Sermon – John 3.14-21, Numbers 21.4-9, L4, YB, March 14, 2021

Tags

belief, choice, cross, glory, God, grace, Israel, Jesus, Lent, light, Moses, salvation, Sermon, serpent, sin, transform

Our scripture lessons today offer two contrasts:  a story from the Hebrew Scriptures which might be unfamiliar to you or at least may seem wildly strange, and a story from John’s gospel that is so familiar, you can probably quote a portion of the text if I simply tell you the citation, “John 3.16.”  What is strange about this combination is the unknown, uncomfortable story is a window into the overly familiar, commonplace story.  If we have any hope of understanding either of them, we need to dive into both.

At the point where we join the story from Numbers, God has been infinitely patient with God’s people.  Some might argue too patient.  God has saved God’s people time and again, wresting them from brutal slavery, miraculously helping them flee through the Sea of Reeds, helping sweeten bitter drinking water when they murmured, granting them manna when they complained of being hungry, giving them water out of a rock when they grumbled about being thirsty, offering them birds to eat when they whined of manna-fatigue.  Grace and patience abound with God.  Until this day.  The Israelites throw yet another fit, and God snaps.  This time, God sends poisonous serpents among the people, and many of them die.  When the people beg for help to Moses, God instructs Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole; if people gaze upon the serpent, they will live.  For a God who asks the people have no idols or gods before God, a serpent on a pole is, quite frankly, just weird.

Meanwhile, we have a super familiar text from John.  “For God so love the world that he gave his only Son.”  We love this verse because the verse reminds of our abundant, loving, graceful God.  Of course, we sometimes gloss over the rest of the troublesome parts of this text.  The rest talks about how Jesus saves the world – as long as the world believes.  Here is where the questions start to pile up for us.  Do we really believe that some people are condemned?  Is God’s love conditional?  What happens if we doubt?  Does that count as not believing?  Can eternal life be given and taken away based on the seesaw of my behavior?  The trouble is if we focus on God’s grace, we can make salvation seem arbitrary, with no essential place for human response.  But if we focus on human faith, we may be in danger of making salvation a human accomplishment, restricting God’s initiative universally.[i]  The only thing that seems to be clear is that God gives us a choice.  When we commit evil deeds, when we deny God through our behavior, when we linger in the darkness, we are making a choice.  And the text tells us today that the consequence of that choice is condemnation.

The answer to so much in these texts seems to lie in verse fourteen of John.  Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  As scholar Debie Thomas writes, “In the Old Testament story, God requires the Israelites to look up.  To gaze without flinching at the monstrous thing their sin has conjured.  It’s the thing they have wrought, the thing they fear most, the thing that will surely kill them if God in God’s mercy doesn’t intervene and transform the instrument of pain and death into an instrument of healing and life.  In order to be saved, the people have to confront the serpent — they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and kills them.”[ii]  The same seems to happen with Jesus on a cross.  Thomas goes on to say, “In the cross, we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the Other must wreak.  When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great cost, for the purposes of resurrection.”[iii]

The truth is, I am not sure either of these texts answer some of our basic questions, especially around those of belief.  But tying them together today, we do find an invitation – to change our gaze away from the judgment of others, the wondering about who is in and out, the questions about God’s retribution, and gaze on the cross – the body that reminds us of the goodness of God in spite of our sinfulness, that reminds us of God’s grace in spite of our lack of deserving, that reminds us of God’s unconditional love despite our inability to keep failing.  Our invitation is to take seriously the words of that old hymn, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.”  As we continue on the path of Lent toward the cross, today’s texts remind us of where we are going and why.  Our invitation is to look up at the horrible, wonderful truth of what Jesus does in the cross, and stand in the light of his glory and grace.  Amen.

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[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 118.

[ii] Debie Thomas, “Looking Up,” March 7, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up, on March 12, 2021. 

[iii] Thomas.

Sermon – John 10.22-30, Psalm 23, E4, YC, May 12, 2019

Tags

belief, belonging, character, God, Good Shepherd, group, image, Jesus, longing, question, Sermon, sheep, shepherd, uncomfortable

One of my good friends is enamored with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  She can describe the chapel of the Good Shepherd at the National Cathedral in minute, passionate detail.  In her office are images of Christ the Good Shepherd.   I suspect that if you asked her who Jesus is to her, she would say he is the Good Shepherd.  And she would not be alone.  The verses of John immediately before the text we heard today about Jesus being the Good Shepherd is a favorite when planning funerals.  The 23^rd Psalm, which says “The Lord is my Shepherd,” is perhaps the most well-know scripture passage of all time – known even by people who have not attended church in ages.  The passage from John we hear today talks about the intimacy between Jesus and Jesus’ followers being like sheep who know their shepherd’s voice.  The fourth Sunday of Easter is even called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” in the liturgical year.  We probably should have all worn those awesome sheep hats the Praise Band wears during the Epiphany pageant to show our sheep solidarity.

Despite all that – despite the familiarity, the wide-spread popularity, and the commitment of an entire day in the church calendar to shepherd imagery – I must confess something I have told very few people in life:  I do not really like the imagery of Christ as the Good Shepherd.  Now I know some of you may be shocked – how can a priest not like one of the most popular biblical metaphors?  Some of you may be perplexed – what’s not to like about the image of a good shepherd?  Some of you may be downright offended – how can I not relate to the metaphor that has sustained you countless times?

Let me break my dislike down for us.  I do not like the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd primarily because I do not like the idea of being sheep.  Now I know we have the Fiber Festival coming up this weekend, and I like wool as much as anybody, but sheep are not the brightest animals.  They are easily spooked, they tend to be a little clueless, they seem to lack individual intelligence, and they make a horrible bleating noise that sounds nothing like the “baa” of nursery rhymes.  Sheep are easily corralled – dogs are used to herd them in simply by nudging them all back together.  That rod and staff the 23^rd Psalm talks about is used to physically push and prod sheep into uniformity.  And let’s not forget they are notorious for getting lost.  I mean, of all images to conjure up and celebrate on a given Sunday, we get to be sheep?!?

But as you and I both know, the things that make us the most uncomfortable are usually the things that are the most true.  Take for example the question and request of Jesus by those gathered around him in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.  They say to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”  Jesus responds, “I have told you, and you do not believe.”  I cannot count the number of times we have asked Jesus this same question.  Sometimes the question is the exact same question as the one the people of faith ask today – are you the Messiah?  Can we believe in you?  Should we believe in you?  For anyone who has struggled with their faith – worried like those gathered at the tomb whether any of this Jesus stuff is true – the question and request today are not unfamiliar.  But we often ask this question in other ways.  As one writer confesses, there are countless times that we petition God with, “‘If you are.’  If you are good.  If you are powerful.  If you are loving.  If you are real.  If you are the Messiah, then stop talking in riddles.  Stop hiding when I long for your presence.  Stop awakening in me holy hungers you won’t satisfy.  Show up, speak plainly, act decisively.  Take this world of swirling, dubious gray, and turn it black and white, once and for all.”[i]  To all those questions, to all those longings, the response from Jesus to us is the same response of Jesus to the people of faith in our scripture lesson:  I have, but you do not believe.

Now here is where the text gets even more uncomfortable.  Jesus’ full words are, “I have told you, and you do not believe…because you do not belong to my sheep.”  Now there are all kinds of awful things that have been said historically about this text – the supersessionism of Christians over Jews, predestination, you name it![ii]  But I do not think Jesus was trying to exclude one group, or say, only one group will ever belong and everyone else is out.  I think what Jesus is trying to do is challenge people like me who do not like the idea of being sheep.  Jesus is saying today – I know you do not like being sheep, I know you do not like submitting control to me, I know that you do not like admitting that you do not have things all figured out.  When Jesus says, you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep, I think Jesus is saying, we do not belong because we are unwilling to belong.  In other words, we do not belong not because Jesus excludes – we do not belong because we actively fight belonging.  And because we fight belonging, we also struggle with believing.

One of my favorite church welcome videos features a series of concerns that often keep people away from church:  feeling like they do not lead lives that are good enough, worrying about unfamiliar or even weird cultural practices that might be uncomfortable, concern they might not fit in because of what they wear, or a sense that they could never belong to a group that has shown a history of hypocrisy.  To each concern, the church-goers have response.  Not sure what to wear?  Wear clothes.  Not sure your past sins will make you worthy?  We all have pasts that make us unworthy.  Worried about secret handshakes or stiff worship?  You’ll just find love and affirmation here.  Know the church is full of hypocrites?  Aren’t we all hypocrites?  What I love about the video is that belonging is more natural that belonging seems – and the more you spend time belonging, the more you realize your belonging helps you believe.  Belief does not come first.  It cannot come first.  Belonging comes first.

Author Debie Thomas says knowing belonging comes first is where our hope is today.  “According to this text, whatever belief I arrive at in this life will not come from the ups and downs of my own emotional life. It will not come from a creed, a doctrine, or a cleverly worded sermon.  Rather it will come from the daily, hourly business of belonging to Jesus’s flock — of walking in the footsteps of the Shepherd, living in the company of fellow sheep, and listening in real time for the voice of the one whose classroom is rocky hills, hidden pastures, and deeply shadowed valleys.  If I won’t follow him into those layered places — places of both tranquility and treachery, trust and doubt — I will never belong to him at all.”[iii]

For the longest time, I have resisted the metaphor of Jesus as our Good Shepherd because I did not like what being a sheep implied about my character and intellect.  But what I forgot in my resistance is that there are a whole lot of sheep around when I simply consent to belong.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me that I have companions along the journey who are also sometimes resistant to the guidance of Christ.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me that I am not alone in the things of life and faith I do not understand.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me going solo often leads to peril.  Bumping into fellow sheep really is not all that bad.  Not only do we have a shepherd who loves us unconditionally and irrationally, we also have a community where all our weakness, foibles, and sins are held in common, and forgiven.

Our invitation is to remember what John is actually saying today in his gospel.  As one scholar reminds us, “God is the one who initiates a relationship to us.  God seeks us out long before we seek God.  Christ makes us his sheep; we do not make him our shepherd.”[iv]  That is why we have long said as a people of faith, “The Lord is my shepherd…He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters.”  I mean, if you want to keep fighting the invitation to belong, by all means.  Lord knows, I have tried that route.  But on this Good Shepherd Sunday, your invitation is to consider another way:  to lean into the sheep all around you today, to trust that the Shepherd actually is good; and to know that wherever you are in your belief journey, belonging is the easiest step to get you there.  Amen.

[i] Debie Thomas, “Tell Us Plainly,” May 5, 2019, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2201 on May 8, 2019.

[ii] Thomas H. Troeger, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 447.

[iii] Thomas.

[iv] Troeger, 449.

Sermon – Luke 17.5-10, 2 Timothy 1.1-14, P22, YC, October 2, 2016

Tags

apostles, belief, Episcopal, faith, God, head, heart, heritage, identity, increase, Jesus, mothers, pastoral, Sermon, struggle, Timothy, work

One of the funny things about wearing a priestly collar in public is that people tend to tell you way more about their lives than perhaps they should.  As soon as a person realizes you are a priest, the flood gates open and all of a sudden you are the guest on the “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Church But Were Afraid to Ask!” Show.  I get questions about how one becomes a priest, what being an Episcopalian means, and what kind of Christian I am.  But mostly I get confessions.  People will confess they used to go to church, but once they became an adult, they had a hard time believing everything the church taught them as a child.  People will confess that they were raised in the church, but when a terrible tragedy hit, they felt abandoned by God and could never go back.  People will confess that they miss going to church, but that they always feel like they do not belong when the go to church – that everyone in the church seems to have their lives figured out except them.

What is interesting to me about those conversations with non-church goers or lapsed Christians is that they seem to think that their struggles with faith make them ineligible for church membership.  Perhaps that is true in some denominations in our country.  But one of the primary reason I became an Episcopalian was because the Episcopal Church not only made room for faith struggles, but expected those struggles.  Almost every time I have raised a question about a Biblical text in Bible Study, instead of someone explaining the answer to me, the response is almost always, “Yeah, that is a hard piece of scripture.”  Almost every time I have been with a grieving family who is on the brink of questioning their faith, no one in the room challenges them.  Usually someone says, “I could totally see how you would be doubting God right now.”  And almost every time I have been in a class about theology, the creeds, confirmation, or baptism, someone has asked, “What if I can’t believe that part.”  Never once has that person been told they do not belong if they cannot believe – in fact, usually the person is praised for naming the lack of faith we have all have had at some point in our spiritual journey.

I think that is why today’s Gospel lesson feels so real.  The disciples and apostles have been following Jesus for weeks, and Jesus has been handing them a lot of heavy stuff.  Jesus has told them to give up their possessions, to forgive those who wrong them, to take up their cross.  I cannot imagine anyone looking at the stark life Jesus describes and not calling out, “Increase our faith!”  How else can we be all Jesus wants us to be without increasing our faith?  Surely we have all had those trough moments – in the face of our mortality, at the betrayal of a friend or spouse, in the midst of anxiety and stress – when we too cry out to God, “Increase our faith!”

What might be helpful to do is talk a little about what we mean when we say faith.  Marcus Borg talks about two different kinds of faith:  faith of the head and faith of the heart.  Faith of the head is claiming something about God or the human condition.  This kind of faith is more about what we believe.  When someone says they have lost their faith, they have often lost this faith of the head.  They no longer believe something taught by holy scripture or the church.  In the Episcopal Church, we do not get too upset about this kind of faith struggle.  Instead, we see faith as ever evolving and growing.  Questions are at the root of a deep, mature faith.  Borg would argue that God cares very little about what beliefs are in our heads – if we believe the right things.  Borg knows that you can believe all the right things and still be in bondage, because, “Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.”[i]

Unlike faith of the head, faith of the heart is a little different, according to Borg.  Faith of the heart is characterized by three things:  trust, fidelity, and vision.  To have faith of the heart is to put a radical trust in God – to rely on God for grounding and safety.  Faith of the heart is also characterized by fidelity – an understanding that we will be faithful in our relationship with God and God with us.  Faith of the heart is finally characterized by vision – a belief that reality is life-giving and nourishing instead of threatening or hostile.  “To live in faith requires ‘a radical centering (of our lives) in God that leads to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see and live our lives.’”[ii]  So when the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, they are not necessarily asking Jesus to help them believe certain statements about God to be true (that faith of the head).  Instead, they are asking for faith of the heart – to get help in trusting God, remaining faithful in their relationship with God, and seeing life as God-given and gracious.

Now one would hope that Jesus would hear this request from the disciples and come back with a loving response – a pastoral word of encouragement that makes them feel affirmed in their fears and doubts.  Unfortunately, that is not what Jesus does at all today.  Instead he tells an abrasive story about masters and servants, which is basically Jesus’ way of saying, “You want your faith to increase?  Then get out there and do the work you have been given to do.”  Instead of assuring and coddling the disciples, Jesus sounds more like that old Nike ad that says, “Just do it!”

I do not know about you, but Jesus’ words are not all that comforting today.  I have sat with someone who is overwhelmed by the disappointments of life, and never once did it occur to me to tell them to just go out there and do the work they have been given to do.  I have counseled people who are facing death, divorce, job loss, or shame, and I have not told a single one of them to stop complaining and just get back out in the world doing what God has called them to do.  I myself have had moments when God felt absent, and I probably would have deemed any counsel to “Just do it!” as insensitive or unfair – to just trust that God is there anyway and get back to work.  Where are we supposed to find the strength to be faithful – to trust, to be loyal, to hold on to the vision of God’s goodness – when we feel completely unable to “Just do it!”?

As I struggled with Jesus’ harshness today, I remembered Paul’s second letter to Timothy.  Paul says to Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.”  Paul’s words this week help me see how we get back to the work Jesus wants us to do.  In Paul’s encouragement, he is confident that Timothy can “Just do it!” because he knows Timothy’s identity.  Timothy is the grandson of Lois and the son of Eunice.  These women have taught him everything he knows about Jesus.  They have been through the depths of despair themselves, and yet they are faithful witnesses of God.  Timothy is not just a man fighting for faith – Timothy is known by God, and comes from a long line of people who have walked with God.  Timothy’s heritage is a heritage of people who have gone before, who have shown him the way through their lives, and who have encouraged him.  Now, you may be thinking, “Yeah, except my Grandma was a Southern Baptist who disagrees with what I believe, or my Mom stopped going to church ages ago.”  Whether biological or not, we all have grandmothers and mothers of our faith.   Maybe they are friends or fellow parishioners.  Or maybe those mothers and grandmothers are the matriarchs of our faith.  Regardless, we are all rooted in something bigger than us – something with much deeper roots that can ground us when we feel like we are flailing in our faith.

When I first read our gospel lesson this week, I thought we had been cursed with the wrong lessons – especially for those of you who brought friends today.  But the more the lessons unfolded, the more I realized they might be the perfect lessons.  We all struggle with faith – certainly of the head, but more importantly of the heart.  But as Paul reminds us, we come from a long line of people who have gone before who have struggled as we do, and who leaned into their identity as beloved children of God in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  We are encouraged today because we have seen the fruit of “Just doing it!”  We have prayed for someone struggling this week.  We have called or visited a friend who needed encouragement this week.  We stood up to a bully this week.   We gave money to support ministry this week.  We did something seemingly inconsequential, but those small, everyday acts of faith are powerful, and they are how we answer Jesus’ call to “Just do it!” – even when we did not think we could.[iii]  Paul and the Church remind us that we can – we can do those acts of faith because we are surrounded by matriarchs and patriarchs who encourage us along the way.  We all have those moments when we just want Jesus to increase our faith.  Today we are encouraged by doing – and eventually our faith increases in spite of us.  Amen.

[i] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 30.  Argument about Borg presented by Br. David Vryhof, “Lord, Increase our Faith!” October 7, 2007, as found at http://ssje.org/ssje/2007/10/07/lord-increase-our-faith/ on September 28, 2016.

[ii] Vryhof.

[iii] David Lose, “Pentecost 20C:  Everyday Acts of Faith,” September 26, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-20-c-every-day-acts-of-faith/ on September 28, 2016.