I’ve been thinking a lot about my hands this week. I have thin hands, with long, slender fingers. “Piano player hands,” my grandmother would say wistfully, holding up her short stubby fingers against my own. Nine futile years of piano lessons proved my grandmother wrong, these are not piano player hands. Long though they may be, my fingers lack the dexterity needed for music making. My grandmother’s hands were quilting hands. Her short fingers were amazingly nimble with a needle and thread. In her ninety-four years she made well over two hundred quilts, all more works of art then functional objects, though we used them for function. I was in college before I knew that you could buy a bedspread, no one in my family ever had. Such was the work of my grandmother’s hands.
Our hands are incredibly complex systems. Two major muscle groups and countless nerves move the twenty-seven bones along four different arches to allow us such diverse mobility. I invite you to take a moment and just move your hands. Notice all of the different ways you can move them, the various motions and contortions they are capable of. No other part of us has the dexterity of our fingers.
Now think of all the things you can do with your hands. Think of all the things you do without thinking. Do you stop to contemplate which finger goes where when you swing a golf club, open a book, hug a friend, or pick up your grandchild? These actions come automatically. So complex, so perfect, is the coordination of our fingers that we give little or no thought to the movements required for these tasks. But our hands know how to do them. Our hands are the holders of memories.
It was officiating Dorcas’s funeral this week that got me thinking about my hands. My right hand still remembers the first casket I ever touched as a pastor. The silky smoothness of the well polished oak; so soft as to feel almost warm. That first casket held the body of a young man killed in a car accident. After a week of feeling totally helpless in the face of unspeakable tragedy, standing alongside a family whose grief was immeasurable, my right hand remembers the feeling of the casket under my palm as my voice proclaimed the powerful words of promise from the commendation prayer, that God will receive this lamb of God’s own flock into arms of mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, into the glorious company of the saints of light. This prayer proclaims that even at the grave our song is Alleluia, because even in death Christ’s victory is assured. I hold that memory in my hands for the power of it is too deep for my mind to understand.
I began my sermon this morning with a reflection on hands because for the next five weeks, we will be immersing ourselves in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. There are rich and powerful teachings in this chapter. In the next five weeks we will hear Jesus declare himself to be the Bread of Life, proclaiming, “whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus will offer us his own body, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” The disciples will marvel at his words, saying, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” But they will also question, asking, “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” We will probably, in the next four weeks find ourselves in the same boat as the disciples, caught between the confusing tension of “Lord to whom shall we go?” and “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But the teachings we will be immersed in for the next five weeks did not come from nowhere. Before all of this teaching, Jesus began with the sign of God’s power that we heard in our Gospel reading for today, that Jesus fed five thousand from his own hands.
After crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus went with his disciples up a mountain to sit. A large crowd followed them, for they had seen the signs that Jesus had done for the sick. When Jesus saw the crowd, he said to Philip, “where are we to buy bread for them?” Philip was dumbfounded, “Six months’ wages couldn’t buy bread to feed all these people.” But Jesus took five loaves and two fish in his hands, gave thanks, and from his own hands, distributed them to all the people, so that when he was finished there was enough leftover to collect twelve baskets.
Before Jesus taught them, he fed them. Before they heard about how he would give his body for them, he first used his hands to feed them. From his hands to their hands, Jesus fed five thousand people bread, so that they could hear the words of the promise of salvation that would soon pass from his body to their bodies. The teaching that would follow was rich and powerful but also “difficult; who can accept it?” And so Jesus began that teaching with something they could hold on to, something they could know with their hands when the teaching itself was too much for their minds. Jesus began with bread; that passed from his hands to their hands. Bread so that, in the long days to come, the days of journeying to the cross, the days of watching Christ’s death and thinking it was the end, the days of wondering in the glory of the resurrection, their hands would remember what their minds might not. Their hands would remember that day on a mountain when Jesus gave bread to them. Their hands would remember that moment, so that every time bread was broken and shared in their midst, their hands would again feel bread broken on a hillside, and their hearts the promise that Jesus himself was the Bread of Life, that “whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believe in him will never be thirsty.”
We receive before we know. We receive, even though we may never know, and that receiving leads us to understanding that is deeper than all knowledge. That is the pattern of the life of faith, the pattern of our worship life together. The walk of Christian faith starts at baptism. We baptize infants in our tradition because baptism is not about our being ready for God, but about God who is always ready for us. It is about God ushering us in, broken and confused, wet and cold and probably now with our hair all tousled, into God’s family as children, as heirs, of God’s promise.
And we live this promise out every week when we come to the table and receive God’s own body in the bread and the wine of communion. We celebrate the Eucharist every week, because every week we need the opportunity to know that God meets us here, no matter what the week behind us has brought us. It is not a matter of us being ready for the Eucharist, but of the Eucharist making us ready for what is to come. Martin Luther said that the days that we feel the least ready for the Eucharist are the days in which we need the Eucharist the most.
So come to the table with your hands outstretched. Come open the beautiful, carefully crafted gift of your hands. Bring hands that will hold God using muscles and tendons, bones and nerves woven together in perfect precision to hold grace of expansive, immeasurable, abundance. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is that God’s infinite goodness, too powerful, too wonderful for human comprehension, shrunk itself down into such simple gifts of bread and fish, so that all could be fed from God’s abundance. And that abundance would cascade over into leftovers enough to feed the world. This is God’s abundant feast set for you. This is food to feed a hungry world. This is a foretaste of the feast to come. Come taste and receive God’s goodness. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, July 27, 2015
Built Together: A Sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22
This sermon was preached during a visit to Trinity's mission partner, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Niles, MI.
Good morning! It is good to be here worshiping with you here at Holy Trinity. Those of us who are here bring you greetings from the rest of our congregation who were not able to travel with us, back at Trinity in Battle Creek. It is so good to be worshiping together as mission partners in the body of Christ.
I have been the pastor at Trinity for just a little over a year now, and I remember when I was discerning this call to ministry one of the pieces that really helped me know that I was called to be in ministry in this place was Trinity’s partnership with outside organizations like the Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change. I first experienced my call to ministry in a congregation that partnered with a women’s shelter in Washington, DC, so the church has always felt most alive to me when it was in partnership with others. I was really excited to come and serve alongside these nonprofit partners in mission.
And then I don’t think I’d been in the office a week, when my office manager wandered down the hall with a check stub from some congregation in a Michigan city I had never heard of. “Where is Niles?” I asked. “And why are they sending us money?” They do this once a quarter, I was informed; they are our mission partners. And that was when I knew I had stumbled into something really special. Because not only was I a pastor who had the incredible privilege of serving a congregation committed to being church in the world. But in doing that work, my congregation had partners all across the Michigan synod who are also committed to being church in the world, and who live out that commitment by supporting Trinity so that we can then better support these non-profit partners who are our hands and feet, and through us God’s hands and feet, in a world who so desperately longs to know God’s presence.
There is something so strikingly counter-cultural about us joining together in this partnership. Here we are; two little congregations in two small towns in a state that is still struggling to regain footing after the recession. Members of a religious tradition that all the media wants to say is struggling to retain members and relevance in an increasingly secular world. We have all the reasons, the world might say, to hole up, to protect our scarce resources, to make sure that we have enough to survive. But we have not done that. Instead we have joined together, and joined with other partners in mission, Trinity and the Women’s Co-op and Creating Change, Holy Trinity and the neighbors who tend your community gardens and the congregations with whom you serve community meals, and in these partnerships we have declared that our God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That God’s math is not a zero-sum game, but a game of exponential expansion, and when two small things, like two little congregations in two small towns, are brought together, the resulting ministry is exponentially greater than either could accomplish on their own.
It’s counter-cultural now, this partnership of ours, and it was also counter-cultural in Paul’s time. Our epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And the Ephesians were really struggling with this concept of joining with people who were different than them. Paul, remember, was a Jew. And a faithful Jew at that; under the law, blameless. But when he came to know Christ, he came to realize he had put too much faith in his ability to live perfectly under the law. He came to know himself as freed to live under the law, not because of the law, but because of Christ. The Ephesians, on the other hand, were Gentiles. They had never been under the law. And in Christ they too had come to know freedom. So the question then is; how now shall we live? Were the Jews to give up the law completely and live as Gentiles? Were the Gentiles to take up the law and live as Jews? Whose way was the “right” way? Who was to become like the other? Who had to change in order to be part of the Body of Christ?
Paul told the Ephesians in this letter to remember the radical welcome they had experienced in Christ. Remember that Christ came and proclaimed peace “to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” not so the near would go far off, or so that the far off would come near, but so that both would be brought together into a new humanity in Christ. It is not Gentile or Jew, one or the other, Paul told the Ephesians, it is all of us, together, “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” This seemed like impossible words to a community so divided among cultural lines of Gentile and Jew. To imagine that both could come together, without becoming one or the other, but in fact could just be together in their differences and proclaim the Body of Christ precisely in those differences. That was unheard of! But, Paul said, this isn’t a new thing you have to do. In fact, it isn’t a thing you have to do at all. This unity, this oneness in Christ, this was already done by Jesus. Through the cross, Paul reminded them, Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” He has “created in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and reconciling both groups to God in one body.” “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Through the cross, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall that separates us, and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. For the Ephesians, this meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile, was welcome in the worshiping community of believers in Ephesus. But what does this mean for us? How do we, in our time and place, break down the walls that divide us and come together as one body? Is Paul telling us to tear down both Trinity and Holy Trinity and build one dwelling place for the Lord? No, I don’t think that’s what we’re called to do at all. I mean, let’s face it, that’s simply not practical. It’s ninety minutes between Battle Creek and Niles on a good day. I’ve lived through one of your winters; there is no guarantee of making a ninety-minute drive in Michigan in February.
I think that what we are doing here this morning is precisely the sort of thing that Paul is talking about, when he reminded the Ephesians that Christ had joined the whole structure of the church together into one holy temple in the Lord. Just like the Gentile and Jewish believers in Ephesus were no longer strangers and aliens to each other once they had worshiped together, so too are we no longer strangers and aliens to each other. We know each other, we’ve worshiped together, we’ve prayed for each other, and in this partnership we have become a part of growing this one holy temple in the Lord, spread across not just Battle Creek or Niles, but across all of the Michigan synod, all of the ELCA, and indeed all of the world.
This seems like a big statement I’m making here. That somehow our congregations worshiping together this morning is changing the world. You may think I am ambitious or idealistic for making a claim like this, and anyone you share this claim with might think you’re a little bit crazy. But here’s the thing, I don’t think this claim I’m making is ambitious or idealistic, because I don’t think this claim I’m making, that the in-breaking of God is made manifest in our worship together, has anything to do with us. Remember what Paul told the Ephesians, that “Christ Jesus is our peace; and in his flesh, he has broken down the dividing wall and created in himself a new humanity. This oneness we’re talking about, this indwelling of God among us, this has already happened. Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are already made one in Jesus, we are already united into one holy temple. We don’t have to make peace, Jesus is peace and so peace is already here. All we are doing this morning is bearing witness to the peace of Christ that we have already experienced, bearing witness to the oneness of God that Jesus Christ brought through his death and resurrection. We bear witness to the amazing thing that God has already done in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, and in this world. So thanks be to God. It is good to be in mission with you. It is good to bear witness with you. Amen.
Good morning! It is good to be here worshiping with you here at Holy Trinity. Those of us who are here bring you greetings from the rest of our congregation who were not able to travel with us, back at Trinity in Battle Creek. It is so good to be worshiping together as mission partners in the body of Christ.
I have been the pastor at Trinity for just a little over a year now, and I remember when I was discerning this call to ministry one of the pieces that really helped me know that I was called to be in ministry in this place was Trinity’s partnership with outside organizations like the Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change. I first experienced my call to ministry in a congregation that partnered with a women’s shelter in Washington, DC, so the church has always felt most alive to me when it was in partnership with others. I was really excited to come and serve alongside these nonprofit partners in mission.
And then I don’t think I’d been in the office a week, when my office manager wandered down the hall with a check stub from some congregation in a Michigan city I had never heard of. “Where is Niles?” I asked. “And why are they sending us money?” They do this once a quarter, I was informed; they are our mission partners. And that was when I knew I had stumbled into something really special. Because not only was I a pastor who had the incredible privilege of serving a congregation committed to being church in the world. But in doing that work, my congregation had partners all across the Michigan synod who are also committed to being church in the world, and who live out that commitment by supporting Trinity so that we can then better support these non-profit partners who are our hands and feet, and through us God’s hands and feet, in a world who so desperately longs to know God’s presence.
There is something so strikingly counter-cultural about us joining together in this partnership. Here we are; two little congregations in two small towns in a state that is still struggling to regain footing after the recession. Members of a religious tradition that all the media wants to say is struggling to retain members and relevance in an increasingly secular world. We have all the reasons, the world might say, to hole up, to protect our scarce resources, to make sure that we have enough to survive. But we have not done that. Instead we have joined together, and joined with other partners in mission, Trinity and the Women’s Co-op and Creating Change, Holy Trinity and the neighbors who tend your community gardens and the congregations with whom you serve community meals, and in these partnerships we have declared that our God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That God’s math is not a zero-sum game, but a game of exponential expansion, and when two small things, like two little congregations in two small towns, are brought together, the resulting ministry is exponentially greater than either could accomplish on their own.
It’s counter-cultural now, this partnership of ours, and it was also counter-cultural in Paul’s time. Our epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And the Ephesians were really struggling with this concept of joining with people who were different than them. Paul, remember, was a Jew. And a faithful Jew at that; under the law, blameless. But when he came to know Christ, he came to realize he had put too much faith in his ability to live perfectly under the law. He came to know himself as freed to live under the law, not because of the law, but because of Christ. The Ephesians, on the other hand, were Gentiles. They had never been under the law. And in Christ they too had come to know freedom. So the question then is; how now shall we live? Were the Jews to give up the law completely and live as Gentiles? Were the Gentiles to take up the law and live as Jews? Whose way was the “right” way? Who was to become like the other? Who had to change in order to be part of the Body of Christ?
Paul told the Ephesians in this letter to remember the radical welcome they had experienced in Christ. Remember that Christ came and proclaimed peace “to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” not so the near would go far off, or so that the far off would come near, but so that both would be brought together into a new humanity in Christ. It is not Gentile or Jew, one or the other, Paul told the Ephesians, it is all of us, together, “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” This seemed like impossible words to a community so divided among cultural lines of Gentile and Jew. To imagine that both could come together, without becoming one or the other, but in fact could just be together in their differences and proclaim the Body of Christ precisely in those differences. That was unheard of! But, Paul said, this isn’t a new thing you have to do. In fact, it isn’t a thing you have to do at all. This unity, this oneness in Christ, this was already done by Jesus. Through the cross, Paul reminded them, Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” He has “created in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and reconciling both groups to God in one body.” “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Through the cross, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall that separates us, and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. For the Ephesians, this meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile, was welcome in the worshiping community of believers in Ephesus. But what does this mean for us? How do we, in our time and place, break down the walls that divide us and come together as one body? Is Paul telling us to tear down both Trinity and Holy Trinity and build one dwelling place for the Lord? No, I don’t think that’s what we’re called to do at all. I mean, let’s face it, that’s simply not practical. It’s ninety minutes between Battle Creek and Niles on a good day. I’ve lived through one of your winters; there is no guarantee of making a ninety-minute drive in Michigan in February.
I think that what we are doing here this morning is precisely the sort of thing that Paul is talking about, when he reminded the Ephesians that Christ had joined the whole structure of the church together into one holy temple in the Lord. Just like the Gentile and Jewish believers in Ephesus were no longer strangers and aliens to each other once they had worshiped together, so too are we no longer strangers and aliens to each other. We know each other, we’ve worshiped together, we’ve prayed for each other, and in this partnership we have become a part of growing this one holy temple in the Lord, spread across not just Battle Creek or Niles, but across all of the Michigan synod, all of the ELCA, and indeed all of the world.
This seems like a big statement I’m making here. That somehow our congregations worshiping together this morning is changing the world. You may think I am ambitious or idealistic for making a claim like this, and anyone you share this claim with might think you’re a little bit crazy. But here’s the thing, I don’t think this claim I’m making is ambitious or idealistic, because I don’t think this claim I’m making, that the in-breaking of God is made manifest in our worship together, has anything to do with us. Remember what Paul told the Ephesians, that “Christ Jesus is our peace; and in his flesh, he has broken down the dividing wall and created in himself a new humanity. This oneness we’re talking about, this indwelling of God among us, this has already happened. Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are already made one in Jesus, we are already united into one holy temple. We don’t have to make peace, Jesus is peace and so peace is already here. All we are doing this morning is bearing witness to the peace of Christ that we have already experienced, bearing witness to the oneness of God that Jesus Christ brought through his death and resurrection. We bear witness to the amazing thing that God has already done in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, and in this world. So thanks be to God. It is good to be in mission with you. It is good to bear witness with you. Amen.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Power: A Sermon on Mark 6:14-29
I have a theory that the most dangerous thing a person can feel is that they are powerless. Especially when they are not. I think that most of the evil in the world has been perpetuated not by evil people or even bad people, but by decent people who felt they were powerless to do anything in response to the evil. Our Gospel reading for this morning is all about what can happen when powerful people feel powerless.
Our reading for this morning is a story not about Jesus but about Herod and John the Baptist. It is interesting that Mark referred to Herod as King, because this was not Herod the Great, the powerful and terrible ruler who was granted the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate. This was his son, Herod Antipas.
Antipas, as he is often called, to distinguish him from his brothers Herod Archelaus and Herod Philip, was not even his father’s first choice as a successor. That honor went to his older half-brothers, Aristobulus and Alexander. But only when they were executed and next oldest brother Antipater was convicted of treason, did the mantle fall to Antipas, briefly. In the final moments of his father’s life, Herod the Great again had a change of heart, dividing the kingdom between Archelaus, Philip, Antipas, and sister Salome. Antipas made a bid to the Emperor that the earlier will should be honored, with him ruling as king. But the Emperor, wanting stronger control over Judea, rejected the move and Antipas had to be content with the lesser title of tetrarch. From the (briefly) favored son of a King, to puppet ruler of a fraction of a kingdom, and Herod Antipas’s power begins to unravel.
At the time of the Gospel reading, Antipas was married to a woman named Herodias. It was a second marriage for each of them. Antipas had originally been married to a woman named Phasaelis and Herodias to Antipas’s brother Herod Philip. But when Antipas and Herodias met it was love, or something, at first sight, and they quickly married. It is worth noting that Herod Philip, Herodias’s first husband is not the same Philip who became Tetrarch of the territories east of Jordan. No, Herod Philip was originally in line to be King of Judea, in fact he was second in succession above half-brother Antipas. But the same family scuffle that moved Antipas to the top of the succession chain knocked Herod Philip out of it. A woman’s value in first century Palestine, especially among the ruling class, was entirely connected to the value of her spouse. So by divorcing Herod Philip and marrying Antipas, Herodias made a shrew political jump from scorned political liability to ruler over all of Galilee.
So we have Herod Antipas, younger son turned favored son turned pawn of the Empire, and we have Herodias, seeking to make a life for herself and her daughter by marrying up the family chain. Into this complex political scene entered John the Baptist. Not one to worry much about political correctness, John had a lot to say about this marriage of affiliation, and none of it was positive. Herodias, seeing the already tenuous grasp her husband had on his title, silenced the noisey prophet by ordering Antipas to imprison him. But Antipas saw John as a holy man and let him live on in prison.
That is, until the day that Antipas threw a party and invited Herodias’s daughter to dance for his guests. Pleased by the dancing, he offered to give the girl anything she asked for. The girl asked her mother and Herodias, seeing her opportunity to rid her family of the mutterings of a prophet, ordered John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Antipas was afraid to kill the prophet, but he was more afraid of his wife and of breaking his vow in front of his friends. So he ordered the death, delivered the head, and John the Baptist died an innocent man, the victim of the power plays of a weak and fearful court.
This story is an extreme case surely, seeming to have more in common with a Game of Thrones episode than of life as we experience it today. But thinking of the themes, I wonder how different it really is. Antipas killed John the Baptist because he felt stuck. Because even though he was the most powerful person in Galilee, second only to the Emperor, he so feared the loss of that power that even though he respected John, he saw no way to preserve his own authority than by killing John. He felt stuck.
Now, most of us, in fact I’d say all of us, do not face choices quite this dramatic. But we face other choices. When someone speaks hurtful or hateful words, we can feel stuck in remaining silent to keep a relation. When injustices are perpetrated on our neighbors, we can feel stuck into thinking the world is a zero-sum game and if there is enough for someone else, there is not enough for me. Stuckness can lead us to plunder the world’s resources, take more than we need, ignore the cries of the poor, the persecuted, the lost, or the lonely, or throw up our hands in defeat and assume the world is to big and hard and broken, and there is nothing we can do. I don’t know about you, but recently every time I turn on the news I feel a wave of stuckness wash over me, and it is enough to tempt me to bury my head in the sand.
But notice this. Jesus is not in our Gospel reading this morning, John the Baptist is. And any time John the Baptist is the central character in a story, we have to remember John’s sole purpose in the Gospels: to point the way to Jesus. John is not the only innocent man whose death Herod Antipas had a hand in. As a citizen of Galilee, Jesus’ trial and subsequent sentence of crucifixion was also under Antipas’ jurisdiction. John the Baptist’s death at the hands of the Roman authorities prefigured Jesus’ death at those same hands, the death of one innocent man leading to the death of another.
Mark tells us the story of John the Baptist’s death to remind us that Jesus also died a violent death and was buried. Jesus also died a powerless death at the hands of powerful people so caught up in fear that they forgot their own power and fell into a strange lockstep that ended with an innocent man dead on a cross. But Jesus was not just another victim. Jesus’ seemingly powerless death was in fact the most powerful act the world has ever seen. By dying, by embracing death, Jesus Christ destroyed death so that even death could have no power. Through the seemingly powerless act of his death, Jesus Christ redefined what it means to be powerful. And by rising again, Jesus declared that death itself would not have the last word, but that life always follows death, victory always comes from defeat, and that the lost, the least, the last, and the lowely would always have a place at the table in the kingdom of God.
It is fitting that we read the story of Herod and John the Baptist on this Sunday that we are celebrating Chase’s baptism. Because it is in these waters of baptism that the promise of the power of God is most visible and most tangible. We baptize with water. Just simple, plain, water. Nothing fancy, nothing showy, nothing glamorous or flashy or bold. Just a simple bowl of water. But in this water, we meet God. In this water God promises that we die to sin, die to death, die to the powerlessness that the world would define us by, and we rise children of God and heirs of the promise of God’s kingdom. A kingdom of power redefined. A kingdom where power is found not in taking what we can, but in sharing all we have. A kingdom ruled not by the fear of scarcity but by the wonderful abundance of enough. A kingdom where no one is powerless and everyone has enough and all are welcome. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Our reading for this morning is a story not about Jesus but about Herod and John the Baptist. It is interesting that Mark referred to Herod as King, because this was not Herod the Great, the powerful and terrible ruler who was granted the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate. This was his son, Herod Antipas.
Antipas, as he is often called, to distinguish him from his brothers Herod Archelaus and Herod Philip, was not even his father’s first choice as a successor. That honor went to his older half-brothers, Aristobulus and Alexander. But only when they were executed and next oldest brother Antipater was convicted of treason, did the mantle fall to Antipas, briefly. In the final moments of his father’s life, Herod the Great again had a change of heart, dividing the kingdom between Archelaus, Philip, Antipas, and sister Salome. Antipas made a bid to the Emperor that the earlier will should be honored, with him ruling as king. But the Emperor, wanting stronger control over Judea, rejected the move and Antipas had to be content with the lesser title of tetrarch. From the (briefly) favored son of a King, to puppet ruler of a fraction of a kingdom, and Herod Antipas’s power begins to unravel.
At the time of the Gospel reading, Antipas was married to a woman named Herodias. It was a second marriage for each of them. Antipas had originally been married to a woman named Phasaelis and Herodias to Antipas’s brother Herod Philip. But when Antipas and Herodias met it was love, or something, at first sight, and they quickly married. It is worth noting that Herod Philip, Herodias’s first husband is not the same Philip who became Tetrarch of the territories east of Jordan. No, Herod Philip was originally in line to be King of Judea, in fact he was second in succession above half-brother Antipas. But the same family scuffle that moved Antipas to the top of the succession chain knocked Herod Philip out of it. A woman’s value in first century Palestine, especially among the ruling class, was entirely connected to the value of her spouse. So by divorcing Herod Philip and marrying Antipas, Herodias made a shrew political jump from scorned political liability to ruler over all of Galilee.
So we have Herod Antipas, younger son turned favored son turned pawn of the Empire, and we have Herodias, seeking to make a life for herself and her daughter by marrying up the family chain. Into this complex political scene entered John the Baptist. Not one to worry much about political correctness, John had a lot to say about this marriage of affiliation, and none of it was positive. Herodias, seeing the already tenuous grasp her husband had on his title, silenced the noisey prophet by ordering Antipas to imprison him. But Antipas saw John as a holy man and let him live on in prison.
That is, until the day that Antipas threw a party and invited Herodias’s daughter to dance for his guests. Pleased by the dancing, he offered to give the girl anything she asked for. The girl asked her mother and Herodias, seeing her opportunity to rid her family of the mutterings of a prophet, ordered John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Antipas was afraid to kill the prophet, but he was more afraid of his wife and of breaking his vow in front of his friends. So he ordered the death, delivered the head, and John the Baptist died an innocent man, the victim of the power plays of a weak and fearful court.
This story is an extreme case surely, seeming to have more in common with a Game of Thrones episode than of life as we experience it today. But thinking of the themes, I wonder how different it really is. Antipas killed John the Baptist because he felt stuck. Because even though he was the most powerful person in Galilee, second only to the Emperor, he so feared the loss of that power that even though he respected John, he saw no way to preserve his own authority than by killing John. He felt stuck.
Now, most of us, in fact I’d say all of us, do not face choices quite this dramatic. But we face other choices. When someone speaks hurtful or hateful words, we can feel stuck in remaining silent to keep a relation. When injustices are perpetrated on our neighbors, we can feel stuck into thinking the world is a zero-sum game and if there is enough for someone else, there is not enough for me. Stuckness can lead us to plunder the world’s resources, take more than we need, ignore the cries of the poor, the persecuted, the lost, or the lonely, or throw up our hands in defeat and assume the world is to big and hard and broken, and there is nothing we can do. I don’t know about you, but recently every time I turn on the news I feel a wave of stuckness wash over me, and it is enough to tempt me to bury my head in the sand.
But notice this. Jesus is not in our Gospel reading this morning, John the Baptist is. And any time John the Baptist is the central character in a story, we have to remember John’s sole purpose in the Gospels: to point the way to Jesus. John is not the only innocent man whose death Herod Antipas had a hand in. As a citizen of Galilee, Jesus’ trial and subsequent sentence of crucifixion was also under Antipas’ jurisdiction. John the Baptist’s death at the hands of the Roman authorities prefigured Jesus’ death at those same hands, the death of one innocent man leading to the death of another.
Mark tells us the story of John the Baptist’s death to remind us that Jesus also died a violent death and was buried. Jesus also died a powerless death at the hands of powerful people so caught up in fear that they forgot their own power and fell into a strange lockstep that ended with an innocent man dead on a cross. But Jesus was not just another victim. Jesus’ seemingly powerless death was in fact the most powerful act the world has ever seen. By dying, by embracing death, Jesus Christ destroyed death so that even death could have no power. Through the seemingly powerless act of his death, Jesus Christ redefined what it means to be powerful. And by rising again, Jesus declared that death itself would not have the last word, but that life always follows death, victory always comes from defeat, and that the lost, the least, the last, and the lowely would always have a place at the table in the kingdom of God.
It is fitting that we read the story of Herod and John the Baptist on this Sunday that we are celebrating Chase’s baptism. Because it is in these waters of baptism that the promise of the power of God is most visible and most tangible. We baptize with water. Just simple, plain, water. Nothing fancy, nothing showy, nothing glamorous or flashy or bold. Just a simple bowl of water. But in this water, we meet God. In this water God promises that we die to sin, die to death, die to the powerlessness that the world would define us by, and we rise children of God and heirs of the promise of God’s kingdom. A kingdom of power redefined. A kingdom where power is found not in taking what we can, but in sharing all we have. A kingdom ruled not by the fear of scarcity but by the wonderful abundance of enough. A kingdom where no one is powerless and everyone has enough and all are welcome. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, June 29, 2015
God Heals: A Sermon on Mark 5:21-43
This is the third sermon I wrote for this morning. I spent Thursday through Saturday at a conference in Holland. So in preparation for that conference, I wrote my sermon for today on Wednesday afternoon. And then on Wednesday evening, as I was packing up my things and getting ready to leave, I received an email from the presiding bishop, asking that we make today a day of prayer and mourning for those killed in Charleston. And I didn’t want to, for the very shallow reasons that I already had a sermon written and we already had bulletins printed and for the very serious reasons that preaching on racism is scary and dangerous. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t have much truck with excuses, shallow or serious. And it wasn’t long before my prepared sermon fell apart before me, and I knew those would not be the words the Holy Spirit had for us this morning.
I am distraught over Charleston. I am distraught that more and more the pages of the newspaper read like pages from the history books I grew up with. I read about it, many of you lived through it, and yet, here we are again, here we are still. I am distraught that racism is still real and alive in our nation. And most of all, I am distraught that I was able to ignore it and treat it like history, because it is not history. And people have died for my ignorance.
And yet, in the stories coming out of Charleston I am also hopeful. I find hope in renewed conversations around race and privilege. I find hope in the powerful words of forgiveness the families of the victims of those killed gave to the man who killed them. I am hopeful that maybe this brutal act will finally bring us to the day when, like the apostle Paul wrote, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for all are one in Jesus Christ.
So I got home Saturday night and I began to write sermon number two for this morning. And I was getting along pretty well, but I still felt strange. I still felt this tension that I couldn’t quite name. This tension drove me to distraction, which led me to Facebook where, surprisingly, I finally was able to put a finger to what felt off. Because my Facebook feed is filled with rainbows and wedding pictures as my friends rejoiced in the Supreme Court’s decision that marriage between two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together is legal in all fifty states.
But my joy was tempered by the reality that we still have a long way to go. That while so many of the people I love can now marry the people they love, they can still be fired from their jobs, be blocked from adopting children, face housing discrimination. And all at once I was overwhelmed by an enormous complexity of emotions, joy and grief, love and pain, pride and shame. How does one make sense of a week like this one?
So I went to our Gospel reading for this morning, and I thought about Jairus. Jairus was a leader in the synagogue. He was wealthy, powerful, well-respected, and honored in his community. But none of that mattered on the day his daughter took sick. On the day his daughter took sick, his wealth, his power, his honor were meaningless as he threw himself at the feet of Jesus and begged for healing for his little girl. And Jesus healed his daughter. But that healing had a cost. See, before his daughter took sick, Jairus hadn’t needed anyone, or hadn’t thought he’d needed anyone. He was a leader in the synagogue, he was wealthy, powerful, put together. His daughter’s illness and Jesus’ healing forced Jairus to come to grips with the fact that all of those things that had defined him had never had any value at all, that when the thing that mattered the most, his daughter’s life, was on the line, he was powerless. What a complexity of emotions Jairus must have felt on that day. Joy at his daughter’s healing, shame that he could not keep her safe in the first place, relief that she was ok, grief at the loss of the identity he’d built for himself. And over that complexity of emotions was Jesus, drawing Jairus and his daughter into new life, into a world more full, more whole, than the one they had known before. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed them.
And I thought about the hemorrhaging woman. So different from Jairus. So low as to not even be named. Suffering for twelve years from an illness that left her an outcast in society, penniless and unclean and alone. Until in an instant, she reached out her hand to touch Jesus’ cloak and she was healed. What a complexity of emotions. Relief, that her long years of suffering were finally over. Fear, of discovery, of what might come next, of what it might mean to have to reenter the very community that had made her an outcast. Hope, that she could finally live again. Grief over all the time she’d lost. And over that complexity of emotions, Jesus healed her. Jesus brought her from isolation back into community, and she found life, new life in his healing. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed her.
What this Gospel story reminded me was that my emotional turmoil this week was not an anomaly, it is our reality. We live in a complex world. So often we try to make sense of this complexity by framing each experience as one thing or another. Something is good or bad, hard or easy, sinner or saint. But so often we find that things cannot be broken down so simply. It is not an either or world we live in, but a both/and world. Joy in an exciting life change like a marriage or a retirement can also be tinged with sadness over losses of relationship or familiarity. Grief over the death of a beloved loved one may also have edges of relief that our loved one is no longer suffering. Life is gritty and complicated and that is OK. That is what makes it real. We find this tension even in ourselves. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber said it very succinctly when she wrote, “I have an incredible capacity for inflicting pain on myself and on others, but I also have an incredible capacity for kindness.” And so to do us all. We laugh, we cry, we hurt each other and heal each other. We keep promises and break them. We are both / and people.
Because we are both / and people, God has given us a both / and church. We confess and receive forgiveness. We encounter Christ through Word and Sacrament. Baptism is water and word, the Eucharist is bread and wine. Out of love for us, to help us practice this tension so that we are better prepared to experience it, God has built this into the very fiber of our worship life.
And over all that wonderful and painful and beautiful complexity is Jesus. Jesus who’s love for us was so great that he took on flesh, the most powerful embodiment of both / and, a God who became human, divinity that was at the same time mortality. A king born to a peasant. A Jew who was also a Nazarean. Sisters and brothers, God gets complexity. And through all our complexity, God brings life. Because the greatest both / and of all creation is this one. That the one who died on the cross rose again. That the tomb that held the body of Jesus became the place where resurrection reigned. We don’t have to make sense of this life, we just have to live it. And we live it in the promise that no matter the complexities we face, God walks with us. Leading us on to a place of healing and grace, resurrection and new life. Because Jesus Christ has triumphed over the complexities of death, these complexities have no power over us. They may complicate our emotions but they do not control our souls. Through it all is Jesus, drawing us deeper into the promise of new life in God.
And so, in weeks like this one. Weeks where I am so taken aback by the wonder and pain and beauty of being alive. When my heart feels both broken and elated, I find assurance in this knowledge beyond belief, that at creation God brought order out of chaos, that in Jesus God raised life out of death, and that through this complex world blows the breath of the Holy Spirit. And so I go on, laughing and crying, mourning and hoping, fighting and forgiving, confident that over all this complexity is this one simple truth. God heals. Thanks be to God. Amen.
I am distraught over Charleston. I am distraught that more and more the pages of the newspaper read like pages from the history books I grew up with. I read about it, many of you lived through it, and yet, here we are again, here we are still. I am distraught that racism is still real and alive in our nation. And most of all, I am distraught that I was able to ignore it and treat it like history, because it is not history. And people have died for my ignorance.
And yet, in the stories coming out of Charleston I am also hopeful. I find hope in renewed conversations around race and privilege. I find hope in the powerful words of forgiveness the families of the victims of those killed gave to the man who killed them. I am hopeful that maybe this brutal act will finally bring us to the day when, like the apostle Paul wrote, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for all are one in Jesus Christ.
So I got home Saturday night and I began to write sermon number two for this morning. And I was getting along pretty well, but I still felt strange. I still felt this tension that I couldn’t quite name. This tension drove me to distraction, which led me to Facebook where, surprisingly, I finally was able to put a finger to what felt off. Because my Facebook feed is filled with rainbows and wedding pictures as my friends rejoiced in the Supreme Court’s decision that marriage between two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together is legal in all fifty states.
But my joy was tempered by the reality that we still have a long way to go. That while so many of the people I love can now marry the people they love, they can still be fired from their jobs, be blocked from adopting children, face housing discrimination. And all at once I was overwhelmed by an enormous complexity of emotions, joy and grief, love and pain, pride and shame. How does one make sense of a week like this one?
So I went to our Gospel reading for this morning, and I thought about Jairus. Jairus was a leader in the synagogue. He was wealthy, powerful, well-respected, and honored in his community. But none of that mattered on the day his daughter took sick. On the day his daughter took sick, his wealth, his power, his honor were meaningless as he threw himself at the feet of Jesus and begged for healing for his little girl. And Jesus healed his daughter. But that healing had a cost. See, before his daughter took sick, Jairus hadn’t needed anyone, or hadn’t thought he’d needed anyone. He was a leader in the synagogue, he was wealthy, powerful, put together. His daughter’s illness and Jesus’ healing forced Jairus to come to grips with the fact that all of those things that had defined him had never had any value at all, that when the thing that mattered the most, his daughter’s life, was on the line, he was powerless. What a complexity of emotions Jairus must have felt on that day. Joy at his daughter’s healing, shame that he could not keep her safe in the first place, relief that she was ok, grief at the loss of the identity he’d built for himself. And over that complexity of emotions was Jesus, drawing Jairus and his daughter into new life, into a world more full, more whole, than the one they had known before. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed them.
And I thought about the hemorrhaging woman. So different from Jairus. So low as to not even be named. Suffering for twelve years from an illness that left her an outcast in society, penniless and unclean and alone. Until in an instant, she reached out her hand to touch Jesus’ cloak and she was healed. What a complexity of emotions. Relief, that her long years of suffering were finally over. Fear, of discovery, of what might come next, of what it might mean to have to reenter the very community that had made her an outcast. Hope, that she could finally live again. Grief over all the time she’d lost. And over that complexity of emotions, Jesus healed her. Jesus brought her from isolation back into community, and she found life, new life in his healing. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed her.
What this Gospel story reminded me was that my emotional turmoil this week was not an anomaly, it is our reality. We live in a complex world. So often we try to make sense of this complexity by framing each experience as one thing or another. Something is good or bad, hard or easy, sinner or saint. But so often we find that things cannot be broken down so simply. It is not an either or world we live in, but a both/and world. Joy in an exciting life change like a marriage or a retirement can also be tinged with sadness over losses of relationship or familiarity. Grief over the death of a beloved loved one may also have edges of relief that our loved one is no longer suffering. Life is gritty and complicated and that is OK. That is what makes it real. We find this tension even in ourselves. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber said it very succinctly when she wrote, “I have an incredible capacity for inflicting pain on myself and on others, but I also have an incredible capacity for kindness.” And so to do us all. We laugh, we cry, we hurt each other and heal each other. We keep promises and break them. We are both / and people.
Because we are both / and people, God has given us a both / and church. We confess and receive forgiveness. We encounter Christ through Word and Sacrament. Baptism is water and word, the Eucharist is bread and wine. Out of love for us, to help us practice this tension so that we are better prepared to experience it, God has built this into the very fiber of our worship life.
And over all that wonderful and painful and beautiful complexity is Jesus. Jesus who’s love for us was so great that he took on flesh, the most powerful embodiment of both / and, a God who became human, divinity that was at the same time mortality. A king born to a peasant. A Jew who was also a Nazarean. Sisters and brothers, God gets complexity. And through all our complexity, God brings life. Because the greatest both / and of all creation is this one. That the one who died on the cross rose again. That the tomb that held the body of Jesus became the place where resurrection reigned. We don’t have to make sense of this life, we just have to live it. And we live it in the promise that no matter the complexities we face, God walks with us. Leading us on to a place of healing and grace, resurrection and new life. Because Jesus Christ has triumphed over the complexities of death, these complexities have no power over us. They may complicate our emotions but they do not control our souls. Through it all is Jesus, drawing us deeper into the promise of new life in God.
And so, in weeks like this one. Weeks where I am so taken aback by the wonder and pain and beauty of being alive. When my heart feels both broken and elated, I find assurance in this knowledge beyond belief, that at creation God brought order out of chaos, that in Jesus God raised life out of death, and that through this complex world blows the breath of the Holy Spirit. And so I go on, laughing and crying, mourning and hoping, fighting and forgiving, confident that over all this complexity is this one simple truth. God heals. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
A Boat is Just a Boat: A Sermon on Mark 4:35-41
The story of Jesus calming the storm always reminds me of a supervision session I had with my supervisor during Clinical Pastoral Education. Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE is like a chaplaincy internship, giving students practice offering pastoral care on a regular basis. In addition to our work as chaplains, part of the program was a weekly one hour meeting with our supervisor to talk through our visits to patients and evaluated how we could improve. In this particular supervisory session, after I finished sharing with my supervisor a conversation I’d had, I stopped talking, waiting for him to respond. Only, he didn’t respond. After a few long moments had passed I confess I got frustrated. I thought, OK, apparently we’re playing the silent game. I can handle this, I will not be the next to talk. So I didn’t. We sat in total silence for two minutes and forty-seven seconds. There was a clock behind his head; I timed it. Him thinking about whatever he was thinking about, me stubbornly refusing to be the next to speak. Finally he broke the silence. To put this in context, it is helpful to know that my supervisor was an avid fisherman. So a lot of his anecdotes were fishing analogies.
“Ah that was good,” he said, with a look of serene satisfaction on his face. “I felt like when you were telling me that story, I got to be in your boat with you for a while and paddle around, see what things look like from your perspective. It was helpful to be in your boat to understand better where you were coming from. And then, in the silence, I felt like we each got back in our own boats for a while and paddled around and reflected on our time together in the one boat, and, you know, that was good too.” I nodded, because what else do you do when the guy who writes your end of term review is rambling on about boats, but in my head I’m thinking, what in the world are you talking about? Because here’s the thing. I don’t really even like boats all that much; I get motion sick pretty easily. The way I understood our relationship, I told a story, his job was to give me feedback, that’s all I was really looking for. Sometimes, a boat is just a boat. [Pause]
Sometimes a boat is just a boat. In our Gospel reading for this morning, we find Jesus and his disciples standing on the edge of the sea in the evening time. Before we get into the meat of the story, let’s remember some facts about first century Palestine and the sea. The sea, remember, is terrifying. The sea is vast and wide and uncontrollable, filled with monsters like the leviathan. The sea in Biblical times is the very essence of chaos, disorder, and destruction. To enter the sea was to take one’s life in one’s hands. Which, as fishermen, the disciples would have done every day for their livelihood, but they would have done every day knowing the perils that awaited them, the very real chance that they may not return. This is also, of course, a time before GPS and electricity. So to enter into the sea at night, was to enter into a place of total darkness, total sensory deprivation. Maybe it was a clear night; maybe there were stars when they started out. But if a storm was to blow in, which, of course, we know one does, the clouds would block what little light there was, leaving no way of separating the sea from the sky.
Then Jesus said, “Let us go across to the other side.” So they got in a boat and went out onto the sea. Why would they do that? Why would they get in a boat and go into the sea? Was it because the boat was a great salvation from the terrors of the waves? Was the boat a metaphor for something? Was the boat a life lesson in how to trust? I don’t think so. I think they got in the boat because they needed to be on the other side of the sea, and a boat was the only way to get there. Sometimes, a boat is just a boat.
So they got in the boat and went out onto the sea. And Jesus went to sleep. This seems a little weird, but it was, I suppose, nighttime. While he was sleeping, a huge storm blew up. And the boat was being ravaged by the wind and the waves, and the disciples were yelling, and Jesus was just sleeping away. So they woke him up and they were like, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing!” This boat is going to sink, Jesus. And I know this doesn’t seem like a problem to you, but it is kind of a problem to us, and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of the storm, before we end up at the bottom of the sea. So Jesus got up and said, “Peace! Be still!” And the storm stopped. And here too is where we want to stop. We want to stop, or I should say, as a preacher I want to stop, and say, hey, look, Jesus calms the storms. Just let Jesus into your boat, and when storms rage, you can call out to Jesus, and he will calm the storms, and it will all be ok. But guess what, you know and I know that this is a nice thing to preach, but it doesn’t match up with the world we live in. Because sometimes Jesus is in our boat and we are calling out, and the storm is still raging. Faith, prayer, calling out to Jesus is not some magic good luck charm that makes storms go away. On any other week a sermon about how Jesus promises to calm storms would be trite and untrue, any of you who have grappled with illness or pain or grief or prejudice know this already. You know that sometimes we cry out and we don’t get answers. On any other week I would struggle to preach those words to you, knowing them to be hollow. But this week. This week when nine people were shot and killed in South Carolina, in a church, in Bible study, for the crime of being black, this week, preaching such weak words as Jesus calms the storms feels not just hollow but dangerous. If our black brothers and sisters are not safe even in their churches from the storms of racism and prejudice, storms that I in my privilege have contributed to brewing, to preach that Jesus will calm the storms that I have inflicted on my sisters and brothers is not only hollow but it is sin. Storms of racism, of poverty, of war, these storms are of human origin and it is not enough to tell each other that Jesus will calm these storms if we just pray hard enough. The Gospel tells us there were other boats in the water that evening, our actions have consequences that affect other people, and we must take responsibility for calming the storms of our own making.
Luckily, the Gospel does not leave us at “Jesus calms the storms.” Jesus said, “Peace! Be Still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. Think about the implication of that sentence. A dead calm. Last week, sitting in a friend’s basement listening to the tornado sirens cut through the heavy stillness, I longed for the storm to just come so that it would be over. The only thing scarier than the storm itself is the calm before. The storm I can rage against, the storm I can fight, in the fury of the storm, the disciples in our Gospel reading could struggle at the oars, fight the sails, bail and rush and work to keep the boat on course, stay upright amidst the waves. But in the calm there is nothing to do but wait. Wait for God to move, wait for the journey to end, wait to reach the other shore. Waiting, for me at least, is way more terrifying than the fury of any storm.
The disciples, I think, felt this same fear when they realized that the storm they had so feared had calmed, but the sea, the big, bold, uncertainty, that was really at the heart of their fear, still surrounded them, and there was nothing to do but wait. And Jesus then said to them, “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The promise in this story, then, has nothing to do with boats, or storms, or calm. The promise in this story is not that Jesus will calm the storm, or that Jesus is with us in our boats. That isn’t the promise, because that isn’t enough, and we know that, and Jesus knows that. The promise in this story is that there is another side. There is a way across the sea of chaos and fear and uncertainty. We will get there. Notice Jesus did not say to the disciples at the beginning of our Gospel reading, “YOU go across to the other side.” No, he said, “Let US go across to the other side.” The promise is that Jesus is leading us somewhere. Leading us to a new place we have to be, another shore for us to go. What happens in between here and there, storms or calm, Jesus calming or Jesus sleeping, Jesus is leading us through it. So often the good news is the journey, but in this story I think the good news is the destination, that whatever happens in the journey is secondary to the promise that there is a destination, there is another shore, there is another way, and somehow we will get there, because Jesus is leading us. And when we get to the other side, we will be changed by the journey. When our location changes, our perspectives change, we can see the world through new eyes. That’s how change works. Blogger Mandy Hale writes, “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
Sometimes a boat is just a boat. Sometimes the sea is just the sea. But through boats or seas, storms or calm, the promise we have in this story is that Jesus is leading us somewhere. And we will be changed by the journey. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Note: My thoughts on this text were heavily influenced by Dr. Karoline Lewis's article on Working Preacher, "The Other Side." You can read Dr. Lewis's article at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=3645.
“Ah that was good,” he said, with a look of serene satisfaction on his face. “I felt like when you were telling me that story, I got to be in your boat with you for a while and paddle around, see what things look like from your perspective. It was helpful to be in your boat to understand better where you were coming from. And then, in the silence, I felt like we each got back in our own boats for a while and paddled around and reflected on our time together in the one boat, and, you know, that was good too.” I nodded, because what else do you do when the guy who writes your end of term review is rambling on about boats, but in my head I’m thinking, what in the world are you talking about? Because here’s the thing. I don’t really even like boats all that much; I get motion sick pretty easily. The way I understood our relationship, I told a story, his job was to give me feedback, that’s all I was really looking for. Sometimes, a boat is just a boat. [Pause]
Sometimes a boat is just a boat. In our Gospel reading for this morning, we find Jesus and his disciples standing on the edge of the sea in the evening time. Before we get into the meat of the story, let’s remember some facts about first century Palestine and the sea. The sea, remember, is terrifying. The sea is vast and wide and uncontrollable, filled with monsters like the leviathan. The sea in Biblical times is the very essence of chaos, disorder, and destruction. To enter the sea was to take one’s life in one’s hands. Which, as fishermen, the disciples would have done every day for their livelihood, but they would have done every day knowing the perils that awaited them, the very real chance that they may not return. This is also, of course, a time before GPS and electricity. So to enter into the sea at night, was to enter into a place of total darkness, total sensory deprivation. Maybe it was a clear night; maybe there were stars when they started out. But if a storm was to blow in, which, of course, we know one does, the clouds would block what little light there was, leaving no way of separating the sea from the sky.
Then Jesus said, “Let us go across to the other side.” So they got in a boat and went out onto the sea. Why would they do that? Why would they get in a boat and go into the sea? Was it because the boat was a great salvation from the terrors of the waves? Was the boat a metaphor for something? Was the boat a life lesson in how to trust? I don’t think so. I think they got in the boat because they needed to be on the other side of the sea, and a boat was the only way to get there. Sometimes, a boat is just a boat.
So they got in the boat and went out onto the sea. And Jesus went to sleep. This seems a little weird, but it was, I suppose, nighttime. While he was sleeping, a huge storm blew up. And the boat was being ravaged by the wind and the waves, and the disciples were yelling, and Jesus was just sleeping away. So they woke him up and they were like, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing!” This boat is going to sink, Jesus. And I know this doesn’t seem like a problem to you, but it is kind of a problem to us, and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of the storm, before we end up at the bottom of the sea. So Jesus got up and said, “Peace! Be still!” And the storm stopped. And here too is where we want to stop. We want to stop, or I should say, as a preacher I want to stop, and say, hey, look, Jesus calms the storms. Just let Jesus into your boat, and when storms rage, you can call out to Jesus, and he will calm the storms, and it will all be ok. But guess what, you know and I know that this is a nice thing to preach, but it doesn’t match up with the world we live in. Because sometimes Jesus is in our boat and we are calling out, and the storm is still raging. Faith, prayer, calling out to Jesus is not some magic good luck charm that makes storms go away. On any other week a sermon about how Jesus promises to calm storms would be trite and untrue, any of you who have grappled with illness or pain or grief or prejudice know this already. You know that sometimes we cry out and we don’t get answers. On any other week I would struggle to preach those words to you, knowing them to be hollow. But this week. This week when nine people were shot and killed in South Carolina, in a church, in Bible study, for the crime of being black, this week, preaching such weak words as Jesus calms the storms feels not just hollow but dangerous. If our black brothers and sisters are not safe even in their churches from the storms of racism and prejudice, storms that I in my privilege have contributed to brewing, to preach that Jesus will calm the storms that I have inflicted on my sisters and brothers is not only hollow but it is sin. Storms of racism, of poverty, of war, these storms are of human origin and it is not enough to tell each other that Jesus will calm these storms if we just pray hard enough. The Gospel tells us there were other boats in the water that evening, our actions have consequences that affect other people, and we must take responsibility for calming the storms of our own making.
Luckily, the Gospel does not leave us at “Jesus calms the storms.” Jesus said, “Peace! Be Still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. Think about the implication of that sentence. A dead calm. Last week, sitting in a friend’s basement listening to the tornado sirens cut through the heavy stillness, I longed for the storm to just come so that it would be over. The only thing scarier than the storm itself is the calm before. The storm I can rage against, the storm I can fight, in the fury of the storm, the disciples in our Gospel reading could struggle at the oars, fight the sails, bail and rush and work to keep the boat on course, stay upright amidst the waves. But in the calm there is nothing to do but wait. Wait for God to move, wait for the journey to end, wait to reach the other shore. Waiting, for me at least, is way more terrifying than the fury of any storm.
The disciples, I think, felt this same fear when they realized that the storm they had so feared had calmed, but the sea, the big, bold, uncertainty, that was really at the heart of their fear, still surrounded them, and there was nothing to do but wait. And Jesus then said to them, “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The promise in this story, then, has nothing to do with boats, or storms, or calm. The promise in this story is not that Jesus will calm the storm, or that Jesus is with us in our boats. That isn’t the promise, because that isn’t enough, and we know that, and Jesus knows that. The promise in this story is that there is another side. There is a way across the sea of chaos and fear and uncertainty. We will get there. Notice Jesus did not say to the disciples at the beginning of our Gospel reading, “YOU go across to the other side.” No, he said, “Let US go across to the other side.” The promise is that Jesus is leading us somewhere. Leading us to a new place we have to be, another shore for us to go. What happens in between here and there, storms or calm, Jesus calming or Jesus sleeping, Jesus is leading us through it. So often the good news is the journey, but in this story I think the good news is the destination, that whatever happens in the journey is secondary to the promise that there is a destination, there is another shore, there is another way, and somehow we will get there, because Jesus is leading us. And when we get to the other side, we will be changed by the journey. When our location changes, our perspectives change, we can see the world through new eyes. That’s how change works. Blogger Mandy Hale writes, “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
Sometimes a boat is just a boat. Sometimes the sea is just the sea. But through boats or seas, storms or calm, the promise we have in this story is that Jesus is leading us somewhere. And we will be changed by the journey. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Note: My thoughts on this text were heavily influenced by Dr. Karoline Lewis's article on Working Preacher, "The Other Side." You can read Dr. Lewis's article at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=3645.
Monday, June 15, 2015
The Kingdom of God: A Sermon on Mark 4:26-32
One of the humbling experiences of being a preacher is trying to preach on Jesus’ sermons. Jesus spends a lot of times in the Gospel preaching, and I find it a great to try and say something about Jesus’ words. Give me a healing story or a miraculous feeding or a boat trip any day, but no thank you to sermons about sermons. After all, if Jesus couldn’t make it clear, what hope do I possibly have?
This is doubly true for preaching on parables. That parables are unclear is actually intentional on Jesus part. We often think of parables in the same way we think of fables, as stories to teach a moral lesson. Like the tortoise and the hare, we look in the parables for which character we’re supposed to emulate and which one we’re not, and we try to line them up neat and tidy to draw out a nice, clean, straightforward lesson on how to live.
The problem with this method is Jesus doesn’t use parables to teach lessons. Jesus uses parables to approach truths, truths that are too big to understand in a straight lesson. And often, more than just being complex, the truths Jesus is getting at in parables are too challenging for us to want to understand. Jesus uses parables to confront us, to move us out of our comfort zones, and to see the world in a different light. To put it straight, parables are challenging to understand because they are meant to challenge our understanding.
I tell you all this as an introduction to this sermon on parables, but also as a bit of a confession. Because despite knowing all about how Jesus used parables, the very first thing I did when I read the text for this morning was to try and figure out who we are in the story. I wanted the parable to tell me, to tell us, how to act. And here’s what I came up with. So in the parable of the growing seed, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, and he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” So first I thought, maybe we’re the sower, and the seed is faith, and the harvest is good works or people coming to faith or something like that. So we sow seeds of faith in ourselves and in each other, and that faith grows, and we don’t really know how, but God does it, and then at the right time we harvest that faith and use it for the world. And that was a pretty good understanding, and I kind of liked it, but it felt short. Seemed a bit to ambitious to claim the role of the “someone” in the parable. So then I thought, maybe we’re the soil. Maybe, God does the sowing and the growing, and our job to be just the very best soil for God that we can possibly be. To fertilize with scripture or eating healthy food or being nice to each other or whatever, and to just be really really great at being soil. And that felt like a really great point, and it also felt like I totally missed the point. Because see, the temptation I fell into in both my attempts was to focus on what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to bring about the kingdom of God by my sowing or by my being great at taking care of myself or something. And here’s my experience with me, and maybe it’s your experience with you, I am great about thinking about what I am supposed to do, and not so great about doing it. I’m great about thinking about sowing seeds of faith in myself and in others, and not so great about actually doing it. And I’m super great about thinking of all the things I should do to take care of myself and learn and grow and be great soil for God to use, but all those shoulds in my life so often just end up with me paralyzed by feeling bad about how much I have failed at those things. How I have not gotten enough sleep or asked for help when I needed it or prayed enough or whatever. So if this parable is about what I’m supposed to do, then I’m left with nothing.
But remember what I said about parables earlier, they’re not metaphors. Somebody asked me recently how we tell what parts of the bible are metaphors. Whoever it was, here’s an answer for you, parables are not metaphors. I can’t break this down into a straight up comparison, this is this and that is that, despite my very faithful attempts to do that this week and wrap it up all nice and neat and hand it to you in a delightful sermon package. So here’s what I did come up with this week. Let’s call the remainder of this sermon some not metaphoric, but still sounding a bit like metaphors, wonderings about the nature of the kingdom of God.
In this first parable of the growing seed, Jesus said that the kingdom of God is someone, maybe God, maybe us, maybe someone else, scattering seed on the ground, and then somehow, the seed sprouts and grows and no one knows how it happened. Here’s what I don’t like about this. One) This someone could be anyone. The open-endedness of Jesus parable forces me to be open to the possibility that the someone scattering seed may not be me or Jesus. It may be someone I don’t like very much. Two) the kingdom of God is entirely out of my control. It says it right there in the parable, verse twenty-seven, the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. Friends, I want to know how the kingdom of God grows. I want to do my part, to be good soil, to scatter seed, to tend it well. Jesus parable says this kingdom of God thing is entirely out of our hands.
But here’s what I love about reading the parable this way. The kingdom of God is entirely out of my hands. Remember when I talked earlier about the anxiety all the shoulds bring me. About how hard I try to be good soil and how much it seems like I just can’t measure up. The kingdom of God does not depend on my ability to tend it. I find incredible freedom in that. It means I can scatter seeds, I can water crops, I can nurture and tend and harvest, and do my work with abundance, precisely because I am confident in the knowledge that because the work itself does not depend on me, I can’t screw it up! I don’t know about you, but for me, that really takes the pressure off! The kingdom of God does not depend on me. I get to be a part of it, yes. We know that from all the other things Jesus said about making disciples, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, bringing justice to the oppressed. We participate in the kingdom, this isn’t a stand back and watch pass. But we do those things knowing that in the end whether the mission succeeds or fails is not on us. And not even that the mission may succeed, but that the mission has succeeded, that the kingdom of God has won, past tense. Jesus already brought the kingdom of God through his death and resurrection, so what we are doing is participating in the unveiling of the already present kingdom of God.
And then there’s this second parable. Again, I thought about metaphors and how the tiny little mustard seed becomes this great plant that keeps the birds safe. And how my tiny little kernel of faith, when nurtured, becomes this towering fortress of God that, I don’t know what it does, hides birds. The metaphor breaks down here for me. But I was reading a blog by a theologian named David Lose, and he pointed out that mustard plant is not like a nice, tame shrub that sort of stays where we want it, like for example the bushes on the edge of the parking lot. They’ve gotten a little rangey with age, but for the most part they haven’t taken over the back lot. No, mustard plant is much more like the ivy in the front of the building. You maybe noticed this morning that the ivy is gone. We had the ivy removed because over the years it had worked its way into the wood and even into the bricks, and it was literally trying to pull down the building around us. And let me tell you what, the ivy did not want to come out. A group from the Burmese community were here all afternoon on Tuesday pulling and hacking at the stuff, and Doug and John went over it again with a Roto-tiller, and still I’m not convinced we’ve seen the last of the ivy. The kingdom of God is like that. It comes into the world and takes over, pulling down all that would keep us from God. Except that no matter how hard we try, how much roto-tilling and pulling and digging, there is nothing we can do to root the kingdom of God out of our lives, out of our world. If Jesus is making any analogy at all here, it is this one. The kingdom of God should probably come with a warning label, because when the kingdom of God gets into the world, it is invasive. And it will stop at nothing and it will not be stopped until it has accomplished its purpose, until all the world is drawn up into the love and the grace and the glorious reign of God.
And the bird sheltering thing. Where the mustard seed becomes a plant that shelters birds. Dr. Lose had a great point about that. We think about this as a cute woodland scene, with the birds all safely nestled in the tree. The problem with that is in most parables, the role of birds is to eat the seeds. The birds are not the good guys usually in the parables, the birds are the ones that come and sweep up the seeds and carry them away. They are the ones the parables warn us to watch out for. And yet, Jesus is talking about how the kingdom of God is like a destructive invasive species that offers grace and protection for even its enemies.
Friends, I think the point Jesus is making in these parables here is that the kingdom of God is crazy and out of control and out of our hands, and it will change us. It has changed us. The kingdom of God is like a handful of women who have next to nothing gathering around a kitchen table and realizing that together they have enough. The kingdom of God is like a little congregation without much money or many people realizing that they have an abundance of space and inviting that handful of women to set up shop in their Sunday school classrooms, and that handful of women becomes one of the most well-regarded non-profits in the community and hundreds of families lives are changed. And the little congregation sits back and wonders, wow, how did that happen! The kingdom of God is six Burmese young adults ripping out ivy to say thank you for the gift of a little water and soil, space to do the thing they love, space to grow the plants they remember from Burma, to fellowship, and to provide for their families. A gift that seemed so small, just the back lot we’re not using, but the kingdom of God transformed into more than we could possibly have given. The kingdom of God is showing up here every week, breaking bread together, drinking wine, hearing the word, praying and singing and experiencing God together.
The kingdom of God is up to something in this place, in this soil, in these seeds, with us. I don’t know what the harvest will look like, I don’t even know what’s planted or who’s doing the planting. But here’s what I know, here’s what I believe. The kingdom of God is loose in this place, it has changed us, it is changing us, and it will change us. Some days I like that, and some days, let’s be honest, I don’t. Some days that’s exciting, most days it’s downright terrifying. But I know that like the mustard growing into a shrub vast enough to shelter even the birds that would have devoured it, the kingdom of God always ends up bigger than my expectations. And we, thanks be to God, are along for the ride. Amen.
This is doubly true for preaching on parables. That parables are unclear is actually intentional on Jesus part. We often think of parables in the same way we think of fables, as stories to teach a moral lesson. Like the tortoise and the hare, we look in the parables for which character we’re supposed to emulate and which one we’re not, and we try to line them up neat and tidy to draw out a nice, clean, straightforward lesson on how to live.
The problem with this method is Jesus doesn’t use parables to teach lessons. Jesus uses parables to approach truths, truths that are too big to understand in a straight lesson. And often, more than just being complex, the truths Jesus is getting at in parables are too challenging for us to want to understand. Jesus uses parables to confront us, to move us out of our comfort zones, and to see the world in a different light. To put it straight, parables are challenging to understand because they are meant to challenge our understanding.
I tell you all this as an introduction to this sermon on parables, but also as a bit of a confession. Because despite knowing all about how Jesus used parables, the very first thing I did when I read the text for this morning was to try and figure out who we are in the story. I wanted the parable to tell me, to tell us, how to act. And here’s what I came up with. So in the parable of the growing seed, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, and he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” So first I thought, maybe we’re the sower, and the seed is faith, and the harvest is good works or people coming to faith or something like that. So we sow seeds of faith in ourselves and in each other, and that faith grows, and we don’t really know how, but God does it, and then at the right time we harvest that faith and use it for the world. And that was a pretty good understanding, and I kind of liked it, but it felt short. Seemed a bit to ambitious to claim the role of the “someone” in the parable. So then I thought, maybe we’re the soil. Maybe, God does the sowing and the growing, and our job to be just the very best soil for God that we can possibly be. To fertilize with scripture or eating healthy food or being nice to each other or whatever, and to just be really really great at being soil. And that felt like a really great point, and it also felt like I totally missed the point. Because see, the temptation I fell into in both my attempts was to focus on what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to bring about the kingdom of God by my sowing or by my being great at taking care of myself or something. And here’s my experience with me, and maybe it’s your experience with you, I am great about thinking about what I am supposed to do, and not so great about doing it. I’m great about thinking about sowing seeds of faith in myself and in others, and not so great about actually doing it. And I’m super great about thinking of all the things I should do to take care of myself and learn and grow and be great soil for God to use, but all those shoulds in my life so often just end up with me paralyzed by feeling bad about how much I have failed at those things. How I have not gotten enough sleep or asked for help when I needed it or prayed enough or whatever. So if this parable is about what I’m supposed to do, then I’m left with nothing.
But remember what I said about parables earlier, they’re not metaphors. Somebody asked me recently how we tell what parts of the bible are metaphors. Whoever it was, here’s an answer for you, parables are not metaphors. I can’t break this down into a straight up comparison, this is this and that is that, despite my very faithful attempts to do that this week and wrap it up all nice and neat and hand it to you in a delightful sermon package. So here’s what I did come up with this week. Let’s call the remainder of this sermon some not metaphoric, but still sounding a bit like metaphors, wonderings about the nature of the kingdom of God.
In this first parable of the growing seed, Jesus said that the kingdom of God is someone, maybe God, maybe us, maybe someone else, scattering seed on the ground, and then somehow, the seed sprouts and grows and no one knows how it happened. Here’s what I don’t like about this. One) This someone could be anyone. The open-endedness of Jesus parable forces me to be open to the possibility that the someone scattering seed may not be me or Jesus. It may be someone I don’t like very much. Two) the kingdom of God is entirely out of my control. It says it right there in the parable, verse twenty-seven, the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. Friends, I want to know how the kingdom of God grows. I want to do my part, to be good soil, to scatter seed, to tend it well. Jesus parable says this kingdom of God thing is entirely out of our hands.
But here’s what I love about reading the parable this way. The kingdom of God is entirely out of my hands. Remember when I talked earlier about the anxiety all the shoulds bring me. About how hard I try to be good soil and how much it seems like I just can’t measure up. The kingdom of God does not depend on my ability to tend it. I find incredible freedom in that. It means I can scatter seeds, I can water crops, I can nurture and tend and harvest, and do my work with abundance, precisely because I am confident in the knowledge that because the work itself does not depend on me, I can’t screw it up! I don’t know about you, but for me, that really takes the pressure off! The kingdom of God does not depend on me. I get to be a part of it, yes. We know that from all the other things Jesus said about making disciples, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, bringing justice to the oppressed. We participate in the kingdom, this isn’t a stand back and watch pass. But we do those things knowing that in the end whether the mission succeeds or fails is not on us. And not even that the mission may succeed, but that the mission has succeeded, that the kingdom of God has won, past tense. Jesus already brought the kingdom of God through his death and resurrection, so what we are doing is participating in the unveiling of the already present kingdom of God.
And then there’s this second parable. Again, I thought about metaphors and how the tiny little mustard seed becomes this great plant that keeps the birds safe. And how my tiny little kernel of faith, when nurtured, becomes this towering fortress of God that, I don’t know what it does, hides birds. The metaphor breaks down here for me. But I was reading a blog by a theologian named David Lose, and he pointed out that mustard plant is not like a nice, tame shrub that sort of stays where we want it, like for example the bushes on the edge of the parking lot. They’ve gotten a little rangey with age, but for the most part they haven’t taken over the back lot. No, mustard plant is much more like the ivy in the front of the building. You maybe noticed this morning that the ivy is gone. We had the ivy removed because over the years it had worked its way into the wood and even into the bricks, and it was literally trying to pull down the building around us. And let me tell you what, the ivy did not want to come out. A group from the Burmese community were here all afternoon on Tuesday pulling and hacking at the stuff, and Doug and John went over it again with a Roto-tiller, and still I’m not convinced we’ve seen the last of the ivy. The kingdom of God is like that. It comes into the world and takes over, pulling down all that would keep us from God. Except that no matter how hard we try, how much roto-tilling and pulling and digging, there is nothing we can do to root the kingdom of God out of our lives, out of our world. If Jesus is making any analogy at all here, it is this one. The kingdom of God should probably come with a warning label, because when the kingdom of God gets into the world, it is invasive. And it will stop at nothing and it will not be stopped until it has accomplished its purpose, until all the world is drawn up into the love and the grace and the glorious reign of God.
And the bird sheltering thing. Where the mustard seed becomes a plant that shelters birds. Dr. Lose had a great point about that. We think about this as a cute woodland scene, with the birds all safely nestled in the tree. The problem with that is in most parables, the role of birds is to eat the seeds. The birds are not the good guys usually in the parables, the birds are the ones that come and sweep up the seeds and carry them away. They are the ones the parables warn us to watch out for. And yet, Jesus is talking about how the kingdom of God is like a destructive invasive species that offers grace and protection for even its enemies.
Friends, I think the point Jesus is making in these parables here is that the kingdom of God is crazy and out of control and out of our hands, and it will change us. It has changed us. The kingdom of God is like a handful of women who have next to nothing gathering around a kitchen table and realizing that together they have enough. The kingdom of God is like a little congregation without much money or many people realizing that they have an abundance of space and inviting that handful of women to set up shop in their Sunday school classrooms, and that handful of women becomes one of the most well-regarded non-profits in the community and hundreds of families lives are changed. And the little congregation sits back and wonders, wow, how did that happen! The kingdom of God is six Burmese young adults ripping out ivy to say thank you for the gift of a little water and soil, space to do the thing they love, space to grow the plants they remember from Burma, to fellowship, and to provide for their families. A gift that seemed so small, just the back lot we’re not using, but the kingdom of God transformed into more than we could possibly have given. The kingdom of God is showing up here every week, breaking bread together, drinking wine, hearing the word, praying and singing and experiencing God together.
The kingdom of God is up to something in this place, in this soil, in these seeds, with us. I don’t know what the harvest will look like, I don’t even know what’s planted or who’s doing the planting. But here’s what I know, here’s what I believe. The kingdom of God is loose in this place, it has changed us, it is changing us, and it will change us. Some days I like that, and some days, let’s be honest, I don’t. Some days that’s exciting, most days it’s downright terrifying. But I know that like the mustard growing into a shrub vast enough to shelter even the birds that would have devoured it, the kingdom of God always ends up bigger than my expectations. And we, thanks be to God, are along for the ride. Amen.
Monday, June 1, 2015
A Sermon for Trinity Lutheran Church on Trinity Sunday
Happy Trinity Sunday! It’s our day, folks. The day that we celebrate the theological doctrine for which our church was named. I wanted to open the sermon this morning by talking about why we are called Trinity, and make some sort of connection between that decision and who we are. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out why we are called Trinity. I did learn from the 75th anniversary book that the congregation was originally called St. Paul’s. This apparently caused some confusion owing to the fact that there were two St. Paul’s Lutheran churches in Battle Creek, this one and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod on Capital Ave. North East. So in 1942, the congregation decided to change the name of the church to Trinity, in order to be more distinct I suppose, the book did not go into great detail on the name change. At any rate, there went my witty and engaging sermon opener.
Whatever the reasons for choosing the name, Trinity is, I think, a good name for a church, for reasons I’ll get to later, but a strange name for a church holiday. Trinity Sunday is one of the only days in the church year dedicated to celebrating an idea. Every other church feast day celebrates an event, like Pentecost, Christmas, Easter, even the less well known ones, that don’t always get their own Sunday, like Ascension, the day Jesus ascended into heaven or Annunciation, when the angel appeared to Mary and announced she would have a child, all these days celebrate a thing that happened. Even if the thing is a strange thing, like the ascension, it was at least a thing that was seen and felt and experienced. We also have a lot of feast days to celebrate people. St. Peter day, St. Paul, Martin Luther’s birthday. We don’t celebrate a lot of the saint days here, but my internship had a weeknight service that frequently celebrated saint days. And let me tell you, as the intern who drew the short straw on the preaching assignments, there are a lot of saint days, and some of them are weird.
But even a day set aside to celebrate St. Bernadine of Siena, the patron saint of hoarseness—who knew that mild throat discomfort needed its own day—at least there again we are given something to see, something to connect to. On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate a theological concept. And not just any theological concept, we celebrate the one that theologians have cherished in struggling with and fighting over for millennia, the question of what it means that we proclaim a one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One equals three, three equals one, it’s like the celebration of bad math day. So heated do our struggles over Trinitarian theology become that literal wars have been fought over it. And early. No sooner had the Roman Empire converted to Christianity then Constantine had to call a council to settle the question of how one God could be three. The result of the council was the Nicean Creed, that longer, more poetic version of the Apostle’s Creed that we frequently use at Easter and some feast days. Unfortunately, even this did not settle the issue. Some bishops signed on to the creed, others refused and were exiled, the church tried again a few years later with the longer and even more confusing Athanasian Creed, which we almost never use in worship because it is very very long. Before I get too swept up in the history of the early church, I think it is enough to say that the trinity is high on the list of things that Christian theologians love to fight about.
Truth be told, I think it’s good that we struggle with the trinity. I think it’s good for a couple of reasons. One, because at the heart of these debates is the essential question of who God is. And it turns out that words matter, that language matters, that the ways we describe God to in fact impact the ways we experience God. So it’s important that we talk about it, think about it, work through language around the nature of God. It’s important to challenge ideas that fall short and refresh metaphors that once fit but have grown small and tired with overuse. When we stop discussing, struggling, questioning, and yes, even fighting, that is when faith becomes distant and old, when we stop being able to experience God coming anew in our lives.
Another reason I think it’s good that we struggle with the trinity is because it reminds us that the trinity is bigger than the words we try to hang off it, that God is beyond our comprehension. Our inability to tie up the trinity in a tidy theological explanation reminds us that we worship a God who will not be contained by our ideas of God, but is instead always just beyond our grasp, drawing us constantly into new and deeper understandings of the beauty and majesty of God’s glorious unveiling. And because God is vast. Because God is beyond our comprehension, beyond our knowing, we need each other. We need each other to see God more fully. Each of us carries for the other a part of the divine mystery, and only through the gathered community can we get a glimpse of the wholeness of God. The incredible complexity of the trinity reminds us that God is too marvelous for us. But in questions and wonderings, each of us carry a piece of the puzzle, and in questioning and wondering and marveling together, we come to know more than we could ever know alone. The gathered community not only unveils wisdom, it also has the capacity to hold wisdom. There are days and times, periods of faith where the wonder of God seems far away. When we are grounded by the daily toil, swept off by crisis, or held under by illness, grief, or fear, when God seems distant and faraway and out of touch with the experience of life on this dusty planet. And it is in those distant times, when doubts overwhelm us, that the gathered community holds for us the mystery of faith. It is why we worship together. The ebb and flow of hymns and scriptures, words and actions, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles Creed, eating bread and drinking wine, confessing sins and receiving forgiveness, we do these things every Sunday trusting that every Sunday there are some among us who cannot do those things in faith, who are simply going through the motions. And so the rest of us carry on the load of worship, singing songs, saying prayers, breaking bread and joining in fellowship, holding space for each other until we learn to worship again.
This questioning together, learning together, walking together and holding space for each other is in fact the very nature of what the trinity is. In the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we see the perfection of Christian community, and through the divine mystery of three things that are one thing, we are drawn into this dance of relationship, becoming a part of the one, and made into one thing ourselves, the community and kingdom of God.
All this to say, for whatever reason it was chosen, I think Trinity, in all its nuanced complexity, is an excellent name for a church. Because the church, like the trinity, is bigger than anything we can bring ourselves. It is power and glory, relationship and struggle, and yes, often a few tooth and nail fights, the sort of fights you only have with people you love, the sort of fights that on good days help us to see things in a new way, so that each of us come out the other side stronger and better for having gone through it.
And so, on this day in which we celebrate the divine mystery, let us remember that God is bigger than our words and beyond our comprehension, and that God, in God’s vast and beautiful wisdom, gave us to each other, so that through each other we might come to know the love of God who is love beyond all knowing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Whatever the reasons for choosing the name, Trinity is, I think, a good name for a church, for reasons I’ll get to later, but a strange name for a church holiday. Trinity Sunday is one of the only days in the church year dedicated to celebrating an idea. Every other church feast day celebrates an event, like Pentecost, Christmas, Easter, even the less well known ones, that don’t always get their own Sunday, like Ascension, the day Jesus ascended into heaven or Annunciation, when the angel appeared to Mary and announced she would have a child, all these days celebrate a thing that happened. Even if the thing is a strange thing, like the ascension, it was at least a thing that was seen and felt and experienced. We also have a lot of feast days to celebrate people. St. Peter day, St. Paul, Martin Luther’s birthday. We don’t celebrate a lot of the saint days here, but my internship had a weeknight service that frequently celebrated saint days. And let me tell you, as the intern who drew the short straw on the preaching assignments, there are a lot of saint days, and some of them are weird.
But even a day set aside to celebrate St. Bernadine of Siena, the patron saint of hoarseness—who knew that mild throat discomfort needed its own day—at least there again we are given something to see, something to connect to. On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate a theological concept. And not just any theological concept, we celebrate the one that theologians have cherished in struggling with and fighting over for millennia, the question of what it means that we proclaim a one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One equals three, three equals one, it’s like the celebration of bad math day. So heated do our struggles over Trinitarian theology become that literal wars have been fought over it. And early. No sooner had the Roman Empire converted to Christianity then Constantine had to call a council to settle the question of how one God could be three. The result of the council was the Nicean Creed, that longer, more poetic version of the Apostle’s Creed that we frequently use at Easter and some feast days. Unfortunately, even this did not settle the issue. Some bishops signed on to the creed, others refused and were exiled, the church tried again a few years later with the longer and even more confusing Athanasian Creed, which we almost never use in worship because it is very very long. Before I get too swept up in the history of the early church, I think it is enough to say that the trinity is high on the list of things that Christian theologians love to fight about.
Truth be told, I think it’s good that we struggle with the trinity. I think it’s good for a couple of reasons. One, because at the heart of these debates is the essential question of who God is. And it turns out that words matter, that language matters, that the ways we describe God to in fact impact the ways we experience God. So it’s important that we talk about it, think about it, work through language around the nature of God. It’s important to challenge ideas that fall short and refresh metaphors that once fit but have grown small and tired with overuse. When we stop discussing, struggling, questioning, and yes, even fighting, that is when faith becomes distant and old, when we stop being able to experience God coming anew in our lives.
Another reason I think it’s good that we struggle with the trinity is because it reminds us that the trinity is bigger than the words we try to hang off it, that God is beyond our comprehension. Our inability to tie up the trinity in a tidy theological explanation reminds us that we worship a God who will not be contained by our ideas of God, but is instead always just beyond our grasp, drawing us constantly into new and deeper understandings of the beauty and majesty of God’s glorious unveiling. And because God is vast. Because God is beyond our comprehension, beyond our knowing, we need each other. We need each other to see God more fully. Each of us carries for the other a part of the divine mystery, and only through the gathered community can we get a glimpse of the wholeness of God. The incredible complexity of the trinity reminds us that God is too marvelous for us. But in questions and wonderings, each of us carry a piece of the puzzle, and in questioning and wondering and marveling together, we come to know more than we could ever know alone. The gathered community not only unveils wisdom, it also has the capacity to hold wisdom. There are days and times, periods of faith where the wonder of God seems far away. When we are grounded by the daily toil, swept off by crisis, or held under by illness, grief, or fear, when God seems distant and faraway and out of touch with the experience of life on this dusty planet. And it is in those distant times, when doubts overwhelm us, that the gathered community holds for us the mystery of faith. It is why we worship together. The ebb and flow of hymns and scriptures, words and actions, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles Creed, eating bread and drinking wine, confessing sins and receiving forgiveness, we do these things every Sunday trusting that every Sunday there are some among us who cannot do those things in faith, who are simply going through the motions. And so the rest of us carry on the load of worship, singing songs, saying prayers, breaking bread and joining in fellowship, holding space for each other until we learn to worship again.
This questioning together, learning together, walking together and holding space for each other is in fact the very nature of what the trinity is. In the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we see the perfection of Christian community, and through the divine mystery of three things that are one thing, we are drawn into this dance of relationship, becoming a part of the one, and made into one thing ourselves, the community and kingdom of God.
All this to say, for whatever reason it was chosen, I think Trinity, in all its nuanced complexity, is an excellent name for a church. Because the church, like the trinity, is bigger than anything we can bring ourselves. It is power and glory, relationship and struggle, and yes, often a few tooth and nail fights, the sort of fights you only have with people you love, the sort of fights that on good days help us to see things in a new way, so that each of us come out the other side stronger and better for having gone through it.
And so, on this day in which we celebrate the divine mystery, let us remember that God is bigger than our words and beyond our comprehension, and that God, in God’s vast and beautiful wisdom, gave us to each other, so that through each other we might come to know the love of God who is love beyond all knowing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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