“Alighting, Delighting,” Sermon by Laura, Baptism of the Lord A, 1.9.11

Scripture Readings: Matt. 3:12-17; Isaiah 42:1-9

What was the best Christmas gift you received this year? Three weeks after you received it, are you still enjoying it? Some gifts are “one-time-only” events, enjoyed as they are used up quickly. But there are other gifts which slowly open for us. This morning, we will savor together a gift given by God which, over time, deepens in meaning, and which continues to give, beyond all our expectations.

Did you see me pour the water from that pitcher over there into the basin? I was trying to make it splash, so you could all see it and hear it.  The basin is our baptismal font, and I poured the water to remind us of the sacrament of baptism.

A sacrament is a gift which keeps giving. It is an act and a sign, a concrete means of encounter with God as well as a tangible symbol of our identity as God’s people. Now, here’s a pop quiz. Who can tell me how many sacraments we practice in the Presbyterian Church? (Two).  And what are they? (Lord’s Supper and Baptism). Good job! While we regularly receive the Lord’s Supper together, we are only baptized once in our lives. Once we’ve gotten ourselves or our children baptized, we might tend to feel the sacrament is over and done. But, as we look at the story Jesus’ baptism, we can begin to see the way baptism, though it only happens once,is also a gift which keeps on giving over the whole course of our lives.

 Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ baptism reveals at least three aspects of this gift that God is giving us over the course of our lives of faith.  Here’s a little rhyme to remember them: Making things right, the dove alights, with God’s delight.

First, making things right. All four gospels tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, but Matthew’s version uniquely features a conversation between John the Baptist and Jesus. There we find out that, when Jesus comes to the Jordan River to be baptized, John wants to reject the gift.[1]  He’s just been preaching that the “more powerful one” is coming, the one whose sandals he is not fit to carry. It doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t the “more powerful one” do the baptizing, rather than get dunked by John in the muddy river alongside all these repentant sinners?

But Jesus says, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Erin Martin puts it this way, “What John doesn’t yet understand, perhaps because Jesus’ ministry is just getting started, is that what it means for Jesus to be the greater one is for him to submit to the lesser one. Soon we will hear it everywhere Jesus goes: the last shall be first, the least greatest, the humble exalted. In Jesus’ baptism, we don’t hear Jesus preach this message; we see him embody it. Jesus’ gift to John is the gift of submission.”[2] And it is Jesus’ submission that “fulfills all righteousness.”

What is righteousness? One author tells that his car broke down in Jerusalem, and after a mechanic had fixed it so that it was running well, the mechanic pronounced a word: “Zadik.” In the context, it means “it works,” but zadik is the also Hebrew word translated as “righteousness.” Jesus’ baptism reveals him to be that One, through whom God is making things work, repairing all the broken down things in our lives,  righting wrongs, healing wounds, restoring people to right relationships with God, each another, and all creation. 

Submitting to all God has called him to do, plunging in to get below the lowest sinner,[3] Jesus Christ emerges from the water as God’s Beloved Child, God’s chosen Servant. Isaiah tells us, “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” Renouncing all sinful ways of violence and domination, Jesus goes down with and for every one of us, joining his life to ours, so that we can arise to the lives of blessing for which God created us.

Second, the dove alights. It is a serious gift, the gift of submission. When we are baptized, we are joined to the life of Christ such that we receive it for ourselves. How will we live into this transformation? Keith and I currently have the privilege toto accompany six bright and boisterous young people as they study Christian faith. The class is called “confirmation” because its purpose is to confirm the Christian identity conferred by baptism. Later this month, we will go on a mission trip,  and as we help out at the Boise Rescue Mission and the Idaho Food Bank, we will be unwrapping another layer of the gift. To be a Christian is to serve others in the pattern of the Servant whose identity we are given in baptism.

It is a serious commissioning we receive. Yet let us not mistake the seriousness for heavy drudgery. When Jesus comes up from that water, having made things right, Matthew tells us that the heavens opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and alighting upon him. One commentator suggests this image is “akin to God’s anointing of prophets in the Old Testament,” preparation for and confirmation of Jesus’ mission as Messiah.[4]

I love that image: to say the dove “alights” upon Jesus is so much better than just saying the dove “landed” on him. There is air and space and freedom about it. It says to me that the Holy Spirit is a gift which uplifts and upholds Jesus, rather than weighing him down. Now, Jesus’ mission on earth is certainly full of gravity. He teaches a challenging way of discipleship, and he suffers and dies for sinful humanity. But there is also lightness and joy.

Submitting to God’s will and depending on the Spirit’s power, Jesus is not burdened with anxieties we experience in trying to manipulate and control for our own agendas. He is freed from self-centered preoccupation, freed from destructive compulsions, freed for truly loving relationships. Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest….For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” My friends, if we are not experiencing lightness and joy, as individuals or as a community, in the service to which baptism calls us, than let us turn to God in prayer and ask for the renewing power of the Spirit to alight gently, but decisively upon us. For we have not only been buried, but we have been raised to new life in Christ.

To unwrap the gift of baptismal identity is to live into the joy of the resurrection, set free to serve as those who are blessed to be a blessing. For, the ultimate gift of our baptized lives is the last part of that rhyme: God delights. Our reading from Matthew concludes with that voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  We also have Isaiah, speaking God’s words: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”

In baptism, we are turned from the ways of sin and given a fresh start in a life which is a delight to God. Do you know what it feels like to experience God’s delight? It is that welling up of joy inside we experience in giving of ourselves. Since God is the ultimate giver, we experience God’s delight when we pass on the gifts we’ve abundantly received.

The greatest gift Dean McIntire received one Christmaswas a card from a friend which contained a $10 bill and instructions to use the money as he though appropriate. Dean writes, “I had Ken’s $10 bill in my wallet when I stopped at the grocery store on my way to work one morning. In the checkout lane next to mine was an older couple who spoke in a thick east European accent of some kind. They did not have enough money to pay for their purchases, which appeared to me to be all staples—no frills or extras. They were having to decide which of their purchases to send back to the shelves. I gave Ken’s $10 to my own checker and asked her to give it anonymously to the young woman checking out the older couple. It covered their deficit and allowed them to keep a few dollars in their pocket. They were gratefully confused as I watched them head for the door.”[5]

It may have seemed a small thing, but it turned out that Dean had received a gift that, through him, kept giving. And that is the way we receive the gifts of baptism, guided by the Holy Spirit in all kinds of ways. We serve as we pray for our world, as we offer words of encouragement, and as we freely share our gifts, talents, money, and resources with those in need. And we receive anew the blessing which comes when we bless others, God’s delight welling up in us and spilling over.

This morning, you will have the opportunity to reaffirm your baptism, to accept and give thanks again for the tremendous gift we have received in Jesus Christ. If you have not yet been baptized, I invite you to not be afraid of taking part in this service of baptismal reaffirmation. If God stirs up the desire in you to participate, perhaps the right and proper time has come for you to be baptized. Keith and I invite you to come and speak to us after the service.

My friends, baptized into Christ, we are called and commissioned to live attuned to gravity, but also anointed and upheld in the delight of our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In baptism the Holy Spirit alights upon us and calls us Beloved Sons and Daughters, freeing us to fly in lives which are blessed to be a blessing. Let us celebrate this gift, this day and every day. Amen.

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[1] Erin Martin, “Baptized into submission,”  Blogging Toward Sunday,  Jan 07, 2008, 

http://christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2008-01/baptized-submission. I was very influenced by Martin’s framing baptism as a gift.

[2] Martin, as above.

[3] http://www.lectionarysermons.com/jan10ser99

[4] Troy A. Miller, “Exegetical Perspective” on Matt. 3:13-17, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, Bartlett and Brown Taylor, eds. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, 241.

[5] Dean McIntire, quoted by Erin Martin as above.

“Going and Glowing” sermon by Laura, Epiphany A, preached 1.2.11

Scripture Readings: Matthew 2:1-12, Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12

A man was traveling through the South during Christmastime. Maybe he was even traveling through somewhere like Natchez,Mississippi, a town Graham and Barbara Hicks know well. As he passed the local courthouse, he saw a wonderful nativity scene nearby. Mary and Joseph, baby Jesus, the shepherds, and the wise men were all in their places. But later, when he stopped for coffee at the corner diner, the man couldn’t help but ask a question. “I really enjoyed the Nativity at the courthouse,” he said to his waiter. “But why are the wise men dressed up like firemen?” The waiter shook his head in exasperation. “Don’t ya’ heathen Yankees read the Bible? It says… ‘they came from a fire [a-fahr].’”

Forgive me for telling you such a corny joke this early in the New Year. As you might guess, I first heard it told by Keith! But I couldn’t help it. We are talking about the magi, or wise men, this morning, having read scriptures set for Epiphany, the feast the church celebrates on Jan. 6th. In our country, after New Years, people get back to the everyday routines of work and school, and so Epiphany is often an afterthought, but elsewhere in the world, Epiphany is a great feast, when the church honors the journey of the magi to pay homage to the Christ child. In fact, in some places, celebrating the arrival of the magi generates more excitement than Christmas day. Our family has a collection of nativity scenes, several from Latin America, and this year, we noticed that all of them feature the magibut none of them include shepherds!

I think we are especially fascinated with the magi. One reason is that they did, indeed, come from “afar,” traveling from somewhere in the East, the exotic “Orient.” Commentators like to speculate on who they might have been and others like to theorize about the enigma of the star they followed.I think we are also intrigued by the richness of their gifts, the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Here’s how one author puts it:

“The Magi fascinate us also because they do not fit into this tiny stage of hill village and humble stable. Their sophistication clashes with this simplicity, their obvious power sits uneasily beside the vulnerability of child and family. They are urban in a rural world, affluent in the midst of poverty, cosmopolitan amid the provincial.”[i]

Now, this gospel reading from Matthew is set beside our other readingsbecause the presence of these strangers at the stable seemed a fulfillment of prophecy. “Arise, shine, for your light has come!” Isaiah’s vision was given originally for the people of Jerusalem, newly returned from exile, beleaguered with the task of rebuilding the Holy City. Don’t give up, he tells them, because a time will come when Jerusalem shall be the radiant center of the world, and foreigners will stream in bearing gifts: “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah…They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.” It is a vision of global proportions.

For the early Christians, the wise men demonstrated that the One who had been born in a stable was not just good news for a “small land and a marginal people,” but for the whole world.[ii] For Paul, it is an astonishing and gracious mystery that “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Perhaps the wise men are the very first Gentiles to learn that in Jesus Christ, the good news of God’s love is poured out for all humanity, both near and from afar. 

Now while these are great reasons to celebrate the magi, let us not allow their exotic travel and kingly gifts to distract us from their importance for our daily lives of faith.  For these magi, whoever they were in their home-country, do turn out to be “wise men.” Another one of those Christian slogans you sometimes see is “Wise men still seek Him.” And I think that we need to admire, not their otherness nor their wealth, but their deep wisdom. They perceived their deep need to seek out the One to whom they could give themselves without reservation; and they were willing to make the journey to find Him, no matter what might happen.

Forgive me another pun, but, since we know they were from the East, you could say they were willing to be “dis-Oriented.” Setting out with a star and ancient prophecies as guides, the magi show up in Jerusalem, based, perhaps, on scriptures like Isaiah 60, which said the royal and holy city, would be the center. But when they arrive at Herod’s court, the presumptive location for a “new king” to be born, they are set in an entirely different direction by Herod’s scholars.

They are “off by nine miles,” as Walter Brueggemann puts it; rather than Jerusalem, with “its high towers and great arenas, banks and urban achievements,” the wise men are pointed toward Bethlehem, “a rural place, dusty, unnoticed and unpretentious.”[iii] And here is the amazing thing about the magi: they don’t protest or resist the change of plans, but they head for Bethlehem. They are willing to go wherever they need to go to meet God, and they are willing to be reoriented from all the distractions of wealth and power to the true center of the universe, which turns out to be a “baby with no credentials,” cradled in the poverty of the manger.[iv]

My friends, this is the journey of faith each of us pursues throughout our lifetimes, allowing God to disorient and reorient us so that we can arrive at the place where we can truly meet God face to face. But in the smaller picture, it is also the journey we make every week when we show up to this place of worship: every one of us journeys from “afar,” from all the distractions, challenges and burdens of our daily lives, in order to rejoice and pay homage to the only One worthy of it. It constantly surprises us to find that One in a manger, in a stable, on a cross, or–by the power of the Spirit—inhabiting the lives of our fellow worshippers. And yet, every time we show up, we demonstrate our kinship with those magi, who were willing to do what it takes to meet God.            

And there is another surprise in their story—and ours—if we listen closely. Maybe our Southern friends were onto something, dressing the wise men in fireman’s gear. For while we say that they came from “a-fahr,” what actually happened is that they went to a fire. They went to the fire. When that star stopped over that stable in Bethlehem, the magi were overwhelmed with joy, because they knew a greater light resided inside. Upon entering, they beheld the light of life, the light that shines in the darkness, the glory of the Lord. In the presence of that light, which revealed everything about their lives, what they had been and what they could become, they could only stop, kneel, and pay homage.

It’s a strange phrase—“pay homage.” We don’t use it much in daily speech in a representational democracy. One commentator notes that Greek word translated “paying homage,” was “commonly used to describe the custom of prostrating oneself at the feet of a king. The physical posture dramatically expresses the idea of giving not just gifts, but our entire selves to Christ.”[v] And paying homage is the impetus, focus, and conclusion of the story: The magi set out on their journey, hoping to find the One worthy to receive, not just their rich gifts, but their very lives.

The Insko family gifted us with a beautiful children’s book called The Last Straw. Emily actually read it to our children some weeks ago during Sunday school. It is about an old camel named Hoshmakaka, who is chosen by the wise men to carry gifts to the baby king. Though he boasts to the younger camels that he is “as strong as ten horses,” he is secretly plagued by sciatica and gout. Along the journey, he is given the burdens of many other gifts, and he complains fiercely to himself as he struggles to appear strong. But the last gift he is charged to carry, a thin piece of straw, does him in. As he arrives at the manger, his knees buckle, and he bows down in front of the baby king despite himself. He feels foolish and worries what others will say, and when the wise men bow down, too, they are mocking him. But then a tiny hand reaches out from the manger to touch him, and the book says, “His pain seemed to disappear…” “From that time on there was no burden, great or small, that Hoshmakaka would not gladly carry.”[vi]

What Hoshmakaka learns is what the wise men already know: that kneeling before Jesus Christ, the true king of the universe and of our lives, does not debase us. Rather, as if we were kneeling around a fire in a dark night, the glory of God in Jesus Christ rises upon us. Beholding him for who he is—as Irenaeus once said, “the glory of humanity fully alive”—we begin to glow ourselves, rejoicing, because in kneeling before him, giving the best of our gifts, our very selves and our faithful service, we too become fully alive.[vii]     

My friends, as we embark anew upon our journeys of faith in this new year, may God make us willing to go wherever we need to go, to bear whatever gifts we are called to share, to change course when a new path appears, and to rejoice in arriving to pay homage in that place where God’s love reaches out with a tiny or trembling hand, setting our very lives aglow.

All glory be to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

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[i] Herbert O’Driscoll, “Kingly Presence,” http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2936 Her

[ii] Ibid, Herbert O’Driscoll.

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, “Off by Nine Miles,” http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2103

[iv] Ibid, Walter Brueggemann.

[v] Thomas H. Troeger  “Homiletical Perspective” on Matt. 2:1-12. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol.1 David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010, 213-217.

[vi] Fredrick H. Thury, author, and Vlasta van Kampen, illustrator. The Last Straw, Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2009.

[vii] Influenced here by both Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective” on Isaiah 60:1-6, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol.1 David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010, 199, and Herbert O’Driscoll, as above.

Can’t You Tell? Sermon by Laura for Advent 3A, 12.12.10

Scripture Readings: Matthew 11:2-11, James 5:7-10, Isaiah 35:1-10

Christmas morning. The tree, decorated, and abundant gifts beneath, wrapped up with shiny paper and ribbons. As a child, I loved that fabulous display of possibilities. Anything could still be under that tree, waiting to be unwrapped! The possibility of endless fun with a new toy or book; the possibility of something wonderful to engage the senses; the possibility of others’ pleasure in the gifts I’d prepared for them. At that moment, this Christmas morning might still be the best one ever. The buoyancy of expectation was its own delight.

But, every year, about mid-afternoon, when the gifts had been opened, and the rituals carried out, deflation set in. All possibility had been unwrapped with torn paper and broken ribbon. There was nothing left to behold but regular old reality. Some gifts had already exhausted their fun or beauty. Some we had not wanted in the first place. The same old family dynamics had played out. We realized again we’d never be able to please Aunt Sylvia, and the oldest complained about how many gifts the youngest had gotten, and so forth. At this point, we head for a nap, thinking maybe we shouldn’t bother with Christmas next year.

Have any of you ever experienced these feelings? Has there been something about which you thought, even for a moment, “This is IT! The Big One! Everything will be better after THIS!” Christmas is a classic example, but there are all sorts of events in life which provoke major expectation. Weddings. Babies. Graduations. Retirement.

There are normal patterns of excitement and let-down, but I think, for people immersed in consumer culture, they become exacerbated. We are regularly pumped up for the “next big thing,” whether an electronic gizmo or a politician, only to suffer a sense of disillusionment when it doesn’t live up to the hype. Too many disappointments can engender in us a sense of cynicism or even despair, in which we refuse to engage any more in the buoyancy of hope for fear of being crushed flat yet again.

And here we are again, midway through December with its holiday flurry of hyped up expectations. We are also three weeks into Advent, the season of church life that is all about living into our hope in Christ. But what is the difference between Christmas hype and Christmas hope?

One of the things we are about in Advent is learning to distinguish between the two. For every year at Christmas, we are given anew a gift which really is the One. The Messiah. The Word made Flesh. Emmanuel—God with us. Yet are we able to fully receive this gift? The way we receive God’s gift to us in Christ Jesus may depend upon what we prepared to receive. What are our expectations of the “one who is to come?” And will those expectations get in the way of our receiving him?

Last week’s gospel reading gave us a sense of what John the Baptist had been expecting in the Messiah. In language of wrath and fire, John exhorted others to prepare for the coming day of the Lord, when the “more powerful one” arrived in their midst. Nothing short of radical repentance was in order. John lived his life the way he preached, his own life stripped to bare essentials, blazing a path to the kingdom as he relentlessly voiced his convictions, whatever the consequences. And consequences had finally come, as John publicly denounced Herod’s corrupt marriage and was thrown in prison. He must have known he would die there.       

Stuck in place with nothing to do but think, this passionate prophet finds himself in doubt. The question John sends some of his own disciples to ask Jesus is classic: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It should comfort us that someone so convicted in his belief comes to a time when he must ask it. As has been observed, “It is easy to believe in God in the bright sunlight when all is joyful and free, but let the iron doors of difficulty slam shut, and doubt is there in the darkness.”[i]

But it is not only John’s life circumstances which pose such hard questions. It is also the content of Jesus’ ministry. When John hears in prison what Jesus is doing, it does not match up with his expectations of the Messiah. Where is the drastic trial by fire John had prophesied? Where is the separation of wheat and chaff? Where is the more powerful one, boldly transforming the world in a blaze of heat and light? Are you the one, or do we wait for another?         

I’m not sure if the response Jesus sends back helps John much in his time of doubt. Jesus doesn’t answer directly. Typically, how Jesus responds when we ask him, “Are you for real, Jesus?” is to offer more questions. What kind of Messiah were you expecting? He asks us in return. Can you hear what I’m saying and see what I’m doing?

So Jesus asks John’s disciples to go out, listen and look, and then return to tell John what they have heard and seen. In chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew, we can read stories which correspond to the list Jesus gives. One by one, as Jesus encounters someone in need, whether or not that person is a sinner or outcast or Gentile, Jesus heals, Jesus cleanses, Jesus forgives. Jesus embodies God’s mercy and love.

Two thousand years later, Christians in church, schooled as we are in the “right answers” of faith, might assume Jesus’ doings were a clear sign of the Messiah. We only have to point out the way Jesus’ list also corresponds to God’s promises in Isaiah 35, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” But how would John have perceived these doings? Do they confirm for John that Jesus is the Messiah?

Truly, they were mostly small things, accomplished on an individual level for small people. A centurion’s servant. An anonymous hemorrhaging woman. A twelve-year-old girl. One preacher notes, “Jesus does not respond by saying what is happening at the level of nations or governments or populations or lands.  He says look closely and see what is happening in the lives of people.  I am at work on a very intimate level.  Someone who was blind can now see.  Someone else who was lame can now walk.  Yet another person who was deaf can now hear.  Someone who’s had the good news brought to them and now feels hope.”[ii]

It is as if every time Jesus touches someone, he is planting a tiny seed. Faith like a mustard seed, which can move mountains, Jesus later tells the disciples. But is this the kind of Messiah John was expecting?

Not if John, like many of us, is looking for a straightforward “yes” or “no.” Not if John is looking for a cataclysmic, world-transforming explosion of light. “Instead,” notes one poet, “we are given nights punctuated by days, and days punctuated by nights.”[iii] Maybe that’s why Jesus concludes his answer, saying, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Because we do take offense, don’t we?

Many of us continue to think we want a Messiah who, obviously and explosively, goes about incinerating wickedness. But we don’t get a fire-bolt wielding judge. Instead we receive a compassionate Savior who reveals the truth of our lives as he suffers the consequences of our sin. Others want a Messiah who tells us how to fix it, and then gets out of our way while we get on with our lives, or maybe a mountain-mover who will do it all with no effort on our part.  But we don’t get a motivational speaker with a step-by-step formula, nor do we get a release from our responsibilities. Instead Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into us, transforming us from the inside out to become his partners in his ministry of reconciliation.  

Still others of us actually suffer from diminished expectations. Maybe our hurt and despair have gotten the best of us, and all we hope to unwrap in Jesus is a little “analgesic” to “take the edge off.” [iv] We don’t really expect to find ourselves or the world transformed in any way. But following Jesus is not about avoiding pain. Instead we get a Healer who walks decisively with us into the heart of every kind of pain and imprisonment, suffering and death we can experience, refusing to look away. He takes all that pain and redeems it, so that new life for all creation begins.   

Jesus Christ is the “more powerful one” who is coming. But let us be clear about how he uses that power. In Jesus Christ, we receive a God who deems human beings so precious, that he comes to be with us as one of us. This God will not violate those he loves by forcing his way upon us. Rather, in Jesus Christ, God touches us with mercy and partners with us gently, patiently working God’s transforming grace upon all things.

It turns out that Jesus is not so much a gift that we unwrap. He is a gift that unwraps us. He unwraps us from any illusions or hype we may have heaped upon him—or upon ourselves.He unwraps us from self-protective layers of cynicism or self-righteousness. He unwraps us from long-held grudges, from simmering anger, and from sinking despair.

I have seen him unwrap a young woman from her expectations of perfection, to let grace and freedom in. I have seen him unwrap a man from deep despair, to let light and laughter in. I have seen him unwrap men and women, young and old, from barriers of old wounds which keep healing relationships at bay.

Today Jesus is inviting us to be unwrapped from any glittering or glum expectations which might get in the way. What have you been expecting? What superficial wrappings do you need to let him open up, so that new life can grow in you?

Together, let us look closely, and hearing what he is saying, seeing what he is doing, following where he is leading us, let us have patient hope in the tiny seeds he is planting, and receive him fully, the true, enduring, hope of God’s tender mercy, startling salvation, and transforming love.

Let us pray: Holy God, Holy Jesus, Holy Spirit, clear our ears and our eyes so that we may truly behold the new life you offer. Let us see and hear what you are doing, and help us to go and tell others, that they might know the gift we are all given in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

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[i] Mark E. Yurs, “Matthew 11:2-11: Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett, eds. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010, 71.

[ii] Rev. Daniel P. Matthews, Jr. “What’s the Plan?” Sermon at http://day1.org/2386-whats_the_plan

[iii] Kim Stafford, The Muses Among Us, 45.

[iv] Mary Hinkle Shore’s phrase on “Pilgrim Preaching,” http://maryhinkle.typepad.com/pilgrim_preaching/2004/12/are_you_the_one.html

“Prepare for Peace”: Sermon by Laura for Advent 2A 12.5.10

Scripture Readings:  Matt 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13

Hasn’t it been lovely, these past couple of weeks, to watch the snow fall? Such weather makes me want to snuggle up inside, next to a warm fire, drinking hot cider. If you’re hearing strains of “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow,” you know what I mean. Of course, snow can make travel treacherous, but, as long as we still have heat and light, many of us secretly enjoy the excuse it provides to indulge in winter comforts. Whatever the weather, this is the feeling we cultivate at “Christmastime,” trying with our decorations, family letters, and food preparations to recreate such coziness, the wonder of beauty, comfort, and family.

Of course, the weather always changes. This past Thursday, the rain descended, turning the crystalline beauty into slush. The ugly, half-melted remnant revealed the gritty asphalt and dead branches which had been hidden beneath the soft, smooth line of snow. No one sings “Let it slush!” for a reason. Nothing romantic or charming about it. We don’t want slush for Christmas.

We don’t want John the Baptist for Christmas, either, but that is what we get this second week of Advent. Of course, while slush is a melting mush which exposes the dirty under-layer of snow’s pristine white, John the Baptist all hard angles and desert severity. He comes in his coarse camel clothing with locusts and honey on his lips, preaching bare-bones wind, water, and fire. There is nothing nostalgic or comfortable in what he says or what he does. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!” And if that doesn’t touch us, he moves onto insults. “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” No one is going to sell us a Christmas snow-globe with scenes of John the Baptist, and we are grateful for it.[1]

We’d much rather dwell on Isaiah 11, wouldn’t we?  “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”  Such hopeful imagery plays on deep longings, and it makes us catch our breath. Harmony between former enemies, predator and prey in repose together, a world safe for small children to reach out towards beauty. This is the imagery of childlike wonder we want at Christmastime. This is the world we want to capture in miniature.

But sometimes, without children around, adults find holiday preparations a bit pointless. The childlike wonder is gone, and when we look at the world, all we see is grey slush. What is there for us to do at Christmastime when the children have moved away and the world we inhabit seems exceedingly far off from “Peace on Earth, Good will to all?”

But if we look more closely at these scriptures, we see they both offer good news, challenging us to prepare ourselves for a blessing which goes far deeper and lasts far longer than any fleeting warm-and-cozy wonder we can work ourselves up to. They remind us that the preparations of Advent are different than the preparations of “Christmastime.” At Christmastime, we try to organize our outer environments to recapture feelings of inner contentment. But during Advent, we prepare by opening ourselves anew to the inner transformation of the Holy Spirit, by which we are truly able to bear nourishing fruits of righteousness and peace in our world.

The prophecy of Isaiah 11, for all the heartwarming imagery at its conclusion, begins with the stark image of a stump. A tree which has been cut down, a family lineage which has been cut off. The “stump of Jesse” is all that remains of the glorious dynasty of King David, of whom Jesse was father. The people of Israel had seen David’s royal family as the bearers of “God’s goodness and God’s faithfulness,” but in the prophet Isaiah’s time, David’s line had been exiled and crushed, first by the Babylonians and later by the Assyrians. For this conquered people, the promises of God’s faithfulness and goodness seem to have concluded in a “stump.” It is an image of “despair and resignation.”[2] 

And yet…“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The prophet predicts new life from that cut-down tree, as the Spirit of the Lord, the wind of God, which blows where it will, is able to breathe new being into the most lifeless of situations. The prophet announces that the Spirit will blow over that “stump.” A little shoot will grow, a Spirit-empowered king, who will bring incredible transformation. God’s Spirit resting upon him, this king will make righteous judgments. He will see through all appearances to decide on behalf of the poor and the meek. This righteousness and faithful justice will be so characteristic of this king’s governance that they shall be like clothes he wears. In and through this ruler’s righteous judgments, the Spirit will inaugurate a new world, in which creation itself will be renewed. Human justice will make peace for all creation possible.

Sounds like a bumper sticker: “Want peace? Work for justice.” And it turns out that we don’t receive a world with fuzzy lions we can cozy up to the way we might receive stuffed animals under the tree. God’s newness is not an easy gift to unwrap. It requires something from us.  Here’s how Walter Brueggemann puts it:

“That new world, however, is not just a pious expression of hope that will come to fruition automatically or by osmosis. The newness is an intrusive reality that disrupts all that is old and destructive. The reception of the new public possibility requires a decision that is both daring and costly. It is daring because we will not know how to act in a genuinely just community. It is costly because we benefit from and are comfortable with old, deathly patterns of life.” [3]

This is where John the Baptist enters the picture. Matthew, borrowing from Isaiah, tells us that his task is to “prepare the way of the Lord.” His job is to prepare us to make daring, costly choices, to reorient our lives, away from false hopes, and toward God’s newness. John’s words grate like gravel on our ears, as he invite us and warn us to scour away that which hinders our path toward the new world we long for, confronting us with the imminent arrival of a day we’d rather avoid. As one commentator notes, “John overturns the secular definition of Advent as number of shopping days left until Christmas. John the Baptist’s version of Advent is number of repentance days left until judgment.”[4]

For it is towards judgment that John the Baptist’s gnarly finger points, and it is good news. “Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees,” he tells us. “One who is more powerful than is coming after me.” The One who is coming brings unquenchable fire for trees which have not borne good fruit and for useless chaff, sorted out from the threshing-floor. How is this good news? It sounds fearful. Some of us hear John’s language of the “fire” and “wrath to come,” and we equate his urgent warning to prepare for judgment to an imminent threat of punishment.

And most of us have been taught to fear punishment. Some of us learned to fear punishment when we received our “just desserts” for misdeeds. But others learned to fear punishment because they were abused for no reason by an abuser who told them they deserved it. And still others were taught by teachers and preachers that God is an angry punisher who must be obeyed or else. In all cases, the threat of punishment has often been used to motivate changes in behavior.[5]

But judgment is not the same as punishment. Judgment is a decision. As we saw in the Isaiah passage, righteous judgment is an essential element of the justice which makes possible the coming of the “Peaceable Kingdom.” And so, we prepare for peace by preparing for righteous judgment. As has been noted, “The way to prepare for punishment is to flinch. The way to prepare for judgment is to repent.”[6]  My friends, we are not called to flinch. We are called to repent.

So, in calling us to repentance, John is calling us to a moment of truth, to make our own decision to accept and find hope in the coming righteous judgment. Here is why this is good news: Friends, we already know the end of this story! The righteous “shoot of Jesse” prophesied by Isaiah is also the “more powerful one” John says is coming after him. The One who baptizes, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire, is none other that the one who comes to lead us as a little child at Christmas, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

To accept and find hope in Christ’s judgment is to look into the loving eyes of the only One who, as one preacher puts it, “judges in order to forgive, accuses in order to justify, gives law in order to show grace, and dies that we might have life.”[7] To open ourselves to the righteous judgment of Jesus Christ is to allow the chaff of our lives to be burnt away so that the essential, nourishing kernel of our true, whole selves can be gathered into his granary, fruit worthy of repentance.

Now, it is not easy or comfortable to repent. Few of us voluntarily admit our sins; none of us enjoy it. It is like intentionally choosing to muck around in winter’s gritty slush to clear a path. As one author describes it, “Repentance is an ‘I can’t’ experience. To repent is to volunteer for death. Repentance asks that the ‘death of self’ which God began to work in us in baptism continue to this day. The repentant person comes before God saying, ‘I can’t do it myself, God. Kill me and give me new life. You buried me in baptism. Bury me again today. Raise me to a new life.’”[8]

 Now, it is only December. Depending on how the weather goes this year, we may have a few more cycles of snow-slush-mud before the first breath of spring. But there’s no denying that slush is a necessary turning point between the soft, crystalline cover of winter snow and the new life birthed from the earth in spring, and so it is a sign of hope. In the Advent weeks to come, let us prepare ourselves to celebrate God’s coming among us at Christmas, and to work, each in our own way, for the justice that makes for peace, repenting and giving ourselves up to the transformation God wants to work within and among us, trusting and hoping in God’s eternal promise: new life is on the way.

 All glory to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.           

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[1] Snow globe idea from Alyce MacKenzie,  “Fear of Punishment,” http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Fear-of-Punishment.html

[2] Brueggman, Walter, in Texts for Preaching Year A. Brueggemann, Cousar, Gaventa, and Newsome, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995, 10-18.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, in Texts for Preaching Year A, Brueggemann, Cousar, Gaventa, and Newsome, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995, 10-18.

[4] Alyce MacKenzie, “Fear of Punishment,” http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Fear-of-Punishment.html

[5]Alyce MacKenzie as above.

[6] Alyce MacKenzie as above.

[7] David Lose, Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=428

[8] Richard Jensen, quoted from Touched by the Spirit by Brian P. Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x1.htm

“Waiting in the Middle” sermon by Keith. Preached 11.28.10. 1st Sunday of Advent

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matt 24:36-44

            Happy Advent!  Today marks the beginning of the Advent season, the time of joyful anticipation.  The word “Advent” literarily means the arrival of something that has been eagerly awaited, especially something momentous.  For some, that momentous moment already happened two days ago with the arrival of Black Friday, which had its own kind of anticipation. We occasionally do some shopping at Wal-Mart, and when we were there earlier last week, we were handed an instruction sheet and a map for how to navigate Black Friday.  My guess is they decided they needed to maintain the safety of the shoppers, and as the flyer said, “Get what you came for and spend less time in line.”  But the instructions seemed to point to nothing but waiting.  Around the store were going to be placed high-end electronics at rock-bottom prices.  And to help guarantee you got the item you wanted, you needed to get a wristband.  Here is how it was supposed to work:  1. Get in line for your wristband(s) starting at midnight.  Wristbands will be handed out beginning at 2 AM.  Be sure to stay in line until you have received your wristband(s).  2.  After you get your band(s) exit the line and continue shopping.  3.  Claim your item between 5 and 6 AM.  4.  We recommend that you stay in the store to ensure you get the item you reserved, because all unclaimed items will be sold to other customers after 6 AM.  Now, staying up to six hours in Wal-Mart during the wee-hours of the morning to get a new large-screen TV or laptop computer does not sound like joyful anticipation for me.  Sleep at that hour seems more joyful.   

            I think it is part of the church’s mission in this society that is so consumer driven to say, “Whoa! Let’s stop for a second and realize exactly what our anticipation, what our waiting is really for.” Advent is a time to reflect on that anticipation, but it is also a time that we get to stretch our imagination in two directions.  In a week or two, we will start looking back to the beginning as we hear the stories that prepare us for the coming of the Christ child, Emmanuel, in our midst.  It is the story that we can easily envision as we have seen it acted out in pageants, on cards, and as the radio stations have made the post-Thanksgiving leap from playing secular tunes to Christmas hymns and jingles.          

            In a way, our stories have become wrapped up in that story as we anticipate the traditions that have become part of the retelling of the story.  In our homes it is the putting up and trimming the tree and maybe hanging lights off of the gutters.  As a church, we mark this waiting time with the lighting of the Advent candles and the Hanging of the Greens.  When you enter the sanctuary next Sunday, things will be different.  You will be able to see and smell and experience the anticipation.  One of my earliest church memories is holding that little candle at the Christmas Eve service, standing on the pew (the only time my parents let me do that), and seeing all the faces in the darkened sanctuary lit by their candles as we sang Silent Night and Joy to the World.  Because of those early experiences, I can’t wait to hold that candle again every year on Christmas Eve, with its drippy, messy wax.  It marks that the waiting is done.  The Christ child has been born, the light of the world has come into our midst!  And back then, I got to go home and open a present.

            But the first Sunday in Advent is different. The texts force us to look forward in time, to the end, toward the vision of the new heaven and the new earth, to an unknown day coming at a time only the Father knows.  It is the day when Christ our King will come again. We can’t mark that day in our appointment calendars.  It is hard to envision exactly what that day will look like, even though many have tried to paint images about it or write novels focusing on it or even calculate exactly when it will happen.  There isn’t a day when radio stations start playing Second Coming hymns and songs on the radio.  I haven’t met any families that have Second Coming traditions.  I’m not sure what they may look like.  “Oh, we went out last weekend and looked for our Tribulation Tree.  Find yours yet?”  And the reply is always, “Nope, not yet.”

            But “not yet” is exactly where we are, in what Karl Barth called “between the times,” stuck between two Advents, one from the past that is easy to envision and celebrate and the other out there in the future that most people either ignore or get too stressed about.  Our Matthew text sits in a series of sayings and parables about that Second Advent.  This day will come as a surprise, just as it did in Noah’s day while people were going about their day-to-day lives with eating and drinking and getting married.  They were surprised by the impending flood that came over them.  But Jesus’ message about this coming day seems to be different. It will be a surprise, but he also seems to be saying, “Be Prepared.”  If the homeowner had known, he would have been prepared for the thief.  Is Jesus saying that the homeowner should always be ready, maybe waiting in the dark, hour after hour with a baseball bat in hand?  That kind of living seems exhausting.  When Jesus is calling us to be ready for that day he comes in his glory, I hope he doesn’t want to find us crouched in the corner, ready for a fight.  I don’t want to live that way.

            The parables in the following chapter of our reading today point to the way that I think Jesus is calling us to live.  The first one tells us of 10 bridesmaids who are waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom.  When he finally arrives unannounced in the middle of the night, he receives the five who saved some oil for that moment, but turns away those who had used up their oil and had to go buy more.  The next parable is about a master who has gone away entrusting his money to his servants.  When he returns, he commends the servants who had wisely invested the money they had received, but chastises the servant who went and buried his master’s money in the ground.  And the third parable, like the previous one, also points to a day when the master will return.  But this specifically talks about the one returning as the Son of Man, or Jesus himself.  He will divide humanity into the sheep and the goats, into the group that as they fed and clothed “the least of these” also fed and clothed the Lord unawares.  But the other group, the ones who failed to feed and cloth “the least of these” failed to feed and cloth the Lord.  All three of these parables reiterate Jesus’ point that you must be ready, for he is coming at an unexpected hour.

            So, how does Jesus want us to live “between the times”?  What’s it look like to be prepared?  How is Jesus calling us to live while we wait for him?  I think that is the point, Jesus is calling us to live.  Like the men in the field working together and the women grinding meal together, they were living out their normal daily routines, no matter how mundane those lives may have seemed.  This is a text about today and how we will live it.  We are called to live today faithfully.  Jesus keeps our attention focused on today and the needs of the moment.  We can’t hole up somewhere with baseball bats and stockpiles of provisions to wait his coming.  But we also can’t live like he isn’t coming back. 

           Jesus is calling us to live faithfully while we wait faithfully.   He calls us to live faithfully for him now before he comes again, because he came that first time to transform our lives.  Because he came that first time as Emmanuel, God with us.  We don’t wait alone.  We wait for him with him.  To live in this in between time it to trust and hope that God in Christ has begun and will continue to transform us more and more into the stature of Christ, in whom all of God’s mercy and loving-kindness becomes manifest.  It is to become more Christ-like in our everyday walk with God.  Theologian Paul Tillich says, “Those who wait, in an ultimate sense are not that far from that for which they wait.”[1]

           Jesus doesn’t really give us much of a blue print for faithful living or how the transformation of our lives is supposed to exactly look like.  We can glean from this passage and the parables that follow that faithful living entails using the gifts that God has entrusted to each of us and reaching out to the least of these, the poor and hungry.  Even Paul’s words about putting on Christ isn’t exactly clear about the shape it should take.  But if we try to spell it out exactly what it should look like for each individual and community, we end up with the same result as when we try and predict the day he will return—we get it wrong.  Living faithfully takes discernment and prayer, but most of all, it takes living this life by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that each decision that we make as we go about our daily lives will transform us into the people God is calling us to be.  Maybe that is how we are supposed to celebrate Christ’s second coming, by simply living our lives as faithfully as we can as the Holy Spirit transforms us as Christ’s disciples.  When we look at it that way, the celebration is taking place every day.

            It is Advent.  And we wait.  We wait for the Christ child to come into our midst and we wait for that same one who will transform heaven and earth.  But that one we wait for who will transform all things is at this very moment transforming us into his faithful disciples.  And at this, we say, “Amen”

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[1] http://day1.org/1067-waiting

“King on a Cross” sermon by Keith. Preached 11.21.10 Christ the King Sunday

Texts Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 1:67-79, Luke 23:33-43

            Today is Christ the King Sunday.  It is the Sunday that marks the culmination of the church year, before we move into Advent.  This feast day was placed at the end of year as kind of a pinnacle, a day we celebrate the all-embracing authority of Christ as King and Lord of the cosmos.  Today, we are reminded that, as Christians, we are subjects of Christ and Christ alone, and that his power transcends all powers.  Now, the two texts that Connie read really seem to point to that understanding as Jesus Christ as exulted King.  But the next reading from the lectionary texts seems out of place.  It is the crucifixion of Jesus, a text we would seem more fitting during Holy Week than during a celebration of the Cosmic Christ.  However, it also points to an understanding of how God sees and anoints Jesus as King.  Let us hear the word of the Lord.

            Read Luke 23:33-43

            What does a king look like?  In our country of elected representative democracy, the idea of kingship can be a little hard to envision.  The closest we can come to is the British royal family, which if you hadn’t heard, is in the news again with the recent engagement announcement of Prince William to Kate Middleton.  Just like any bride and groom, there have been discussions about the guest list, venue and the date.  But, as one report put it, these decisions are “eagerly anticipated by literally billions of people.”[1] Some of you may remember the extravagance of the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, Williams’s parents, in the early eighties.  Odds are this wedding will not be any less lavish.  Estimates range from 20 to 40 million British pounds for the expected cost of this upcoming wedding.  Converted to US dollars, that comes in at 32 to 64 million dollars.  It is also expected that the wedding will boost the British economy by 620 million pounds, or just shy of one billion US dollars.[2]  But, that’s an OK amount for the future king of England, isn’t it?  This future king will represent the United Kingdom to the rest of the world as he receives foreign ambassadors and high commissioners, entertains visiting Heads of State and makes State visits overseas to other countries, in support of diplomatic and economic relations.  This will be the king who will open parliament, sign the acts they have passed, and meet with the Prime Minister.  He will also be the one who will provide a focus of national identity, unity and pride. 

            In the text I read, we get a glimpse of what the people were looking for in their king, the Messiah, the one who would be anointed by God to be their prophet and king by what they say to Jesus.  The Messiah would be their savior as he frees Israel from the oppression of the Romans and gives them back their national identity, uniting them, and bringing back the pride of the people of God.   He would be both a religious and military leader.  He will come to establish an earthly kingdom of peace and justice that would be centered in Israel.  And none of that happened with this man nailed to the cross.  Now, crucifixion was a common punishment at this date in history, but it was also reserved for those who had perpetrated two crimes, treason and avoiding due process in a capital crime.  Jesus is dying a rebel’s death.  And the sign that hung over him revealed his crime of treason, “This is the King of Jews.”  There can be only one king, and that is Caesar. 

            It is those words, “This is the King of Jews,” that bring about the mocking from the onlookers.  The leaders who had brought about the charges that say, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the chosen one!”  The true chosen one of God would be able to call forth an army, whether it be of men or of angels, and bring himself down from the cross, and rid us of these Romans.  This man can do none of that.  And if he could, why doesn’t he?

            Some of the soldiers who were now at this place called the Skull were in Pilate’s chambers when he had sentenced Jesus to crucifixion while at the same time declaring his innocence.  The soldiers’ acts are a mix of mockery and compassion as they offer wine to lessen the pain alongside such words as, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”  Even if you have a little kingly authority, save yourself from this humiliation, save yourself from this kind of death. This is no way for an innocent man to die.

            The criminal next to Jesus hung on his cross because he was guilty of treason, more than likely having led an unsuccessful group in rebellion against the Romans.  Looking up at the sign that hung above Jesus and then down at him, he literally blasphemed Jesus with, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”  We led others against Rome; free yourself and when you do, free us!  We will follow you as you become the King, because we will recognize the power you have!  We want the same thing you do!  We want freedom!

            What does a King look like?  It didn’t look like Jesus that day as he hung on a cross to those who witnessed it.  But it also is hard for us to picture Jesus as king that way as well.  It’s easier to turn to Paul’s word in Colossians to describe Jesus as King than it is to look upon Jesus during the crucifixion.  We don’t like to think of the one who had the power to create all things in heaven and on earth as being nailed to the cross, with seeming little power to do anything about it.  We do not like to picture the one who holds all things together being torn apart by the weight of his own body.  We want a king who can save himself and us! 

           In the mocking words of the scoffers and in the inscription put over his cross, we are faced with the true nature of Jesus’ Kingship. On the cross, Jesus is tempted by these scoffers in his calling.  Just as the devil had earlier challenged his vocational identity at the beginning of his ministry in the desert by offering him a different and less painful path to Kingship, Jesus is now being invited to save himself, to avoid the cross, and in the process to save the criminals as well.  He is being tempted to be the kind of King not unlike the one depicted in the false charges brought against him.  But he does not respond that way; he remains steadfast to fulfilling the divine will of what the Messiah will look like, not by what the scoffers want the Messiah to look like.

            Ironically, the words of those around him, those who ridicule and belittle him, pose the paradox of his mission.  He will save others, but he is the Messiah who saves others only by not saving himself.  All power is given up in the cross, and in that powerlessness of the cross, Jesus demonstrates the authority that ultimately rescues criminals, scoffers, religious leaders, and even us.  Christ’s reign is established in and through the crucifixion.  He does not rule by threat or military domination.  His authority is not sustained by asking homage from others.  Surrendering all the divine and human power that he has on the cross for the sake of others, Jesus defines for us what sort of king he really is. 

            What does a king look like?  The other criminal on the cross recognizes Jesus as who he is and dares speak his revelation.  He acknowledges that he himself is guilty and deserves to be hanging on that cross, but he also recognizes that Jesus is innocent.  And he also sees that Jesus will enter his kingly realm not by coming down from the cross, but by dying on it.  He pleads not to be forgotten, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  It is a confession of faith that in some deep mystery of the gospel, death must take place so that new life can take place, that renewed life can occur, that resurrection life can be experienced and true freedom can be found.  He recognizes that God will vindicate this King on a cross next to him and bring Jesus into his proper rule. 

            Friends, I ask you what does our king look like?  The good news is he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all of creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.  It is on that cross that we deserve to be hanging in condemnation, but our innocent king hangs there in our place.  It is also good news that we can approach our king and say, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And God, who has crowned Christ as head of the church, has already brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.  It is because of Christ our King, who has been, at the same time, humiliated on the cross and exalted in the empty tomb, that we find redemption and the forgiveness of sins. 

            Friends, this is who we worship.  This is why we are here, so we can encounter our King!  This is the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.  This is the one who saves us, Jesus Christ, our Lord and King. 

            Now, may all power and glory and honor be his now and forever more, Amen. 

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[1] http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_20442879,00.html

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330695/Kate-Middleton-Prince-Williams-wedding-picked-Charles.html

“Dangerous Opportunity,” Sermon by Laura,11.14.10, Proper 28C/Ordinary 33

Scripture Readings:  Luke 21:5-19, Isaiah 65: 17-25

Were you prepared for the Y2K? How many of remember when computer technicians predicted a melt-down of global data systems at the year 2000, due to an early computer programming error? It sounds far-fetched now. For the most part, Y2K turned out to be a non-event. Some credit that to computer programmers, who raced to fix the problem. Others speculate the problem wasn’t as significant as originally thought. But at the time, considering how computerized global infrastructures had become, the fears of accidental apocalypse were not totally unfounded. Many people—maybe even some of us here—reacted to the dire predictions by fortifying their homes, stocking up on essentials. We wanted to be prepared.

 Be prepared! I think these words characterize the way many people live in a time when fear of world-ending catastrophes is an undercurrent to daily life. Nuclear annihilation is still a specter on the horizon, but now it is complicated by international terrorism. There’s also the crazy weather, which we all suspect portends global climate change, but no one can be quite sure. And there are the numerous “wars and rumors of wars” and the various earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes which have caused epic damage over the past decade. Thanks to the news media, we are witnesses like never before to the awful suffering of victims worldwide, and we all too aware that ours is an age of tribulation.

Be prepared! These seem to be wise words. But sometimes, instead of preparing for effective action, we become slaves to self-preservation. Against the looming backdrop of fears, we often feel small and powerless. Frightened people go into survival mode, just getting through and grabbing tight to whatever we can. And we are easily misled to the transient and the trivial.

For there plenty of people are clamoring to manipulate our fears for personal or political gain. Every day, as Jesus predicted, we hear someone saying, “I am he!” and “The time is near!” Inundated with products to purchase “now or never,” and paraded with celebrities to worship, it is difficult to follow a clear path. Sometimes we just refuse to move, entrenching ourselves in fortresses of functional survival, trying to keep head down and nose clean.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It is not a bad thing to keep a few extra groceries on hand in case of an imminent blizzard. But, as individuals or as a church community, to practice a long-term ethic of survivalist self-preservation is to deny our faith in the “just, peace-bringing, salvation-making God” we know in Jesus Christ.[i] So, how, then, shall we live?

Across the ages, in our gospel lesson from Luke, we hear Jesus speaking to just these questions. He begins with prophecy. “Not one stone will be left upon another,” he tells some folks gazing at the impressive Jerusalem temple. It’s hard to overstate how unbelievable and terrible this must have sounded. Unbelievable, because of the temple’s enormity. People could hardly imagine the feat of strength to put its foundation stones in place, let alone that they might be thrown down. And terrible, because of the temple’s splendor. Ancient Jewish historian Josephus reports that “at the first rising of the sun, [it] reflected a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays.”[ii]

For those who originally heard these words, the destruction of this resplendent house of the eternal, the wealth and pride of the people, was unthinkable. But there’s an interesting layering of times in this passage. The gospel-writer Luke is actually recording these words a generation after Jesus’ earthly ministry. By that time, the community for whom he wrote had witnessed “these things” come to pass. In 70 A.D., the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, as the Romans put an end to Jewish revolt. Luke’s audience not only knew how possible such a cataclysmic event was, but they had to cope with its aftermath.  It had become urgent to know how to “be prepared” for future cataclysms. Chief among these was the expected return of Jesus in glory. As Luke writes in 21: 27, “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.

The church today continues to look for Jesus’ promised return, the “day of the Lord” at the end of history. We believe it will be the ultimate judgment of human history, the time when the real reality—God’s truth—will be finally revealed in fullness. All the seemingly reliable masterpieces humans have falsely placed at the center of life will be shown for the fragile edifices they are, cobbled together on unstable foundations of injustice and violence. They will thrown down to make room for the eternal city built by God. We wait in anticipation, both fearful and hopeful. 

And so there’s this question: “When will this be, and what will be the sign?”

As usual, Jesus’ way of preparing us is not quite what we expected or wanted. When we want to pinpoint an exact calendar date for the end-times, Jesus tells us, “Beware that you are not led astray.” Any who claim to know the day and the hour are mistaken. And when we want to entrench ourselves in fortified houses or institutions to outlast all wars and disasters, Jesus tells us “Do not be terrified.” And when we want him to give us a hug and tell us everything will be all right, Jesus looks us straight in the eyes and refuses to sugarcoat the truth. “Let me tell you, this in-between time will not be easy. Bad things will happen. And you, my disciples, will not be exempted from suffering.”

This doesn’t sound much like good news, does it? It is a sobering speech—no motivational step-by-step, no emotional pep-rally here. Jesus takes deadly seriously the suffering of people and creation, caused by the continuing presence of evil in our world. After all, he is speaking these words just before his own suffering begins. As the story in Luke continues, we learn of Jesus’ betrayal and death by crucifixion, as he takes upon himself our sin that we may be free of it.  

Yet sobering as these words are, if we listen carefully, there’s a life-giving Word here which can sustain us through any tribulation of our times and help us resist our own trivialization. Jesus’ instructions encourage us to take evil seriously, too, preparing ourselves by being alert to its presence within and without us. Yet he also tells us, in his words and in his actions, to quote one theologian, “we must not take evil more seriously than we do God.”[iii]

For Jesus knows, and wants us to know, with a steely certainty that can face down all dire predictions and all dreadful circumstances, that evil does not get the last word. As we face trials and terrors in our lives, unprepared and powerless though we may be, we will be given opportunities to testify, and we will be given the last word, a wisdom no opponent can withstand or contradict.

What is that wisdom?

The destruction of the temple is not the end. War or natural disaster is not the end. Nor are the trials, betrayals and persecutions Jesus’ followers may experience because of his name. As awful as any catastrophe in our lives might be, it is not the end. That is why Jesus can say, in the same breath, that some will be put to death, yet “not a hair of your head will perish.” Neither his suffering nor his death was the end, and neither will ours be. On the third day, when Jesus was raised from the dead, the powers of death and darkness were decisively defeated, and everything before and after is being transformed.

For in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we are given the wisdom to know, in the hands of our creative God, the end is always a new beginning. A new creation is even now coming into being from the rubble. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth!”  And what a joyous vision! No more weeping or suffering. The end of infant mortality and long life for everyone. Every person enjoying the fruits of his or her labor. Harmonious relationships throughout creation, and God in our midst. The new day Isaiah proclaims is the life we have always longed for.

It is the life which begins to take shape in us, as the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom of this vision. We are transformed from self-preservationists heads numbly down to stay out of trouble, to disciples who boldly stand up and raise our heads to see our redemption draw near.[iv]

We become those who share generously, sacrificially, of our time, money, and talents, trusting God’s abundant provision in every circumstance. We become those who speak out against injustice, who take courageous action on behalf of the most vulnerable people, people who fight evil in our time and place.

And finally, we become empowered to endure: every transition, every test, every illness, and every world-ending loss. We gain our souls as we testify in words and deeds to the eternal truth which outlasts everything else: God’s powerful, purposeful, ever-present, all-renewing love.

“Live Like You were Dying,” a recent country song by Tim McGraw, depicts well what it might look like to seize the opportunity to testify we’re given in world-changing times. It’s the story of a man confronting his imminent “end,” who finds, instead, a new beginning.

The first verse goes: 

“He said: “I was in my early forties,
“With a lot of life before me,
“An’ a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
“I spent most of the next days,
“Looking at the x-rays,
“An’ talking ’bout the options an’ talkin’ ‘bout sweet time.”
I asked him when it sank in,
That this might really be the real end?
How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news?
Man whatcha do?

 

And in the second verse, he tells us what he did…

He said “I was finally the husband,
“That most the time I wasn’t.
“An’ I became a friend a friend would like to have.
“And all of a sudden goin’ fishin’,
“Wasn’t such an imposition,
“And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.
“Well, I finally read the Good Book,
“And I took a good long hard look,
“At what I’d do if I could do it all again.

And the chorus:

An’ he said: “I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
“I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
“And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
“And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.”
An’ he said: “Some day, I hope you get the chance,
“To live like you were dyin’.”[v]

My friends, our lives between the times will not be easy. But we don’t have to wait for new life. Every day has an ending, and every day has a new beginning. Every day is the day of the Lord, an opportunity to live an eternal life, in and through the everlasting love of God.[vi]

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

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[i] Eugene Petersen, Under the Unpredictable Plant, 146.

[ii] Josephus in The Wars of the Jews, quoted by William Barclay in The Gospel of Luke, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, 259.

[iii] Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 284-285.

[iv] Luke 21:28

[v] http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/mcgraw-tim/live-like-you-were-dying-13619.html

[vi] This ending was strongly influenced by  this sermon by Samuel C. Candler, “All will be thrown down,”  http://day1.org/2380-all_will_be_thrown_down.

“You Give Them Something” sermon by Keith. Preached 11/7/10.

Scripture Texts: 2 Kings 4:1-7 and Luke 9:10-17

            Limited.  It is a word we don’t like to think about placing upon ourselves.  I know as I get older, the limits in life seem to be much more apparent then they were even five years ago.  In college, I could pull all-nighters and not have them phase me a bit.  Now, if I don’t get that eight hours of sleep, life seems bleak.  Too much coffee has become too good of a friend.  Lucas helps me realize how much energy I don’t have.  Where does all his energy come from, as he runs around the couch for the umpteenth time and I sit on the couch, hands wrapped around my coffee cup, smiling, getting exhausted by just watching him?  The only thing right now that seems to be unlimited is the number that pops up on the scale in the bathroom. 

           In our text this morning, we read about a situation where the disciples feel they have hit the limits in their ministry.  The feeding of the 5000 is one of those rare stories we find mentioned in all four gospels.  Let us hear the Word of the Lord…

 Read Luke 9:10-17

           The disciples have just returned from this incredible experience where Jesus has sent them out through all the countryside and villages to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom, cast out demons, and cure diseases.  People came to them, and they taught as Jesus had taught and healed as Jesus had healed.  The disciples had touched people, and they were made well.  They had never experienced anything like it.  And when the disciples were done, they came back to Jesus, filled with excitement.  Jesus was then taking them to Bethsaida, probably to discuss what had happened, but probably more for the same reasons that prompted his own retreats after busy periods of ministry:  prayer and renewal as well as to deal with the temptation that can arise from public praise. 

              But the retreat is to be short lived.  Word spread that Jesus and his band were headed to Bethsaida.  And many, many came from the surrounding country side, from the villages and towns, and interrupted this spiritual retreat.  One of the things we learn about Jesus during these ‘interrupted’ moments is he doesn’t send people away or say “I’ll get back to you.”  He deals with those in front of him.  In this case, he welcomes them, teaching and healing.

             As the sun starts to sink low in the western sky, the disciples begin to mumble.  “How many people are here?” Peter whispers to John.  “I don’t know, thousands, maybe, but they keep on coming.  Look, there are a dozen more coming down the road.”  Philip looks over, “They can’t stay out here all night long.”  Now, their mumblings are about genuine concern for these people.  Here they were, hungry for food and a good word, in the wilderness, with sunset quickly approaching.  If Jesus would just stop talking, this crowd could disband; they could go into the surrounding villages and find food and shelter.  All twelve of them approach Jesus, pull him aside, and tell him to send the crowd away so they can find food and lodging. 

             But it is hard to say exactly how they respond to what Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”  Do they laugh?  Do they cry?  What little they had was planned to be shared among Jesus and the disciples that night.  Dinner of bread and fish for thirteen.  Luke tells us there are five thousand men present.  That doesn’t include the women and the children.  There easily could have been over ten thousand people there.  As Peter looks down at the loaf of bread he is assigned to carry, and then up at the ocean of faces looking toward him, he must have realized how limited he really was.

           When we look out at the world, in many ways we feel like what we have in our hands for resources seems very limited, just like Peters.  I read an article recently from a fellow seminary student who thought going to seminary would allow her to figure out how to get the resources together, especially across denominational lines, so that, quote, “we could stand together to transform our society into the reign of God that Jesus came to establish.”[1]  After three years, especially after taking church history, and learning just why we are such a divided church, she realized it wasn’t that easy.  Maybe we need a new program or a new fund, something more that we can put into our hands for resources to reach out to others and take care of this problem!  And week after week, people are turned away because there is no money left in that new fund.  Or someone leaves the church because they are burned out after they end up caring the weight of that program entirely on their own shoulders.  We are limited, especially when we try to do it all, especially all by ourselves.

            Peter felt limited.  That is understandable.  There were a lot of people there, how could this measly amount of bread and fish feed more than just a few people?  But Jesus didn’t ask the disciples to feed this multitude of thousands of people to overwhelm them, he knows how limited they are as individuals.  He asks them to do it because he knows what they are capable of doing through him.  Peter seems to have forgotten the work that he had been empowered to accomplish, in and through the one who had sent him out to proclaim the good news and to heal in the villages.  Only through Jesus were the disciples capable of doing this great work of ministry and compassion.  On his own, Peter would have stayed a fisherman.  On his own, Matthew would have still been a tax collector.  Each disciple is a limited human being with limited resources. 

            But when a limited person with limited resources gets in the hands of an unlimited God, watch out!  Jesus asks his disciples to have the people sit in groups of fifty.  See what is happening?  Jesus again uses the disciples as instruments through which his will can be accomplished.  Then, Jesus takes those five loaves of bread and those two fish, looks up to heaven, and blesses and breaks them.  As he hands the broken pieces to the disciples, we can hear him say, “Peter, you give them something to eat.  All that they need, I am placing in your hands.” “John, you give that group under that tree something to eat.  All that they need, I am placing in your hands.”  “Philip, you see that group with all the children sitting over there?  You take your bread and fish to them.  All that they need, I am putting in your hands.”  “Bartholomew, take this bread and fish and give them to that group of widows over there.  All that they need, I am placing in your hands.”  And on and on Jesus went, handing the broken pieces of the bread and fish to his disciples so that they could give all who were there, men, women and children, something to eat.  And all ate and were filled.  And there were leftovers, enough leftovers that each disciple had an entire basket of bread.  It was almost as if Jesus was telling them, “In what little you thought you held in your hands, God has brought much.”

            Friends, the good news of this text is that in Christ, we are capable of great things.  The apostle Paul says it this way in Philippians:  “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”  Christ is capable of using our limited humanity to affect this church and this community. God can even use us to change the world in Christ and with Christ.  God gives us what we need to accomplish his work with him. 

            When you look down at your hands, do you see limiting age, hands that are weathered by the years, hands that are incapable of doing God’s work in the world?  God sees those hands differently, God sees them holding another hand, the hand of child, as stories are told and wisdom is shared.  God sees those hands folded in prayer, and God sees those hands serving a meal to strangers and welcoming friends.  When you look down at your hands, do you see the hands of youth, hands that seem too young to offer anything?  God sees them differently.  God sees them reaching out to those who need a steady hand, God sees them playing with the lonely, and God sees them holding a paint brush putting stain on a fence.  When you look at your hands, do you see just plain, empty hands with nothing to offer?  God sees them filled with the life that he has given you, God sees them filled with the resources he has given you.  God sees them as the hands of Christ, reaching out to a world in great need of not just hearing about God’s love, but of being filled.  Filled with God’s love as the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, and the outcast welcomed back home.

            If you are worn out from doing the work of the church, I don’t want you to hear this message as a need to ask God for more resolve so you can plow back into whatever ministry that has wiped you out in the first place.  Accepting your limits while at the same time accepting Christ’s promise to use those limits to do extraordinary things with your life takes discernment, prayer, and thoughtful action.  It means asking the Holy Spirit to guide you, that your hands are doing the work that Christ has called you and empowered you to do.  We need to be sure what we are doing is not following after the desires of our own hearts, but following the will of God.  And just as important, it means acting as part of a community.  Notice that Jesus didn’t just send one disciple to feed the crowds, leaving the other eleven standing back watching or off on some other task.  He sent them all.  He sent them all together to serve those in need, to do the ministry he was calling, leading, and guiding them to do.  There are no Lone Rangers when it comes to doing Christ’s work in the world.   It takes all of us.

            After church today, we as a congregation will be attending the Stewardship Commitment Lunch so the church can put together next years’ budget, a living document which attempts to account for how we will seek to be faithful to God’s gifts as a community.  It is fitting that we have heard this story today, as Jesus calls us to give of ourselves and our resources, even within our limited means and then watch what he can do in and through us.  No matter how limited we feel we are, when we have invited God into our lives, when we dwell with God in prayer, relying on the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, God will always do more with us than we could ever expect. 

            In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

---

[1] Pierce, Denise.  Article titled “What I’ve Learned in Seminary,” from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Windows. Summer 2010. Page 6.

“Not Like Other People”: Sermon by Laura, 10.24.10, Proper 25C/Ordinary Time 30

Scripture Readings: Luke 18.9-14, Psalm 65

The prayer offered by the Pharisee begins well: “God, I thank you…” Thanksgiving, a foundational form of prayer, is always a good place to begin communication with God. Psalm 65, for example, models a communal thanksgiving prayer, in which the people acknowledge God, the giver of everything we are and everything we have, everything necessary to sustain whole and holy life, from the good things of the earth, to answers to our prayers, to forgiveness for our transgressions. In thanksgiving, we become aware of ourselves again as creatures no different from any other, humbled in gratitude for that which we can never repay but only receive from our generous and gracious God.

“God, I thank you…” the Pharisee begins. And yet, we know from Jesus’ conclusion that the Pharisee’s prayer goes awry somehow. Somehow, his thanksgiving defeats the central purpose of prayer. For, deeper than listing to God our wants, prayer is about the relationships at the heart of our faith. As one scholar notes, “Prayer is not an optional exercise in piety, carried out to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship.” [i] To pray for justice, like the widow in last week’s parable of the unjust judge, is to seek the restoration of right and life-giving relationships between human beings.

To pray for justification, central to today’s parable, is to seek to be restored in right and life-giving relationship with God. And, it turns out, we cannot truly have one without the other. After all,  Jesus tells us, the greatest commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind” and the second is like it, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

So what does the Pharisee’s prayer tell us about his relationship with God and neighbor? In the introduction which precedes the story, and in the pronouncement that follows, it seems to be spelled out for us. This is a story aimed at people who, trusting their own righteousness, have contempt for other people, a story about how the exalted are humbled and the humbled are exalted. So it’s hard not to write the Pharisee off as example number one of the very kind of hypocritical religiosity we are talking about when we use the word “pharisaical.” 

But the people of Jesus’ time would have seen the Pharisee differently. Let’s give him a name—Levi, say—to help us see him as a person rather than a stock category.[ii] Levi would have been known as a good neighbor and admired, a community leader extraordinarily committed to living out his faith. People could count on Levi to volunteer teaching Sunday school and serving on Session. People relied upon Levi’s financial stewardship. Not only does Levi go without food twice a week, offering penitent prayer for the nation, but he gives a full ten percent of everything he has, support the needy of the community.  So when we hear Levi pray, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” there is some truth. Levi has gone above and beyond in living out of Torah instructions. Perhaps he is simply grateful to God that he has the privilege of living such a life.

Yet this is also the moment where his prayer turns away from thanksgiving. It happens when Levi starts looking away from God in order to compare himself with others. You can almost visualize him peeking at the tax collector, feeling maybe just the tiniest bit of superiority. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” 

Levi doesn’t realize that he’s feeling superiority, though. On the one hand, it feels like relief: compared to that guy, Levi has it together. How many of us haven’t compared our situation to someone down on their luck and concluded, “Whew! There but for the grace of God go I”?

On the other hand, it feels like frustration: when will the tax collector “get with the program?” Levi is working awfully hard on behalf of God’s kingdom, and he believes such faithful living could transform the world.  If that tax collector (and everyone else) would truly repent, start showing up for church regularly, and start living out his faith—not to mention start tithing!—Levi thinks, we wouldn’t be in this mess! Sarah Dylan Breuer notes,

“…[W]hen someone doesn’t sign on to such a program, it becomes tempting to start seeing people on the other side   as the problem, and it’s practically impossible to proclaim something that will sound like Good News to your audience if you’re doing it from a position of resentment.”[iii]

It turns out that, any time we compare ourselves with other people, we eventually find ourselves indulging in self-justification. Daniel Clendinnen points out,

“We’ll invoke almost anything to justify ourselves — intelligence (GPA and SAT), alma mater (“This is where I went to school thirty years ago”), money (“I’m frugal toward myself and generous to others”), family (“Great kids!”), sports (“I’m in shape, you’re a slob”), politics (“My vote is enlightened, yours is ideological”), and work (“I work at X; what do you do?”).”[iv]

All of our attempts at self-justification ultimately defeat us. We may feel good about ourselves for a moment, but it always comes at the cost of relationships, with God and with other people.[v]

So what about that tax collector? What does his prayer reveal?

We’d better give him a name, too, to be fair. Let’s call him Jack. The people of Jesus’ time would have seen Jack in much the same way that the Pharisee seems to: a greedy crook and traitorous collaborator with the hated Roman oppressors. Jack is wealthy, because he has been willing to squeeze whatever he can from his neighbors, above and beyond what he has to pay the empire. And Jack doesn’t share his wealth with his church or community charities—he spends it on fine food, flashy clothes, and expensive toys. It was widely assumed that someone willing to enrich himself thusly would also traffic with other kinds of shady characters—that’s why tax collectors are always mentioned with prostitutes and sinners in the gospels. It’s actually remarkable that Jack is in the temple praying, as he has rarely, if ever, been seen there before.

But in the parable, Jack is the image of humiliated defeat:off by himself, eyes downcast, beating his breast, praying, simply, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ And Jesus tells us that this one-line prayer has a result which is at the heart of all prayer: Jack goes home justified with God.

Now we don’t know what happens after this. There is no suggestion that the tax collector went home and repented of his crooked ways. There is no suggestion that this prayer was a magic pill which, “poof,” transforms Jack from brokenness to holiness. There is only this snapshot of one moment in his life. But there is also the promise that this man, who has looked at painfully, honestly, at himself and come clean before God, when he leaves that place, goes “home.” There is nothing said about “home” for the Pharisee.

“Home,” is a word with deep symbolic resonance. In its most ideal meaning, home is a place where I can rest, where I can be fully myself, “warts and all.”  When I am deeply at home, there is no need to compare myself to anyone else, because there is no need to prove how loveable or worthy I am. At home, I can trust in and receive the love of others. The tax collector’s prayer, bare of all attempts at self-justification, casting all his hope on the mercy of the only One who can right what has gone awry in his life, can point towards our way home, too.

Now, this parable is a bit of a brain-teaser. If we come away from it, lifting up the tax collector as a paragon of true righteousness while condemning that hypocritical Pharisee, we have missed the point. Or maybe, ironically, you could say we have fallen upon it revealing the immaturity of our own faith, falling into the very pattern of the Pharisee that we now despise. Ultimately, this parable just gives us a “good man” who condemns himself in disparaging a “bad” man, and a bad man whose penance probably falls short of our hopes. And it turns out that every one of us can go from being one of them to the other in the blink of an eye, without ever realizing what happened. [vi]

So what is the point? To be justified with God is not to say “Thank God I’m not like other people,” but to recognize that I am, in fact, exactly like other people. I, too, am a sinner. I have fallen short of the glory of God. No matter what I do, in and of myself, I can never fully make everything right. All I can do is come honestly before my God and my Savior, asking for mercy.

The good news is that, trusting in that mercy, I can go “home.” Letting go of all of those comparisons I have used to prop myself up might make me feel vulnerable, but it amazingly liberates me to go where I never have to prove myself ever again. [vii] The home I find in that place is where I can finally find some peace in my own life, and peace in relationship to everyone I encounter.

To be at home in that way is to learn, what it means to be the kind of “humble” people who God exalts, as Jesus pronounces at the end of the parable. Thomas Merton once said, “Humility is being precisely the person you actually are in the presence of God.” [viii] No longer comparing my deeds or lack thereof with others, I can focus more fully on God’s presence and the Holy Spirit’s movement in my life. I can be more compassionate to other people, recognizing that it is not “there but for the grace of God go I,” but “there we all go together, every one of us dependent on God’s mercy.” 

And I can return again to a prayer of thanksgiving, no longer separating myself out, but identifying with the whole creation like the Psalmist, who praises God, saying, “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy,  the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.”

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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[i] Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke¸Sacra Pagina series, 473, quoted by Stofroeggen , http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/prayers-god

[ii] Sarah Dylan Breuer, http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2004/10/proper_25_year_.html

[iii] Sarah Dylan Breuer, as above.

[iv] Daniel Clendinnen, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20101018JJ.shtml

[v] David Lose, Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=416

[vi] Paul Simpson Duke, The Parables: The Great Texts, a Preaching Commentary. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005, 34.

[vii] Daniel Clendinnen, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20101018JJ.shtml

[viii] Quoted in Rev. Robert M. Holmes,  http://day1.org/604-a_satisfactory_humility.

“Persistence” by Keith. Proper 24C. Preached 10/17/10

Texts for preaching:  2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 and Luke 18:1-8

            One of the things I’ve learned about having our now 3 year old is that he can be very persistent.  I think every grocery store in town, plus a few other stores, have gumball machines hidden off in the corner.  Lucas seems to have a sixth sense in finding the gumball machines and an uncanny memory in remembering which stores have them.  He even seems to remember what color the last one was he got from a particular machine.  And when we have to go to a store that he knows has a gumball machine, he will remind mom and dad that they need to bring along a quarter.  One day at the grocery store, we made our way to the gumball machine, and I helped Lucas put the quarter in and turn the knob, and turn the knob, and turn the knob.  Something was broke in the mechanism, not broke enough to give us our quarter back, but broke enough that the quarter dropped and the handle just kept on turning and turning, never stopping, but most importantly, not giving us our gumball.  After about the 10^th turn, a quick shake and a hit, I told Lucas we wouldn’t be getting a gumball that day.  There wasn’t another machine, and I didn’t have another quarter.  But he kept turning the handle and he just couldn’t be pulled away.  He knew that it was when the turning stopped, that’s when the gumball dropped.  He just knew he had to keep turning it.  And if he stopped and left, he just wouldn’t get what he was waiting for, his gumball.

            In today’s passage, we get introduced to the concept of persistence in prayer.  The main characters are a dishonest judge and a widow.  Like the parable of the unjust steward, Jesus uses a person we are not to use for an example of godly living.  This judge hated dealing with people and he hated God.  He was the kind of person who would have reached right in and taken that gumball from a three year old when it came falling out of the dispenser without hesitation.  He gave the title of judge a bad name.

            And showing up in his courtroom was a widow who needed justice and had nothing.  She has no husband, no children, no money, no power, and no standing in the community.  Well, ok, she did have one thing.  She had the power to pest, to annoy.  In his courtroom, she would stand in the corner chanting, “Give me justice!”  Outside his chamber doors, “Give me justice!  Give me justice!”  On his way to the country club, “Give me justice!  Give me justice!  Give me justice!”  And even standing outside of his house at night she hounded him with her chant, “Give me justice!” 

            And her cries for justice finally wear him out.  He says to himself, “I don’t care about justice and I don’t care about this old women and her problem.  But I am tired of her nagging.  I have to get rid of her.”  The Greek literally means he has to grant her justice before she comes and slaps him in the face.

            Now, this passage starts off with the rational for Jesus to tell this parable.  In a world where Jesus knew they would experience persecution almost daily, the disciples were to pray always and not to lose heart.  They are to be persistent pray-ers.  And the reason, we find out, is we have a persistent God.  Jesus uses a literary technique knows as “from the lesser to the greater.”  We might paraphrase his question to something like this: “If an unjust judge can grant justice in response to badgering, how much more will God grant justice to those who cry out day and night?”  The good news that we find in the biblical witness is about God’s persistent, unshakeable everlasting love for us and for all of creation.  Because of our brokenness and sinful nature, we deserve God’s condemnation and justice.  But it is also because of God’s persistent love that God took on that condemnation in Christ so that we might find peace with God.  We can trust that this God who loves us will also bring about justice.  God hears our prayers, we can be sure of that, even as we cry out day and night, and even though we do not see any results yet.   We can and do grow impatient and sometimes loosing heart.  Fred Craddock put it this way:  “All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.”[1]

            And it is here where the persistence of the faithful, our persistence, enters the picture.  Because we know of and experience God’s persistent love in Christ, we try anew everyday, no matter how hard it is, to pray, “Thy kingdom come.”  Praying is hard work, especially while we look around and see the brokenness of the world, while we live here between Christ’s first and second coming.  Our Peacemaker, Brenda Trinidad, shared the horrific news of the thousands of women who have been murdered or are missing in northern Mexico.  We read the papers and watch the news and see stories of abuse and neglect of the young and the old.  We cry out “Justice!” even why we pray, “Thy kingdom come.”  Our crying out for justice means hopefully trusting in God, and not in ourselves. 

            The widow kept coming to the judge for justice, hoping against all odds, persistent, determined, and relentless.  We keep praying for justice, hoping against all odds, persistent, determined and relentless.  We do this not because we are good Christians or that we possess such a strong and great faith, but the Holy Spirit has given us the courage to do so, to pray without ceasing in a broken and fearful world.  The widow in the parable also represents the Spirit’s incessant work of encouraging us to pray for justice, the Spirit’s nagging persistence and unrelenting perseverance.  We cannot bring justice to this broken world, but through the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives and in our prayers, God uses us to be instruments of justice, working for justice and peace until that time when Christ comes again to judge the world with his love.

Seminary professor Tom Long shares the story of when Mother Teresa went to visit Edward Bennett Williams, a legendary Washington criminal lawyer.[2] He was a powerful lawyer. He at one time owned the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles and he was the lawyer for Frank Sinatra and Richard Nixon, among others. Evan Thomas’s biography of Williams tells the story about when Mother Teresa visited Williams because she was raising money for an AIDS hospice. Williams was in charge of a small charitable foundation that she hoped would help. Before she arrived for the appointment, Williams said to his partner, Paul Dietrich, “You know, Paul, AIDS is not my favorite disease. I don’t really want to make a contribution, but I’ve got this Catholic saint coming to see me, and I don’t know what to do.” Well, they agreed that they would be polite, hear her out, but then say no.

Well, Mother Teresa arrived. She was a little sparrow sitting on the other side of the big mahogany lawyer’s desk. She made her appeal for the hospice, and Williams said, “We’re touched by your appeal, but no.” Mother Teresa said simply, “Let us pray.” Williams looked at Dietrich; they bowed their heads and after the prayer, Mother Teresa made the same pitch, word for word, for the hospice. Again Williams politely said no. Mother Teresa said, “Let us pray.” Williams, exasperated, looked up at the ceiling, “All right, all right, get me my checkbook!”

            The moral of the parable is to pray always and don’t lose heart.  Maybe Jesus wants us to be a little feisty in our prayer life, persistently ringing the doorbell of heaven’s doors.  But deeper than that it is a parable about God and God’s love and justice.  It’s a parable about God’s love for us.  If a poor widow with no standing can finally win her justice from a dishonorable judge, how much more will we–God’s own children, the loved and known by the one who knew us from the very beginning—find a God who will hear and answer our prayers for justice in a broken world.

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[1] Craddock, Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 210.

[2] http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/long_5101.htm