“John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’” This morning our Gospel reading seems to find the hapless disciples engaged in divine tattle tailing. “We saw someone…” I grew up with a sibling; I am all too familiar being on both the giving and the receiving end of that line. “We saw someone…”
As a kid it was always super frustrating when I would get in trouble for this line, because obviously, what I was reporting was something worth knowing. Surely my parents wanted my keen observations on all of the things my brother was doing that he was not supposed to. Certainly I was just trying to be helpful in pointing out the things that they couldn’t see.
But, shockingly, my parents never saw it that way. As the older child, if said incident was dangerous, there was some expectation that I should stop it. And if it wasn’t, then they seemed to feel that the best plan was for me to ignore it. They seemed to feel it really wasn’t any of my business what trouble my brother was getting into. His actions, for good or for bad, were their responsibility, not mine, and they did not need or want my help in raising my brother.
Jesus, it seems, also does not need the disciples help in policing workers for his mission. And actually, there’s an even deeper level of irony in John’s comment to Jesus this morning. So, this is Mark nine, verse thirty-eight, but listen to this story from just twenty verses earlier, Mark nine, verse eighteen. A man brought his son to Jesus saying, “Teacher, I brought you my son, he has a spirit…I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” John is calling out someone for doing something in the name of Jesus that he himself could not do. It’s not like the guy has even done anything wrong. This would be like me complaining to my parents that my little brother had done my math homework for me.
Of course, John’s not concerned just because the guy’s casting out demons that John himself could not cast out—though, let’s be honest, pride is probably part of the problem here—John’s concerned because he doesn’t know who this guy is or whether he can be trusted. I mean, he’s not one of us, after all. Sure, right now it’s all ok, but what could happen in the future. What sort of trouble could this outsider cause?
We human beings are notoriously wary of outsiders. We have actually evolved to be that way, to trust people from our own group, who look like us, think like us, act like us, believe like us. This was a trait that served us well on the African savannah, where the thing that didn’t look like us could very possibly be a lion wanting to eat us. But our evolutionary tendency to prefer sameness is actually a hindrance to us now, and a hindrance to the spreading of God’s love. And that’s the problem Jesus pointed out to John in our Gospel text this morning. “Don’t stop him,” Jesus said. “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Whoever is not against us is for us. That is a great sound bite. It sounds very noble and open-hearted and wise. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels even more unfair then why I should get in trouble for calling out my brother. I mean, think of it this way. Say we have a pie. No, say I have a pie. A whole pie. It’s delicious, it’s, I don’t know, pick your favorite type of pie. And then you come along. And you’re not trying to steal my pie. You’re not going to throw the pie in my face. You’re for me, you’re on my team. But now, I have to share with you my pie. So now, even though we’re on the same team, I only have half a pie. And even though we haven’t lost any pie and we’ve gained each other, it kind of feels like I’m losing. And I think that’s the disciples concern here. They are the disciples. They have Jesus full and complete attention. And then this interloper comes in and he’s casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and suddenly they have to share Jesus with someone else. So sure, demons are being cast out, and that’s great, but now there’s not as much of Jesus to go around.
I think we tend to view life this way. We live in a world driven by a fear of scarcity. As if it is some zero-sum game where if you have enough than I must not, so the only way for me to be ok is if I take it from you. This isn’t our fault, we’ve been trained, our culture has taught us that this is the way the world works. But guess what friends, this isn’t the way the world works. It’s not the way the world works, because it’s not the way that God works. God is not a zero-sum game, God is exponential expansion. God is I have a pie and you come and you bring a pie, and suddenly because this seems to be the way with potlucks, the freezer is full of pies. God is wherever two or three are gathered, there God is also. God is five loaves and two fish become a meal for the multitudes. God is eleven out-of-work fishermen start a movement that now counts two billion people. God is even death is not death, because three days after Jesus died he rose again, how’s that for abundance. Abundant life burst forth from the tomb.
This multiplication trick of God’s economy isn’t restricted to the Bible either. I mean, think of it in practice in our community. The world’s economy says the women of the Co-op can’t share because they already don’t have enough as it is. If they give away what they have, they will have nothing. But we see in God’s economy that by sharing what they have, they also get what they need, and everyone has enough. The world’s economy says we shouldn’t partner with St. Peter’s, because there’s only so many Lutherans in Battle Creek, and if we work together, there might not be enough. But at our Easter Vigil, we had exponentially more than we ever would have had if either congregation had tried on our own. The world’s economy may even say that we as a congregation shouldn’t exist. There’s only a handful of us, what value do we possibly add. But God’s economy says here’s a congregation that gives housing to the Co-op and Creating Change, that speaks out against economic injustice, that bought fourteen pigs for families in need. Here’s a congregation that wants its neighbors and everyone who comes through its door to know that they are loved and valued and precious in God’s economy, even as the world says they are not. It is a value system that we live out with our very existence in this neighborhood. By staying in Post-Franklin when so many others have fled, despite the very real possibility that we would do better economically in a more prosperous area, we are living out this promise that God’s economy works different from the world, and that God’s grace is most abundantly clear in the places and ways the world has chosen to ignore.
Of course, there’s challenge in this too. Because, if God’s economy is so much bigger and grander and more expansive than us, that means that sometimes God’s work is being done by people who are not like us, maybe even in ways we do not trust, maybe even by people we do not like. Today’s Gospel forces us to accept the fact that we cannot control where God might chose to act. But in fact God’s work may be done in the world in ways we wouldn’t do it by people we can’t keep tabs on. This means that the guy at the community meeting that won’t stop talking may have a good idea. That the hymn you can’t stand is probably somebody’s favorite. What feels like a waste of time might be the project someone else needs to be doing. It means we won’t always agree, and in fact it might be in our disagreements that God is choosing to work. We tend to want to harken back to a day when all Christians agreed with each other and everyone was on the same page, but there never was such a day, because the church is made up of people. Even the disciples bickered. Just last week they were fighting over who was the greatest.
Which, I think even that to a certain extent is OK, because think how boring and uncreative our faith would be if we all thought the same. Think about how little we’d get done if we all had the same ideas. The man casting out demons in the Gospel today was doing work that John could not, and Christ’s ministry was the better for it. Jesus ended his teaching to the disciples this morning not with a call to uniformity, but with the command to have salt. Salt is an interesting seasoning because its purpose is not to have its own flavor, but to heighten other flavors. We use salt to enhance how something tastes, to make the flavors pop, to bring out the brightness and the richness in a dish. So too do our diversities bring out the brightness and the richness of the kingdom of God. By working with others who are not like us we can find our own lives renewed, our own ideas refreshed, our own saltiness restored. And we too can do that restoring for others. So let us rejoice in the amazing multitude of ways that God is at work in this world, through us and through others. And let us be challenged, amazed, and renewed at a God so vast that God’s power would show up in such a diverse multitude of places. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
Yes, Jesus Loves Me: A Sermon on Mark 9:30-37
This morning for the hymn of the day we are going to see one of the great old Sunday school classics, “Jesus Loves Me.” This song has a really special place in my heart because it was one of my grandmother’s favorite songs. Later in her life, as dementia took a stronger hold and she lost more and more of who she was, one thing she held onto was Jesus Loves Me. She used it as a self-soothing tool, singing it quietly to herself every night as she went to sleep. I remember sitting in the front room of her small apartment with the home health aide, listening to her sleepy voice over the baby monitor, singing the refrain of “yes, Jesus loves me” followed by her traditional sign-off, “Good night, sleep tight, I love you very very very very much.”
The song also became a bit of a family joke. Since it was her traditional good night song, it wasn’t long until it became the way she would indicate she wanted to take a nap. We’d be sitting around in the afternoon and if Nana started singing, “Jesus Loves Me,” you knew that was your not-so-subtle hint that she was ready for you to go. In those instances the number of verys in her sign-off indicated how serious she was about the proposition. The first round she would love you very much, but for each additional round, she’d add a very, her voice ever so slightly edging up in frustration at your continued presence. We didn’t always leave at the singing, as a good Swedish Lutheran, she could usually be distracted from her desire for a nap by the offer of a cup of coffee. At her funeral, we drank coffee and sang Jesus Loves Me.
My grandmother hung on to Jesus Loves Me long after all her other touch points to faith were gone. I remember one afternoon when a woman from my grandmother’s church came to bring her communion. My grandmother listened along, even repeating the words she knew so well, “on the night in which he was betrayed…” When Mary paused for a breath, my grandmother piped up, “who said this?” Mary responded, “Jesus, Jesus said this.” “Oh,” my grandmother paused, reflectively. “He sounds like a really nice young man.” Mary agreed that, yes, Jesus was a very nice young man. And then Mary began the Lord’s Prayer and my grandmother, who couldn’t remember who Jesus was, repeated every word of the prayer she held not in her mind, but in her heart.
One of the themes of the Gospel reading this morning is the nature of faith. That’s kind of what Jesus was getting at when he asked his disciples, “what were you arguing about back there?” Karoline Lewis points out that what the NRSV translated as “argue” can also mean “discuss, consider, reason, ponder.” Rather than offering the disciples a corrective on their clearly-wrongheaded discussion about who was the greatest, Jesus instead invited them into further conversation on the nature of faith, of what it meant to be one who journeyed with Jesus.
But what is the nature of faith. So much of what passes for preaching these days tries to make faith a decision. “Have you made a decision for Jesus yet?” “Have you welcomed Jesus into your heart?” Friends, I’m a pastor and there are days I can’t make a decision for 1 percent or 2 percent milk, let alone my eternal salvation. Decision theology makes it sound so cut and dry, like I can just find the magical door in my heart that I can open and Jesus comes strolling on in and I never again question, or wonder, or have doubts or confusion. But here’s the truth, milk is the least of my concerns. Every year I hear the story Jesus told the disciples, about how “the Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” And I believe it to be true. I know it in my soul that resurrection comes through death on a cross. I have experienced the truth of this resurrection hope in my life and it is the only way I can possibly make sense of the world. But there are days when if pressed I too, like the disciples, do not understand what he was saying and would be afraid to ask him.
They traveled along further and when they came to Capuernaum, they entered a house, and Jesus brought up the conversation on the road. “What were you arguing about on the way?” After the conversation about Jesus’ death and resurrection had ended they’d moved on to other topics, namely, who among them was the greatest. So Jesus again asked them a question and again they were silent. Again, they did not know what to say. Like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the disciples were caught boasting in a faith they didn’t understand.
But Jesus didn’t chastise them. Instead, he called them together around a little child. And he told them, “whoever wants to be first must be last” and “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
Faith is not intellectual assent. It is not understanding or getting it right or having all the answers. Faith is welcome. Faith is leaning into the questions you cannot understand. And faith, most importantly, is a journey led by Jesus. As they traveled through Galilee, listening to Jesus teach words they didn’t understand the disciples didn’t know that the very steps they were taking were making Jesus’ words come to fulfillment. In their walking and their talking, their arguing and yes even their confused and embarrassed silence, they were being swept up in God’s divine story of salvation. They were becoming God’s kingdom come on earth.
In my grandmother I saw the promise of a life of faith. Not because she could tell me about Jesus, but because she couldn’t. For my grandmother, faith was no longer an intellectual pursuit; it was a lived experience. My grandmother could not testify to her faith. She could not tell you her name, let alone give any sort of explanation of Jesus. The promises made to her in faith were carried for her in places and people too deep for memory. They were in murmured whispers of the Lord’s Prayer, and declarations of Jesus as “a nice young man.” They were in the church community who sang Jesus Loves Me when her voice failed, and in the pastor who proclaimed ashes to ashes, dust to dust at her graveside. Faith, Jesus demonstrated to us and to the disciples in our gospel reading for this morning, is not found in being able to answer questions, it is found in the journey. It is found in walking along, sometimes not understanding, sometimes misunderstanding, sometimes fighting over the wrong thing all together, but still journeying. Still walking along the path, in fits and starts, alongside the one who holds all understanding.
This morning we celebrate as Leah begins this walk of faith. And in the baptism of children, I think we see this beautiful, clear example of faith as God’s doing. Because Leah, like my grandmother, like the disciples, and even, some days, like us, cannot make a decision for Jesus. Leah is not choosing baptism this morning. In fact, there will probably be times in her life when she will not believe, when she will question the events of this day. But in these waters we know that God is choosing Leah. That God is naming Leah as a precious child of God and God is claiming Leah as God’s own. Not because of anything Leah or Janelle or Robert are doing, but because of what God has done through Christ for us. And the promise God makes to Leah this morning will be true for the rest of Leah’s life. For the times she totally understands, and the times when, like the disciples, she doesn’t understand, or she is afraid or embarrassed or confused. God promises this day to be with Leah through all of those times, faithfully and truthfully, forever.
The baptism of infants reminds us that those same promises are true for us as well. That our status as children of God does not depend on our ability to understand it, but on God’s promise to journey with us forever. Because, as the song reminds us, Jesus loves us. The Bible tells us so. Amen.
The song also became a bit of a family joke. Since it was her traditional good night song, it wasn’t long until it became the way she would indicate she wanted to take a nap. We’d be sitting around in the afternoon and if Nana started singing, “Jesus Loves Me,” you knew that was your not-so-subtle hint that she was ready for you to go. In those instances the number of verys in her sign-off indicated how serious she was about the proposition. The first round she would love you very much, but for each additional round, she’d add a very, her voice ever so slightly edging up in frustration at your continued presence. We didn’t always leave at the singing, as a good Swedish Lutheran, she could usually be distracted from her desire for a nap by the offer of a cup of coffee. At her funeral, we drank coffee and sang Jesus Loves Me.
My grandmother hung on to Jesus Loves Me long after all her other touch points to faith were gone. I remember one afternoon when a woman from my grandmother’s church came to bring her communion. My grandmother listened along, even repeating the words she knew so well, “on the night in which he was betrayed…” When Mary paused for a breath, my grandmother piped up, “who said this?” Mary responded, “Jesus, Jesus said this.” “Oh,” my grandmother paused, reflectively. “He sounds like a really nice young man.” Mary agreed that, yes, Jesus was a very nice young man. And then Mary began the Lord’s Prayer and my grandmother, who couldn’t remember who Jesus was, repeated every word of the prayer she held not in her mind, but in her heart.
One of the themes of the Gospel reading this morning is the nature of faith. That’s kind of what Jesus was getting at when he asked his disciples, “what were you arguing about back there?” Karoline Lewis points out that what the NRSV translated as “argue” can also mean “discuss, consider, reason, ponder.” Rather than offering the disciples a corrective on their clearly-wrongheaded discussion about who was the greatest, Jesus instead invited them into further conversation on the nature of faith, of what it meant to be one who journeyed with Jesus.
But what is the nature of faith. So much of what passes for preaching these days tries to make faith a decision. “Have you made a decision for Jesus yet?” “Have you welcomed Jesus into your heart?” Friends, I’m a pastor and there are days I can’t make a decision for 1 percent or 2 percent milk, let alone my eternal salvation. Decision theology makes it sound so cut and dry, like I can just find the magical door in my heart that I can open and Jesus comes strolling on in and I never again question, or wonder, or have doubts or confusion. But here’s the truth, milk is the least of my concerns. Every year I hear the story Jesus told the disciples, about how “the Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” And I believe it to be true. I know it in my soul that resurrection comes through death on a cross. I have experienced the truth of this resurrection hope in my life and it is the only way I can possibly make sense of the world. But there are days when if pressed I too, like the disciples, do not understand what he was saying and would be afraid to ask him.
They traveled along further and when they came to Capuernaum, they entered a house, and Jesus brought up the conversation on the road. “What were you arguing about on the way?” After the conversation about Jesus’ death and resurrection had ended they’d moved on to other topics, namely, who among them was the greatest. So Jesus again asked them a question and again they were silent. Again, they did not know what to say. Like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the disciples were caught boasting in a faith they didn’t understand.
But Jesus didn’t chastise them. Instead, he called them together around a little child. And he told them, “whoever wants to be first must be last” and “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
Faith is not intellectual assent. It is not understanding or getting it right or having all the answers. Faith is welcome. Faith is leaning into the questions you cannot understand. And faith, most importantly, is a journey led by Jesus. As they traveled through Galilee, listening to Jesus teach words they didn’t understand the disciples didn’t know that the very steps they were taking were making Jesus’ words come to fulfillment. In their walking and their talking, their arguing and yes even their confused and embarrassed silence, they were being swept up in God’s divine story of salvation. They were becoming God’s kingdom come on earth.
In my grandmother I saw the promise of a life of faith. Not because she could tell me about Jesus, but because she couldn’t. For my grandmother, faith was no longer an intellectual pursuit; it was a lived experience. My grandmother could not testify to her faith. She could not tell you her name, let alone give any sort of explanation of Jesus. The promises made to her in faith were carried for her in places and people too deep for memory. They were in murmured whispers of the Lord’s Prayer, and declarations of Jesus as “a nice young man.” They were in the church community who sang Jesus Loves Me when her voice failed, and in the pastor who proclaimed ashes to ashes, dust to dust at her graveside. Faith, Jesus demonstrated to us and to the disciples in our gospel reading for this morning, is not found in being able to answer questions, it is found in the journey. It is found in walking along, sometimes not understanding, sometimes misunderstanding, sometimes fighting over the wrong thing all together, but still journeying. Still walking along the path, in fits and starts, alongside the one who holds all understanding.
This morning we celebrate as Leah begins this walk of faith. And in the baptism of children, I think we see this beautiful, clear example of faith as God’s doing. Because Leah, like my grandmother, like the disciples, and even, some days, like us, cannot make a decision for Jesus. Leah is not choosing baptism this morning. In fact, there will probably be times in her life when she will not believe, when she will question the events of this day. But in these waters we know that God is choosing Leah. That God is naming Leah as a precious child of God and God is claiming Leah as God’s own. Not because of anything Leah or Janelle or Robert are doing, but because of what God has done through Christ for us. And the promise God makes to Leah this morning will be true for the rest of Leah’s life. For the times she totally understands, and the times when, like the disciples, she doesn’t understand, or she is afraid or embarrassed or confused. God promises this day to be with Leah through all of those times, faithfully and truthfully, forever.
The baptism of infants reminds us that those same promises are true for us as well. That our status as children of God does not depend on our ability to understand it, but on God’s promise to journey with us forever. Because, as the song reminds us, Jesus loves us. The Bible tells us so. Amen.
Monday, September 14, 2015
I Wouldn't Have Picked this Text: A Sermon on Mark 7:24-37
Wow, this is a rough text this morning. These are the weeks I wish I was not a lectionary preacher. I felt it last week but even more strongly this morning, I am not ready for this abrupt jump back into the heat of Mark. After five long weeks pondering one speech of Jesus, the fast-paced, abruptness of the Markan narrative feels harsh and abrasive. Just about every reading from here to the end of the year will start “then he went, then they traveled, when they arrived,” etc. Jesus is on the move in Mark’s Gospel, and the best we can do is hold on for the ride.
This constant travel is tiring, and this morning we encounter a Jesus who is tired. He’d just finished scolding the Pharisees for their manipulation of the law, and now he set out to go to Tyre to get away from the crowds for a bit, to take a break. The text tells us he entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But the crowds found him anyway and a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit came, bowed down at his feet, and begged for healing. Even on vacation, Jesus cannot catch a break. And on top of that, the woman was not even a Jew; she was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She was not a part of Jesus’ direct mandate to the people of Israel.
But all of this justification still doesn’t explain what happened next. The woman came and knelt at Jesus feet and begged for healing for her daughter, and Jesus sent her away. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” I read a lot of commentaries this week, trying to make sense of this sentence, and let me tell you what, there’s no easy way to make sense of these words. There were a couple attempts to make a plea for economic justice, the Jews were the farmers of the region, whose food was often taken and given to the wealthy, or there were efforts to soften the word “dogs.” Well, he meant like a joke, like with a twinkle in his eye, or like a house pet, like a puppy. But, really, that’s not what that means, and softening it doesn’t make it better. Most commentaries don’t even make an attempt to explain it. “Jesus gets caught with his compassion down,” one quipped.
And as both a preacher and a person of faith, I don’t know what to do with this text. I don’t know what to do with this very human Jesus, who seems ready to turn away from someone in need because she does not look like him, because she is not from his same ethnic background. We shouldn’t, theology professor Micah Kiel wrote, be surprised to find ethnic tension or problematic gender dynamics in patriarchal early Christian writings.* But I am surprised, because Jesus. So what then? What to do with this text?
Enter the Syrophoenician woman. She is not amazed or surprised at the response to her, but when it comes, she also doesn’t accept it. Instead, she stood up to it, flipped the slur on its head, and reclaimed it as her own, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Call me what you will, but even if your words are true there is enough here for me as well. So give me what I am due and heal my daughter. And Jesus, who normally overwhelmed his opponents in any verbal sparring match, demurred. “‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
The Syrophoenician woman stood up to Jesus and demanded that he see in her her full personhood. That he see in her the full worth of the glory of God’s creation. That he see in her his mission to the world, his creative, redeeming, sanctifying mission of love and grace and truth. The Syrophoenician woman demanded that Jesus act on what he already proclaimed to be true, that the kingdom of God was about border crossing and boundary breaking, and the Son of Man was the savior for all of humanity.
This text makes me uncomfortable, and I think that is its purpose. I think the purpose of this text is to force me to ask the question of who are the marginalized voices in our world today that are speaking out, that are demanding to be heard. And am I hearing them? Am I, like Jesus, allowing their words to enter into my heart and remind me of God’s glory and God’s grace and God’s expansive love? Or am I pushing them aside? Am I waiting until “the children” get fed, and missing the obvious abundance that goes uneaten at the banquet of the Lord?
What the Syrophoenician woman points out to us is that there is enough grace, healing, abundance, at the banquet of the Lord for everyone. Even after the children are filled, the remnants pour out across the floor such that the real waste is not sharing it; the real waste in fact, is thinking there is any need to wait at all, the real waste is restraining it, is setting any limitations on who or in what order grace should be obtained.
I still wrestle with this text. But when I wrestle with this text or any text, I remember that we have a God whose love is bigger than our understanding. There are stories in the Bible that I just do not get, and that’s OK, because God is vaster, more mighty, more wonderful than me. I don’t know what Jesus is doing here, I don’t know what message I’m supposed to take from Jesus actions, and I tell you what, explaining this story will be on the short for questions I hope to have answered someday when all knowledge is revealed. But, the good news I take from this text is that it’s OK to be wrong. What Jesus gives us in this text is a beautiful model for how to admit our errors and move forward. To hear a word of grace that was different than I may have realized, and to adapt, to change my perspective by the meeting of another. One commentary I read wrote that “The miracle [of this story] is the overcoming of prejudice and boundaries that separate persons.”** And isn’t that, in a world of increased borders and boundaries, separation and division, a miracle that our world so desperately needs.
So be uncomfortable. Lean in to the spaces and places where you don’t know if you fit. Question and wonder and welcome. Clearly and directly and specifically. And if you fail, and we will fail, it’s part of the wonderful brokenness of humanity, don’t be afraid to change your mind. Don’t be afraid to expand your thinking. God is waiting in our questions, with abundance that spills out over the table, and there is enough, enough grace, enough love, enough healing, for everyone.
* Micah D. Kiel, “Commentary on Mark 7:24-37,” Working Preacher, 6 September 2015, < http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2624 >, accessed 2 September 2015.
** Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark: Introductions, Commentary, and Reflections,” The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume VIII, Abingdon Press: Nashville, TN, 1995, pg. 611.
This constant travel is tiring, and this morning we encounter a Jesus who is tired. He’d just finished scolding the Pharisees for their manipulation of the law, and now he set out to go to Tyre to get away from the crowds for a bit, to take a break. The text tells us he entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But the crowds found him anyway and a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit came, bowed down at his feet, and begged for healing. Even on vacation, Jesus cannot catch a break. And on top of that, the woman was not even a Jew; she was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She was not a part of Jesus’ direct mandate to the people of Israel.
But all of this justification still doesn’t explain what happened next. The woman came and knelt at Jesus feet and begged for healing for her daughter, and Jesus sent her away. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” I read a lot of commentaries this week, trying to make sense of this sentence, and let me tell you what, there’s no easy way to make sense of these words. There were a couple attempts to make a plea for economic justice, the Jews were the farmers of the region, whose food was often taken and given to the wealthy, or there were efforts to soften the word “dogs.” Well, he meant like a joke, like with a twinkle in his eye, or like a house pet, like a puppy. But, really, that’s not what that means, and softening it doesn’t make it better. Most commentaries don’t even make an attempt to explain it. “Jesus gets caught with his compassion down,” one quipped.
And as both a preacher and a person of faith, I don’t know what to do with this text. I don’t know what to do with this very human Jesus, who seems ready to turn away from someone in need because she does not look like him, because she is not from his same ethnic background. We shouldn’t, theology professor Micah Kiel wrote, be surprised to find ethnic tension or problematic gender dynamics in patriarchal early Christian writings.* But I am surprised, because Jesus. So what then? What to do with this text?
Enter the Syrophoenician woman. She is not amazed or surprised at the response to her, but when it comes, she also doesn’t accept it. Instead, she stood up to it, flipped the slur on its head, and reclaimed it as her own, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Call me what you will, but even if your words are true there is enough here for me as well. So give me what I am due and heal my daughter. And Jesus, who normally overwhelmed his opponents in any verbal sparring match, demurred. “‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
The Syrophoenician woman stood up to Jesus and demanded that he see in her her full personhood. That he see in her the full worth of the glory of God’s creation. That he see in her his mission to the world, his creative, redeeming, sanctifying mission of love and grace and truth. The Syrophoenician woman demanded that Jesus act on what he already proclaimed to be true, that the kingdom of God was about border crossing and boundary breaking, and the Son of Man was the savior for all of humanity.
This text makes me uncomfortable, and I think that is its purpose. I think the purpose of this text is to force me to ask the question of who are the marginalized voices in our world today that are speaking out, that are demanding to be heard. And am I hearing them? Am I, like Jesus, allowing their words to enter into my heart and remind me of God’s glory and God’s grace and God’s expansive love? Or am I pushing them aside? Am I waiting until “the children” get fed, and missing the obvious abundance that goes uneaten at the banquet of the Lord?
What the Syrophoenician woman points out to us is that there is enough grace, healing, abundance, at the banquet of the Lord for everyone. Even after the children are filled, the remnants pour out across the floor such that the real waste is not sharing it; the real waste in fact, is thinking there is any need to wait at all, the real waste is restraining it, is setting any limitations on who or in what order grace should be obtained.
I still wrestle with this text. But when I wrestle with this text or any text, I remember that we have a God whose love is bigger than our understanding. There are stories in the Bible that I just do not get, and that’s OK, because God is vaster, more mighty, more wonderful than me. I don’t know what Jesus is doing here, I don’t know what message I’m supposed to take from Jesus actions, and I tell you what, explaining this story will be on the short for questions I hope to have answered someday when all knowledge is revealed. But, the good news I take from this text is that it’s OK to be wrong. What Jesus gives us in this text is a beautiful model for how to admit our errors and move forward. To hear a word of grace that was different than I may have realized, and to adapt, to change my perspective by the meeting of another. One commentary I read wrote that “The miracle [of this story] is the overcoming of prejudice and boundaries that separate persons.”** And isn’t that, in a world of increased borders and boundaries, separation and division, a miracle that our world so desperately needs.
So be uncomfortable. Lean in to the spaces and places where you don’t know if you fit. Question and wonder and welcome. Clearly and directly and specifically. And if you fail, and we will fail, it’s part of the wonderful brokenness of humanity, don’t be afraid to change your mind. Don’t be afraid to expand your thinking. God is waiting in our questions, with abundance that spills out over the table, and there is enough, enough grace, enough love, enough healing, for everyone.
* Micah D. Kiel, “Commentary on Mark 7:24-37,” Working Preacher, 6 September 2015, < http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2624 >, accessed 2 September 2015.
** Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark: Introductions, Commentary, and Reflections,” The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume VIII, Abingdon Press: Nashville, TN, 1995, pg. 611.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Team Pharisee: A Sermon on Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
A clergy colleague and I were talking about our Gospel text this week and she shared about a sign that had hung in the kitchen of her former call. The sign read: “Wash your hands and say your prayers, because Jesus and germs are everywhere.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I think it’s important for me to share with you that I like this sign and I dislike this text because I, myself, am an obsessive hand-washer. No joke, I could probably be in therapy for my clean hand needs. The fact of the matter is, if the controversy in this Gospel text is really about proper hand washing, then sign me up for team Pharisee. I love Jesus, but we have a lot better understanding of germs now than we did in Jesus’ time and the sign in my colleague’s former church kitchen is right on. Jesus is everywhere, but so are germs and the Center for Disease Control recommends good hand-washing protocol as the best prevention against the spread of disease. If, as the Bible also says, our body is a temple to the Lord, who can argue with that? I mean, come on now, tradition of the elders or not, it’s just a good idea. Team Pharisee.
But I don’t think the point Jesus was making here has anything to do with the CDC. For brevity’s sake, the lectionary left out a section of this reading, but I think this section is crucial to understanding the point of Jesus’ argument. So let me read the missing verses. This is between when Jesus quoted Isaiah, “this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” and when he called the crowd together to tell them that nothing outside them can defile a person. Mark seven, nine to thirteen: “Then [Jesus] said to them, “you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother’; and “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban,” (that is, an offering to God)—then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
Remember that this was a time before 401Ks and retirement plans. People lived a day-by-day existence. They couldn’t save for the future; everything they made was enough to get through that one day. And so when a person got older and was unable to work, they were totally dependent on their descendants to support them. So it was part of the Jewish law that children had to support their elderly parents, or else those parents would starve. Let’s be clear, “honor your father and mother” was not a romantic notion of respect for the people who birthed you, it was an economic commitment to care for people in dire need. But the Pharisees found a loophole in the law through a tradition known as Corban. Corban was the dedication of wealth to the temple, to God. Which is great, of course, to give of what you have to God. In fact, God commands us to do this very action. We have a word for Corban too, we call it stewardship, and we know that God asks us to give of ourselves because it makes us better people, it helps us grow. So, again, what’s the real problem here? But what the Pharisees were doing here wasn’t stewardship, though they called it stewardship; it wasn’t giving of their own wealth. Think about who was benefiting from giving these gifts, and who was suffering. The Pharisees were getting honor and praise for their great generosity to God and to the Temple, but that generosity was coming not from their own sacrifice, but out of the hands and mouths of the vulnerable elderly. The Pharisees were using the practice of Corban not to honor God but to honor themselves, at the expense of people in need. Calling what the Pharisees were doing here “Corban” would be like cashing in your parents’ retirement account as your stewardship pledge to the church and then making a big deal about how generous you are. Jesus was calling the Pharisees out on their desire to show off how good they are at being good followers of God not to draw honor to God, but to draw honor to themselves. The Pharisees were using God as a tool on their road to self-aggrandizement.
Which brings us back to the question of hand washing. The Pharisees weren’t concerned about the disciples’ personal hygiene or about whether God was being honored in the disciples’ dietary habits. The Pharisees were concerned about showing the world how much better they were than these unclean followers of Jesus. Look how great I am, look how clean my hands are, look at what a great Jew I am. Your following of the traditions of the elders isn’t about God at all, Jesus told the Pharisees, it’s about your own pride.
Because the Pharisees always take the fall in the Bible stories, it is so tempting here for us to once again get a laugh at the expense of the foolish and wrong-headed Pharisees. Of course they were stuck up on something silly like food laws and bragging about stewardship. They are stock characters in the Bible; you almost hear that wowa-wowa-wowa sound whenever they come on the scene. But we, followers of Jesus, we have been set free from such silly restrictions as hand washing and food law and all of the things that hold us captive. We are above the Pharisees. Because of Jesus we know that we don’t have to worry about those things anymore, and we are free to cast judgment on the Pharisees and their self-righteousness.
But are we really? Or were my judgmental words about the Pharisees really just another form of the exact same thing. The truth, brothers and sisters, if we are honest with one another, if we are honest with ourselves, is we still struggle with this. There are still people who come to God with what we see as unclean hands, and we turn away in disgust. We are guilty of the same sin as the Pharisees. I know I am.
But there is good news for us in these words from Jesus. As I read this Gospel text for this morning, the first thing that caught my attention was what Jesus did immediately following his calling out of the Pharisees. Jesus turned to the crowd, those who had been judged by the Pharisees, those who had been cast aside, called less than because they could not live up to the draconian purity standards ascribed to them, and he said to the crowd, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile.” Listen and understand, Jesus said to the crowd, there is no restriction that some outside person can put on you that can keep you from being welcome in God’s community. There is no rule that someone can hold against you that you can fail to live up to so much that it will make you unworthy of God’s love. This is good news for those of us who have turned away, who have felt ashamed, unwelcome, unworthy in the judgmental eyes of those who cast themselves as Pharisees. Jesus says to the crowd, you are welcome here. You are not defined by what others think of you. There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile them.
There is challenge here too. Jesus goes on to tell the crowd and the Pharisees, “It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” Then he gives that laundry list of temptations that sound distant and ominous and all too familiar. These things, these evil things, are inside of us, they defile us, and Jesus knows it and Jesus calls us out on them.
But even in the calling out, even in this list of evil, here too is good news for us. Because in Jesus we have a God who loves us enough to call us out on the evil within us. Jesus didn’t let the Pharisees get away with their judgmental ways, didn’t ignore the Pharisees, didn’t turn his back on them. Jesus loved them enough to look them in the eyes and say to him, these things that you are doing, these things are sin. They defile you, and they will destroy you.
Sisters and brothers, this is what grace, true grace looks like. Grace is not always rainbows and unicorns and soft fluffy kittens. Sometimes grace is looking someone in the eye and saying, yes, that thing you are doing, that thing is sin. It is dark, it is ugly, and it is wrong. It hurts to say it; it hurts to be told it. It hurts to have our brokenness held up before us by God as in a mirror. We would prefer that Jesus gloss over the messier realities of human existence, that Jesus just tell us we’re doing a great job, give us an A for effort and a participation sticker, but Jesus simply loves us too much for that. Jesus loves us too much to be nice. Jesus loves us so much that Jesus has to speak truth.
And in this love manifest as challenge, Jesus loves us enough to not leave us alone. You may not have caught it but there’s a very subtle anatomy lesson going on here. Jesus makes a distinction between two main systems in our bodies, our hearts and our stomachs. Evil intentions, Jesus said, come from the heart. But things that go in—food—go nowhere near our hearts. Food goes to our stomachs. Now, you could argue that food energy powers our hearts, but that is a depth of anatomical knowledge that is really beyond first century Palestine. Basically, the argument Jesus makes here is that food cannot defile, because food is just food, doesn’t affect our hearts.
But there is one food that can cross the stomach/heart barrier. There is one thing that comes in from the outside that ends up nestled in our hearts, right in the midst of all that brokenness and hurt and, yes, evil intentions. That food is the food we eat around this table. That food is Jesus. Through the bread and wine of the Eucharist, Jesus enters into our hearts and transforms us from within, changes us from the very heart of our brokenness, and makes us new. So when Jesus, in his grace, calls the crowd, the Pharisees, us, out on the evil that comes from within, Jesus does that knowing that he is already at work within us, bringing us peace, changing our hearts, making us new. So come to the table. Bring the things you think belong, but more importantly, bring the parts of you you wish you could hide. Bring the grubby parts, the messiness, bring your unwashed hands and your thirst for the rules. Bring all of these things to the table of the Lord, and feast on the one who pours himself into our unwashed hands and makes us new. Amen.
In the interest of full disclosure, I think it’s important for me to share with you that I like this sign and I dislike this text because I, myself, am an obsessive hand-washer. No joke, I could probably be in therapy for my clean hand needs. The fact of the matter is, if the controversy in this Gospel text is really about proper hand washing, then sign me up for team Pharisee. I love Jesus, but we have a lot better understanding of germs now than we did in Jesus’ time and the sign in my colleague’s former church kitchen is right on. Jesus is everywhere, but so are germs and the Center for Disease Control recommends good hand-washing protocol as the best prevention against the spread of disease. If, as the Bible also says, our body is a temple to the Lord, who can argue with that? I mean, come on now, tradition of the elders or not, it’s just a good idea. Team Pharisee.
But I don’t think the point Jesus was making here has anything to do with the CDC. For brevity’s sake, the lectionary left out a section of this reading, but I think this section is crucial to understanding the point of Jesus’ argument. So let me read the missing verses. This is between when Jesus quoted Isaiah, “this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” and when he called the crowd together to tell them that nothing outside them can defile a person. Mark seven, nine to thirteen: “Then [Jesus] said to them, “you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother’; and “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban,” (that is, an offering to God)—then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
Remember that this was a time before 401Ks and retirement plans. People lived a day-by-day existence. They couldn’t save for the future; everything they made was enough to get through that one day. And so when a person got older and was unable to work, they were totally dependent on their descendants to support them. So it was part of the Jewish law that children had to support their elderly parents, or else those parents would starve. Let’s be clear, “honor your father and mother” was not a romantic notion of respect for the people who birthed you, it was an economic commitment to care for people in dire need. But the Pharisees found a loophole in the law through a tradition known as Corban. Corban was the dedication of wealth to the temple, to God. Which is great, of course, to give of what you have to God. In fact, God commands us to do this very action. We have a word for Corban too, we call it stewardship, and we know that God asks us to give of ourselves because it makes us better people, it helps us grow. So, again, what’s the real problem here? But what the Pharisees were doing here wasn’t stewardship, though they called it stewardship; it wasn’t giving of their own wealth. Think about who was benefiting from giving these gifts, and who was suffering. The Pharisees were getting honor and praise for their great generosity to God and to the Temple, but that generosity was coming not from their own sacrifice, but out of the hands and mouths of the vulnerable elderly. The Pharisees were using the practice of Corban not to honor God but to honor themselves, at the expense of people in need. Calling what the Pharisees were doing here “Corban” would be like cashing in your parents’ retirement account as your stewardship pledge to the church and then making a big deal about how generous you are. Jesus was calling the Pharisees out on their desire to show off how good they are at being good followers of God not to draw honor to God, but to draw honor to themselves. The Pharisees were using God as a tool on their road to self-aggrandizement.
Which brings us back to the question of hand washing. The Pharisees weren’t concerned about the disciples’ personal hygiene or about whether God was being honored in the disciples’ dietary habits. The Pharisees were concerned about showing the world how much better they were than these unclean followers of Jesus. Look how great I am, look how clean my hands are, look at what a great Jew I am. Your following of the traditions of the elders isn’t about God at all, Jesus told the Pharisees, it’s about your own pride.
Because the Pharisees always take the fall in the Bible stories, it is so tempting here for us to once again get a laugh at the expense of the foolish and wrong-headed Pharisees. Of course they were stuck up on something silly like food laws and bragging about stewardship. They are stock characters in the Bible; you almost hear that wowa-wowa-wowa sound whenever they come on the scene. But we, followers of Jesus, we have been set free from such silly restrictions as hand washing and food law and all of the things that hold us captive. We are above the Pharisees. Because of Jesus we know that we don’t have to worry about those things anymore, and we are free to cast judgment on the Pharisees and their self-righteousness.
But are we really? Or were my judgmental words about the Pharisees really just another form of the exact same thing. The truth, brothers and sisters, if we are honest with one another, if we are honest with ourselves, is we still struggle with this. There are still people who come to God with what we see as unclean hands, and we turn away in disgust. We are guilty of the same sin as the Pharisees. I know I am.
But there is good news for us in these words from Jesus. As I read this Gospel text for this morning, the first thing that caught my attention was what Jesus did immediately following his calling out of the Pharisees. Jesus turned to the crowd, those who had been judged by the Pharisees, those who had been cast aside, called less than because they could not live up to the draconian purity standards ascribed to them, and he said to the crowd, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile.” Listen and understand, Jesus said to the crowd, there is no restriction that some outside person can put on you that can keep you from being welcome in God’s community. There is no rule that someone can hold against you that you can fail to live up to so much that it will make you unworthy of God’s love. This is good news for those of us who have turned away, who have felt ashamed, unwelcome, unworthy in the judgmental eyes of those who cast themselves as Pharisees. Jesus says to the crowd, you are welcome here. You are not defined by what others think of you. There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile them.
There is challenge here too. Jesus goes on to tell the crowd and the Pharisees, “It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” Then he gives that laundry list of temptations that sound distant and ominous and all too familiar. These things, these evil things, are inside of us, they defile us, and Jesus knows it and Jesus calls us out on them.
But even in the calling out, even in this list of evil, here too is good news for us. Because in Jesus we have a God who loves us enough to call us out on the evil within us. Jesus didn’t let the Pharisees get away with their judgmental ways, didn’t ignore the Pharisees, didn’t turn his back on them. Jesus loved them enough to look them in the eyes and say to him, these things that you are doing, these things are sin. They defile you, and they will destroy you.
Sisters and brothers, this is what grace, true grace looks like. Grace is not always rainbows and unicorns and soft fluffy kittens. Sometimes grace is looking someone in the eye and saying, yes, that thing you are doing, that thing is sin. It is dark, it is ugly, and it is wrong. It hurts to say it; it hurts to be told it. It hurts to have our brokenness held up before us by God as in a mirror. We would prefer that Jesus gloss over the messier realities of human existence, that Jesus just tell us we’re doing a great job, give us an A for effort and a participation sticker, but Jesus simply loves us too much for that. Jesus loves us too much to be nice. Jesus loves us so much that Jesus has to speak truth.
And in this love manifest as challenge, Jesus loves us enough to not leave us alone. You may not have caught it but there’s a very subtle anatomy lesson going on here. Jesus makes a distinction between two main systems in our bodies, our hearts and our stomachs. Evil intentions, Jesus said, come from the heart. But things that go in—food—go nowhere near our hearts. Food goes to our stomachs. Now, you could argue that food energy powers our hearts, but that is a depth of anatomical knowledge that is really beyond first century Palestine. Basically, the argument Jesus makes here is that food cannot defile, because food is just food, doesn’t affect our hearts.
But there is one food that can cross the stomach/heart barrier. There is one thing that comes in from the outside that ends up nestled in our hearts, right in the midst of all that brokenness and hurt and, yes, evil intentions. That food is the food we eat around this table. That food is Jesus. Through the bread and wine of the Eucharist, Jesus enters into our hearts and transforms us from within, changes us from the very heart of our brokenness, and makes us new. So when Jesus, in his grace, calls the crowd, the Pharisees, us, out on the evil that comes from within, Jesus does that knowing that he is already at work within us, bringing us peace, changing our hearts, making us new. So come to the table. Bring the things you think belong, but more importantly, bring the parts of you you wish you could hide. Bring the grubby parts, the messiness, bring your unwashed hands and your thirst for the rules. Bring all of these things to the table of the Lord, and feast on the one who pours himself into our unwashed hands and makes us new. Amen.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Words We Can Touch: A Sermon on John 6:56-69
You know the old children's rhyme, "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me." That phrase is a lie. Sticks and stones can do physical damage; it's true. But words, for good or bad, can root into our souls and change us in ways that sticks and stone can never touch.
Words have power for good and bad. Think, for example, of the words that told you that you would be a parent or a grandparent for the first time. When your boss gave you that big promotion at work you'd been working so hard for. When your significant other first said "I love you." Think of the way those words shaped your identity, as a parent, as an employee, as a person of value.
Think now of the opposite side of the equation, of word's power to hurt. Think of the jab that spelt the end of a relationship. The words spoken that you immediately wished you could take back. The thoughtless Facebook post, the question left unanswered, the words spoken in anger that cut deeper than truth. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can hurt and heal the places sticks and stones can never reach, our very hearts and souls.
And then there are times when words are not enough, when all the words in the world fall short. Sticks and stones have a conclusiveness to them, a swing or a throw and the damage is done. But words. The uncertainty of a word can root into our lives and fester, what seeming at first so tiny becoming so powerful. Waiting for a test result. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for an apology to be accepted. Lifting a prayer to God and wondering, what now. Words have power even in their absence, and sometimes we long for something more than words, something solid that we can hold onto.
Our gospel readings for these last few weeks have been all another words. Jesus started the whole thing off with a miracle, feeding the five thousand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. A miracle of abundance that people could touch and taste. Sticks and stones of bread and fish to fill their empty stomachs.
But from there on, Jesus filled them with words. Good words of promise, hard words of challenge, ambiguous words of uncertainty. So many words have filled the crowd; have filled us, these last four weeks. What are we to do with all these words?
Last week we heard the initial grumbling of those for whom the words had become to heavy to bear. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Today that grumbling became more pronounced. “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” It was just too much for some of the disciples, who, the Gospel tells us, “turned back and no longer went about with him.” It was too much, the words were just too much, they couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t comprehend it, and they left. So Jesus turned to the twelve and asked them, “Do you also wish to go away?” And Simon Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Which of course is the right answer, right? Of course, Peter is the hero of the day. “Lord, to whom shall we go?” We love the line so much it’s a part of our liturgy. We didn’t sing it this morning, but certainly the tune is familiar. “Alleluia, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia.” Do you recognize it? It’s one of the Gospel acclamations we sing regularly before the reading of the Gospel. Next time you hear it, now you’ll know the context, it comes from right here in the sixth chapter of John.
So we want to go with Peter, but Peter is a complex character. It won’t be all that many chapters before Peter will stand in courtyard beside a charcoal fire and the one who proclaimed, “Lord to whom shall we go” will deny knowing the Lord at all.
Words, human words, are fickle. We see it in Peter, we see it in the crowds, we know it in ourselves. The one who proclaimed “Lord, to whom shall we go,” will deny the Lord in a courtyard. We don’t know what happened to those who announced, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it,” but we know just a few verses before Jesus fed those very same doubters with the bread and fish of abundance.
But Jesus words are not like our words. Not like Peter’s confidence or denial, not like the crowds’ search for Jesus or their turning away from his promise. Jesus words have power because they are not ambiguous ideas, they are words anchored in tangible promise. I am the bread of life, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in them. There is no uncertainty in Jesus words, no questions left open, no level to live up to or checklist to reach.
Jesus words are words we can touch. When Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life,” his statement was more true than I think Peter even knew. Because it was not just that Jesus has the word, but that Jesus is the word. Jesus’ words are not just spoken, Jesus’ words are embodied, Jesus’ words are lived. Jesus is the Word made flesh, words we can touch and feel and taste. Words that took on human form, pulling on sinews and muscles and bones, fitting the Word like a familiar sweater out of the closet after a long summer. Jesus Word is also a word of challenge, a word that drives us forward. The sweater sustaining us with warmth so we can enter into a cold world to be about the work Jesus is calling us to.
Jesus, the Word made flesh, is a Word we can touch. And no place is that made more clear for us than in the sacraments. Sacraments are by definition a word and an element. A word and a promise. Jesus said, “go and baptize,” and with this Word and water, we are redeemed. Without the Word, water is just water. But without water, the word can be hard to comprehend. But because we can touch it, feel it, run our hands through it, pour it on our heads, we can know that this thing we touch is Word made flesh for us. Word incarnate in the promise of Christ’s word. Word that makes us new.
This month our worship has had a special emphasis on the Eucharist, and as a sacrament, it to is Word and element, thing and promise. Jesus said to his disciples, I am the bread of life, I am the cup of salvation, whoever eats and drinks of me will have eternal life. We know this to be true because we can touch it, we can feel it, we can taste Jesus in our bodies and we can experience being transformed by the living word made flesh of Jesus.
“This teaching is difficult,” the disciples said, “who can accept it.” But around this table, we are not asked to accept it, we are only asked to do it. Come, eat and drink of the one who gave himself for us, the Word made flesh, the fulfiller of promise, the giver of life. Come, because this bread and cup are the words of eternal life. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Words have power for good and bad. Think, for example, of the words that told you that you would be a parent or a grandparent for the first time. When your boss gave you that big promotion at work you'd been working so hard for. When your significant other first said "I love you." Think of the way those words shaped your identity, as a parent, as an employee, as a person of value.
Think now of the opposite side of the equation, of word's power to hurt. Think of the jab that spelt the end of a relationship. The words spoken that you immediately wished you could take back. The thoughtless Facebook post, the question left unanswered, the words spoken in anger that cut deeper than truth. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can hurt and heal the places sticks and stones can never reach, our very hearts and souls.
And then there are times when words are not enough, when all the words in the world fall short. Sticks and stones have a conclusiveness to them, a swing or a throw and the damage is done. But words. The uncertainty of a word can root into our lives and fester, what seeming at first so tiny becoming so powerful. Waiting for a test result. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for an apology to be accepted. Lifting a prayer to God and wondering, what now. Words have power even in their absence, and sometimes we long for something more than words, something solid that we can hold onto.
Our gospel readings for these last few weeks have been all another words. Jesus started the whole thing off with a miracle, feeding the five thousand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. A miracle of abundance that people could touch and taste. Sticks and stones of bread and fish to fill their empty stomachs.
But from there on, Jesus filled them with words. Good words of promise, hard words of challenge, ambiguous words of uncertainty. So many words have filled the crowd; have filled us, these last four weeks. What are we to do with all these words?
Last week we heard the initial grumbling of those for whom the words had become to heavy to bear. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Today that grumbling became more pronounced. “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” It was just too much for some of the disciples, who, the Gospel tells us, “turned back and no longer went about with him.” It was too much, the words were just too much, they couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t comprehend it, and they left. So Jesus turned to the twelve and asked them, “Do you also wish to go away?” And Simon Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Which of course is the right answer, right? Of course, Peter is the hero of the day. “Lord, to whom shall we go?” We love the line so much it’s a part of our liturgy. We didn’t sing it this morning, but certainly the tune is familiar. “Alleluia, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia.” Do you recognize it? It’s one of the Gospel acclamations we sing regularly before the reading of the Gospel. Next time you hear it, now you’ll know the context, it comes from right here in the sixth chapter of John.
So we want to go with Peter, but Peter is a complex character. It won’t be all that many chapters before Peter will stand in courtyard beside a charcoal fire and the one who proclaimed, “Lord to whom shall we go” will deny knowing the Lord at all.
Words, human words, are fickle. We see it in Peter, we see it in the crowds, we know it in ourselves. The one who proclaimed “Lord, to whom shall we go,” will deny the Lord in a courtyard. We don’t know what happened to those who announced, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it,” but we know just a few verses before Jesus fed those very same doubters with the bread and fish of abundance.
But Jesus words are not like our words. Not like Peter’s confidence or denial, not like the crowds’ search for Jesus or their turning away from his promise. Jesus words have power because they are not ambiguous ideas, they are words anchored in tangible promise. I am the bread of life, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in them. There is no uncertainty in Jesus words, no questions left open, no level to live up to or checklist to reach.
Jesus words are words we can touch. When Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life,” his statement was more true than I think Peter even knew. Because it was not just that Jesus has the word, but that Jesus is the word. Jesus’ words are not just spoken, Jesus’ words are embodied, Jesus’ words are lived. Jesus is the Word made flesh, words we can touch and feel and taste. Words that took on human form, pulling on sinews and muscles and bones, fitting the Word like a familiar sweater out of the closet after a long summer. Jesus Word is also a word of challenge, a word that drives us forward. The sweater sustaining us with warmth so we can enter into a cold world to be about the work Jesus is calling us to.
Jesus, the Word made flesh, is a Word we can touch. And no place is that made more clear for us than in the sacraments. Sacraments are by definition a word and an element. A word and a promise. Jesus said, “go and baptize,” and with this Word and water, we are redeemed. Without the Word, water is just water. But without water, the word can be hard to comprehend. But because we can touch it, feel it, run our hands through it, pour it on our heads, we can know that this thing we touch is Word made flesh for us. Word incarnate in the promise of Christ’s word. Word that makes us new.
This month our worship has had a special emphasis on the Eucharist, and as a sacrament, it to is Word and element, thing and promise. Jesus said to his disciples, I am the bread of life, I am the cup of salvation, whoever eats and drinks of me will have eternal life. We know this to be true because we can touch it, we can feel it, we can taste Jesus in our bodies and we can experience being transformed by the living word made flesh of Jesus.
“This teaching is difficult,” the disciples said, “who can accept it.” But around this table, we are not asked to accept it, we are only asked to do it. Come, eat and drink of the one who gave himself for us, the Word made flesh, the fulfiller of promise, the giver of life. Come, because this bread and cup are the words of eternal life. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, August 17, 2015
What's in the Cup?: A Sermon on John 6:51-58.
Wednesday nights at my internship congregation were pretty raucous occasions. Every Wednesday, we would have dinner together, followed by children’s time and a worship service for the adults, which the kids would join at the passing of the peace. The free meal and fun games attracted numerous children from the nearby apartments. The result was a communion service of around sixty of whom forty or so were marginally or totally unsupervised children under the age of ten. Chaos, as you might imagine, was the name of the game. On one particularly crazy evening, I found myself seated in the front row, surrounded by a hoard of six-year-old boys. My internship supervisor, a larger than life figure who always seemed to feed on the energy in the room, took the cup, held it aloft, and, his deep voice booming through the sanctuary, proclaimed “This is my blood, poured out for you.” And the six year old to my left all of a sudden turned to me, eyes huge, and said, “wait, there’s blood in that cup! GROSS!”
And I panicked. How in the world was I supposed to explain the complicated nuances of consubstantiation—a long word you may not be familiar with that I am using deliberately right now to make the point that this is a complicated subject—to a six year old in the middle of a worship service. My mind raced through hours of seminary lectures, pages of hastily scribbled notes, books upon books upon books by brilliant theologians, and just as I was opening my mouth to utter a long, confused, stalling, “um,” the six-year-old to my right conveniently chose that moment to begin to beat the kid next to him with his folded up bulletin. I turned to break up that situation, and in the seconds it took to grab the offending bulletin and end the scuffle, my budding theologian had turned his bulletin into a bullhorn and was attempting to shout the Lord’s Prayer as loudly as he could over the combined voices of the rest of the conversation. Then it was time for me to go forward and assist with communion. As the kid came forward, hunk of bread gripped firmly between two grubby fingers, I knelt down to his level and, hands shaking, held out the cup, uttering the familiar words, a hint of hesitance in my voice, “the blood of Christ, shed for you.” I wondered what I would say if the question came up again? What if he balked at taking the cup? What if he said something and it freaked the other kids out so much that they stopped coming to church? My worry was unfounded. We used a sweet bread, and the kids liked the sense of danger they got from getting to have wine. “Jesus is pretty delicious,” one of them once told me. This meant communion was always the high point in the evening. The kid looked up at me, face broken into a huge, gap-toothed grin, and shoved his hand into the cup with such force that wine sloshed out of the cup and onto my hands. He held the bread in the cup for a moment, wine up to his knuckles. Then he stuck the thoroughly soaked bread in his mouth and made a huge production of chewing with great enthusiasm, loud smacking to indicate his pleasure at the treat, making sure every single kid still waiting in line understood that because he had sat in the front of the church, he had gotten his snack first and they had to wait. Seminary logic, as so often happened, was no match for the unbridled joy of a six-year-old.
So here we are, week four of the five weeks of the bread of life texts. We’ve been muddling through this sixth chapter of John for a while now, and as is the case with all of the long speeches in John’s Gospel, the longer Jesus talked, the more confusing he became. Finally, this morning, we reach the tipping point. Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And the crowd responded, “wait? What? How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They will get more firm in their confusion next week, but this week it still takes the form of an uneasy question. And Jesus responded with like the most Jesus-y comeback ever. The kind of comeback that makes Jesus both such a great teacher and such an incredibly frustrating one. Because Jesus didn’t answer their question. Jesus didn’t break down the doctrine for them, he didn’t define what he meant, didn’t throw in a bunch of fancy words like “consubstantiation” or say something in Latin or name-drop a theologian. Jesus instead gave them a promise. Instead of answering their questions, Jesus simply promised, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood with have eternal life.” That’s it. It’s that simple.
Except, it’s not at all simple, right? The crowd didn’t respond, but you can hear their unwritten questions because they are the same questions rattling around in our own heads as we hear this story. But wait Jesus, you’re not telling us that you are made of flour and water? You’re not advocating cannibalism? What if I don’t eat of your flesh and drink of your blood? What if I don’t understand what you’re talking about? Can I do this wrong? How often am I supposed to do this? Once a week? Or does too often make it not special? How do I get ready for this? Do I have to confess first? Should I not come if I’m not yet ready? How do I know if I’m ready? What if I think I’m ready and then I eat and then I’m totally not ready? Are you going to be mad?
So in verse fifty-seven, Jesus drops the flesh and blood part, simplifying it even more. “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” These words Jesus spoke, this meal he calls us to, it isn’t about believing or understanding or getting right with God. It is about Jesus. It is about what Jesus is going to do because of who Jesus is. Jesus promises to meet us and feed us and give us his entire being.
Just come. Just eat. Eat and drink and receive God. It really is that simple. This morning in the first reading we heard in Proverbs about wisdom, in John six we see Jesus’s bold declaration that the wisdom of God is not knowledge or understanding, the wisdom of God is relationship. The wisdom of God is a God who encounters us in our very bodies and transforms us from within. In the third chapter of John, Jesus talked about believing, but here in chapter six, Jesus moves from belief to promise. Bishop Craig Satterlee wrote, “Eternal life does not come through understanding correctly or believing the right things. Eternal life is being in close communion with Jesus. Eternal life is to remain in Jesus and to have Jesus remain in us. We take Christ’s body and blood into our mouths, into our stomachs, into our bodies, so that Christ remains in us and we remain in Christ.”*
Since the conversation with the six-year-old, I read a lot more books about teaching communion to children and adults. I wrote a paper about that experience and all that reading. I graduated seminary. I have been “set apart” for word and sacrament ministry, a fancy phrase that means I get to preside at communion, for three years now; I’ve been ordained for one. Even so, if you ask me after the service or, if you really want to put me on the spot, at the communion rail, if there’s blood in the cup, you’re likely to get the same frantic blank, backpedalling stare that I gave the six-year-old many years ago. I can define consubstantiation for you, it is a theological doctrine that asserts that during the sacrament, the fundamental substance of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of bread and wine, which remain present. However, I will also tell you that consubstantiation is not our Eucharistic theology as Lutherans, and you can really safely forget that word. So instead of you asking me, and me awkwardly stumbling through an explanation, let me tell you what I believe. No, more than believe; let me tell you what I know to be true because I have experienced this truth. Jesus Christ meets us in this meal. In this meal, we encounter, we take into ourselves, the Word made flesh. God incarnate in Jesus Christ enters our very bodies and transforms us from within. What I have experienced is that this meal gives me life. This meal changes me. This meal feeds me in ways that food cannot. So come. And eat. Come eat of the flesh of God and drink of his blood. Come and meet Jesus. You will be transformed. Jesus promises you this. Thanks be to God. Amen.
* Bishop Craig A. Satterlee, "Commentary on John 6:51-58," Working Preacher, August 16, 2015, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2552.
And I panicked. How in the world was I supposed to explain the complicated nuances of consubstantiation—a long word you may not be familiar with that I am using deliberately right now to make the point that this is a complicated subject—to a six year old in the middle of a worship service. My mind raced through hours of seminary lectures, pages of hastily scribbled notes, books upon books upon books by brilliant theologians, and just as I was opening my mouth to utter a long, confused, stalling, “um,” the six-year-old to my right conveniently chose that moment to begin to beat the kid next to him with his folded up bulletin. I turned to break up that situation, and in the seconds it took to grab the offending bulletin and end the scuffle, my budding theologian had turned his bulletin into a bullhorn and was attempting to shout the Lord’s Prayer as loudly as he could over the combined voices of the rest of the conversation. Then it was time for me to go forward and assist with communion. As the kid came forward, hunk of bread gripped firmly between two grubby fingers, I knelt down to his level and, hands shaking, held out the cup, uttering the familiar words, a hint of hesitance in my voice, “the blood of Christ, shed for you.” I wondered what I would say if the question came up again? What if he balked at taking the cup? What if he said something and it freaked the other kids out so much that they stopped coming to church? My worry was unfounded. We used a sweet bread, and the kids liked the sense of danger they got from getting to have wine. “Jesus is pretty delicious,” one of them once told me. This meant communion was always the high point in the evening. The kid looked up at me, face broken into a huge, gap-toothed grin, and shoved his hand into the cup with such force that wine sloshed out of the cup and onto my hands. He held the bread in the cup for a moment, wine up to his knuckles. Then he stuck the thoroughly soaked bread in his mouth and made a huge production of chewing with great enthusiasm, loud smacking to indicate his pleasure at the treat, making sure every single kid still waiting in line understood that because he had sat in the front of the church, he had gotten his snack first and they had to wait. Seminary logic, as so often happened, was no match for the unbridled joy of a six-year-old.
So here we are, week four of the five weeks of the bread of life texts. We’ve been muddling through this sixth chapter of John for a while now, and as is the case with all of the long speeches in John’s Gospel, the longer Jesus talked, the more confusing he became. Finally, this morning, we reach the tipping point. Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And the crowd responded, “wait? What? How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They will get more firm in their confusion next week, but this week it still takes the form of an uneasy question. And Jesus responded with like the most Jesus-y comeback ever. The kind of comeback that makes Jesus both such a great teacher and such an incredibly frustrating one. Because Jesus didn’t answer their question. Jesus didn’t break down the doctrine for them, he didn’t define what he meant, didn’t throw in a bunch of fancy words like “consubstantiation” or say something in Latin or name-drop a theologian. Jesus instead gave them a promise. Instead of answering their questions, Jesus simply promised, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood with have eternal life.” That’s it. It’s that simple.
Except, it’s not at all simple, right? The crowd didn’t respond, but you can hear their unwritten questions because they are the same questions rattling around in our own heads as we hear this story. But wait Jesus, you’re not telling us that you are made of flour and water? You’re not advocating cannibalism? What if I don’t eat of your flesh and drink of your blood? What if I don’t understand what you’re talking about? Can I do this wrong? How often am I supposed to do this? Once a week? Or does too often make it not special? How do I get ready for this? Do I have to confess first? Should I not come if I’m not yet ready? How do I know if I’m ready? What if I think I’m ready and then I eat and then I’m totally not ready? Are you going to be mad?
So in verse fifty-seven, Jesus drops the flesh and blood part, simplifying it even more. “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” These words Jesus spoke, this meal he calls us to, it isn’t about believing or understanding or getting right with God. It is about Jesus. It is about what Jesus is going to do because of who Jesus is. Jesus promises to meet us and feed us and give us his entire being.
Just come. Just eat. Eat and drink and receive God. It really is that simple. This morning in the first reading we heard in Proverbs about wisdom, in John six we see Jesus’s bold declaration that the wisdom of God is not knowledge or understanding, the wisdom of God is relationship. The wisdom of God is a God who encounters us in our very bodies and transforms us from within. In the third chapter of John, Jesus talked about believing, but here in chapter six, Jesus moves from belief to promise. Bishop Craig Satterlee wrote, “Eternal life does not come through understanding correctly or believing the right things. Eternal life is being in close communion with Jesus. Eternal life is to remain in Jesus and to have Jesus remain in us. We take Christ’s body and blood into our mouths, into our stomachs, into our bodies, so that Christ remains in us and we remain in Christ.”*
Since the conversation with the six-year-old, I read a lot more books about teaching communion to children and adults. I wrote a paper about that experience and all that reading. I graduated seminary. I have been “set apart” for word and sacrament ministry, a fancy phrase that means I get to preside at communion, for three years now; I’ve been ordained for one. Even so, if you ask me after the service or, if you really want to put me on the spot, at the communion rail, if there’s blood in the cup, you’re likely to get the same frantic blank, backpedalling stare that I gave the six-year-old many years ago. I can define consubstantiation for you, it is a theological doctrine that asserts that during the sacrament, the fundamental substance of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of bread and wine, which remain present. However, I will also tell you that consubstantiation is not our Eucharistic theology as Lutherans, and you can really safely forget that word. So instead of you asking me, and me awkwardly stumbling through an explanation, let me tell you what I believe. No, more than believe; let me tell you what I know to be true because I have experienced this truth. Jesus Christ meets us in this meal. In this meal, we encounter, we take into ourselves, the Word made flesh. God incarnate in Jesus Christ enters our very bodies and transforms us from within. What I have experienced is that this meal gives me life. This meal changes me. This meal feeds me in ways that food cannot. So come. And eat. Come eat of the flesh of God and drink of his blood. Come and meet Jesus. You will be transformed. Jesus promises you this. Thanks be to God. Amen.
* Bishop Craig A. Satterlee, "Commentary on John 6:51-58," Working Preacher, August 16, 2015, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2552.
Monday, July 27, 2015
From Jesus's Own Hands: A Sermon on John 6:1-21
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.
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.
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