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Meditation on Luke's Passion

Because so many people will have a Holy Week broken up by spring break travels and moments out of their usual context, I post this meditation on Luke's Passion as a sort of Prologue. If you can do nothing else before Easter, sit down and read Luke 22 and 23. Perhaps this framing will be helpful:

Passion Sunday Year C

We live in a world that loves a story of winners and losers, where history is too often the story that is told by those who came out on top. Truth gives way to truthi-ness, and the people with the loudest microphones set the tone of our narrative.

The story of Jesus’ passion, especially in Luke,  can be read that way, as a story of mob mentality, a story of how fickle we are as human beings, how easily we turn against those who do not meet our expectations, how much we want to tie ourselves to a star.

But make no mistake. This is not a story about whether Jesus will win or lose, whether he will be a king as he is hailed to be on that Palm Sunday. It’s only about what kind of king he is, and who will recognize it.

We think we know what kings do: they rule, they wield the power of the sword; they set themselves on top and expect everyone else to take their place below. They meet with other kings and rulers and travel the world making royal appearances.The king’s language tells the story and the king’s judgment makes the law.

And here comes this king who does everything backwards. . . who does not defend his power, who eats with the lowly, who has no palace, no royal guard. Who relies on the hospitality of others.

And finally, this king pardons, not the deserving, but those who clearly deserve punishment. And dies between two thieves.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. . .

Finally, before his final breath,  someone declares him a king in an unironic way – and it is this thief, who is going to die anyway, who understands that Jesus’ kingdom, when he comes into it, will not look like a walk off the cross.

When you come into YOUR kingdom, Jesus, remember me.

Remember me in YOUR kingdom:

The one where enemies are reconciled ( 23:12)

The one where strangers take up a cross and follow you (23:26)

The one where sinners are welcomed (23:42)

The one where power is not measured by might but by righteousness and mercy

Jesus says today you will be with me in paradise

For what is paradise if not a place where the righteous are declared innocent

Where the sinner is pardoned

Where even the barren are blessed (23:29)

Where enemies become friends

Paradise –is that place of rest where the righteous wait for the resurrection

And today we are welcomed too – for this week, for our lives –into that place of blessed rest where we know that Christ is king, and where we wait for the resurrection, for the new life only this king can bring. That paradise is here today, because Jesus stands among us.

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A Sermon on Jessie Diggins, Rosa Parks, and the Wedding at Cana

Epiphany 2C                                                 January 17, 2016

A sermon on Jessie Diggins, Rosa Parks, and the Wedding at Cana

John 2: 1-11

            While the sports section was covering the Vikings 12 pages at a time last week, a tiny paragraph appeared posting news that was much bigger in my world: a Minnesotan named Jessie Diggins became the first U.S. Nordic skier to win a World Cup distance race.  This is big big news in cross country skiing, and the race series last week that she was part of was front page news – in Norway.

            There was one article that gave it a little more attention == and what was fascinating was the way various people commented on the win.  No one described it as a long-shot or a miracle. The athlete herself was both elated and humble. She said again and again that it was her team’s enthusiasm that cheered her on, her coaches and waxers that made it technically possible.   The godfather of Twin Cities skiing, Ahvo Taipele, said “I saw her ski when she was 12 and I always said she would be a threat.” Her coach said “we’ve seen how she can close down a race many times.”  And of course a couple of people said, “The Europeans have been put on notice!”

And her parents, her parents simply said “This is the result of 100s and 100s of hours of dedication and training.”

And most of the world still has no idea what I’m talking about.

As the Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus, it never speaks of miracles or wonders. Jesus heals the blind, raises the dead, and this morning turns water into wine, but never is what he does a miracle. It is a “sign” – an act that reveals his glory and points to who he is.  It’s putting us on notice that the Word is coming into the world.

But the funny thing is, with this sign especially, it’s a pretty well-hidden sign.

Think about it: what happens truly is astonishing, and it totally saves the day for this family. 

Mary knows that not having wine is going to be disastrous – are they poor? Was there an accident and something was lost? Are they just pathetically poor planners? We don’t know. But what we do know is that in the world of Middle Eastern weddings, failing to have enough wine to offer your guests at a wedding is a colossal failure, a real shame.

Mary is maybe the only one at this time who knows that Jesus can be of any help with this issue.  Their relationship is--  well,  probably about as complicated as you can imagine a relationship between a human mother and a not-exactly-normal son would be.  The way Jesus addresses her probably has more to do with John’s theology than with Jesus here – let’s agree to leave that aside for the moment. But notice this; all she says is:

Do whatever he tells you

And they fill the jars –  

            This is a ridiculous amount of water.  It takes some serious obedience for these servants to do this, because this is enough water to keep people drinking for weeks nearly a thousand bottles. And it’s WATER they’re putting in there. You can imagine some of them saying “Why are we doing this? What good does this do?” No one wants to drink water.  There’s an old saying, “in beer there is wisdom, in wine there is joy, in water there’s bacteria.”

 The real crisis here is more than wine, it’s hospitality, it’s joy. The people are not dying of thirst. They are in danger of going home because the party has lost its luster, because this is not what a good host does.

But the obedient servants fill the jars, because Jesus told them to and because Jesus’ mother told them to do what he said.

            And out of all this water, after all this work, one servant takes one cup to one man, the steward.

            The steward, we assume, has no idea where this cup came from;  He gives all the credit to the bridegroom, who likely has no idea that the servants have been hauling water full time for the last hour, much less who ordered them to do so.

            But that one cup,  that little bit of what was an enormous wonder of abundant wine, that cup causes him to wonder out loud about the entire philosophy of hospitality:

            You, you have saved the best wine for last.

            The assumption here is that the guests are not even going to notice how good the wine is. They would have noticed when it ran out, for sure. But not the quality of what is now in front of them.  Not only do they not know how closely the wedding escaped disaster. Not only do they not know that Jesus is responsible. They don’t even know that this wine is the best of all. But they sure benefit from it. They might have all kinds of other explanations for what has just happened.

So it’s an odd thing. If this is supposed to be Jesus great revelation to the world of who he is, it’s pretty well hidden. If this is supposed to be a sign, it’s a sign that does not exactly turn the spotlights on him. 

--

The people in the best position to appreciate what has just happened are the ones who actually had to work some to make it happen – those servants must have literally hauled water for quite a while.  So while the wine sort of came out of nowhere, the full jars did not. It was the result of lots of work.

--

In our age of instant fame and viral videos, what we seldom see is the hauling of water. We want the miracle, the great moment captured in 42 seconds on someone’s camera, but we have little patience for the process of getting there.

Think of the civil rights movement. My generation came of age learning about Rosa Parks as if her staying put at the front of the bus was a spontaneous decision, a moment that catalyzed everything that followed just by sheer force of will.

But that’s not what happened. Rosa Parks was not just tired.  And she was not the first person arrested for refusing to give up her seat. She was a churchgoing woman of color who had already been active in the efforts to call attention to segregation.  She was known and respected across the community  because she was engaged across a broad spectrum of the Montgomery community. As her husband put it,  she was more often at community potlucks than cooking dinner at home. She was already active with the NAACP and was disciplined in the art of peaceful demonstration. And when her action catalyzed the Montgomery bus boycott, there were already legions of neighbors and fellow churchgoers who were ready to not take the bus to work the next day, and the next day, and the next. There was organization, and determination and grit from not just one woman but from a community.  And their actions was one part of a struggle that lasted not just days but years.  There was, and still is, a lot of hauling water happening to call attention to the need for human dignity and rights for every citizen. (This is beautifully written about in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg).

--

The ones who realized what happened at Cana were servants, which is entirely fitting since when Jesus decided to teach his disciples his last lesson about who he was, he took a towel, and wrapped it around his waist, and got down on his knees. His last commandment to them was that they love one another. And loving one another is not one deed but thousands upon thousands.

It shouldn’t surprise us that we don’t always see the signs.  The world is too drunk with its own consumerism to care most of the time. Most of the time we don’t even notice the disasters we have narrowly escaped. That is no different than before.  But God’s grace still pours down; Jesus still goes about his work, healing, giving life, giving joy.  If we want to see it, we have to pay attention.

Next week at St. John’s we will gather and speak of what it means to follow this servant. There will be report after report by servants in this place who can tell you of hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, a ream of examples of deeds done in Jesus’ name. Many of us may not feel that it matters all that much, whether we show up, whether we volunteer, whether we have that conversation with someone we don’t already know or raise our hand to help out.

  It is easy for us to fret that it’s not enough; it’s easy to imagine that all that water we haul week after week is not what we need to really feast in God’s presence.  

But Jesus is here;  as we obey his commands, as we love one another, as we tend to empty jars and empty bellies and troubled hearts and questioning minds and hungry souls, the ordinary water of everyday life  becomes the wine of joy. If we pay attention, we will see him at work.

So how will you put something in an empty jar this week? It might not be dramatic, you won’t do it alone, and it might not even be noticed by anyone; and it’s entirely possible that when someone says this is the best wine I’ve ever tasted, they won’t know that it came from the work of Jesus. But Jesus offers joy to the whole party, every one.  And this is just the beginning.

 

beyond words

Thanks to workingpreacher.org for this reminder about my friend Deanna Thompson's lovely essay about talking about things we don't know how to talk about. Even those of us who do love words confront times when words fail us.  It's a great connection to this Sunday's second lesson from 2 Timothy.

One of the great blessings of the internet has been its power to help some very fine writers in the midst of personal crisis to share their story more or less as it happens. Some of them write books as well, but I'm grateful for sites like caringbridge that allow people to reflect on illness and grief without having to go through years of editing and publishing details first. As someone who knows how hard it can be to speak in such times, the ability to write to many loved ones at once is a blessing.

Sunday's sermon: Lazarus and the nameless rich man

September 29, 2013

Lectionary 26;  Luke 16: 19-31

 

Pope Francis decides to invite former Pope Benedict and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams out for a ride in his 1984 Renault. How  else could three such prominent theologians actually have a private conversation about weighty matters? Unfortunately, the paparazzi get  wind of this plan and chase the three across the Italian countryside until the whole things ends in a tragic fiery crash, and all three end up at the Pearly Gates together.

St. Peter welcomes them and informs them that due to their dedicated service to the Lord’s Church on earth, they will each be granted a private audience with the Holy One. They draw straws to see who will go first and Rowan Williams is the first.

It takes a while. . .longer than anyone expected, really. And when Williams emerges he hangs his head and shakes his bushy eyebrows muttering to himself, “How could have been so wrong?”

Well, the popes are a little encouraged by this, so Pope Francis volunteers to go next. He is in the inner sanctum for even longer than the Archbishop, and finally emerges looking puzzled and humbled himself. “How could I have been so wrong?” he exclaims.

Pope Benedict, not at all cowed by this, strides in last. And this time the meeting seems never to end. Hours and hours go by, and finally the door is flung open, and God Herself bursts out, hanging Her divine head in despair, crying “How could I have been so wrong?”

---

          There are many things that have not changed in two thousand years. One is that we all love a good pearly gates joke. We know from ancient sources that stories about heaven and hell were told in ancient Egypt and  among Jewish rabbis in Jesus’ time as well. Jesus’ own story this morning is a mash-up of Jewish and Greek concepts of the afterlife, not one that’s consistent with any one understanding.

          But as we all know from our own jokes, these stories aren’t really about what we think of heaven or hell. You don’t have to literally believe in Pearly Gates with St. Peter at the front desk to enjoy a good story about popes or presidents or Lutherans  or Catholics. Some of them, like this one, are great jokes because you can easily put in the people of your day; who among us doesn’t have a family member that could stand in for Pope Benedict in this joke? The point of these stories is never so much about what we think things will look like after we draw our final breath, but about how we live our lives here and now. They are about seeing what is on earth from the eyes of heaven.

          Sartre said that the meaning of life is that it ends, and maybe that’s why we enjoy these stories so much. They are about the meaning of our lives from that final perspective: if the period were put on the end of a President’s life today how would we tell the story? If the period were put on the last paragraph of my life today, how would that story get told? There’s nothing like heavenly hindsight to put things in perspective. And perspective is exactly what the rich man and Lazarus get.

          So don’t be distracted by things like flames and the lap of Father Abraham. They are like the  bar when the rabbi and the priest walk into a bar. It’s not about the bar.  Jesus is using his cultural means to make give us a little fantasy that helps us pay attention to reality.  The image of this huge chasm between Lazarus’ condition in heaven and the rich man’s in Hades is a reversal of their life time conditions.

          And there’s another thing that has not changed at all in 2000 years, and this is the part that is not at all funny. There is still a tremendous chasm between the condition of some in this life and the comfort with which the rest live. We all can still see Lazarus at the gate, though there are forces in our lives that also work to keep him invisible from us.

There is a great chasm, and we get a witness to it every day in the newspaper. Often it can be measured in dollars and cents but there are other gaps as well.

          Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman

          Between Congresspeople arguing about health care and those who actually don’t have any

Between we who have the means to recover from the affect of climate change to our communities, and those millions who will simply lose their livelihoods and homes.

This story calls us to pay attention to those terrible gaps that have existed in every generation and seem never to go away. It is only good news if you are the one who has not been on the winning side in this life. I do hope and pray that the Trayvons of this world are comforted closely by Abraham or someone equally wise in heaven, but I do not believe that should be the only consolation of all the people who find themselves begging at the gate, nameless and unknown to the haves of this world.  

One of the first clues things are reversed in this story  is that the rich man is the nameless one. You might sometimes hear him called Dives, but that’s only because that’s the Latin word for rich.  Imagine the afterlife  as a place populated by people who are finally known by their names, instead of “homeless” or “young black man” or “shanty dweller in a 3^rd world city”. Imagine the afterlife as one in which everyone who has put their names on buildings and projects and fortunes simply known as “rich man.”

In heaven it is not as it is on earth.

          When Lazarus dies, the scripture says, he is now “comforted” but the word is more like “encouraged” or even “called out”  John Swanson translates it this way “

          “Remember you received  your good things in your life.

          Lazarus likewise the evil.

          Now, here he is called as a witness, but you suffer.” (Provoking the Gospel of Luke)

Lazarus is called as a witness. A witness to the chasm, one who after years of being silent and invisible and nameless is called to witness, to speak.

 

We need those witnesses to the chasm:

One way activists have sought to bear witness is through art, through simply making the homeless at the gate more visible. In Boston graphic design students are turning simple cardboard signs in to art-quality colorful media pieces. An exhibit in Minneapolis a few years ago featured the work of homeless folks who were using humor to break down the barrier. One man named David Drew had a sign that read:

"Just a simple checklist of things you can do to ignore me: Check your seat belt, check your stereo, wash your windshield, call someone on your cell phone."

It would be funny if it weren’t so painfully true.

Jesus’ story doesn’t give us much hope that our human pattern of ignoring this chasm will change much. Indeed, it can seem as though our tools for turning away from poverty and inequality have only gotten more sophisticated over the years, to the point where we can now have politicians arguing that it will be good for the poor to drastically cut the amount of food assistance available to them. Mayors are rewarded for keeping the homeless off the street – not necessarily housed, but out of sight and often out of mind. We keep our own eyes fixed on moving up the ladder and thinking as little as possible about those who have no access to the ladder at all.

So what is to be done? From his heavenly hindsight the rich man at least moves from seeing Lazarus as the guy who will cool to tongue to thinking of someone besides himself – he asks for a witness, someone to go and warn his brothers, and Abraham responds that he already has witnesses   

He has the witness of the law and the prophets. Words like Moses’ law of jubilee that debt not be allowed to create a permanent chasm in society; words like Amos’ lament for a people who lie on

No one can cross it –  Indeed, it’s true that a man named Lazarus, risen from the dead, was not enough to convince even teachers of the law like the Pharisees to repent. But Lazarus was not the only one. Jesus was raised from the dead as well, and the fact that a man named Luke wrote this gospel, for a group of Gentile and Jewish Christians who included some rich people among them, who included male and female, slave and free in their midst – that Jesus did indeed cross the chasm. We have to get to the end of Jesus’ life to make sense of his story as well, and that story is one that ends with these words:

“ the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:46-48)

We are witnesses. But we are witnesses only as we let go of our identities as yet another rich person. We are witnesses when we are named at that baptismal font, stripped of everything but our identity in Christ, dead to the world’s evaluation of us, made alive only by our life in  Jesus, next to the one who chose the place of the poor, we who bear witness to the chasm of this life but also to the power of Jesus’ ability to cross it, to make even the dead alive. When we are Lazarus, we are witnesses of these things.

The surprising end on the Gospel story is that someone does come back from the dead, and at least a few of us through history have decided to listen. People like St. Francis of Assisi, who threw off his identity as a rich man and chose to live among the poor and the animals.

People like Dorothy Day, who from her baptism sought to be close to the wretched and the nameless homeless of New York City, bearing witness through writing and hospitality.

People like Gordon Cosby, who started Church of the Saviour in Washington DC, really a cluster of churches, each of which identified with Lazarus in different ways.

The Washington Post wrote about him:

“Cosby, who has been preaching since he was a 15-year-old in Lynchburg (Va.), was raised Southern Baptist in southern Virginia. He went into the seminary and then became an Army chaplain in Europe in World War II, an experience that reshaped his faith perspective. He said he came back feeling that denomination and race were artificial constructs and that people should live in regular life as they would in war–willing to lay down their lives for their neighbors, viewing their faith as an urgent tool to change the world.”

Cosby died at the age of 95 recently, cared for at a ministry he had founded, Christ House, spending his final days next to homeless men who needed medical care and shelter.

 

In whose company would we like to be known? Just another boring rich person who like every other has thrown a few coins to Lazarus but never breached the gap, or the one who was among us like Lazarus, poor, homeless, not esteemed by the world but finally raised up by God to new life.  It will not be in heaven as it is on earth, this story reminds us. But in Christ we see it could be on earth as it is in heaven.

 

Lazarus at the gate

This coming Sunday's text has reminded me again of the astonishing fact that very little has changed in two thousand years. We can still see Lazarus at the gate, only now he's the homeless guy (or woman) with the cardbaord sign at the freeway exit.

I'm fascinated by this Boston project started by some art students to spruce up those cardboard signs. The first step in solving homelessness, they argue, is recognizing the humanity of those who use signs to get our attention, and nothing humanizes better than art (and, I would argue, the stories they tell on this website).

Lectionary Blog: The Parable of the Guy in the Ditch

Credits: Karoline Lewis for the alternate parable title: Garret Keizer's wonderful book Help: the Original Human Dilemma; Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. Bible translation from Eugene Peterson's The Message.

Luke 10:25-37

Here Jesus goes again, answering a simple question with a story. At least this one seems to have a clear enough point to it. It’s no accident that we have Good Samaritan laws and not Unjust Steward laws. Good Samaritan Hospitals, and not Rich Fool Hospitals.

But although it’s so familiar and so evidently simple, that’s just the problem with it.

Like so many parables, Jesus gives us just enough details  to make it seem real – the dangerous road, the officials in a hurry, the robbers lurking nearby, the wine poured into open wounds and a donkey hauling a broken man to shelter.  It’s so vivid, it’s no wonder the story has become synonymous in our culture with what it means to help a stranger in distress.

But there are so many details left out; so many complications of helping real people in the real world, that make it seem easier than it really is.

Because we all know that helping others is actually a pretty complicated affair:

Garrett Keizer describes this with bracing clarity in his book Help

          “I want to tell it again in different versions. . . I wnt the Samaritan. . . to take the phone from the saddlbad and hear the voice of his wife, his sister-in-law, the police telling him that someone he dearly loves is “at it again.” I want the man by the side of the road to be his father, his little brother, or his only begotten son, and I want him to be drunk as a skunk and stripped, beaten, and left for dead. I want this to be the third time in as many months that this has happened. . .

          “I want the Samaritan – very much I want this – to get into a big argument over putting the victim on his animal. . . I want to hear him scream “Just get on the [stupid] donkey.. . .

          “I want the Samaritan, on his return visit to the inn, to learn that the wounded man has recovered enough to trash his room, harass several guests..  .

          “In short, I want to see it get complicated. And along with that, I want to see it take time, all kinds of time.”

 

If any part of you is laughing ruefully after this litany it’s because you know how very very vulnerable we make ourselves when we help others, and how easy it is to delude ourselves that we are in fact helping, when maybe we might just be interfering and making things worse – worse for those we  love if not also for ourselves and our supposed beneficiaries.

Like Keizer, I want it to get complicated.

And here’s another complication, a metaphor for just how difficult it can be to even encounter our neighbors: You can no longer take this road. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is now blocked by an enormous wall, separating  Israel from Palestinian territory; you cannot simply walk from Jerusalem to Jericho. The Jew and the Samaritan  simply wouldn’t end up on that road together anymore.

If this parable is  designed to tell us HOW to be help our neighbors, this story is way too simple, way to quick, lacking in all the messy details that make the job hard.  You can’t get there from here.

The truth is, most of us would never find ourselves on such a road in the first place. We’ve built our entire security society out of the assumption that people should help themselves, and if the world is not safe enough they should pay for a better security system, a better handgun, an armed guard to accompany us in the dangerous places. We pay for the health club and the statins best healthcare we can possibly afford and wonder what that person who had the heart attack did wrong. We invest everything we can in helping our kids be responsible and studious and successful so they’ll go to the right schools and get a good job and never ever have to ask for a handout.

Which is why when the bad stuff does happen, as it so often does, even now, the person in the ditch is so often incredibly alone.

The suffering of the one in the ditch is not just about theft and violence and wounds. The suffering of the person in the ditch is that of being passed by.

So often that is the pain that I hear, over and over again, of those who find themselves thrown off the fast track of life.  What’s surprising is not that bad stuff happened. If you live long enough you expect that. What’s surprising and so saddening, again and again, is how utterly isolating it can be, when you are the one who lost the job, you are the one with cancer, you are the one whose spouse is slowly drifting away on the ship of Alzheimers. What so many people tell me hurts the most is that the rest of the world keeps on racing by, and hardly anyone stops to say, “are you all right?”

 

If this story is supposed to tell us how to help our neighbor, it’s finally not that helpful, in a world designed to keep us away from unfamiliar neighbors. But that’s not actually the  question the religious man asked, not what Jesus was trying to answer.

The question is WHO is my neighbor

“The Samaritan,” the man answers Jesus, grudgingly,  because in his religious mind the Samaritans are the ones that have it all wrong. They worship in the wrong place in a weird way. Their religion took a strange left turn several centuries ago and ever since then it’s been much easier to live separate lives, keep to ourselves and not expect anything from one another.

And the answer, finally, for the lawyer and for us,  is that the neighbor is finally that unlikely character that offers YOU help – the one you would be least likely to talk to on the road, the one you might even cross the road to avoid. The Samaritan, that most unlikely neighbor, is not necessarily the person you would point at and say, now there goes a good man. THERE goes someone who observes the law and walks upright.

And in that sense, you could say that when we are the ones lying in the ditch by the side of the road, and we cry out for help, we might end up relying on someone like Jesus – someone none of the religious authorities in his day thought was right. Someone who had no place to lay his head, who was called a glutton and a drunkard. Someone who ate with all the wrong people.

Jesus may be revered in some circles still but for many of us it’s still maybe a little bit embarrassing to call on him for help, or even admit that we need that  kind of help.

Anne Lamott , in her memoir Traveling Mercies, describes her own conversion as exactly such a reaction. She was sick, strung out, broke, and utterly alone. She reached rock bottom, was lying alone in her room and sensed the presence of someone there. She sensed that it was Jesus, and writes that her first thought was “Anyone but him.”

But that is how grace works.

We find ourselves beaten down, tired, stripped of all our pretensions of being really good people. We find ourselves in the ditch, the one place we swore we would never be, looking so pathetic  we  can’t blame anyone else for passing us by.

We find ourselves utterly unable to walk the road alone anymore.

Then it is Jesus, the last one we want to turn to but the only one who is still around, who picks us up. Who gives us wine to drink and anoints us with oil. Who walks alongside us because we can no longer travel by ourselves, who gives everything he can and says, “I’ll come back for you.”

Who is my neighbor? Like it or not, in all kinds of guises we might not expect. it’s Jesus.

 

 

a sermon on the good shepherd, Hanukkah, and Boston

John 10: 22-30

April 21, 2013, 4th Sunday in Easter

It is winter. . . .still winter, we might say. 4^th Sunday of Easter and the scene outside seems stuck on constant loop, and the lectionary has bumped us all the way back to Hanukkah. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ description of Narnia under the witch’s reign – always winter, never Christmas.

The Feast of the Dedication, or Hanukkah, that’s the context of this scene. Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon during the feast, the commemoration of the time when the Jews had been banned from worshipping God for over three years, and finally after the Maccabean revolt had an opportunity to re-dedicate their temple.

It is winter, they are remembering one rededication, but doing so rather carefully because even as they are celebrating the freedom they gained in the past the Jews look outside their window and see history stuck in a loop. . . another empire, another foreign ruler watching over their shoulders and making sure that their demands for freedom don’t go too far.

The porch of Solomon was a site of memory but also a place of slaughter. It was a place that had been rededicated but only after too much blood had been shed, too many children had died. In Jewish lore of the time there was speculation about where, when the anointed one, the Messiah came, the new age would begin. Where would the anointed one declare that the reign of God was at hand that the new age of God’s people worshipping without fear would begin? Some people thought it would be at Rachel’s tomb, since Rachel was the mother of all the exiles, the one whose weeping would not be silenced. And some thought it was here, at Solomon’s Porch, at the place where the innocent had been slaughtered and God’s people had not given up on longing for God’s reign.

And in this place, Jesus uses language that evokes the kingship of David, where he speaks of being a shepherd, the kind of leader who will gather the scattered and protect the vulnerable.

Because vulnerable is what they are – and it does not matter where they are

Even this massive temple is not safe, and it too will some day in the not too distant future be destroyed. Even this place of celebration can be in a moment marred by violence. Even this holy place can be desecrated.

Like seeing Back Bay turned into a scene of bloodshed

Like seeing a passenger plane used as a weapon

Like seeing an elementary school attacked.

Even our most sacred places can be violated. . . and our most revered heroes fall

The next verse, by the way, is that people took up stones to stone Jesus for what he said

And the next story is that his dear friend Lazarus is dead. 

Death is all too close, all the time. Illness and violence strike randomly, even to Jesus himself.

What makes a shepherd a shepherd is not that he leads us away from every danger, but that he leads us through.  

It is not mere protection Jesus offers, but assurance, the knowledge of being known, of never being alone. Of being unsnatchable.

Samuel Wells,  the chaplain at St. Martin in the Fields – which by the way is not just an orchestra but also a homeless shelter – argued recently that the key word in the Christian faith is WITH  

We tend to imagine that the important word is FOR. That what God does FOR me makes me a Christian and what I do FOR God and neighbor is what it’s all about. So we ask what our church life does for us; and what our church does for their neighborhood. We occupy ourselves with doing more and more of the right kind of service for the world and build communities intent on telling people what the church can do for them.

But Wells argues that the heart of the Gospel is instead the little word WITH, as in when the angel says to Mary, this child shall be Emmanuel, God WITH us, and when Jesus says, Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.

Thou art WITH me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

What a shepherd does for the sheep is first and foremost simply being with them, through good and bad.

Shepherds, after all, don’t cause the grass to grow or the waters to be still. They do not make wolves and lions go away; they cannot make sheep more perfectly sensible and independent. But they are with their flocks, and in that with-ness, the flock is assured.

And so,   as Jesus is standing on this porch of Solomon, talking about  being a shepherd, he emphasizes that he is a shepherd because he is WITH his Father, and in his communion with God he offers us communion with him. He is a good shepherd because about to enter into the ultimate with-ness of humanity, entering into the suffering and death which is always part of the human experience.

My Sheep are with me. And no one will snatch them out of my hand

What might that mean, if you lived as if you were unsnatchable? What might it mean to give witness to all God’s sheep being unsnatchable.

How would we life,

If it did not matter whether you look good enough, or work hard enough, or are liked by everybody? If you believed that even the scariest events of our time could not separate you from God’s love?

What would it mean to live knowing that goodness and mercy will pursue us, like sheepdogs nipping at our heels, all our lives? That even when the scene outside our doors or inside our hearts seems stuck on a constant loop, a Groundhog Day blizzard over and over again, even then goodness and mercy will keep invading our lives, keep running into the chaos, into the bloodshed, into the hurt with Words of strength and acts of compassion.

What might it mean to be a church that knows that being with God means being with our brothers and sisters, and that no one, not even the most unloved by the world, is considered lost by our good shepherd?

Such a witness does not run from the places of darkness. Such a witness is not paralyzed when it seems like there is nothing we can do for the hurting or the wounded. Such a witness says simply, let us be wth God’s world because God is with us.

It was popular to say this week that we are all Bostonians or all Texans, but wise voices from outside this country reminded us that we ought to remember how often violence invades the lives of people throughout the world, sometimes at the hands of our own government.

So yes, said one journalist at Britain’s the Guardian,  "I'm all up for us all being Bostonians, today. But can we all be Yemenis  tomorrow, and Pakistanis the next day?" Can we be with one another even then?

Jesus is with us because God has chosen to be with us. And when we pray with one another, when we hurt with one another, when we enter into this life WITH  one another, we give witness to that God who has said, YOU are unsnatchable.

We have received that promise at our baptism . . . You belong to Christ

And we are commissioned in that same moment to witness to that reality to the world – we are anointed, chosen. We who count ourselves one with Christ, we are anointed to be one with God’s world.

You belong to Christ. We invite you to hear these words, to receive a sign of that anointing, and to live it 

 

 

A sermon for Reformation Day (but on Lectionary 30 texts)

Reformation Sunday, Confirmation Sunday                                                                         October 28, 2012

 

Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-9

                Mark 10:46-52

 

Being the parent of grade schoolers, I sometimes get sucked in to games of “Would you rather?”  I remember this kind of conversation from my childhood, but now, like so many things, it has become an actual commercial product, a packet of cards you can purchase that poses questions like,

 

 “Would you rather be boiled in hot oil, or chopped into pieces?”

 

“Would you rather lose both your legs below the knee, or both your opposable thumbs?”

For some reason,  my kids enjoy posing all these worst-case scenarios against one another, no matter how gruesome the options.  But we never make it far into the game before at least one (usually a grown-up) member of the family points out that the choices are ridiculous. If you were in such a situation, your hope would be to get out of the choice, not to make the choice.

 

But occasionally it is enlightening to see where our priorities would lie, and so I’d like to try a game of “Would you rather?” with you. You don’t have to speak your answer or raise a hand. Just ask yourself:

 

 

Would you rather seek out God in your own terms, or have to accept what other people are telling you about when  and how God is present ?

 

Would you rather ask God what you can do, or ask God to do something for you?

 

Would you rather be loved by Jesus, or be called by Jesus?

 

Would you rather have lots of things, and willingly give them all away;  Or have one thing, and throw that aside in desperation for something better

 

Would you rather be a rich upright citizen, or a blind helpless beggar? 

 

Most of us  don't like these choices, because of course we’d rather not have to choose between extremes. After all, everyone in this election season is on the side of the middle class, right? Whether you make 10 dollars an hour  or $200,000 a year, we all want to be middle class.

 

But if we are looking to find ourselves amongst all the people Jesus encounters in  the gospels—they  don't really give us that option.  Jesus doesn’t generally encounter middle-class people, middle of the road people, people who  take a moderate approach to following him. He encounters the poor and the sick and the lame. And he encounters the powerful,  the rich and the respected.  Especially in these  chapters of Mark, there isn’t much middle.  Specifically Mark seems to hold up these two men who could not be more opposite.

 

A rich young man comes running up to Jesus, and asks what must I do to inherit eternal life?

 

While a blind beggar can only shout from the sidelines because he has heard that Jesus is passing by.

 

The rich man says, “I’ve obeyed the commandments! What else can I do?”

 

The blind man can only say “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

The rich man, Jesus loves.

 

But to the blind man, he says “what do you want me to do for you?” And then he does it.

 

The rich man, goes away sad, because he has many possessions

 

The blind man throws off the one thing he has, his beggar’s cloak, and asks for his sight. He receives it and then follows Jesus on the way.

 

The beggar is the only person Jesus heals in the whole Bible who is named, named twice.  “Bartimaeus and ‘son of Timaeus’ mean exactly the same thing.   He is named, and he is the only one whom Jesus heals whom  we are told follows Jesus afterwards.

 

I'm not sure it's helpful, finally to ask would you rather be. We all know exactly where we'd rather be, and dependent and desperate and poor are not our lists. We’d rather be the one who is loved by Jesus, who is upright, who is rich, who is   called by Jesus, healed by him, AND who follows him– but that one does not appear in the Gospel.  But this is not about our choices.

 

But thanks be to God that this is not about what we choose to be. No matter where life takes us, Jesus will be there – challenging us to let go when we think we have grasped our salvation, and calling us to follow and giving us the  sight to do so even when we think we have nothing to offer.

 

This day we celebrate as these confirmands affirm the promises of their baptisms, and I think it's fair to say that they are all above average!  We look into their apparently bright futures, and we would never wish for them a moment of desperation.   But let us be clear -- our faith is not about them standing alone, upright, righteous and able to seek God on their own. Jesus calls us when we can't even see him ourselves.

 

Jesus called these young people  when they were helpless, and unable to walk to the font themselves. Jesus called them when they couldn’t see anything except maybe the eyes of their parents or grandparents holding them and gazing at them.  Jesus called them when the only thing they could articulate was a cry.

 

And truth be told, though we celebrate that they can now stand on their own, and affirm the promises of their baptism; though we can look at their projects and see how they have come to seek God and try and understand God; though we celebrate that they might even want to do something for God, we know that there will be other times

 

There will be times when they cannot see the path in front of them

Times when they have nothing to give and cannot imagine doing anything FOR God.

There will be times – times after a diagnosis, or after a rejection, times of doubt and desperation and grief. There will be times when the only words that come out in prayer are cries for help.

There will be times when they understand, not just in their heads but in their hearts, Martin Luther’s dying words, “we are all beggars, that is true.”

 

But in those moments we are not alone. In the body of Christ we stand in a throng, a whole great company, as Jeremiah puts it, of people too ill to travel on their own, too vulnerable to make their way without help.

 

We stand, or maybe just sit, in that crowd, and we rely on the witness of the saints before us and the on the company of those around us, who say, “Take heart. Get up. He is calling you.”

 

And then he Jesus calls us, and sees us, and gives us sight to follow. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food=identity

We're about through our "bread of life" marathon in John 6. It works out rather well that this falls in the summer, I think, since the varied schedules of both staff and parishioners means that each Sunday we truly have a different congregation in the pews, so it's hard to feel like we're repeating ourselves, even if Jesus is.

This piece from the New York Times on special diets and hospitality  didn't exactly make it into my sermons this month, but it did get me thinking about the ways that changing one's diet can be a way of expressing a new identity:

Today’s restricted eaters are prone to identity-driven pronouncements along the lines of “I’m gluten free.” (It’s worth nothing that, back in the aughts, no one declared “I’m Atkins!” Except, quite possibly, Dr. Robert Atkins himself.)

Consumers seem to be building self through sustenance, adjusting their appetites to reflect independence and moral character. In numerous interviews with restricted-diet adherents and those who study and feed them, control and identity were two common themes on everyone’s lips.

“It’s an alternative way of finding an identity in a place where identity is increasingly uncertain,” said Richard Wilk, the director of Indiana University’s doctoral program in food studies. “So much of our lives are completely out of our control. You can go to college and not get a job. You can do an internship and not get a job. The economy takes some new tack every 15 minutes.”

We often say to those who have communed at ECLC "You are the Body of Christ." What would it mean to take that identity as seriously as "gluten-free."?

Brothers and Sisters: lectionary blog July 1

I have returned from an 8 day sojourn with our sister congregation in El Salvador. Many of the stories of the week  (by me and others in the group) can be found on our ECLC in El Salvador Blog. 

I include this one here since it is relevant to today's lectionary.

 This morning's Gospel lesson from Mark brought me back to the morning we spent with the Salvadoran church leaders at Concordia, singing, celebrating and sharing the lectionary texts for the week. Bishop Medardo Gomez presided over the gathering and offered a reflection on the two healing stories of the Gospel text.

I have heard and preached many a sermon about the contrasts between these two supplicants to Jesus: Jairus, a rich man who sends for help for his ailing daughter, without encountering Jesus face to face; and the woman with a hemorrhage, whose only plea is to reach out and touch him, believing even that might bring her healing. But something about encountering these texts with our Salvadoran brothers and sisters, who know all too well the gap between the rich and poor, who struggle to give witness to healing in a nation still suffering daily violence -- there is no substitute for that kind of face-to-face encounter with the Gospel.

That same power of face-to-face happened on Thursday afternoon, when at our last stop of the day we gathered around the subversive cross in Resurrection Lutheran Church in San Salvador. I already had seen pictures, already had heard the story of this cross, which is marked with the confession of the sins of the Salvadoran nation. During some of the most harrowing days of the civil war, it was literally taken prisoner as evidence of the church's subversive activity, traveling from prison to the President's house before it was returned to the church.

It's a remarkable story, but we were privileged to hear it directly from Bishop Gomez, who stopped what he was doing that afternoon to sit with us. (Tim Muth told us he had never, in his 10 years of work in El Salvador, heard the bishop tell the tale directly). Medardo Gomez spoke of the danger to his own life in those days in 1989 when six Jesuit priests were slaughtered, of his exile for many weeks until he could be escorted home by a group of international bishops, and of his request to the President to have the cross returned.

Probably the words we heard the most often in our six days of visiting were "hermanos y hermanas" -- brothers and sisters. We heard them so often referring to our unity in Christ that we occasionally misunderstood when people were talking about actual blood relatives. But the welcome we received in every congregation, in every home, in every meeting, matched this testimony that we are indeed brothers and sisters in Christ. We are in relationship -- not because we are North Americans and in a position to "help", but because we are one, because we need one another, and because our witness to Christ is incomplete unless we know one another and share our joys and sorrows together. My brothers and sisters in Christ in El Salvador have been the face of Christ to me. We have touched his garment and are healed.