can imagine.

We know this to be true about Jesus, but it’s hard to make sense of it when it comes to the cross. Because the cross is so violent, so brutal, so gory. How can such an instrument of pain possibly be the place of God’s glory?

On Good Friday we will hear the passion story according to John. And when you’re hearing the story, I invite you to pay attention to the movement of the story. The passion according to John unfolds like a drama, with characters coming in and out and scenes shifting from one to another. But throughout all this movement and chaos, Jesus stays unwaveringly in the center. From the moment Jesus leads his disciples across the Kidron Valley and into the garden until he is laid in the tomb, Jesus is the central figure, constant, solid, in control, never turning from the goal. The passion unfolds according to the plan, events happen, words are spoken, “according to fulfill what was written,” or “what Jesus had said.” Every movement, every action part of a carefully directed, elegantly choreographed event, the script of which Jesus had been writing since the beginning of time. There is no hesitation in John’s gospel, no moment of doubt. Pilate comes and goes, Peter comes and goes, the crowds gather and disperse, all the while Jesus marches on to the cross, to glory. The crucifixion scene in John’s Gospel isn’t gory and it isn’t dark. It is powerful. It sheer, unadulterated power that blinds the eyes with a love that cannot be understood. The cross isn’t weakness; it isn’t violence. It isn’t about Jesus sacrificing himself, or Jesus taking pain. It is about Jesus marching straight into sacrifice, into pain, and destroying it, so that the world’s dark control crumbled under the overwhelming grace and love and mercy of Jesus.

The closest analogy I can make to this scene, and it’s not a perfect analogy, but it gets close, is the image of the marchers of the Civil Rights movement standing on the far edge of the Edmond Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama preparing to march across into the waiting arms, and clubs, of the Alabama State Troopers. They marched across the bridge because they knew that the only way to defeat the evils of racism and oppression was to march right into the face of it. Because only by uncovering it, only by bringing it into the light, only by showing the world in no uncertain terms the violence of being a black person in 1960s America could that evil be defeated. They walked into the darkness because darkness can only be defeated by displacing it with light, hatred can only be done in by injecting into its heart a love so powerful that hatred has no room, death can only be undone by replacing it with life.

That is the glory of the cross. That Jesus with his own incarnate body replaced darkness with light, hatred with love, death with life. Like a stone dropped in a pail displaces water out over the sides, Jesus on the cross displaced glory, love, light into the world so that hatred, darkness, death would have no place to go. On the cross Jesus stepped into the very belly of the beast and said even here you shall not have hold, even here you shall not triumph, even here love wins.

And because love won, hope won, life won on the cross, then we know that hope wins, that love wins, that life wins everywhere. On the cross Jesus went not to his own death, but to all of the places where we face death, and not just physical death, but death of our hopes, death of our dreams, death caused by prejudice and judgment and inequality and fear. The cross is Jesus going to the places we fear most and displacing that fear. The cross is Jesus meeting us in the places that scare us the most and saying this has no power over you. The power of the cross is what gives us power to stand up in the face of injustice and hatred and death because we know that because Jesus went to the cross there is nowhere that love cannot triumph.

After we read the passion story on Good Friday we will sing “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” And I hope you, I hope I, I hope we will tremble. Tremble not from pain, not from shame, but tremble from the sheer overwhelming power of love. Tremble because we know that we are loved. Tremble in the presence of a love so powerful that it blazes out from the most unlikely of places, a cross, a bridge, our own broken hearts, and overwhelms us with its glory.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks said. And Jesus responded, “look to the cross.” Because on the cross we see glory, on the cross we see power, on the cross we see a God who loves us so much that the love shines through the brokenness of the cross mending our broken parts and knitting us together into the glorious children of God. Look to the cross because there is God. Amen.

Snakes: A Sermon on Numbers 21:4-9 amd John 3:14-21

There are a lot of snakes in the readings today. A lot of snakes. I, truth be told, am not so much a fan of snakes. I don’t like the way they move, I think it’s creepy. I do also confess a bit of a bias here for animals with between two and four legs, so sorry snakes, spiders, and those weird silvery, feathery things with lots of legs that fall from the ceiling sometimes, ug. I get that snakes, spiders, those gross millipeedy things, are all God’s beautiful creatures, all part of the creation which God called good. But they can be God’s good creation outside, so far as I’m concerned.

Snakes also play a pretty important symbolic role in scripture. And as we dive into our readings for this morning, it’s important to keep those parts of the story in mind. Jesus did not compare himself to the serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness just to give us all the heeby-geebies, there’s more going on here.

Snakes represent deception, remember it was a serpent who tricked Adam and Eve in the garden. They represent power, Aaron threw down his rod in front of Pharaoh and it became a snake. They represent the unknown. Proverbs thirty, eighteen and nineteen, “[Things] I do not understand…the [movement] of a snake on a rock.” When snakes show up in scriptures, they evoke for us all this sense of fear, of mystery, of things we cannot understand, cannot make sense of, cannot control.

This reading from Numbers is one of the so-called “murmuring stories.” It’s one of the many times in the Exodus when the Israelites are wandering along, complaining about how much better life was when they were all in slavery in Egypt. And then suddenly, in the midst of the camp, are all these poisonous snakes. There are all sorts of interesting, and difficult, questions about why God would send poisonous snakes amongst God’s people, but I don’t think the origin of the snakes is really the point here. I don’t think any of us need any help identifying the snakes in our lives. Remember what snakes stand for in the Bible. They stand for fear, for lack of control, for lack of power, for all the things we cannot know, all the things cannot understand. We don’t need the writer of Numbers to spell out what these metaphorical snakes are, we all know, we understand, we are familiar with the pain they cause, the uneasy way they creep through our souls, filling us with fear, with dread, with uncertainty. We know the way their powerful toxins take control of us.

So when the snakes come calling, God does a funny thing. God had Moses build a giant snake, set it on a pole, and raise it up over the Israelites. So that any Israelite who was bitten by a snake could look up at the snake on a pole, and live. Because when I am surrounded by snakes, the most comforting thing I can think of is to be instructed to look at a giant “thing I am the most terrified of.” Awesome. Helpful.

But it was helpful. More than helpful, it was healing, it was wholeness, it was life-giving. When the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole they found comfort, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole they found relief, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole, even though they were still in the midst of snakes, even though the camp was still crawling in, infested with, snakes, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole, they lived.

The Israelites lived, though the snakes remained, because the snake on the pole was never the point in the first place. The point was God. It was reminding the Israelites that no matter how bad things got, how afraid they were, how much they lacked, how long they journeyed, the snake on a pole reminded them that they were God’s people. That God was with them, that God was for them. And that from the most unlikely, uncertain, death-filled places, God would bring life. The snake on a pole promised the Israelites that things that look like death are not death with God, they are God creating life again, in a new way, because life is how God works, life is who God is. So powerful, so innovative, so redemptive is our God that God brings life through a snake from amidst a sea of snakes. It makes as little sense as the movement of a snake, but somehow, like the movement of a snake, it is true. We can know it, we can trust it in our gut even when we cannot understand it, when we cannot feel it. That’s what God bringing healing through a snake on a pole promises.

So then in our Gospel reading for today, Jesus was talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and he had come to Jesus for answers to questions he could not understand. But he came by night, under the cover of darkness, because he was afraid to be seen with Jesus. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, because he was afraid of his own snakes, afraid of the snakes of judgment, the snakes of persecution, the snakes that would surely follow a Pharisee involving himself with Jesus.

And in the midst of Nicodemus’s fear, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the story of the bronze serpent in the wilderness. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Then Jesus takes it a step further, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Belief in the Bible is about trust. Moses didn’t challenge the Israelites to know anything about God, Moses wanted them to trust and to follow, and really to just keep moving forward even in the wilderness. So belief then is not about understanding with our minds, or feeling with our hearts, belief is about knowing in our guts, about knowing even when we cannot understand. What Moses did for the Israelites when he set the snake on the pole was to give them something to follow, something to remind them to trust, something to point them to the One who is trustworthy, instead of trying to trust themselves. And just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too will Jesus go to the cross. So that in the midst of death, in the midst of fear, in the midst of lack of control and things we cannot understand, we will see Jesus, facing down death, fear, lack of control, leading from a place of death to life. The cross is as inexplicable as snakes in the wilderness, and it is more powerful, more life-giving than we can understand with our minds, or feel with our hearts. Instead we trust, we feel in our guts that God is here, that God meets us here, even here, and that God brings life, God always brings life, for that is who God is. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

And like the Israelites looked to the bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness, that is why we come here. We come here because we know, in our guts, that we find Jesus here. That Jesus meets us here, in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of communion. We come here because we know that no matter what we understand or what we feel, Jesus is here. Jesus meets us here. Like the serpent on the pole turned the Israelites attention to God, so that they could know that God was with them in the wilderness, so too these sacraments of bread and wine, water and word turn our attention to God so that in the midst of whatever wilderness we face, whatever snakes cross our paths, we can look to the font, look to the table and know, beyond all knowing, that God is here, that God is with us, and that God always brings life. So come, and look, and live. Amen.

Cleared Away: A Sermon on John 2:13-22

There’s an internet meme that always makes its way around the Facebook circuit anytime this reading comes up in the lectionary. The meme is based on a popular movement among Christian circles in the nineties about asking the question “What Would Jesus Do?” Maybe you remember, it was big for a while to wear those elastic band bracelets with W.W.J.D. emblazoned on them. The idea was that we were to approach any question, any issue, we might encounter with the question “What would Jesus do” in this situation? How would Jesus respond to this conflict with a family member, or this peer pressure temptation, or this moral dilemma, and by thinking about how Jesus would respond, and responding accordingly, we could be guaranteed to act correctly.

Well, this internet meme making the rounds right now is an illustration of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus cleansing the temple. It features a very angry-looking Jesus-figure in the center, dressed in red and brandishing a whip, while all around him, are strewn upturned tables and frightened, tousled people. Framing the image in bold letters, are the words, “If anyone ever asks you, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Remind him that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibility.”

Maybe the better question of this Gospel reading today is not, “What Would Jesus Do? But “What is Jesus Doing?” What is Jesus doing? This is the Temple after all, the most sacred place in the Jewish faith. The center of the known world, the place where God dwelled. And here’s a little more background for you, these people Jesus is driving out, the people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers, they’re not just there all willy-nilly. This isn’t the same as setting up a pet store in the narthex. Part of the Temple culture, the accepted religious practice at the time, was animal sacrifice. People came to the Temple specifically to offer an animal to the house of God. A trip to the Temple was for people who lived in the outlying regions, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, they would travel miles, days, weeks, in order to worship the True God in the Temple. And so, to aid in their worship, to make the journey easier for them, a robust trade of sacrificial animals developed within the temple complex, in order to assist pilgrims in being able to enter fully into worship. Instead of having to travel long distances with a cow, a pilgrim could simply purchase a cow, or a sheep, or a dove, upon arrival. Much in the same way that if you were flying somewhere, you might pick up a bag of chips once you reached your destination rather than trying to keep them from being crushed in your carry-on luggage. And with all this commerce going on, money-changers were there to help people from foreign countries to trade in the local currency. This booming Temple industry had developed to help people worship God. So, one might ask, what was Jesus’ problem with this?

The disciples made sense of what happened here with one word: Zeal. The Gospel reads, “Then the disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Zeal. Passion. Ardor. Fervor. Devotion. Even so far as intensity or fanaticism, zeal is the single-minded drive toward a goal so focused that nothing can stand in its way. So focused is Jesus’ devotion to the Temple, to God, that whatever stands in the way, good or bad, must be forced away to allow for God’s grace to enter through.

At Trinity this Lent we’ve been talking about Old Testament stories, and what these stories have to teach us about the nature of God and the nature of humanity. As we’re talking this morning about zeal, our Old Testament reading from Exodus about God giving the Ten Commandments, and what’s happened with those commandments over time, really gets to the heart of why Jesus cleansed the Temple.

Just a bit of a refresher on how we got to Exodus chapter twenty. The Israelites were in slavery under the Pharaoh in Egypt, then God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery. But Pharaoh wasn’t keen on letting his entire workforce go free, so God had Moses bring plagues down, and God split the Red Sea, so the Israelites could walk on dry land, and then brought the sea back down upon the Egyptian army, and finally the Israelites were a free people, in the middle of the Sinai wilderness. The other problem, of course, is that the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for so long that they really didn’t understood what it meant any more to be a community, to be the people of God. So part of what God was doing in that forty years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness was making them into one people again. God was uniting them as God’s people, teaching them what it meant to live together. The Ten Commandments were part of this uniting. God gave the Ten Commandments to the people of God so that they would know how to live well together with God and with each other. I had a professor in seminary who described the Ten Commandments as a playpen. We put children in playpens when they are learning to crawl so that they will be in a safe space. The Ten Commandments were about building community, about creating a place where the people of God could be united with each other, connected to one another.

But, because the Israelites were people, over time they turned the Ten Commandments from a playpen to a fence. They put more and more structures and rules in place in order to decide who got to be in the playpen. And the Ten Commandments changed from guidelines to create community to rules to divide people from community. Humanity broke the good covenant which God made with God’s people not by breaking the Ten Commandments, but by enforcing it so strictly so as to take the life out of it, leaving us not with a gift for living, but a weapon for dividing.

If only this was a thing that happened back then, but not anymore. But the truth is, we still do this. We still put up laws, rules, restrictions, on ourselves and on others, about what makes us worthy of God’s love, what makes us worthy to be in the community of the people of God. These restrictions may come from the best intentions, but they divide us. And I think, during this season of Lent and as people of the ELCA, we are even harder on ourselves. We’re quick to welcome others to the fold, quick to extend grace to our neighbors, but do we extend that same grace to ourselves, do we allow ourselves to believe that this good news that we are preaching is for us?

Here’s the good news for us in Jesus cleansing the temple this morning, Jesus cleanses the temple of all that holds us captive as well. All the ways that we fell short, the prayers we did not say, the Lenten disciples we did not keep, the sin and pain and brokenness that keeps us separate from God, with a whip and a shout, Jesus drives all of those things away as well. Because nothing will keep Jesus from us. Not the powers of evil, the death made clear on the cross, not our own failures in faith, or even our unfocused piety that draws our attention to us rather than God. Whatever it is that stands in our way, Jesus drives it away, because such is Jesus love for us, that Jesus will not let anything get in the way of relationship with us.

This morning, like every Sunday morning, we come to the Table to experience this grace. At this table there are no barriers, there are no boundaries, there is no code you have to meet or yardstick you have to measure up to, because Jesus has cleared them away. Jesus has set a feast for us, and all are welcome, because nothing, nothing, will keep Jesus from us. Amen.

Denial and Abundance: A Sermon on Mark 8:31-38

I had kind of a funny, contradictory experience this week as I was pondering the sermon for this morning. On Wednesday, I was invited to speak at the Lenten Lunch series at Second Missionary Baptist church. The topic for the series this year is “Living the Abundant Life through Christ.” So I spent much of the beginning of the week pondering what it means to live abundantly, and what kind of life does Christ want for us. However, alongside of that, I was also immersed in my normal sermon prep for this morning, which involved spending the week reflecting on this Gospel text from Mark, where Jesus rebukes Peter and tells him that those who want to become followers of Jesus must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow. I don’t know about you, but Jesus injunction about denial and cross-bearing didn’t seem to have much to do with abundance.

Lent itself, truthfully, does not conjure up for me images of abundance. When I think of Lent, I think more about denial. Oftentimes in Lent we give up something, like chocolate or soda pop or playing Candy Crush on Facebook. The idea being that God wants us to practice self-denial, that giving up something helps us focus more fully on God, achieve a greater level of spiritual disciple. And in theory there’s wisdom in this. The early church often practiced asceticism as a means of drawing one’s attention closer to God. But in practice, or at least in practice in my life, this discipline of giving something up for Lent often becomes less about God and more about a second attempt at whatever New Year’s resolution I had that bottomed out by the third of January. There is temptation for me to turn the season of Lent into a six week long self-improvement endeavor couched in the language of spirituality. Like I need to be healthier, so I’m giving up chocolate for Jesus, despite the fact that the Bible says nothing at all about chocolate, as it didn’t exist in First Century Palestine. Lent then runs the risk of either becoming a chance to feel great about myself, “look how good I am at not eating chocolate, I’m super great, Jesus must really be proud of me,” or another opportunity to put myself down, “oh man, I gave in to the temptation to check Facebook last night, God must really be mad about me, I am such a failure.” Either way, Lent becomes more about me, about what I’m doing, about who I am, about how I’m being this great person, or not, then it is about Christ, who is the heart of this season of Lent. And it certainly doesn’t feel like abundance.

So I am so grateful to Reverend Wyne for having invited me to speak at their series, and possibly you should be grateful to Reverent Wyne as well, :) because looking at this text through the framework of abundance forced me to look at this text in a different way, to wonder what denying oneself might have to say about the kind of life Christ wants for us.

This reading from Mark comes from chapter eight, which is really a turning point in the Gospel. Up until this point, Jesus disciples had been traveling with Jesus through Galilee, learning all that Jesus had to teach them. They’d heard him teach, seen him heal, cast out demons, forgive sins. So finally, right before this reading, Jesus basically asked the disciples, alright, you’ve seen all this, now, who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter responded, “You are the Messiah.” Which is, of course, the right answer. But then we hear in this passage that Jesus, as he was wont to do, kept talking. And he started talking all about how he was going to undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed, and then rise again. And Peter is like, wait a minute now! Jesus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but we’ve got a bit of a movement going on here, and this talk about dying is really not going to raise moral. Let’s stick with the more helpful teachings, you know, maybe give them some food, or heal them, something like that. Crowds love that.

Jesus response to Peter is sudden and unmistakable, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things. See, Peter knew Jesus was the Messiah. Peter knew that the ministry Jesus was doing was incredibly important and was changing the lives of thousands of people. Which may have been his problem. He got the importance of the work Jesus was doing almost too much. See, Peter was thinking about the movement, he was thinking about the good work Jesus was doing in the world in that moment. He was also, probably, thinking about himself. Thinking about how he, Peter, looked, being associated with this great healer and teacher. I think Peter got caught up in all that Jesus was doing and it caused him to think too small. Even the most noble of Peter’s ambitions for Jesus to do great work in the world were on too small a scale for what Jesus had in mind. Jesus knew that this great work that he was doing on earth, even things as huge as feeding five-thousand people, wouldn’t hold a candle to the vision God had for humanity. Peter was worried about the crowds gathered that day, Jesus was working for every person that ever lived, every person that would ever live. Peter wanted Jesus to stay in the salvation business long enough to get a movement off the ground to overthrow the Roman Empire, Jesus was laying plans to throw the very forces of evil out of power. Peter’s rebuke of Jesus was well-intentioned, but it displayed a faith that didn’t have any concept of just how vast the love of Christ for humanity and the vision that love gave Christ for the world. Jesus wanted more for Peter than Peter even knew to want for himself.

After rebuking Peter, Jesus called the crowd in with his disciples and said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” What we see in this passage is that abundant life is all about denial. Jesus is calling Peter and the crowd to deny themselves, because the vision Jesus has for them is bigger than themselves. This denial isn’t about suffering, it isn’t about self-improvement, it isn’t about the self at all. Denial is about setting all of the things that keep your hands full aside so that your life is open to receive the abundance that Christ has for you.

In this story from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus invited Peter, the disciples, the crowd, and us, to deny all the things that are smaller than God’s dreams for us, so that we are free to embrace the abundance God offers. Jesus invited Peter, the disciples, us, to deny all of the things that keep us from God, because God’s vision is so much bigger than we can imagine.

So what does this denial look like? It means that Jesus doesn’t so much care if we give up dessert, but Jesus does want us to be healthy, to get full life out of the good bodies that God gave us. And Jesus does care that we know that our value is determined not by how we look, but by how God sees us. It means that Jesus doesn’t worry about our Candy Crush addiction, but Jesus does care that we have relationships with people that support us, nurture us, and bring us life and joy. Denying ourselves is about Jesus coming in and interrupting all the things that make us that think less of ourselves than who we are, all that gets in the way of us being fully God’s child, all that keeps us from seeing ourselves the way God sees us, as precious, as valued, as Beloved children of God. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, so that we can be more fully ourselves, more fully immersed in God’s abundant love.

But it’s not enough to just talk about what we need to deny, because Jesus did more than simply ask the disciples to deny themselves, Jesus did more than simply invite the disciples into this new life, Jesus went to the cross to rebuke all that held them captive and demand from the powers of the world that life. Jesus rebuked Peter, and then Jesus went to the cross and rebuked death itself, so that death could not have power over us. And because of what Jesus did at the cross, we know that nothing else can ever have power over us. In the face of death itself, things like Facebook games or food, or even big things like broken relationships or anger or heartache or grief, these things have no power over us, because at the cross Jesus rebuked all the powers of the world so that those powers would have no power over us.

Jesus Christ rebuked Peter because Peter’s understanding of Christ’s mission was keeping Peter captive. Jesus rebuked Peter because Jesus had more for Peter than Peter could imagine for himself. Jesus rebuked Peter so that Peter’s limits couldn’t get in the way of God’s limitless love for Peter. That’s how much Jesus loved Peter, Jesus loves us, that Jesus was not going to waste time when Peter, when we, missed out on the abundance Christ has for us. So no matter what it is that gets in the way of that life, be it death or power or just our own undersized expectations, Jesus will not stop until that power is rebuked. Jesus simply had too much love for Peter, too much vision for Peter, and too much love for us, to let anything get in the way of that love, that vision, that power. Amen.

God Acts: A Sermon on Mark 1:9-15

Do you have any idea how many times the number forty appears in the Bible? A lot, as it turns out. The number forty plays an important role in our readings today. We always start our forty day Lenten journey with the story of Jesus forty days in the wilderness from one of the three Gospels. And this year’s lectionary cycle pairs Jesus forty days in the wilderness with the covenant God made with Noah, a covenant made after Noah was in the waters of the flood for forty days. Off the top of my head I could think of a couple other examples of the number forty. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness forty years after they escaped Egypt. Moses was on the mountain forty days to receive the Ten Commandments. I have this program on my computer where I can run word searches through the Bible, so I decided to run one on the number forty. Oh my gosh, I was amazed at how often it came up! Isaac was forty when he got married, his son Esau was forty when he got married. While the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, they sent spies to check out the Promised Land, the spy was forty years old and he was in the Promised Land forty days. In the time of the Judges there were forty years of peace, followed by forty years of war with the Philistines. King David reigned for forty years, King Solomon reigned for forty years, I could quite literally go on like this all morning. What struck me about all of these instances of forty, and what I think is more important than the exact amount of time itself, is that the use of the number forty is meant to clue us into something. In each of these examples, forty signifies the amount of time it took the people to be ready for something, the time in which God needed to act. Think about it. Noah was on the flood forty days because a new covenant was being formed. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness not because they were bad at asking for directions, but because God was making out of them a new people. In forty days, Moses was gathering the laws that would create a new community. Each of these periods of forty were not just dead time where people were hanging around waiting, they were periods of rich, creative work on the part of God in setting up a new reality for God’s people, a reality so different that it would take a long break from the old so that people would be ready to receive the new.

So in our Gospel reading for today, “Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Something I noticed about this wilderness period for Jesus is that the wilderness falls right on the heels of Jesus baptism in the Jordan. Immediately after the Spirit of God descended on Jesus and declared him God’s Son, that very same Spirit drove him into the wilderness. Jesus wasn’t called into the wilderness, he wasn’t invited into the wilderness, the Spirit didn’t walk along beside him gently as Jesus braved the wilderness. No the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. Which I think means we can assume something; Jesus didn’t really want to go. The wilderness was not high on Jesus priority list of places to begin his ministry. Jesus, like the rest of us, wasn’t really interested in spending any time in the uncertainty of the wilderness, Jesus would have been just as happy to have headed back to Galilee following the announcement of him as God’s Beloved Son. But the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, because God was about to do a new thing with Jesus and that new thing was going to take some time.

Another thing I thought was important was that in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted, actually tested is a better word, by Satan. Not, by the Holy Spirit. I’d never caught that difference before. The Holy Spirit didn’t drive Jesus out to be tested; the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. Now, yes, in the wilderness, Jesus met Satan, Jesus was tested, but testing Jesus, putting Jesus through suffering, was not the role of the Holy Spirit. Suffering, testing, happened in the wilderness, but it was not the point of the wilderness. I think this is important because I think so often when we find ourselves or others in wilderness times, it is tempting to look for answers in attributing that testing to God. Like God wants us to suffer so we can undergo some sort of great learning. And I think this story tells us that is not the case. Wilderness times, times of uncertainty, times when we do not know the way forward, those can be God times, times when God is doing a new thing in our lives and until that new thing has come into creation we cannot see the way. But suffering, testing, pain, while that can be found in those wilderness times, it is not God’s purpose for us, it is not God’s hope for us. We’ll get into this a lot more next week when Peter and Jesus talk about carrying the cross, but for now I want to make the distinction between wilderness as a time of creativity and as a time of suffering. The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, but the Holy Spirit did not test Jesus, Satan did that. Testing, tempting, was not the work of God, though it happened in a place God had set up for Jesus to be.

I also think it’s important to note that Jesus was not alone in the wilderness, “he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” When I first read “he was with the wild beasts,” this thought came to mind of one of those old cartoons, Jesus sitting alone at a campfire, surrounded by an encircling darkness of glowing red eyes. But, here’s your obscure Greek fact for the day, the word “with” is an unspecific terms. So we don’t really know what it means that he was “with” the wild beasts, but it seems actually more likely that being “with the wild beasts” means that Jesus and the wild beasts were together around the campfire, allies against the encircling wilderness. A better image may be Jesus, a lion, a wildebeest, and whatever other animals one might find in the Jordanian outback all seated together around a crackling campfire, protecting each other from the uncertainty of the wilderness. Envisioning the scene this way, we might ask ourselves, who are the unexpected companions we have found in wilderness journeys. Who are the unlikely bedfellows who have shared the path with us? And who might God have placed in our wilderness now to journey with us?

But Jesus was not just with the wild beasts, the text also tells us the angels waited on him. Now, of course, you might be thinking, he’s the Son of God, of course the angels waited on him. But here’s something I’d never thought of before, there’s another time in the Bible where there is wilderness and man and angels, and the angels are not waiting. In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve ate of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were driven out of the garden, same word there, Jesus was driven into the wilderness, and an angel was set to guard the entrance. So in Jesus time in the wilderness we see the beginning of the end of the angel as a guard. This new thing that God is doing with Jesus, this new thing that will end at the cross with the defeat of death and restored relationship between God and God’s creation, we already see the start of it right here in the wilderness, where the angel goes from guardian to guide, from adversary to companion on the journey. Already a new thing is happening in the wilderness, and it is happening despite all the temptation that Satan might be throwing at Jesus. Jesus time in the wilderness is a creative time, it is setting the stage for this new thing that God is going to be about in the world, and all the tempting of Satan cannot get in the way of the change that is about to come out of the wilderness.

This story of Jesus time in the wilderness is a great story for us, not just at the start of Lent, but at this time in the life of our church and in the life of our world. Because wilderness time is a time we can relate to. Advances in technology, changes in culture, moves in our personal lives, retirements, family changes, illnesses and joys, things are happening at a rapid rate, and even the great things can seem unsettling. It can be hard to see the way forward, hard to figure out who we will be at the end of all this shifting. But here’s what we know from Jesus time in the wilderness, from all of the forty day, week, year periods in scripture. We know God acts in times of uncertainty. We know that just because we cannot see the way through, does not mean that God cannot see the way through. We know that God’s vision is broad enough to encompass the whole of the wilderness, and that God meets us, leads us, guides us through these times, even when the path is unclear. We know that sometimes Satan shows up in the wilderness, but we know that evil, pain, suffering, while it may occur on our paths, is not a part of God’s plan. And we know that when we encounter suffering, we do not encounter it alone. We have companions on the journey. Some companions are holy angels, guides and leaders who walk with us, support us, and protect us. Other companions look at first like wild beasts, we may worry about their presence or wonder about their plans. But God uses strange tools to accomplish God’s mission, and the most unlikely relationship may be our greatest blessing.

So as we enter into this season of Lent, let us also enter into this season of wilderness. This season of creative becoming, trusting that God has a plan for our path and a will for our lives. And that in the uncertainty God is doing a new thing, and it will be different, greater and newer, than the thing we had before. Amen.

Speak On the Ashes: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday from Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

I read a story recently about Sojourner Truth that reminded me of Ash Wednesday. One of our local heroes, the former slave turned abolitionist preacher lived in Battle Creek, but she traveled all over the country giving speeches and teaching people about the sins of slavery and racial prejudice. The story I read was about a time she was scheduled to preach in Angola, Indiana when she received the news that someone was threatening to burn down the town house she was to speak in if she continued with the meeting. Undeterred, Truth responded, “then I will speak on the ashes.” I cannot imagine the courage, the confidence in her convictions that Truth would have needed, as a black woman and a former slave in the tinderbox of the years before the Civil War, to make such a bold statement. “Then I will speak on the ashes.”

I don’t think it is a far step to say that we too live in a tinderbox world, live in a world aflame. More connected than ever before, we seem as divided as ever. Protests this summer in Ferguson and New York. The recent shooting deaths of three young Muslim-Americans in North Carolina. Economic inequality, so clearly displayed in the reports yet again coming from just down the street from us in Triangle Trailer Park. The growing threat of extremism. And a government so divided that it seems only able to agree that things are not working. The flames of hatred, of poverty, of prejudice, of inequality, leave behind a world of ashes.

And the truth of life on this ashy sphere is that no matter how far away the evil, the violence, might be, the world is an insular place, and we are complicit in this brokenness. After killing his brother, Cain asked God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And God responded with a resounding yes. On this ashy sphere, we are bound up in each other, dependent on each other, connected to each other, in blessing and in brokenness. And so, on Ash Wednesday, we gather. To confess our brokenness. To confess the ways in which our sin, our brokenness, contribute to the enslavement of our fellow humanity. We make corporate confession this day for sins close and far, not just what we did, but what we allowed to happen in our name, what we benefited from in ways we did not know. We confess the ashy remains of broken lives, of a broken world.

We confess and then, in an ashy cross drawn upon our forehead we find that God was here all along, we find a God who is, as the prophet Joel proclaimed, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” In this ashy cross on our forehead we are reminded that God speaks on the ashes. That from the burnt out remains of sin, God speaks life where there was death, hope where there was suffering, light where there was darkness. In this ashy cross upon our foreheads, we hear the resounding voice of a God who says “You are my Beloved,” and there is no burn of sin or death or darkness that can ever change the power of that voice.

God speaks on the ashes, because that is what God has always done. Our God is a God of new life, a God who is always speaking into the ashes and bringing something new. From the dust of creation, God formed humanity, breathing life where there had been only mud. When the Israelites stood between the Red Sea and the fires of Pharaoh’s army, God spoke through Moses, parting the sea and leading God’s people from slavery to freedom. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God spoke over the dry bones and life, and breath, came over those bones again. Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale, then God spoke and Jonah was spewed onto high ground, free to bring good news of God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh. King Nebechanezzer threw the servants of God into a firey furnace, but God was with them in the furnace, and not a hair on their head was scorched. God speaks on the ashes and brings new life, because speaking on the ashes and bringing new life is what God does, it is who God is. It is God’s story, a story that finds its completion in a cross.

Ash Wednesday leads us to the cross. It leads us to the most powerful manifestation of God’s overwhelming love for humanity. At the cross we see a world so divided, so embattled, so fearful and full of hate that it led God’s own Son to death. But more than that, at the cross we see a God so committed to us that God turned death into everlasting life. In the death of Christ death itself was broken open, so that never again could death contain us. And then, God raised Jesus from the dead so that we too are raised. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God spoke on the ashes of all death, so that death would not have the last word. So that wherever there are ashes, there is life.

These ashy crosses make that promise visible. They make visible the promise of our baptism, that for us Christ died and through Christ we too are raised. These ashy crosses proclaim that nothing can separate us from the love of this God in Christ for us. These ashy crosses are not about marking our sorrow, or marking our shame, marking our brokenness, or marking our pain. These ashy crosses are about marking us as God’s. These ashy crosses are about a God who dances on the graves of all that hold us captive, a God who says not just that a different way is possible, but who promises that from the dust is where God always forms God’s best creation, from dust is where God always brings new life. These ashy crosses proclaim that we who are dust are God’s handiwork, the creation which God calls good. That we who were slaves now are free. That we dry bones have life again. Long after the ashes have worn of your face this evening, may you feel the presence of that promise, made visible tonight, but always there, always with you, always marking your forehead through the promise of the waters of baptism, and may you know, now and always, that your God is with you. Amen.