Sermon – Luke 24.36b-48, E3, YB, April 15, 2018

Tags

afraid, Christian, disciples, God, hiding, identity, Jesus, judge, Sermon, witness, world

Last month I was talking to Pastor Alex from Stonehouse Presbyterian.  We were walking toward our cars and he complimented my license plate, noting how fun spotting my plate around town has been.  I chuckled and told him the plate had been both a blessing and a curse.  He asked me what I meant, and I explained.  You see, I love the plate for the very reason he mentioned – that I run into people who recognize my plate, that people connect who I am with what I do, that people ask me about my vocation and about Hickory Neck.  But the plate is also a bit of a curse.  If I had to choose any place to be a witness for Christ, I am not sure the car is the best location.  You see, the car is where I leave prayer books, post-its about phone calls, gum wrappers, and coffee cups.  The car is where I cart around children – sometimes singing at the tops of our lungs to a favorite song, and sometimes scowling after an argument about behavior.  The car is where I find a moment to getaway before picking up children, and the car is where I sometimes reveal that I once lived in a region of the country that is known for impatient, sometimes foul-mouthed drivers.  The car is not really home to my best witness for loving Christ.  And yet, there is where a big plate – on both the front and the back – witnesses to the world who and whose I am.

That is what I find so funny about the disciples this week.  Here they are in Luke’s gospel, not unlike what we heard in John’s gospel last week, hiding in a room, afraid, disbelieving, and wondering what to make of all that has happened.  To be fair, life has gotten a bit chaotic of late.  Their whole world has gotten turned upside down since that beautiful, sacred night when Jesus washed their feet.  They had ideas about what was coming in their life, what was going to happen to Jesus, and how the world would be changed.  But Jesus dies, they are outcasts, and God seems to have closed a door – a tomb door.  Then, just days later, their world gets upended again.  The disciples learn from the women that the same closed tomb door is now open.  Two of the disciples have an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus.  And as if all of that is not enough, today, Jesus shows up – very much alive, proving his corporality, teaching them, and reminding them they are witnesses.

The disciples certainly have our sympathy and concern.  And yet, the disciples remain holed up in a room – as if they can hide.  As if they can integrate back into the world, with no one realizing who and whose they are.  As if no one will notice the license plate on their car that says, “Jesus’ disciple.”  The disciples are hiding, acting as though no one is watching, no one is making conclusions about them based on their behavior, no one is making conclusions about Christ.  Their hiding is just as much of a witness as going out into the community.  Perhaps they feel being in that room is giving them a break from being witnesses – that no one sees them.  But we know better.  And so does Jesus.  “You are witnesses of these things,” says Jesus.

Sometimes we do the exact same thing.  We too can start to believe that we have hiding places in our lives – places where we do not have to be witnesses.  Maybe yours is a car.  Maybe yours is at work or school because those places seem more removed from what we do here on Sundays.  Maybe yours is at home, on vacation, or when surrounded by friends.  Like the disciples, we too have that same longing to “turn off” our witness.  Maybe we are just tired and feel like being a witness for Christ is exhausting.  Maybe we are upset with or disappointed in God and are not sure communicating those feelings helps our witness of Christ.  Or maybe we are just afraid – that people will notice that we do not live lives that reflect who and whose we are.

But “turning off” our identity as people of faith is not really an option.  Sooner or later we will get caught.  Sometimes being caught can be a very positive thing.  An acquaintance who knows you go to church may ask you to add them to your church’s prayer list because they or their child just received a horrible diagnosis.  But sometimes being caught can be less flattering.  At our Adult Forum series on evangelism this fall, we watched a video about how not to invite people to church.  The video features two neighbors, one who is out gardening in the yard and the other who is clearly just coming home from church.  The neighbor who is out gardening wonders to himself, “I wonder why he never invites me to his church.  I would go if he asked me.”  But sometimes being caught can be even worse.  I had a friend who waited tables during college.  She always moaned when she got her work schedule and discovered she was assigned a Sunday.  I finally asked her why she hated Sundays so much.  She said, “Because that’s when all the churchgoers go out to eat – and they are the worst tippers!”  Somehow, in all her long hours of trying to make a few bucks to pay for books and school fees she had gotten the message that people of faith did not value her.

We know from experience that hiding as a Christian is really an illusion.  Wherever we are, whenever we are, with whomever we are, our identity is always there.  Jesus confirms that today.  As biblical scholar Karoline Lewis says, “Jesus’ address to the disciples is not, ‘you will be witnesses.’ Not, ‘please be witnesses.’ Not, ‘consider being witnesses if you have time.’ No, [Jesus says] ‘you are witnesses of these things.’ We are witnesses.  As it turns out, witnessing is not voluntary, but a state of being.”[i]  Lewis goes on to add, “‘We are witnesses’ does not depend on our acceptance or agreement or approval. ‘We are witnesses’ does not depend on our readiness or recognition or responsiveness. ‘We are witnesses’ just is.”[ii]  The disciples learn that today.  When Jesus says, you are witnesses, he empowers a very scared, uncertain, fearful group of followers to remember who and whose they are.

The good news is that Jesus does not judge the disciples today.  Jesus meets the disciples where they are.[iii]  Jesus’ first words are words of encouragement.  “Peace be with you,” he says.  Then, ever the tender pastor, Jesus asks the question in verse 38, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your heart?”  Knowing their confusion, Jesus eats with them to assure them he is really there, not just some ghost or figment of their imagination.  He sits down and teaches them once again, taking them back to their roots, reminding them of how the prophets have taught them all they need to know.  And then, come those fateful words in verse 48, “you are witnesses of these things.”  Jesus meets them where they are, offering comfort, assurance, and affirmation.  But Jesus also encourages them to move beyond where they are.

After September 11^th, there were two widows featured on the news.  “Grateful for the outpouring of support they received, they started thinking about the women in Afghanistan who, when widowed, lose status in that society and therefore find their already difficult lives even harder.  They raised money and formed a foundation called Beyond the 11^th to support Afghani widows, and even made visits to Afghanistan to meet the widows they were helping.”[iv]  Those widows had lot of options – fear, anger, vengeance, or isolation.  But instead, they remembered how Jesus encourages us to remember our identity as witnesses and to move beyond where we are.  Our invitation today is to reclaim that same identity.  Now I do not know if that means you go put a Hickory Neck bumper sticker on your car, or you start wearing that cross necklace again, or you start tangibly connecting your words and actions to your identity as a witness.  Only you can know the shape your witness will take.  But today Jesus invites us to let go of our hiding places, realizing that even when we think we are hiding, we are still witnessing.  Our invitation is to own who we are, so that others might see the beauty of who and whose we are.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “We Are Witnesses,” April 9, 2018, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5126 on April 12, 2018.

[ii] Lewis.

[iii] Nancy R. Blakely, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 424.

[iv] Blakely, 428.

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Sermon – John 20.1-18, ED, YB, April 1, 2018

Tags

affirmation, called, church, Easter, encouragement, gift, joy, known, Mary Magdalene, name, reason, Sermon, share

Last weekend, before Holy Week started, our family celebrated my youngest’s fourth birthday.  A dear friend was there and asked me how I was doing, knowing full well that Holy Week and Easter were coming.  I launched into a diatribe about all the things I was juggling – birthday party, work commitments, packing for Spring Break, and the pressures of writing an Easter sermon.  The last complaint caught her attention.  “You’re worried about an Easter sermon?” she asked.  “Oh, yes!” I explained.  “It’s a big day.  The sermon needs to be good!”  She looked at me, dumbfounded, and said to me, in a way that only a best friend can, “You know nobody comes to church on Easter because of the sermon.”

Now as a preacher, you can imagine my ego was a little bruised.  But the more I thought about her observation, the more I realized she was right.  We come to church on Easter for a whole host of reasons.  We come to church on Easter because that is what our family has always done, and the continued observation of Easter somehow connects us to the past, present, and future, creating a sense of belonging and identity.  We come to church on Easter, because we long for a good word – a reminder that even in a tumultuous world, there is the promise of resurrection life, joy, and hope.  We come to church on Easter because we love the music, the flowers, the crowded seats, the Easter attire, and the experience of being a part of community.  And some of us are not sure why we come to church on Easter, but we suspect, or at least hope, we will find something that can revive our weary souls.

I suspect what most of us are hoping for today is an experience like Mary Magdalene’s.  I am not sure Mary knew why she went to the tomb that fateful day.  In John’s gospel, Mary is not there with spices to anoint Jesus’ body.  She does not bring flowers or some memento to leave at the tomb.  In fact, she comes to the tomb in darkness, before the morning light has arisen, perhaps in a fog of knowing she needs something but not sure what that something might be.  And then, not unlike the chaos that may have been your morning to get here on time and half-way presentable, Mary’s life gets thrown into chaos.  An empty tomb means she and the disciples run around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Later, Mary finds herself bemoaning to angels and a stranger alike that she just wants Jesus’ body – a physical reminder of all the horror and love and pain that has happened.  And in the midst of this chaos, a simple, profound thing happens.  Mary is called by her name.[i]  And her world gets turned on its head.

There is something very powerful about being called by your name.  We will frequent restaurants or coffee shops because we love being recognized by name by our favorite barista or shop owner.  If you have ever received a blessing or healing prayer by a person who knew your name, you know the intimacy that is created between the two of you, and the power of hearing your name lifted up to God.  We even try to use nametags here at Hickory Neck because we know how wonderful being known by name feels.  Being known by name creates a feeling of acceptance, affirmation, affection, and acknowledgement.[ii]  I can only imagine the rush of emotions when Jesus calls Mary by name today – not just the recognition of who Jesus is, but the reminder of how much he has loved her.

I suspect we should add that to the list of reasons why we come to church on Easter Sunday.  We want to be known too.  Perhaps we want to literally be called by name.  But perhaps we know just being here creates the same sense of belonging that being known by name creates.  When we sit in these seats today, we know that we are sitting next to someone who is longing for belonging today too – who also rallied to get to church on time – maybe with kids in cute dresses, or maybe just pulling their aching bodies to church.  When we sit in the seats today, we know that we are surrounded by a group of people who also love having their senses overwhelmed – from the smell of fragrant lilies, to the joyous sound of song [brass], to the taste of communion bread and wine, to the sight of fanfare and smiles, to the feel of another hand at the peace.  When we sit in these seats today, we know that we will be offered a word of joy, light, love, hope – and we want our lives to be marked by that same sense of promise.

Now you may feel tempted today to take all that affirmation, encouragement, and joy, and go about the next days on your own personal high – as though the gifts you receive today are solely for you.  But what all this fanfare, acknowledgment, and hope are meant to do is to propel you out into the world.  When Mary is called by name, receiving the blessing of recognition and encouragement, she does not stay at the feet of the resurrected Jesus.  She becomes John’s gospel’s first preacher.  “I have seen the Lord,” Mary says to the disciples.  Now I know some of you will go out from this place today and do just that – you will put on your Facebook page, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” or you will hug your neighbor and tell them what a joyous day you just had at church.  But for others of you, sharing today’s joy may take you a little more time, or may look a bit different than proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord,” to your favorite barista.  But what Mary invites us to do today is find our own way of sharing the beautiful gift we receive today – to give someone else the gift of joy and hope, to quietly tell a friend what a cool experience this day was, or to simply call someone else by name – sharing that same sense of belonging and affirmation you receive today.   You came to church this Easter Sunday for something.  Mary invites you to give that something to someone else.  Amen.  Alleluia!

[i] Serene Jones, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 378.

[ii] D. Cameron Murchison, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 380.

Homily – Mark 16.1-8, EV, YB, March 31, 2018

Tags

covenant, Easter Vigil, God, Jesus, learning, relationship, resurrection, silent, tomb, wonderful

I once worked with a parish who wanted to tweak their outreach efforts.  Instead of simply volunteering together with an outreach ministry or donating funds, they wanted to partner outreach and formation – what the secular world would call service learning.  And so, we experimented.  We gathered a team for six weeks in preparation for service with a transitional home for women coming out of prison.  The first week, two clients came to talk to us about their experiences with the ministry we were serving.  We heard stories of abuse, addition, and authority.  We learned about the things within their control and the things outside their control. Then we spent four weeks reading about a woman whose ministry in a prison led to her live and serve among the prisoners, guards, and families affected by the prison.  In the final week, the parishioners served a meal for the women in the transitional house, engaging in meaningful conversation as we ate.  When we gathered after our days of service, each participant felt as though their experience at the transitional home was much richer than the experience would have been had they simply showed up at the house with a hot meal, having never thought much about who they would encounter and why.  With old assumptions gone, parishioners were able to ask meaningful questions, understand how hard the road ahead would be, and share their own journeys.

Easter Vigil is a bit like that service learning group.  You see, we could gather tonight, and ring in Easter, happily celebrating the empty tomb the two Marys discover.  The miracle of that event, and the consequences of Christ’s resurrection are cause enough for a tremendous celebration.  But what we do tonight is not just jump into the resurrection.  First, we learn together why the resurrection is meaningful at all.  We start at the beginning, when the world was a formless void.  We learn about the creative God, who makes order out of a disordered world, who creates the beauty of the world around us, and who trusts us to care for that beauty.  But, of course, we fail at being stewards of God’s creation, and fall into sin so deep that God destroys most of the created order, saving one family from every species.  And God gives us a covenant – to never destroy the world again.  Generations later, as God helps us flee suffering and enslavement, God does the impossible – parts an entire sea so that we might be forever free.  Later, God is able to restore a valley of dry bones to life through God’s prophet Ezekiel.  God teaches us that even death and destruction can be restored.  Even as they are scattered in exile, God once again promises to restore the people.  Story after story after story tells us tonight that we belong to a God who creates us in beauty, stays in relationship, and restores us to wholeness.

When you know the breadth of our walk with God – when you remember all the pieces of what we know about God – then what happens to God’s Son this night makes more sense.  We can move from singing, “this is the night,” to singing, “how wonderful.”  “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.  How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away.  It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn.  It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord.  How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.”[i]  What is shocking about this night is not just the empty tomb.  What is shocking is the empty tomb in light of all that has gone before – despite our sinfulness, the breaking of covenant after covenant, our unfaithfulness and lack of gratitude, God stays in relationship.  God keeps making creation new.  God goes a step further in the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

That is why I love that we get Mark’s gospel to close our learning tonight.  Ever the succinct writer, Mark describes for us perfectly how overwhelming God’s love and commitment is to us.  Despite all the drama of our relationship with God, despite all the unfaithfulness, and despite all the waywardness of our behavior, God’s love never ends.  That realization leads to the same sort of terror, amazement, and fear that the Marys experience – the experience of a theophany – of an encounter with or a revelation of God.[ii]  The women flee the tomb tonight and remain silent because they are completely overwhelmed by their encounter with God and God’s love.  On Palm Sunday we were silent at the tomb in grief and despair.  Tonight we are silent at the tomb in unspeakable joy.  The women at the tomb give us permission tonight not to describe the experience, but simply to allow the blessing of this night to overwhelm us.  We can go and tell the news to others tomorrow.  But for tonight, hold on to that marvelous, wonderous feeling of knowing that Christ has been raised.  Amen.  Alleluia.

[i] BCP, 287.

[ii] Gail R. O’Day, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 357.

Homily – Mark 11.1-11, 14.1-15.47, PS, YB, March 25, 2018

Tags

complicit, God, Holy Week, homily, Jesus, love, Mary, Palm Sunday, participate, physicality, relationship, senses, Sermon, silence, sin, tomb, uncomfortable, visceral

When I did my AmeriCorps year of service at a food bank in North Carolina, the warehouse manager was from Liberia.  Eugene and I talked about a lot of things, but one favorite topic was the church.  When Holy Week rolled around, I remember Eugene telling me about Good Friday in Liberia.  On the way to church on Good Friday in Liberia, the children lead a procession.  The children carry an effigy of Jesus, and all the children take turns flogging the effigy of Jesus all the way to the church.  I remember being mortified when I learned about this tradition, wondering who in their right mind would invite children to participate in worship in such a gruesome, grotesque way.

The weird thing is, this mortifying tradition is not all that dissimilar to the physicality of our own worship today.  Today, we invite everyone to vigorously wave palms hailing Jesus Christ the king; then we have voices from our parishioners narrate the text, sometimes taking roles of people like Judas, Pilate, or denying Peter; and if that were not bad enough, then we put the words, “Crucify him!” in bold in our bulletins, reminding everyone to shout the words together.  The practice is so visceral that I often notice many people resist participating.  I cannot tell you how many photos I had to scroll through to find a good Hickory Neck Palm Sunday processional photo this year.  In what is supposed to be replica of joyously welcoming the Messiah, Hickory Neck-ers rarely take more than one palm, we hold them upright so as not to seem too zealous, and forget about a smile or look of excited victory.  I do not know if we feel silly or if we know all too well what comes next so we resist, but we struggle to engage in even the joyful part of today’s liturgy.

And I have rarely found an Episcopal Church anywhere who wholeheartedly joins in the chant, “Crucify him!”  We are so uncomfortable with that part of the liturgy.  More often people do not say the words at all, or they embarrassingly mumble the words.  Sometimes I see people tense up if those beside them enthusiastically participate too much.

Our resistance is futile though.  As if we hesitantly wave palms, or if we stay silent while the crowd demands we crucify Christ, we somehow avoid complicity with this humiliating atrocity.  But we are complicit with sin every day, in the most heinous ways.  We are complicit as our neighbors decide between housing, health care, and child care costs.  We are complicit as racism creates separate, unequal experiences for our citizens.  We are complicit as our God invites into a new way and we say “no.”

That is why the church offers us this very tactile, primal service today.  We wave the palms with fervor today because we remember the ways in which we see in part – the ways in which we manage to follow Christ, even if we do not understand what Christ is doing, even if we do not catch how Jesus inverts his triumphal entry on the back of a young donkey.  We fully participate in the words of today’s passion in order to remind us to “stop abusing the image of God revealed in the dignity of every human being.”[i]  And then we let those final words soak in today, as we stand with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses, silently at the tomb, seeing where Christ’s body is laid.

What we do in worship today is actually the perfect entry into this most Holy Week in Church.  Now some priests will tell you that we combine the liturgy of the palms with the passion narrative today because the designers of the Prayer Book knew that many of you would come on Palm Sunday, skip the days of worship during Holy Week, and then show up on Easter Sunday without having walked from this triumphal entry into Jerusalem through the cross and tomb.  And maybe they were right (though I know most of you rearranged your schedules this week for Holy Week services).  But more importantly, even if you walk through this journey with Christ this week, the reason we pair the Palms with the Passion is that we could never go from the Palms to the Resurrection without the connection to the cross.  The triumphal entry into Jerusalem makes no sense without the cross; the irony of that festive procession only makes sense when you are standing silently and bleakly at the tomb.

I know today is uncomfortable.  I know today is confusing, and oddly visceral, and may even be a bit overwhelming.  But today, and perhaps all this week if you are able to join us, allow the senses to take over.  Allow the sights, and smells, and touches, and sounds, and tastes to overwhelm you this week.  Allow the ache of standing with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses to sink deep into the same body that has waved palms and shouted awful things today.  Because only when our senses are that overwhelmed are we able to see that the cross is not about suffering and death, but rather is about a relationship that holds.  Only then will we find a “love stronger than death, that can withstand whatever the forces of evil do against [love], and that can hold suffering even as [love] struggles to alleviate [suffering].”[ii]  What feels like an empty, guilty ache today instead becomes a sign of how God overcomes terror, enfolds us in Life, and dwells with us forever.[iii]  But until then, stand with the Marys and with one another at the tomb in silence.

[i] Michael Battle, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 182.

[ii] Margaret A. Farley, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 182.

[iii] Farley, 184.

Sermon – Daniel 3:14-20,24-28, John 8:31–42, Ecumenical Eucharist, March 21, 2018

Tags

Abednego, call, companions, discerning, ecumencial, faithful, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Meshack, new, Shadrach, trust

This sermon was preached at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Norge, Virginia.  Each week in Lent, one of the churches from the Upper James City County Ministerium hosts a worship service and welcomes a guest preacher from another church.  It has been a wonderful experience in the exchange of worship, and has made all our church members feel more connected with the community.  

**********

One of my favorite gospel songs is a song called, Jesus Can Work It Out.  There are lots of versions of the song, but the basic tenet of the song is that whenever you have a problem that you cannot seem to solve, you can give the problem over to the Lord and the Lord will work the problem out.  In the version of the song in my iTunes, the lead singer talks about a variety of problems that she has had over her life that, as soon as she gave them over to the Lord, God worked the problems out.  In one example she talks about how she and the choir went on tour and when she came back home, she had a foreclosure notice.  Overcome with grief, she says she turned the situation over to the Lord and the Lord worked it out.

Now I love this song – mostly because not only does the song encourage me to trust God, but also because the song has a way of getting your toes tapping.  But every time I hear the part about the foreclosure, I cannot help thinking, “I mean, I get trusting the Lord, but I am pretty sure you knew you had not paid the mortgage before you decided to go on tour.  I mean there is trust and there is TRUST.”

That is what I think is so interesting about our two readings today.  They represent two different extremes when we talk about the role of trust in our relationship with God.  The first is the vivid and dramatic story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  King Nebuchadnezzar has captured the three men and insists they worship his gods and his statue or face a fiery death.  When the three men refuse, the king has them thrown into the furnace, turned up seven times as high as normal.  But much to the king’s surprise, not only do the men survive, they seem to be dancing around in the flames with Yahweh.  When the men come out untouched by the flames, not even smelling of smoke, King Nebuchadnezzar concedes and decides to worship their God instead of his gods. This fantastic story is a story of how, even in the face of persecution and death, faithfulness, trust, and loyalty to our God will make you victorious, even in impossible situations.

Meanwhile, in our gospel text, the faithful are equally trusting of God, but in this instance, their trust and confidence is ill-placed.  You see, Jesus has gathered people who are following him and begins to talk about who he is in relation to God.  When Jesus starts talking about to whom the people belong, and that God is doing a new thing in Jesus Christ, the followers become obstinate.  “We are descendants of Abraham…Abraham is our father,” they protest  What is funny about this exchange between Jesus and the faithful is that on the surface, the faithful are doing the same thing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do.  They are staying true to their God, despite the fact that this new teacher and prophet is asking them to see something new in what God is doing.  But in their case, we can see that Jesus does not see their faithfulness and trust as a virtue, but instead a hinderance to seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in something new.  Unlike Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s story, this story seems to be about how we should hold tightly to what God has taught us, but not so tightly that we lose touch with when God is doing a new thing.  We are to be loyal and trusting, but also discerning and open.

I do not know about you, but I find myself lost in these lessons.  When am I supposed to be so faithful that I am willing to face death (or foreclosure on my mortgage), and when am I supposed to be so faithful that I am willing to abandon what I know about my God and my identity to follow a new way?  When I was figuring out my vocation as a priest, I struggled.  The first step was getting over the hurdle of saying yes to a call to ordained ministry at all.  You see, my dad was a United Methodist minister, and I had sworn that I would never go into the ministry.  But once I finally was able to say yes, then came the hard part.  You see, I was called in the context of the Episcopal Church.  But not only was my father a United Methodist Minister.  His father was a United Methodist Minister.  And my grandfather’s brothers were United Methodist Ministers, and my uncle was a United Methodist Chaplain, and my cousins were United Methodist ministers.  At Annual Conference every year, there was a whole Andrews section.  So what I was dreading was telling my grandmother that I was breaking ranks.  My grandmother is pretty intense.  As a former librarian and English teacher, I was actually pretty intimidated by her most of my childhood.  Eventually I gathered up my nerve and had a talk with her.  As soon as I told her the news she gave out a huff.  And then she leaned in toward me and said, “I was a Lutheran before I married your grandfather.  I never wanted to be a Methodist anyway!”

Here’s the thing about following God – when we follow God, we get confirmation along the way.  I do not think that Jesus was asking his followers to abandon Abraham and trust in him alone.  Instead, I think Jesus was reminding them that if Abraham was their father, they would actually follow Abraham’s example.  Instead of clinging to an old, stable identity, they needed to remember that the main thing Abraham was known for was abandoning his old life and going to a new, scary place, and following God.  Jesus is not mad at his followers because they are clinging to the past.  Jesus is mad at his followers because they are clinging to a distorted version of the past – they are clinging to security instead of remembering the past is what taught them that sometimes they need to get up, drop everything, and go.  Sometimes they need to take a risk and say no to a worldly power who wants them to abandon who they are and what they are called to be.  These two stories are not about examples of total trust versus a lack of trust.  The two stories remind us that trusting God will lead us to uncomfortable places, will challenge our sense that we know God best, and will sometimes make us dance.

Our collect or prayer appointed for this last Wednesday before we begin Holy Week says, “Almighty God our heavenly Father, renew in us the gifts of your mercy; increase our faith, strengthen our hope, enlighten our understanding, widen our charity, and make us ready to serve you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”  We leave this sacred place tonight, not with a sense that we need to dramatically follow Christ into the flames or be considered faithlessly unwilling to go where God calls us.  Instead, these stories remind us that we can always stand to increase our faith, strengthen our hope, enlighten our understanding, widen our charity, and be made ready to serve.  We all know we need that work because that is the work we have been doing all Lent – working on our faithful walk with Christ.  What these stories remind us of is we have companions along the way – companions who are bold and fearless, companions who have messed up, and companions who may not even go to our own church, but who know our same journey and our same God.  Christ renews us in his mercy tonight, so that we can keep saying yes to God.  Amen.

Sermon – Jeremiah 31.31-34, Psalm 51.1-13, L5, YB, March 18, 2018

Tags

clean, comfort, communion, covenant, exile, God, heart, Lent, persistence, Psalm, relationship, repentance, Sermon, sin, sinfulness, ten commandments

As we heard our psalm today, you may have thought the psalm sounded familiar.  And you would be right.  Just under five weeks ago, we said this exact same psalm on Ash Wednesday.  After we were invited into a holy Lent – one of fasting, self-examination, and repentance, and ashes were spread across our foreheads, we said this psalm.  “Have mercy on me, O God…For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…[I have] done evil in your sight…” we confessed.  We begged God to create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.  I wonder how saying these words again, just several weeks later, feels today.  Perhaps after weeks of following your Lenten discipline, you feel closer to that clean heart and renewed spirit.  Maybe you are making your way out of Lent and the repetition of Psalm 51 feels unnecessary because you have completed your repentance work.  But maybe Psalm 51 feels unattainable, because your sinfulness feels like something you cannot shake.

If you are in the latter category, and if, in fact, you are beginning to wonder if you will ever master this sinfulness thing, take heart.  I actually say verse eleven of this psalm every time I celebrate the Eucharist.  Week in and week out, whether we are in Lent, Eastertide, or Ordinary time, even after I have prayed and confessed with the community, before I approach the altar to celebrate holy communion, I say these same words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  Whether in a season of penitence or not, whether I have already celebrated Eucharist two times earlier in the morning, I still pray Psalm 51.11, longing for the God of mercy and hesed, or loving-kindness, to create in me a clean heart.

That is why I think the beginning of our liturgy was so hard today.  As part of the penitential order, we prayed the decalogue, or the ten commandments.  With each commandment, we responded, “Amen. Lord have mercy.”  Reading the decalogue in scripture, as we did just a few weeks ago in Lent is a bit different – somehow having them in paragraph form makes them more palatable – with only certain commandments jumping out at us as areas of improvement.  But praying them is more difficult.  With each commandment receiving a closing petition, the idea is hammered home – we struggle with every last one of these commandments.  Now I can imagine what you are thinking – but I have never murdered.  While that may be true, the poor and the oppressed die every day because no one cares enough to change policy or ensure each person gets help.  Or maybe you are muttering that you have never put any gods before our God.  But we commit idolatry every day when we believe money or even we ourselves are in control instead of our God.  Each petition we pray in the decalogue reminds of how deep and diverse our sinfulness is.

But here’s the funny thing about those commandments – the Israelites could not follow them either.  The Israelites had been rescued from slavery and protected relentlessly.  Once the Israelites were finally in safety and heading to the Promised Land, God created a new covenant with the people.  God sent Moses up the mountaintop and had Moses write the law on tablets – the law that would guide the people into faithful, covenantal living.  But before Moses could even get down the mountain and deliver the covenant to the people, they had already created the golden calf – an idol in the place of God.  They people would struggle so much with the ten commandments that a whole generation of God’s covenantal people would not be allowed into the Promised Land – not even Moses himself.  Although God intended for the decalogue to shape the lives of the people and to create the boundaries for the covenant, and although none of the petitions are all that unreasonable, yet still the people would break their covenant with God time and again.

We are just like our ancestors.  I was just retelling a parishioner this week about my Lenten discipline in college.  You see, in college I picked up a bit of a potty mouth.  It got so bad that my freshman year, I decided to charge myself a quarter for every curse word I uttered, with the plan of giving the proceeds to church on Easter.  By the end of week two in Lent, I had to reduce the fee to a nickel because I could not afford the fee!  And the funny thing was that every year in college was the same.  “This year!  This year I will master my filthy mouth.”  And every year I would have to reduce the fees.  We are creatures of habit, masters of repeated sinfulness, just like our ancestors.

That is why reading Jeremiah is so powerful today.  Jeremiah writes in a time of desperation for the people of God. The Babylonians have razed the temple and carried King Zedekiah off in chains.  Effectively, the Babylonians have “destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity.”[i]  Sometimes we talk about the exile so much that I think we forget the heart-wrenching experience of exile.  Being taken from homes and forced to live in a foreign land is certainly awful enough.  But the things that were taken – the land of promise, the temple for God’s dwelling, the king offered for comfort to God’s people – are all taken, leaving not just lives in ruin, but faith in question.  But today, in the midst of the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation, Jeremiah’s reading says God will make a new covenant.  God knows the people cannot stop breaking the old covenant, and so God promises to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  Instead of making the people responsible for the maintenance of the covenant, God goes a step further and writes the law in their hearts, embodies God’s way within the people.

The words of Jeremiah in the section called “the Book of Comfort,”[ii] and this new covenant by God, show a God whose abundance knows no limits.  God offers this new covenant to a people who surely do not deserve another covenant.  God has offered prophets and sages, has called the people to repentance, has threatened and cajoled, and yet still the people could not keep the basic tenants of the covenant established in those ten commandments.  But instead of abandoning the people to exile, God offers reconciliation and restoration yet again.  And because God knows we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, God basically says, “Here.  Let me help you.  Let me write these laws in your hearts so that you do not have to achieve your way into favor with me, but you will simply live faithfully, living the covenant with your bodies and minds.”  And when even that does not seem to work, God sends God’s only son.  God never gives up on us or our relationship with God.  Even all these years after Christ’s resurrection, God is still finding new ways to make our covenant work.

I have had parishioners attend two services in one day – maybe they were a speaker at two services or maybe they sang in two different choirs.  Invariably, one of these multi-service attendees will ask me, “Should I take communion again?  I shouldn’t, right?”  I always chuckle because I have to remind them that I take communion three times every Sunday – sometimes four or five if I take communion to someone homebound on a Sunday.  I confess all those times, I pray all those times, I say those words of Psalm 51 all those times, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Lent is the same way – sometimes we are confessing multiple times in one day.  Sometimes we need to say the decalogue, and we need to confess our sins, and we need to hear Psalm 51.  And before we go to bed, we may need to confess to God again.  We do all those things with confidence because our God is a god of mercy, hesed, and restoration, always looking for ways to renew God’s covenant with us.  God’s persistence with us is what inspires our work this Lent.  So yes, create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us – every week, every day, every hour.  Amen.

[i] Richard Floyd, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 122.

[ii] Jon L. Berquist, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 123.

Sermon – John 2.13-22, Exodus 20.1-17, L3, YB, March 4, 2018

Tags

beautiful, bless, body, flesh, God, good, honor, incarnation, Jesus, Lent, ministry, repentance, righteous anger, sacred, Sermon, sinful, temple

Today’s gospel lesson is one of those lessons in Scripture that is so vivid we find looking away difficult.  All four of the gospels have this story, and three of the gospels use this story to convey Jesus’ righteous anger about how the practice around temple worship and obligatory sacrifice has led to monetary abuses.  Matthew and Luke even have Jesus calling the whole enterprise a den of robbers.  The story evokes images of Jesus flipping tables, or in today’s version, swinging around a whip like Indiana Jones.  We often recall this text when looking for evidence of Jesus’ righteous anger at injustice.  We are so familiar with this text we can almost hear the sermon about a call to justice in our heads.

But this week, the gospel has been speaking a different sermon to me.  You see, John’s version of this story is a bit different from the other three gospels.  First, John places this story in a very different place in his narrative.[i]  Unlike the other gospels who place this story toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, John places this incident in the second chapter, right after the miracle in Cana.  And in John’s version, Jesus does not lay into the moneychangers in quite the same way.  Instead of financial injustice, Jesus seems more concerned that those gathered have missed something critical – in the obligatory administering of sacrifices at the physical temple, they have missed the fact that God is no longer tied to the location of the temple – and instead is found in the temple of Jesus’ body.  For John, the incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, is central to the entirety of the good news and in this story specifically.

I realized this week that when I think about the Incarnation, I immediately think of the baby Jesus.  Somehow, like a child you do not see for a few years, my image of Jesus incarnate gets stuck in the manger.  And because the adult Jesus sometimes feels so superhuman, I forget about the earthy, gritty flesh of his body – the body that touches to heal, stoops down to wash feet, eats and drinks with others, cries wet tears, and breathes a last breath of the cross.  In coming to know the Messiah who heals, teaches, brings about justice, and is transfigured before the disciples, I forget the enfleshed Jesus – the human body in which God dwells – the only temple we need to draw nearer to our God.

We are in a season of flesh.  Lent is that season when we experience Jesus in deeply enfleshed ways.  What our disciplines or our practices do for us in Lent is help us remember that we are a people of flesh and our God was willing to take on that flesh to transform our lives.  We do not often talk about the profound reality of an enfleshed God, but I stumbled on a hymn this week that opened up the reality.  Brian Wren’s hymn Good is the Flesh says, “Good is the flesh that the Word has become, good is the birthing, the milk in the breast, good is the feeding, caressing and rest, good is the body for knowing the world, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  The hymn goes on to say, “Good is the body, from cradle to grave, growing and aging, arousing, impaired, happy in clothing, or lovingly bared, good is the pleasure of God in our flesh, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”[ii]  Now I do not know about your own spiritual journey, but I do not think I have ever heard Jesus’ flesh being described so vividly.  The closest I have come has been in imagining the vulnerability of that enfleshed body in the cradle.  But capturing what being enfleshed means for all of life – from cradle to grave – somehow opened up John’s words about the temple of Jesus’ body.  God takes something we often associate with sinfulness – and transforms that flesh into something good.  “Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,” are powerful words that shift how we experience the fullness of Christ’s humanity.

Once we reconnect with the goodness of God’s flesh – the incarnation of Christ – then we begin to see all of Jesus’ ministry not stuck in a manger but immersed in the flesh of life.  Karoline Lewis reminds us Jesus’ fleshy life was important, “Because a woman at a well, whose body was rejected for the barren body it was, experiences the truth of neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem; because a man ill for 38 years, his entire life to be exact, whose body has only known life on the ground, is now able to imagine his ascended life; because a man born blind, is then able to see, and to see himself as a sheep of Jesus’ own fold; because Lazarus, whose body was dead and starting to decay, found himself reclining on Jesus, eating and drinking, and with his sisters, sharing a meal once again.”[iii]  Not only is Jesus’ incarnation good, making flesh good, Jesus’ ministry is about blessing, healing, and restoring physical bodies.

Once we connect with the goodness of God’s flesh, and the power of Jesus’ fleshy ministry, we are forced to see something we do not always feel comfortable with – the goodness of our own flesh.  Now I do not know about you, but my experience in church has not been one in which the church tells me how good my body is.  In fact, today’s inclusion of the ten commandments usually reminds me of the opposite – of the myriad ways my body is sinful:  from the words that come out of my mouth, to the ways in which I hurt others and take things with my body, to the ways in which I covet things and other bodies.  And those sins do not even touch the ways in which I learn the message that my body is imperfect – how my body is not the right height or shape or gender, how my body is not fit or strong enough, how my skin color, hair, or nails are not quite the ideal.  But if God takes on flesh and says, “Good is the flesh,” and if that enfleshed God engages in a ministry of blessing flesh, then surely part of what we remember today is how good and blessed our own flesh is – how God made our flesh for good.

Now, here comes the tricky part.  Once we realize “Good is the flesh,” that ministered to the flesh, that our flesh is beautiful and revered, then we are forced to make yet another leap – that the flesh of others is also beautiful.  Those bodies we would like to subjugate, regulate, and decimate are no longer able to be separated from the goodness of God’s flesh or our own flesh.  Barbara Brown Taylor argues in An Altar in the World, “‘One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.’  In other words, once I value my own body as God’s temple, as a site of God’s pleasure, delight, and grace, how can I stand by while other bodies suffer exploitation, poverty, discrimination, or abuse?”[iv]

This week, we enter that kind of work.  As we welcome guests through the Winter Shelter, we affirm the goodness of all flesh – of God’s flesh, of our flesh, and especially the flesh of those who have no shelter, who work hard all day but cannot secure housing, who live lives of uncertainty, of insecurity, of scarcity.  Once we recall the incarnation of Christ, the dignity of our own incarnation, our work immediately becomes to honor the incarnation of others.  We certainly accomplish the work of honoring flesh this week through the Winter Shelter.  But as we keep walking our Lenten journey, we will struggle with our bodies.  Even our collect today says, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”  But our invitation this Lent is to also struggle with claiming our body as good – and using the goodness of the flesh to bless other flesh.  Our repentance this week is not just of the sinfulness of the flesh, but we repent this week of the ways in which we do not honor how “Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  Amen.

 

[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 92.

[ii] I found this hymn in the commentary by Debie Thomas, “The Temple of His Body” February 28, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1675 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iii] Karoline Lewis, “Body Zeal,” February 26, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5071 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iv] Thomas.

Sermon – Mark 8.31.38, L2, YB, February 25, 2018

Tags

cede, Christ, control, conversation, follow, God, guns, invest, Jesus, Messiah, outcome, Peter, relationship, self-interest, Sermon, solution

Last week, as Lent Madness started up, the first matchup was between Peter and Paul.  Our family had a lively debate about which saint we preferred, including how cool it was for Paul to change his mind so radically.  But I advocated for Peter because I love how human he is – always being both the Rock on which Christ will build his Church, and the “Satan” who gets so tripped up in his own desires that he forgets what Jesus is trying to do.  Sometimes Peter’s praise and condemnation happen within verses of each other.  Today is just such a day.  In the few verses before the gospel reading from Mark we heard today, Peter boldly professes that Jesus is the Messiah when none of the other disciples are able to do so.  But then today, as soon as Jesus starts talking about suffering, rejection, and death, Peter slips again.  Like a celebrity’s manager, Peter quietly pulls Jesus aside to remind him that talking about suffering, rejection, and death is not going to help his ratings with the crowds.

I imagine many of us here have had similar conversations with God.  Like Peter, we have taken certain risks in our lives to follow Christ.  We have been mocked by non-believers, we have had to defend our God when the news feed seems to suggest God is absent, we have given up countless invitations for brunch or simply sleeping in because we agreed to read scripture in church or teach Sunday School.  We have taken jobs out a sense of call or we have loved an enemy when we did not want to love her.  We have made sacrifices for our faith.  And like any relationship where we have committed time and energy, we become invested in the outcomes.  So, when someone does not recover from an illness, or when a child is lost too soon, we get angry with God.  When another shooting happens, or when we hear reports of genocide, we voice our frustration with God.  Even when we follow politics, we become convinced that God would want a particular outcome or a particular party to win.

But here’s the trouble.  You see, when we follow Jesus, when we give up things and commit to the relationship, we become invested.  The process is natural – any relationship in which we commit our time is one in which we become invested in the results.  But that is the scary thing about following Jesus.  Not only does Jesus want us to follow him, Jesus also wants us to let go of control in the relationship.  That’s where Peter stumbles today.  You see, he is a faithful follower of Jesus.  But somewhere along the way, his faithfulness is not offered out of a total trust in whatever Jesus has to offer, but is rooted in a conviction that Jesus will behave in a particular way:  the conquering Messiah – the one who will bring redemption.  His rebuking Jesus is because what Jesus says today does not jive with his expectations of the Messiah.  And because he has a relationship with Jesus, because he is invested in his relationship with Jesus, he tries to exert his will over Jesus – to convince him to look like the Messiah he wants.

I once served at a parish that had a longtime missional relationship with a village in the Dominican Republic.  When I got involved with the program, the relationship had been floundering.  The church had worked with the village to build a community center.  Once that was done, not wanting the relationship to end, the church tried some other efforts, including microfinance and teaching different industries.  Most of those efforts failed, and the teams that would travel to the village began to feel like they were wasting their time or were doing busy work.  The more the church tried to control the relationship, the less satisfying the relationship became.

I remember on one of our last nights in the DR talking to the local priest.  I shared with him our concern – that we feared the relationship had accomplished all it could and everything we were trying to do in the village was forcing the relationship to be something the relationship could not be.  The priest understood our predicament, and gave us his blessing to do whatever we needed to do.  I went home convinced the church would gracefully end the relationship.  Instead, years later, I found out the relationship was still going strong – but not because the church had done something.  Instead, when the church was finally willing to let go, to stop trying to control the relationship, and force their own outcome, the relationship took off.  The village came to the church with a new proposal.  Instead of one more coat of paint, or one more attempted microbusiness, the village wanted to build more buildings.  But this time, the buildings would not just service the village – they would serve as a high school for the region.  Last I heard, the government finally noticed what the village was doing, and began to support the school with infrastructure and teachers.

What the church had to learn, what we need to learn, what Peter eventually learns is taking up our cross to follow Jesus means being open to death.  Perhaps that sounds obvious to those of you who have read Jesus’ words time and again.  But this week, when I think about what being open to death means I think Jesus means being open to the death of our self-interest – of our will – of our desperate need for control.  Once we allow that to die, we start to find life – life in Christ as Christ would have us live life.  We find ourselves able to keep our minds on divine things, not on human things.

This past week of dealing with the aftermath of another school shooting, I have been struggling.  Every time our country faces another mass shooting, I feel like I need to do something, to change something, to push our leaders to do something different.  Every time we face another tragedy, I join Christians in prayer and grief.  But, as one Christian theologian points out, “There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.”[i]  And so this week, instead of just looking to like-minded people about what to do or whom to blame, I tried something else.  I called up a friend who has very different feelings about these things and asked him to help me understand his point of view on guns in our country.  Instead of trying to convince him of my view, I let go of my own stuff, and listened.  When I let go – when I was open to the death of my self-interest or longing for control, I found that we got a lot closer to a common solution.  We began to discover ways forward.

And then, as I found myself loosening my own grip on a solution, our young people started speaking up.  Instead of the adults in this country trying to tell students how to feel or behave, the students began to teach us.  If we can deny ourselves, let go of our death grip on this issue on either side, our young people are inviting us into a new way of entering this problem – of listening differently to one another and responding in a way that transforms both sides of the aisle.

I cannot imagine a better time for us to grapple with our relationships with God and with one another.  Many of you have already shared with me the ways in which you have taken on Lenten disciplines to help you deepen your relationship with Christ.  What Peter’s experience this week invites us to consider is how we might not simply deepen our relationship, but also how me might cede our self-interest in our relationship with Christ – not simply following Christ, but letting go of how we think that journey should look; not simply taking up our cross, but being open to the fact that we do not know what that will mean or what we will encounter.  If we can engage in that kind of relationship with Christ, then we might just be able to engage in that kind of relationship with one another – no longer maddeningly holding on to what we want in our relationships, but trusting that God is working among us when we let go.  Then we are finally taking up our crosses and following Christ – together.  Amen.

[i] Attributed to Miroslav Volf by Kirsten Powers, “Why ‘thoughts and prayers’ is starting to sound so profane,” Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/10/03/why-thoughts-and-prayers-is-starting-to-sound-so-profane, as referenced by Karoline Lewis, “Open Speech,” Feb. 19, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5066, as found on Feb. 22, 2018.

Sermon – Mark 9.2-9, TRNS, YB, February 10, 2018

Tags

Christ, disciples, Epiphany, God, Good News, Jesus, Lent, Mark, Messiah, mountain, Sermon, Son of God, Suffering Servant, Transfiguration

A couple of months ago, we entered into a new liturgical year.  When Advent started, we began another year of discovery, this year focusing on Mark’s gospel and Mark’s depiction of who Jesus is and what that depiction means for our journey with Christ.  Back in December, we began the journey with the very first words of Mark – the first verse of the first chapter of Mark.  Mark says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  Now, I never thought much of Mark 1.1.  The line, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” has always sounded to me like, “Once upon a time…”  But we know that Mark is the shortest gospel, and that Mark is the tightest writer of Jesus’ story.  So, what I should have remembered is that Mark does not throw away words.  Mark would never introduce his gospel with “Once upon a time.”  As a writer who does not mince words, instead Mark tells us everything we need to know about Jesus in one simple sentence:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So what does Mark tell us, and why I am taking us back to the beginning when our assigned reading is about the Transfiguration?   Because we need Mark’s first words before we can understand anything as dramatic as the Transfiguration.  When Mark says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” Mark tells us right away who Jesus is:  Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God.[i]  Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God.  First, Mark tells us Jesus is the Christ:  the Messiah, the person the people of God had been awaiting, the victorious redeemer of the people, the mighty restorer of the kingdom of God.  Since that day in December when we heard this brief introduction by Mark, we have been celebrating the Messiah.  We heard of a mother, shepherds, and kings who reveal this truth to us – a Messiah is born.  Then, Jesus is baptized, and disciples follow him, and miracles happen.  In Mark’s gospel, when Jesus asks who the disciples say that Jesus is, Peter boldly proclaims, “You are the Messiah.”  Even today, as Jesus’ clothes turn dazzling white, and Elijah and Moses appear, we are filled with anticipation:  this is what we have been waiting for – Jesus the Messiah!!

And yet, somehow in the birth stories, and the epiphanies, and the dramatic healing stories, we forget the other half of Mark’s introduction:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  You see, Mark needs us to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ.  But Jesus is equally something else:  the Son of God.  Now the Son of God is not just an honorific title.  Mark tells us something powerful when Mark tells us Jesus is the Son of God.  If you remember, in a few chapters beyond our reading in Mark today, Jesus will tell that familiar parable of some wicked tenants – tenants who are entrusted with the Master’s vineyard, but who kill the son of the landowner when the landowner sends his son to collect the harvest.  The Son of God is not a title of honor so much as a reminder of what will happen to Jesus.  The Son of God is destined to lay down his life for the people of God.  Jesus is the suffering servant we hear about in Isaiah – the one who makes the ultimate sacrifice so that new life might come.

So what does any of this have to do with the Transfiguration?  Pretty much everything.  You see, in this victorious Messiah-like last epiphany moment before we head into Lent, when the disciples are so overwhelmed by the drama of their Messiah gathered with Moses and Elijah, God says something simple to the disciples, “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  You see, just days before the Transfiguration of Jesus, Peter had insightfully proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah – the same thing that Mark proclaims from the beginning of Mark’s gospel.  But Peter forgot the other part of Mark’s introduction.  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus is both the Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God, the suffering servant.  Jesus is always both.

I remember in my very first interview with the Commission on Ministry – the group who helps those discerning a call to ordained ministry – in that first interview, the Commission asked me this question:  Who is Jesus to you?  I remember at the time thinking what a weird question that was.  I mean, we have the whole of the New Testament that tells us who Jesus is.  But since I was sitting before a body of people who could determine my fate, I figured I had better come up with something better than, “That’s a weird question.”  And so I started to ramble on about the things that were enlivening my faith journey – Jesus’ preference for the poor, his passion for justice, and his call to being in community.  Not once did I remember Mark’s simple words – that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.  I did what Peter does today – what we all do in our faith journey.  I looked at Jesus and pulled out the stuff I liked:  the advocate for justice.  Peter pulls out what he likes:  the Christ, the victorious Messiah.  But what the Transfiguration today reminds of is that we can never pick and choose what we like about Jesus.  Jesus is always both the Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God, the suffering servant.

So why does any of this matter?  Well, in part, this fundamental clarity about Jesus is important because we are at a fulcrum in Mark’s gospel.  We have journeyed with Jesus, experienced epiphanies, ascended the mountain and seen the radiance of our God.  All of that excitement could lead us to think we have arrived, that our victory has already come, that Christ is simply the Messiah. The temptation is for us to linger on the mountain, to stay with the Jesus who makes us feel good, who makes us feel powerful, who makes us feel victorious, who dazzles us with shiny clothes.  And in some ways, that is what today is all about.  We celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration because we need to know Jesus is the Christ – the Messiah.

But as we begin Lent this week, we descend this mountain and walk our way to another mountain – the mountain of Calvary that reminds us of the other truth of Jesus:  that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to redeem us through the darkness of the cross.[ii]  Even on the mountain of Transfiguration, God reminds us of this truth.  God does not shout to the disciples, “Jesus is the Messiah!!”  Instead, God whispers the gentle reminder, “This is my Son, the beloved.”  Even God knows we will want to linger on the goodness of who Jesus is – the brilliance of a Messiah.  But as Mark tells us from the beginning:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus is both the Christ and the Son of God.

This week we will begin the long journey of Lent.  We will be reflecting on our relationship with Jesus, our failings and faults, and our gifts and goodness.  The work will feel hard and tedious at times, and on those days we are feeling particularly low, we may want to have Jesus the Christ stand up for us, and bring in a mighty victory.  But as we walk from today’s mountain to Good Friday’s mountain, we also hold in tension with Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God.  In our weakness, we find a savior who is also weak.  In our dark days, we find a savior mired in darkness.  In our despairing, we find a savior lost in despair too.  Jesus’ identity as the Son of God gives us as much comfort as Jesus’ identity as the mighty Messiah.  When we hold all of who Jesus is in our hearts, we can be more tender with all of who we are.

I am eager to walk the Lenten walk with you.  I am eager to hear about your struggles and victories, your darkness and light.  I am eager to be surrounded by a community of people working through valley of two mountains so that we can come through the redemption of the resurrection.  Today’s Feast of the Transfiguration offers you sustenance for the valley, fuel for the work, fire for the renewal.  This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ, the son of God.  Amen.

[i] This understanding of Jesus’ identity was presented by Thomas P. Long at a lecture on February 9, 2018.

[ii] The idea of framing Lent between two mountains come from Rolf Jacobson, in the Sermon Brainwave podcast, “#585 –Transfiguration of Our Lord,” February 3, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=977, as found on February 7, 2018.

Sermon – Mark 1.29-39, EP5, YB, February 4, 2018

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#metoo, Bible, disciples, discipleship, gender, interpret, Jesus, men, reassuring, role, scripture, Sermon, together, uncomfortable, women

One of the things I love about the Bible is that the Bible never makes you feel wholly comfortable.  You can always find a comforting passage – a victorious song from Isaiah, soothing words from a psalm, a story of encouragement or inspiration about a beloved character.  But as you read Holy Scripture, you can almost as equally find passages that make you bristle.  This especially happens when you follow the lectionary, because, much to the chagrin of your preachers, you cannot pick and choose what texts you like.  And so, you open up the assigned text and your modern sensibilities say, “Whoa!  Hey now!”

Today’s lesson from Mark hit me that way at first glance.  Jesus has had a pretty full day.  On the Sabbath, Jesus and the disciples go to the synagogue and Jesus teaches with an authority that amazes those gathered.  He rids a man of an unclean spirit, and the people marvel again.  Jesus leaves the temple and goes to Simon Peter’s house.  Before he can even sit down, the disciples tell him that Simon’s mother-in-law has a fever – which, in those days, is a dangerous condition.  Jesus goes to her, offers her his hand, she rises, and is healed.  And this is the part where I bristle.  The text says, “Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”

The timing of this text could not be worse.  Our country is in the middle of a complete reevaluation of the treatment and role of women.  Just a few weeks ago, women around the country, and even here in Williamsburg, marched to protest the ways in which women are being treated and the ways in which legislation is affirming that treatment.  This year, Time Magazine chose the women of the #metoo movement as their “Person of the Year.”  These Silence Breakers are women who have begun to take a stand against sexual harassment and assault.  The magazine’s selection was timely, as story after story continues to break of prominent men are accused of mistreating and assaulting women.  Even our political elections are seeing more women running for office, including three graduates from the Naval Academy.[i]  In this season of women and men calling our country to examine the role and treatment of women, the last thing I wanted to hear was a story about a woman whose immediate reaction to a miraculous healing and resurrection is to go into the kitchen and serve the men.  She does not join the four disciples as part of Jesus’ entourage; she does not sit with Jesus and learn more from his teachings; she does not become an evangelist of the Good News.  The text simply says, “Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”

One of the tricky things about reading Holy Scripture is how to interpret scripture in the context of our modern sensibilities.  In my last year of seminary, I decided to write my thesis on the book of Ruth for this same reason.  Here was an entire book on women – a rarity in scripture.  The first three chapters of the book show women of agency and power, who make their way, even in a world where widows have very little power.  Even Ruth is described as a woman of hayil, a Hebrew word reserved almost entirely to describe men of great power and military prowess.  And what happens to this mighty, powerful woman?  In the final chapter of the book, men determine Ruth’s fate, she gets married, has a child, and the child redeems her mother-in-law.  This character who speaks throughout the book is rendered voiceless throughout the last chapter.  It took me a year of wrestling with this book to realize that my modern lens and interpretation of the book of Ruth prevented me from understanding how Ruth’s fate does not mitigate her hayil, her power in the story.  Reading Ruth would never translate the same way to modern ears.  Ruth’s story is still a story of empowerment.  But in order to hear that empowerment, I would need a deeper understanding of the cultural context.  And I would need to be open to other messages from the text – not simply what I wanted to hear and have affirmed to my everyday life.

A similar reality is true in today’s reading from Mark.  This is not a story about a woman’s role or a woman’s expected place with Jesus.  This is not a story about the differences between men and women in the kingdom of God.  This is not a story about gender and discrimination.  This is a story about discipleship.[ii]  The past three weeks we have been talking about discipleship –  how discipleship is discerned within community, how discipleship involves sacrifice and a response to Jesus, how discipleship involves a sense of immediacy.  Today’s lesson reminds us that discipleship is also about service.

Simon’s mother-in-law does not recover from an illness and immediately begin to serve Jesus out of a sense of gendered identity.  She immediately begins to serve Jesus because, through her healing, she understands a key component in discipleship:  service. This is something the disciples will not learn until many chapters later, when Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”[iii]  Two of the same disciples who are there this night of the mother-in-law’s healing, James and John, after ten chapters of following Jesus think discipleship means power and privilege – sitting at Jesus’ left and right hand.  But Jesus, the mother-in-law, and countless others show the disciples that discipleship is about service.  Discipleship is about what we reaffirm in our baptismal covenant – to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

This story is not a story about gender and the role of women and men.  This story is about discipleship.  Now, for those of you who may still feel dissatisfied, what is interesting in this story is that in a room full of men, the woman is the one who actually understands what Jesus is all about.  We see that point even more fully when Simon Peter approaches Jesus later as Jesus is praying.  The text says, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  And Simon and his companions hunted for him.”  Scholar’s argue that Simon did not simply “hunt for” or look for Jesus.  The implication of the Greek word here is that Simon vigorously looked for and approached Jesus with the intent of forcing Jesus to get back to work.[iv]  Simon misunderstands Jesus and the work of discipleship; Simon’s mother-in-law does not misunderstand.  But taking this story to be a feminist text of the women getting it and not the men is probably reading too much into the text too.  This is a text about one disciple getting it – getting it to strong degree.  In fact, the word used for “service” here, is the same root of the word for deacon.[v]  The service of the mother-in-law is akin to the work of deacons in the church.

I do not know where you find yourself in this text today.  Maybe the text is reassuring because you have made your life of discipleship about the service of the kingdom.  Maybe this text is reassuring because you understand that sometimes you do not always get the message, and yet you can still be disciples.  Or maybe this text is reassuring because you are grateful to be surrounded by disciples on various points of the spectrum, who are all figuring it out.  The point is – this is a reassuring text.  This passage from Mark is not meant to be a text for bristling, for defensiveness (on either side), or for creating a sense of failure.  This is a text which reassuringly reminds us that we are all on a journey to understanding discipleship and becoming more faithful disciples every day.  This text reminds us that we need each other: men and women, old and young, married and single.  Together we help each other walk with Christ.  Together we teach each other the work of discipleship.  Together we do the work of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen.

[i] Michael Tackett, “From Annapolis to Congress? These Three Women Know Tough Missions,” January 28, 2018, as found at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/us/politics/women-annapolis-democrats-congress-trump.html on February 2, 2018.

[ii] Karoline Lewis, “A Call Story,” January 28, 2018, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5052 on February 1, 2018.

[iii] Mark 10.45a.

[iv] Daniel J. Harrington, ed., The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 2 (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 2002), 87.

[v] Gary W. Charles, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 335.