Sermon – Luke 23.33-43, P29, YC, November 24, 2019

Tags

Christ the King, cross, fairness, humility, image, Jesus, justice, king, Mr. Rogers, need, Sermon, victory, want

Fifty-one years ago, Mister Rogers Neighborhood debuted on public television.  Many people criticized the show, saying the show was too slow and too boring to keep children engaged.  For critics, children’s programming needed to be loud, action-packed, full of silly gimmicks, perhaps with a few characters that were made fun of or teased.  Knowing how frenetic young children can be, television producers had decided to mirror young children’s behavior in their television programming.  But not Mr. Rogers.  In the midst of frenetic behavior, Mr. Rogers sought a different environment for his show – something slower and more thoughtful, something kind and engaging, something simple and attentive.  Critics said the show would never last, that Mister Rogers Neighborhood was not what children wanted.

On this Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the Church year, this Sunday of jubilant triumph, we find a similar conundrum.  As we read from Luke’s gospel, we do not find Christ the King on a throne – we find him on a cross, leaders scoffing at him, soldiers mocking him, a criminal deriding him, and a crowd of people just standing there watching.  Nothing about today’s lesson connotes victory or royalty.  Jesus’ critics put a sign over his head that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”  The inscription is written as a declarative statement, but I wonder if there should have been a question mark at the end of that sentence.  This is the King of the Jews?  This is what royalty looks like?  This is what a savior is to you?

Of course, I am not sure the people of God were any surer about what having a king should be like.  The people of God never really had a king until they reached the Promised Land.  They saw the neighboring countries with their armies and their admirable kings, and they wanted one for themselves.  That was their first mistake.  God granted them a king to rule over them, but inevitably, the kings, like all humans, were flawed – some more than others.  Hence, there are four books in the Hebrew Scriptures about the kings who ruled and the judges who tried to correct their behavior.  Most of the kings were corrupted by power, money, and greed.  Many abused the people.  Even the most revered king, King David, was a mess.  He was the one who coveted Bathsheba, slept with her, and then killed her husband when he got her pregnant and realized he would not be able to get away with it.

Having been through a horrible patch of awful kings, the prophets predicted the coming of a Messiah – the king of kings and Lord of lords.  This king would be triumphant and would make the people of Israel dominant at last.  You can imagine that with such a great promise, the people of Israel are not too pleased with the man who finally claimed be the Messiah.  Nothing about Jesus says “king.”  He is nonviolent, hangs out with sinners of all sorts, and travels with a sorry band of misfits.  Even his grand entrance into Jerusalem where he is heralded as a king is not so grand – he rides in on a donkey, for goodness sake!  This could not possibly be the king Yahweh had promised them.

And yet, this is exactly the king God sends.  The Lord, who never wanted God’s people to have an earthly king anyway, makes a king that represents everything that is kingly:  a man who loves the poor and cares for the sick, a man who sees through the pretenses of the temple and calls for authenticity, a man who loves deeply and forgives infinitely.  So why are the people of God not excited about this king?  Why can they not love this countercultural king as much as the king they think they need?

In talking to a William & Mary student a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of the first Political Science classes I took in college called Political Theory.  When we started reading the first book in our Political Theory class, I knew I was in trouble.  We read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.  In the book, he presents the best way to create a just political system.  He imagines gathering a random, diverse group of people who are essentially blindfolded about what their lot in life will be.  They have no guarantees about whether they will be old or young, rich or poor, male or female, member of a minority group or not.  In the midst of this blindness, the people gathered are given the task to create a set of rules to govern society.  Rawls’ basic argument is that if those people are truly blind about what their lot in life will be, they will be more likely to come up with a system of governance that is the fairest for all – since no one would want to take a chance on being the one victimized by an unfair system.  Although I appreciated what Rawls was saying, I was immediately annoyed at his argument.  How could we ever recreate a system of justice from scratch, and truly blind anyone enough to create such a system?  The entire premise seemed impossible, and thoroughly frustrating.  Needless to say, my focus in Political Science did not become Political Theory!

That being said, many years later, I think I may finally understand what Rawls was trying to communicate.  Our political system, or even this earthly life in general, is governed by a set of human-made standards that do not look out for the poor, create injustices, and benefit very few.  This is why so many of us get frustrated when we talk about justice or trying to make a difference – we see the system of injustice that fights against us and we can end up feeling helpless.  This is the very injustice that our king – Jesus – comes to fight.  Maybe Rawls saw this too.  Perhaps this world we can only achieve through blindness is the same world Jesus could see through God’s eyes.

In Rawls’ argument, when the blinded people make the rules, and then have their blindfolds removed, some are relieved to be well-off and others are dismayed to see themselves in poverty or at a disadvantage.  But all have some sense of acceptance because the rules they made do not make rich-life as advantageous and do not make poor-life as unbearable.  This is the kind of fairness into which Jesus invites us.  Jesus shows us a world where a humiliated man can look at his persecutors and forgive them.  Jesus shows a world where a man is willing to suffer for the salvation of others.  Jesus shows us a world where even a criminal can see truth in the last hour, can admit his guilt, and turn to Christ for leniency.

This is why we celebrate Christ as King today:  not because he is victorious in putting us in control over others, but because he invites us into a life that evens the playing field – the life of the kingdom of God.  There are certainly going to be days when we wish Jesus would just mount a mighty horse and triumph over evil.  Lord knows, in these days of political strife, of country-wide division and derision, of a time in our country where we say nasty things to one another, and the actions of the other side (whichever side we see as “the other”) are seen as the cause of all our troubles, we could use a Messiah, a king to come in and just “fix it” – to be a decisive, strong, powerful king to clean the slate.  But what Christ the King Sunday invites us to remember is we do not need a king on a throne; we need a king on a cross who enables us to create a world of fairness here and now – a world that is much more similar to the kingdom of God than the kingdom of humankind.

So why do we honor this not-so-kingly king today on the last day of the liturgical year?  I think the very best reason we close one year and prepare to start another with today’s gospel lesson is so that as we can more humbly approach the Christ Child.  If we can imagine ourselves gathered around that manger on that most holy of nights, not eager for vindication, but instead humbled by the path we will all walk with this king, then we enter into Advent with more reverence, less arrogance, and a healthy dose of gratitude.  This king – Christ the King – is the most sobering, challenging, merciful, joyous, steadying king for which we could hope.  He is not the king we always want, but he is certainly the king we always need.  Today we celebrate the wise gift by God of a true King – a king who makes us all better versions of ourselves, who helps us see there are no easy solutions, and who encourages us to embrace justice as fairness, not justice as vindication.  Our invitation today is to take a seat at the foot of the cross, to prepare our place in the hay surrounding the manger, to change out our shoes, to take off our jackets and zip up our cardigans, and to make a calm, quieter space for ourselves to hear how a real king can help us create not the kingdom we may want, but certainly the kingdom we need.  Amen.

Sermon – Luke 14.25-33, P18, YC, September 8, 2019

Tags

blessing, community, cost, cross, decisions, discipleship, easy, hard, hate, Jesus, light, possessions, priorities, rainbows, Sermon, sunshine

One of the things I enjoyed about living on Long Island was the directness of communication.  Now do not get me wrong, having been raised in the South, I know all too well that when your mom says, “You’re wearing that?” or if your grandma says, “Don’t you want to wear lipstick?” or if your friend says, “Well those new shoes are utilitarian,” they are not actually saying what they mean.  On Long Island things are much clearer.  Instead you’ll be told, “Don’t wear that,” “Put on some lipstick; I’ll show you which one,” and “Those shoes are awful.”  The words always sting, but at least you know you what people think.

Today’s gospel has me convinced some of Jesus’ relatives were from Long Island.  In these short eight verses, Jesus says if we want to follow him, we will need to sell our possessions, carry our cross, and hate our parents, spouse, children, siblings, and even life itself.  I have to say, on this Rally Sunday, on the day we return to the fullness of Hickory Neck, and we feast and laugh and worship together, I could have used a little more southern-speak from Jesus today.  At least Jesus could have saved the hard sell for Stewardship season!

But as we start putting our calendars together for the fall, as our children sign up for the extracurricular activities, and as we think about what ministries we may want to try at Hickory Neck this fall, I suppose there is no time like the present to get real.  This is a season of hard choices.  I know in our household alone, there were two awesome opportunities for afterschool activities that fell on the exact same time and day.  And so we had to make a hard decision.  As I have mapped out my own calendar, I have realized that there are things I can say yes to and things to which I have to say no.  And on the really tricky days, there are times when our family has to bring in a third adult to help us juggle four people’s commitments.  This is a season of hard choices and consequences.  This is a season of priorities.

I do not actually think Jesus is being harsh today.  I know we sometimes get so used to the inclusive, loving, embracing God that we forget that following Jesus is not all rainbows and sunshine.  Jesus, like our beloved Long Islanders, is not harsh – just honest.  And Jesus is not saying there will be no health, healing, and wholeness; no justice, mercy, and grace; no forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.  But Jesus is saying those things will cost us.  All those rainbows and sunshine we will receive come at the cost of redistributing wealth, of being faithful even when being faithful gets us ostracized from our social circles, of being intolerant of injustice even if doing so risks our most valued relationships with others.

If we can agree that Jesus is just being honest, understanding why he is setting such a high standard can be helpful.  Starting with one of the trickier things Jesus says today may be best.  Jesus says in the final verse today, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”  Though money is a taboo subject for most people, Jesus talks about money perhaps more than any other subject in scripture.  Jesus talks about money so much because Jesus knows the power money has over us.  Jesus tells us to give up our possessions, to stop worrying about what is mine because my obsession with owning, possessing, or claiming things as my own can make me think ownership is my exclusive, inviolable right.  Jesus knows having possessions can make me think all things are my own:  my money, my time, my comfortable lifestyle, my political or religious beliefs, my closest relationship, my independence.  Jesus knows when I get possessive, I cling to things that are not God, and create habits in myself leading me to smother, not love; to exploit, not steward; to hoard, not appreciate.[i]

On the podcast “On Being,” Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie retells an old Talmudic parable.  In the parable there is “a ship that is sailing, and there are many cabins.  And one of the people in the cabins on the lower floor decides to dig a hole in the floor of his cabin, and does so, and sure enough, the ship begins to sink.  And the other passengers suddenly discover what’s going on and see this guy with a hole in the floor.  And they say, ‘What are you doing?’ And he says, ‘Well, it’s my cabin. I paid for it.’  And down goes the ship.”[ii]  What this parable and what Jesus are trying to do is help us see that possessions tempt us to live like the man in the cabin – to believe our ownership negates our relationship to others.  Our possessions can create an obsession with “me, me, me,” with a disregard for the “we” to which we belong as followers of Christ.

Jesus also says in verse 27, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  Part of Jesus’ cross is a redefining of the “we,” we were just talking about.  If you have read your September Nuggets, our newsletter, you know one of the rallying calls of stewardship this fall is going to be “We are Hickory Neck!”  When I thought about that call, I immediately thought about the movie We Are Marshall.  In the film, the rally call “We Are,” answered vigorously by “Marshall!” is a definitive moment about not letting tragedy overcome goodness – not letting death squash life.  When we start our own rallying, “We are Hickory Neck,” we probably all have things about Hickory Neck that are dear to our heart, that inspire our belonging here, and motivate our involvement here.  One of the things we are doing in the call, “We are Hickory Neck,” is also defining who the “we” is in that call.  In carrying our cross as Jesus invites today, we are not just talking about personal sacrifice.  We are also asking, to whom and for whom we are responsible.  We are widening the circle of “my people,” to consider who the people are we will love, welcome, serve, and for which we would make sacrifices.  We are taking on the task of widening our “we” to be broader and riskier than we have previously embraced.  By taking up our cross, we are saying the whole ship, not just my cabin on the ship, but the whole ship has an irrefutable claim on my life.[iii]

Perhaps the hardest thing Jesus says comes right at the beginning, in verse 26.  Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  Hate is a strong word – a word we have banned in our home, especially when talking about other family members.  I will not be going home today and telling our children they can pick up that word again.  But I do think Jesus uses a powerful word because the power of discipleship will involve taking on some powerful experiences.  We will need to be willing to hate some things about this life.  We will need to ask which customs, beliefs, or traditions we have inherited we need to renounce in order to follow Jesus.  We will need to look at what baggage we need to abandon, what ties we must loosen, what relationships we must subordinate.  What scholar Debie Thomas says is “Jesus spoke his hard words about ‘hating’ one’s family in a cultural context where the extended family was the source of a person’s security and stability.  Jewish families in first century Palestine were self-sustaining economic units.  No one in their right mind would leave such a unit behind in order to follow a homeless, controversial preacher into some uncertain future.”  What Thomas asks us to consider is what sources of modern-day security and stability we trust more than we trust God.[iv]

So if this is what discipleship looks like, where is the Good News in Jesus’ challenge today?  Why would we do all this hard stuff?  We do all the hard stuff of discipleship because of the rainbows and sunshine.  We give up a sense of possession, we take on crosses, and we renounce things we have loved because we have experienced the rainbows and sunshine of Hickory Neck:  we have experienced life-altering community here; we have experienced love, joy, and blessing we did not know we needed here; we have found purpose, meaning, and value here.  We also take on Jesus’ intense notion of discipleship because we have experienced the rainbows and sunshine of the world around us:  we have experienced the profundity of loving our neighbor as ourselves; we have experienced the blessing of seeing God in someone we thought unworthy of our love; we have experienced being transformed by walking right out of our comfort zones into life-giving discomfort zones.  We accept the invitation of illogical discipleship because of the more cosmic rainbows and sunshine of faith:  of being known and accepted by a loving, living God; of the promise of forgiveness of our most heinous sins; of the reality of eternal life made possible through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Once we start thinking about the rewards of the life of discipleship, the cost seems surmountable.  Once we look at the depth of Christ’s rainbows and sunshine, letting go of possessions, taking up crosses, and hating the stuff of life that only brings death seems much less scary.  Once we realize we may not be able to do whatever we want to in our cabin, we realize we have a ship full of people ready to hold our hands as we take on the burden of discipleship together – because the burden is easy and the yoke is light.  Amen.

[i] Debie Thomas, “What It Will Cost You,” Journey with Jesus, September 1, 2019, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2346 on September 4, 2019.

[ii] Amichai Lau-Lavee, “First Aid for Spiritual Seekers,” On Being with Krista Tippet, July 13, 2017, as found at https://onbeing.org/programs/amichai-lau-lavie-first-aid-for-spiritual-seekers/ on September 6, 2019.

[iii] Thomas.

[iv] Thomas.

On Resurrection and Race…

Tags

anxiety, comfort, cross, Easter, Jesus, kingdom of God, light, light of Christ, privilege, race, racism, resurrection, shade

Photo credit:  https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/august-web-only/reflections-on-cross-and-lynching-tree.html

This Sunday at Hickory Neck, we kick of a three-week series on James H. Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree.  Only a few pages into the book, and I confess this will be a heavy discussion for us as a parish.  You might be wondering why we chose such a book in Eastertide – isn’t race and violence a better topic for Lent?  Or maybe you are wondering why we are talking about race – again – at church.  Surely we can move on to talk about other topics!?

When my family I visited the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in April, something poignant happened to me as I shepherded our young children through the museum.  There was an exhibit about the Jim Crow era in Mississippi.  As you walked through the exhibit, there were motion detectors that triggered recordings.  The recordings were of white men and women saying or shouting the things that were said or shouted to persons of color – about not belonging, about watching out, about even just existing in a segregated world.  Since I had small, active children, the motion sensors were triggered a lot, meaning these voices were shouting at me constantly.  I found by the time we exited that portion of the museum, my nerves were totally shot.  The exhibit was a powerful reminder of how, even when civil liberties were won, African-Americans were still not treated equally.  In fact, their existence then (and I suspect even today) was one of walking on egg shells – never knowing when someone would say something offensive, physically-threatening, or even life-threatening.  That kind of lifelong anxiety must do things to your psyche and mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

But as a Caucasian, I have the privilege to not experience that egg shell kind of life.  I have the privilege to decide when “we’ve talked about race enough.”  I even have the privilege of deciding when a good season to talk about race is – lest we confuse happy seasons with sad or contemplative ones.  And that is why we try at Hickory Neck to engage in at least one book or film study a year – to remind us of the privilege we hold because of something totally out of our control:  our skin color.  And if we are an Easter people, then celebrating resurrection life means bringing about the kingdom of God here on earth.  One of the ways we advance the kingdom is to live out the gospel – to live out the life of Jesus, instead of one that is counter to the life of Jesus.

I know the reading will be hard, and I know you have hundreds of things to do.  But for the next three weeks, I invite you to join us.  Join us in setting aside the comfort of our privilege in life, and stepping into the shady places of life.  Join us in being open to hearing other experiences, learning new things, and seeing race and reality differently.  Join us in living into the true meaning of Easter – a life where the resurrection means reconciliation and renewal.  Walking into the shady parts of life will allow us to more authentically proclaim the light of parts of life – the light of Christ.

Sermon – John 18.1-19.42, GF, YC, April 19, 2019

Tags

broken, community, cross, darkness, disciple, find, God, Good Friday, humanity, identity, incomplete, Jesus, lost, passion, prayer, Sermon, sin

When I was in college, I would occasionally find myself sitting in the back of the enormous Chapel.  Sometimes I do not even remember actively choosing to go inside the Chapel.  Somehow my body seemed to know I needed something before my brain did.  The cavernous, quiet building rarely had large crowds.  Or maybe my late-night study sessions meant I was there after everyone had left.  Regardless, I would find myself on a hard, wooden pew, just sitting there.  I am not sure I was there praying necessarily.  At least not in the traditional sense.  More often I was sitting there in desperation.  Sometimes I was at the end of a semester, completely overwhelmed and feeling incapable.  Other times, I was feeling a deep sense of loneliness, despite being surround by tons of friends and classmates.  Other times, I simply felt lost, not sure about my purpose or what in the world God was doing with my life – if God was even there at all.  But mostly, when I sat on those pews, surrounded by magnificent beauty and architecture, I felt a profound hole in my heart.  That Chapel was sometimes the only place I could go and be honest about my profoundly weak humanity.

I think worshiping on Good Friday is a little bit like that.  Unlike other times of worship, we do not usually come to this service looking for praise and joyful singing.  Instead, this day is a day where we willingly come to acknowledge and honor those parts of our lives where we feel a profound sense of brokenness, sinfulness, and incompleteness.  We read Scripture that speaks to our deepest pain and suffering.  We say prayers that address the fullness of need for ourselves and the world.  And we venerate the cross – staring at the object that brings into sharp focus our weakness and humanity, and our need for something bigger than ourselves.

On a day like today, I am grateful for John’s Passion Narrative.  All the Passion Narratives from the gospels tell a similar story – the last moments of Jesus’ time with the disciples, his trial and crucifixion, and his death.  And despite the fact that the story in all four gospels is heart-wrenching, something about John’s version digs deeper – shines a light into those dark places we prefer to keep hidden from the light of day.  But in John’s gospel, there is nowhere to hide.  We experience a deep sense of being bereft of our own sinfulness as the sins of those in our narrative mirror our own.  These are not just the common, everyday sins of life.  The sins of the characters today are the sins of denying our very own identity.

Often when we talk about Judas, we think of his failure as a thing he did to Jesus.  But Judas’ sin goes deeper than betrayal of Jesus.  Judas denies his very discipleship.  After all those years of following Jesus, trusting the salvific work of the Christ, believing and proclaiming Jesus’ Messiahship, Judas denies his discipleship by no longer following and instead trying to control the work of God.  You see, Judas follows Jesus because he believes Jesus is starting a political revolution – is becoming the conquering Messiah.  Jesus is not living into that identity as much as Judas wants, so Judas gives Jesus a push.[i]  But when Judas brings all of those soldiers to the intimate place where he discovered his identity as a disciple, we see how deep Judas’ sinfulness goes.  The garden had been a home for the disciples – where they had gathered regularly, in intimate community.  To bring those soldiers there – to the place that defined his own discipleship – is the marker not of an indiscretion, but of a complete denial of who he is.  In John’s gospel, the last appearance of Judas is not of remorse, or suicide, or judgment of Judas.  John simply says, Judas stands “with them.”  With them is not just a physical location; with them is a theological one.  By seeking to control Jesus, by walking away from relationship with Christ, and by standing against Jesus in the very place of intimate identity-making, Judas takes a new identity.  He denies his discipleship, and instead stands with them.[ii]  And as much as we might want to judge Judas, we all know that there have been times when we were fed up with God, and decided to take matters into our own hands.  The more we think we know better, the further we step away from following Christ, denying our own identity in Christ.  The more we seek control, the further we step away from our intimate relationship with Jesus, and instead stand with someone or something else.

Peter denies his identity in a slightly different way.  When we read John’s gospel, we can easily conflate John’s version with the versions from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  In those gospels, Peter is asked whether he knows Jesus.  His response is he does not know the man.  But in John’s gospel, the question to Peter is different.  He is not asked if he knows Jesus, but whether he is Jesus’ disciple.  To say, “I am not,” is not just a denial of knowledge.  Peter is denying his very identity.  As Karoline Lewis asserts, “In the Gospel of John…Peter’s denial is not of Jesus but of his own discipleship.  …To deny discipleship is to deny one’s relationship with Jesus and the intimacy that makes Jesus and his followers virtually inseparable.  Peter does not deny Jesus, but denies being a disciple.”[iii]  Because we live in a time when we are rarely asked about our identity as people of God, we think of ourselves as immune to Peter’s temptation or somehow incapable of such identity denial.  And in some ways, we may be right:  our denial of identity is not usually as straightforward as Peter’s.  But that doesn’t mean we do not regularly reject our identity.  In small, everyday ways, we find ourselves making accommodations that fracture our intimacy with Christ – decisions that we can rationalize at the time, but when we look back realize have become of slow pattern of denying whose we really are.  And before long, we get so far from discipleship that no one even knows we are Christ’s disciple.

But the denials of identity are not just limited to Christ’s disciples.  Even the religious authorities lose themselves in their attempt to squash the Jesus movement.  The leaders of the faith community are so convinced that Jesus is wrong, they negotiate with a secular leader to get what they want.  And when Pilate, who knows what they want is wrong, pushes them to recognize they are wrong, the religious authorities say something that seems innocuous enough.  But saying, “We have no king but the emperor,” is the ultimate denial of their identity as a people of God.  The people of faith, who were once freed from a king over them, who journeyed forty years, claiming God as their king, who have an everlasting covenant with God, deny the covenant to get what they want.  By claiming the emperor, they deny their very identity.  The people of God, who are about to prepare the Passover feast – the feast that celebrates their release from Pharaoh, “embrace a latter-day Pharaoh whose overthrow the Passover is intended to celebrate.”[iv]  Although we like to demonize the chief priests, we too have pledged loyalties to things other than God.  Perhaps not as dramatically as the religious authorities, but we have all known those moments when a declaration slipped out of our mouths that we later come to realize was denial of everything we claim to be.

On this most holy of days, we can journey so far into the darkness of humanity, of the ways we deny our very own identity, that we can walk out of this beautiful historic chapel feeling lost – having received no encouragement for our bereft hearts.  But I do not think the point of Good Friday is to walk with us into the darkness without giving us a sliver of light to hold onto in these next hours.  Though our reading ends with the finality of Jesus in a tomb, where we are better left is at the foot of the cross.  At the foot of the cross is where we find identity again.  At the foot of the cross, we find a new community being formed.  Jesus gives his mother to the beloved disciple; and to the beloved disciple, he gives his mother.  In other words, Jesus creates a community of mutual care – a new family, a place of forming identity in Christ, even as Christ is departing.[v]  The very reason we gather in community on Good Friday is because we need this group gathered here – this group gathered at the foot of the cross – to bring us back from the denials of our identity, and help us reclaim whose we are.  Today is certainly a day for claiming how deep our own betrayal of God is, but today is also a day of claiming a community who can help us walk back.

I think that was what I was doing all those years ago in college as I sat on those cold, hard pews of the Chapel.  I knew I was lost, that my angst was not just the anxiety of tests and deadlines, but was a much deeper angst about identity.  And although that Chapel was mostly empty, that Chapel reminded me of all the times I had gathered in sacred spaces with the community of the faithful.  Even when the Chapel was empty, the Chapel was somehow a reminder of the mothers and brothers who gathered with me at the foot of the cross.  The only difference today is you do not have to imagine a community gathered with you at the cross.  We are right here with you.  We are struggling right along with you on this journey called discipleship.  Together, starting at the foot of the cross, we will find our way.  Amen.

[i] Jim Green Somerville, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),300, 302.

[ii] Karoline M. Lewis, John (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014), 218-219.

[iii] Lewis, 222.

[iv] C. Clifton Black, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),303.

[v][v] Lewis, 229.

Sermon – John 18.1-19.42, GF, YA, April 14, 2017

Tags

betrayal, blasphemy, chief priests, confession, cross, denial, evil, failure, God, Good Friday, Jesus, Judas, passion narrative, Peter, scapegoat, Sermon, sinfulness, transform

I have been thinking this week about how every year we read the same story of Jesus’ death.  Unlike the Christmas story that we eagerly anticipate hearing each year, this story seems like a masochistic practice of hearing the same devastating story over and over again.  And we do not just read this story on Good Friday.  In addition to John’s version of the passion narrative, we read one of the synoptic versions on Palm Sunday.  Twice in one week we relive the painful story, catching interesting variations.  But the ending is always the same:  death, finality, failure.  At least on Palm Sunday, we use various voices, making the story feel like a performance.  But today, one sole voice, tells the achingly raw story – a story we would rather skip, or soften, or cry out to the reader, “Please stop!”

In hearing the story this year, I was struck by the failures of three characters.  The first is probably the easiest culprit:  Judas.  In Mathew’s gospel there is at least a feigning of loyalty as Judas greets Jesus as “Rabbi,” and kisses his cheek.  But John does not play such games.  In John’s narrative, Judas is fully on the side of the persecutors.  He boldly brings and stands with the soldiers and police.  He does not greet Jesus, or apologize.  He is confident in his decision.  He stands proud, even as we now are able to see his profound failure.  His ignorance of the depth of his betrayal is almost worse than the actual betrayal.  His confidence that this is for the best, is the first crack in our hearts as we hear this painful story.

Then we have Peter – precious, passionate, pitiful Peter.  For all the times he gets things right, and all the endearing times he gets things wrong, today is just a spirit-crushing failure.  In Matthew’s gospel, Peter denies knowing Jesus.  In John’s gospel, Peter denies his discipleship – his very relationship with and dedication to the Messiah.  In the face of Jesus’ “I am,” claim[i] today, Peter’s claim is “I am not.”[ii]  For all the wonderful, powerful, sacrificial moments in Jesus today, Peter is shameful, cowardly, and self-serving.  Even after being warned that he will deny Christ, Peter denies Christ in spite of himself.  That cock’s crow is the second crack in our hearts as we hear this brutal story.

The third character today does not always get as much attention, but their failure is perhaps the worst.  Whereas Judas and Peter deny and betray a friend, the chief priests deny their very God.  They say seven words to Pilate today that should be more shocking than anything said.  “We have no king but the emperor.”  We often get distracted by their words, because we know that they are meant manipulate Pilate’s sense of authority.  But the chief priests, the religious, moral guides of the people of faith say today, “We have no king but the emperor.”  Of course, we have to think back to remember why this statement is so profoundly painful.  You see, once upon a time, God was the king of Israel.  The people worshiped Yahweh, and Yahweh alone.  But the people got greedy, and begged Yahweh for a king like the other nations.  And so God anointed kings through God’s prophets.  But the chief priests take their self-centered sinfulness a step further than our ancestors.  They deny God today.  Their claim to have no king but the emperor is treason against our God – blasphemy.  And with their claim, our heart lies cracked in two as we hear the rest of the awful story.

Of course, blaming Judas, Peter, and the chief priests would be an easy way to scapegoat our way out of this dark day.  There are even Christians who claim that the Jews crucified our Lord.  But we know the truth.  We know that we are the Jews.  We know that we are Judas and Peter and the chief priests.  We know that our heart fractures with each vignette because they remind us of times when we have stood on our soapboxes, certain of our moral claims, only to later look back and see whom we betrayed and trampled in the process.  We know that that our heart fractures because we are reminded of those times when we knew the right thing to do, said we were going to do the right thing, and then failed to do the right thing – over, and over, and over again.  We have heard that same cock crowing.  We know that our heart fractures because we have put other gods before our God.  Sure, the gods have varied:  money, power, security, ego.  But we have gotten so lost in our gods that we said and did things that would have inspired a gasp from anyone more faithful than ourselves.  The failures of Judas, Peter, and the chief priests are not just failures of those men, two thousand years ago.  The failures of Judas, Peter, and the chief priests are our failures.[iii]

I think that is why we tell this story year after year, twice a week from different gospels.  We tell this story over and over again because we fail over and over again.  Though the specific characters are important, the characters live and operate in us centuries later.  That is why the story is so compelling – not because we can gather together and wag our fingers at those people.  The story is compelling because the story is eerily close to our own sinfulness.  Part of the devastating nature of this story is how complicit we are in the story.  Though the powers of evil might want us to deny our culpability in this story, what is hardest about this story is how close to home the story really is.

Now, you I do not ever like to leave the pulpit without a word of hope, a reminder that risen Lord redeems us all.  But today, I encourage you not to rush to the empty tomb.  Take time to sit in our collective confession, to tarry on those things done and left undone which are separating you from God and one another.  Bring your failures or sense of failure to the cross and lay them there today.  Grieve the ways that you cannot help yourself, year after year, from sin and shame.  The whole season of Lent has been building up to this day.  The whole reason we took on those disciplines and came to church for confession was because we knew, ultimately, that this is where we keep tripping up:  in betrayal and denial of our very identity as beloved disciples and children of God.  We are the ones bombing others.  We are the ones racially profiling.  We are the ones denigrating women, the poor, and the oppressed.  We are the ones, century after century repeating the sins of the faithful.

Lay all that sinfulness at the cross today.  Whether you venerate the cross in the liturgy today, wear a cross around your neck, or pray with the cross on your prayer beads, the power of the cross is to absorb all those failures and to transform them into something worth living.  You can, and perhaps should, feel the powerful weight of your sinful patterns today.  But let them die at the foot of the cross with Jesus.  Lay them naked at the cross, for all the world to see.  There is relief in that confession, the depth of which you may not feel fully until our Easter proclamation.

[i] Susan E. Hylen, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 299.

[ii] Karoline Lewis, John:  Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014), 222.

[iii] Rolf Jacobson, Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner, “SB 535, Good Friday,” April 7, 2017, found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=873 on April 8, 2017.

Sermon – Luke 23.33-43, P29, YC, November 20, 2016

Tags

Christ the King, cross, darkness, forgiveness, hope, Jesus, king, kingdom of God, kingdom of man, light, love, politics, Sermon, shine, thief, tired, weary

Today I have a confession.  I am tired.  After the election two weeks ago, and struggling to understand how vastly different the kingdom of God is from the kingdom of man, I found myself not emboldened, but just tired.  As our country and the world has tried to absorb what America’s decision means, as sides seem to dig in their heels – identifying all sorts of ways in which their side has been right, and as uncertainty, instead of peace, seem to rise, I find myself, quite simply, tired.  I was certainly given some opportunities for redemption.  Our Celebration of a New Ministry filled with me such joy that the evening felt like a redemptive group hug.  While reading the psalms appointed for evening prayer this week, I found several verses full of righteous indignation and a call against enemies.  The words felt cathartic, but later, left me feeling empty, as I know vengeance is not the answer.  Even at our Clergy Conference this week, we took some time to talk about how to navigate the results of the election as leaders of churches.  Though I appreciated the gift of that time from the Bishop, I could tell that most of us were filled with the same uncertainty that everyone else is feeling.  And, like a dutiful priest, I keep trying to stay tuned in to the news so that I am sure we are being relevant – but that, too, makes me tired.

As I turned to our gospel lesson for today, I was hoping for some bit of encouragement – some promise that everything would be okay.  Knowing today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in the liturgical year whose text should bring into focus the point of a year of journeying with Christ, I had hoped that there would be some sort of rallying text that would invigorate me and shake me out of my emotional and spiritual exhaustion.  But instead, on this day when we honor Christ our King, what is the image we are given?  A beaten, humiliated, ridiculed, discredited, shameful shell of a man, hanging on a cross, defeated in the approaching death.  We do not get Christ risen from the grave today – the ultimate Easter message.  No, today we get Good Friday – our hoped-for Messiah, seemingly defeated on the cross.  Of course, he dies with great dignity, forgiving sinners until the very end, welcoming the repentant even on their last breath, resisting every urge strike back or at least refute the charges against him.  He dies with dignity, but he dies nonetheless.

As we close out this liturgical year and prepare to begin a new year with the season of Advent, I have been thinking a lot about the other version of Christ we will soon be talking about – the Christ Child.  As I meditated on Christ the King, imagining his battered body, whose mother is not far away, I wondered if she too is thinking back to those early days with her infant.  I imagine every mother has some hopes and dreams for whom her child might become.  Maybe they have specific hopes of power and influence for their child.  Certainly, at the very least, they hope their child will be a decent, respectful human being.  But Mary could be tempted to dream much more for her child – shepherds, angels, and wise men told her to expect great things.  I wonder how she sits at that cross, devastated at what had come of her son’s journey.  Of course, her son never really had an overwhelmingly positive journey.  He was run out of towns; people were constantly trying to trick him into saying something incriminating; though those who were healed were often happy, more often, people were upset about Jesus’ healing ministry; and although they had that parade just a few days ago for her son, how quickly they had turned against him.  As she sits at the foot of that cross, I wonder if she is, at the root of her being, just plain tired.

I have often thought it is strange how the cross, and not the empty tomb is our primary Christian symbol.  That we use an instrument of death as our sign for victory is rather odd.  But today we do not just honor Christ’s death on the cross; we honor how he died on the cross.  Even in death Christ our King managed to love his neighbor – even the really bad neighbors.  Even in death, Christ managed to love God – inviting God to forgive even the most hateful behavior.  Even on the cross, Jesus never loses his focus.  Jesus never gets tired.

Just like the kingdom of God is different, so is the king of God.  The people of God never really had a king until they reached the Promised Land.  They saw the neighboring countries with their armies and their admirable kings, and they wanted one for themselves.  That was their first mistake.  God granted them a king to rule over them, but inevitably, the kings, like any humans, were flawed – some more than others.  Hence, there are four books in the Hebrew Scriptures about the kings who ruled and the judges who tried to correct their behavior.  Most of the kings were corrupted by power, money, and greed.  Many abused the people.  Even the most revered king, King David, was a bit of a mess.  But Jesus is not like foreign kings or the kings of Israel.  Jesus’ kingship is different.  He loves the poor and cares for the sick, he sees through the pretenses of the temple and calls for authenticity, he loves deeply and forgives infinitely.[i]  And he never tires of being this kind of king.

For most of us, looking to Jesus as an example of how to rally out of our fatigue and weariness may feel overwhelming to our tired selves.  Instead, I found looking at the repentant thief to be helpful.  You see, the thief was probably tired too.  Anyone who is a thief has been hustling long before he gets caught.  He may have even been caught several times before for more minor offenses.  His arrest this time is different.  There will be no escape.  He will hang on that cross until he dies.  With the cruelty of the cross, and the pain of his body, also shining forth is an overwhelming sense of fatigue.  He too is tired.  Tired of running, tired of hustling, tired of the life that leads one to become a thief.  But even in his deep fatigue, he does something extraordinary.  When the other thief taunts Jesus, the repentant thief lets the other thief have it.  Hanging in agony, he looks outside himself, and refuses to stand for the hypocrisy of the other thief.  He decries the injustice of Jesus’ sentence, he wisely points out his own, as well as the other’s, culpability in sin, and then, without shame looks right at Jesus and asks Jesus to remember him.

Even at our most weary, tired states, when we feel like there is no hope, or when death feels ever present, Jesus invites us to keep shining our light for all to see.[ii]  Our gospel this week is full of people doing just that:  taking their world of hurt, pain, sadness, sorrow, defeat, seeming hopelessness, and turning toward the light.[iii]  Mary and the other women eventually find their light despite their fatigue.  The thief hanging in humiliation and death finds his light.  And Jesus, defeated in the eyes of all but the thief today, keeps shining his light until the bitter end.  Christ our King invites us to do likewise.  Of all people, Jesus understood being tired.  His cry out to God in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is a prayer of a tired man.  But Jesus stood up that night, all the way to the cross on Calvary and refused to let fatigue be an excuse for a world without love, hope, and forgiveness.  Our king may not look like other kings.  His story may be strange and full of contradictions.  But our king has the power to pull you out of darkness and drag you into the light.  But along the way, he is going to need you to shine your light too.  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Christ the King C:  What Kind of King Do You Want?” November 14, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/11/christ-the-king-c-what-kind-of-king-do-you-want/ on November 16, 2016.

[ii] Caroline Lewis, “Who and What is Your King?” November 13, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4754 on November 17, 2016.

[iii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 337.

Sermon – Luke 12.49-56, P15, YC, August 14, 2016

Tags

argue, avoid, conflict, conflict management, confront, cross, disagreement, division, family, forgive, honest, Jesus, listen, love, peace, Prince of Peace, rebirth, reconciliation, renewal, restoration, Sermon, transformation

I grew up in a house without conflict.  No one ever fought, no one ever yelled, and certainly, no one ever hit.  There may have been disagreements, but they were quickly resolved and our house was restored to peace.  Given that was my experience growing up, I assumed all family handled conflict in hushed, quiet ways.  But then I visited a friend who taught me differently.  I was staying with her family for a few days, and on a car ride to dinner, her mother and father started arguing and were quickly yelling at each other in the front seat.  My eyes bulged and my whole body tensed up.  I immediately thought, “This is the most horrible thing I have ever seen!”  I surreptitiously glanced at my friend to see if she was equally horrified, but she just sat there like it was an everyday occurrence.  But even more strange than the fight was how the family acted later.  There was a bit of quiet after the yelling, but by the time we stopped for dinner, everyone was back to normal.  I, however, could not manage to release the tension in my body, and my mind was racing.  Are they okay?  Is this normal?  Will it happen again?  How do I act now?

I remember after that visit feeling relieved and almost proud.  Clearly my family had the better conflict management system.  Clearly we were more in control of our emotions and cared for each other with tenderness and love.  I let myself believe that lie until my parent’s divorce.  My entire world view about conflict and family and love came apart.  Suddenly my quiet house was not simply quiet.  My quiet house was a conflict avoidant house.  The lack of yelling in my house was not simply a lack of yelling, but was a stuffing of hurt and pain for the sake of pretend peace.  Now, do not get me wrong.  I am not suggested that you all go home and yell at your loved ones.  What I am saying is that no matter what your experience of conflict has been – avoidance, dramatic confrontation, reasoned discussion through disagreement – we have all experienced conflict in our family.

All that is to say that nothing Jesus says about families should be shocking today.  Most of us like the loving, caring, gentle Jesus the best.  We like Jesus being hailed as the Prince of Peace, not hearing Jesus say, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”[i]  That is not the version of Jesus we come to hear about on Sundays.  That is not the version of Jesus we want to read about when our best friend is mad at us, our brother won’t talk to us, or our spouse is thinking about leaving.  That is not the version of Jesus we want the preacher talking about on the Sunday we decided to bring our friend to church.

And normally, I would be right there with you in protest.  I like the Prince of Peace who cares for the poor and downtrodden.  I love the Jesus who tells me not to be afraid and not to worry, especially when the lilies of the field are so well tended by God.  I adore the Jesus who forgives and unites all kinds of people into one.  But all of my protest comes from being someone who used to be pretty conflict avoidant.  That is, until I learned another way.  I will always say that one of the greatest gifts of my time on Long Island was learning how to not only handle conflict, but to really appreciate conflict for all that conflict can do.

For those of you not familiar with the cultural dynamic of Long Island, several things are at play.  First, Long Islanders have a different way of communicating.  They are direct, incisive, and honest.  For a Southerner, their style of communication can feel rude, but over time, said Southerner realizes that all that directness and ability to dive into conflict means you get everything out on the table.  There is no listening for innuendo or passive aggressiveness.  There are no cute phrases that sound nice, but really mean something entirely different.  Instead, you know where people stand, and you go home quite clear about the varying viewpoints.  Of course, that style of communication does not always feel good.  If you have sensitive feelings about criticism, your feelings can and will get hurt.  If you get uncomfortable with heated arguments, you will be challenged to stay calm.  If you prefer niceness over brutal honesty – well, you probably should not live on Long Island.

But here is what I learned and came to love about the beautiful people of Long Island.  They taught me how to listen, even if all I wanted to do was flee the room.  They taught me how to sit through criticism instead of getting defensive.  They taught me how to see conflict not as the ultimate evil, but instead as a critical key to transformation, reconciliation, and restoration.

That is at the heart of Jesus’ message today.  Of course Jesus says that he is going to divide fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and in-laws against one another.  What Jesus is teaching about is a radical reordering of the world.[ii]  We heard that proclamation from his mother’s mouth as she sang out the words of the Magnificat earlier in Luke’s gospel, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”[iii]  Mary was not just talking about the enemy Rome.  Many of the Israelites themselves were proud, powerful, and rich.  We in the modern world are the proud, powerful, and rich.  And to us, Jesus shouts, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

The good news is that Jesus is not telling us he wants us to fight.  He is not encouraging violence or abuse, or even neglect or pain.  Jesus is simply telling us that his message is going to upset the status quo.  And as people who benefit from the status quo, we are going to have to face our demons and look at our brothers and sisters who are in need and take real stock of ourselves and our lives.  And when we start upsetting the status quo – when we start making women equal to men, when we start treating minorities with dignity and respect, when we start empowering the poor thrive and turn their lives around, we will have friends and family who push back.  We will have people who try to convince us to protect our power rather than share our power.  We will have family who walk away because they cannot face the truth.  All we have to do is look at the church – look at the hundreds of denominations who could not agree on whom could be baptized, what Eucharist means, and whom can be ordained or married.  We are a family divided because Jesus’ love is so revolutionary that we will be divided about how to define his love, how to share his love, and how receive his love.  Jesus does not want us to fight.  But he knows that if we are going to authentically live into the Gospel life, we are going to deal with conflict and we are going to be divided.[iv]

But that is also why Jesus went all the way to the cross.  His death was an effort to transform and redeem our conflict and to help us live fully into the people of peace and love we are invited to be in him.  Jesus knows that we will have to fight.  But he also knows that if we are willing to enter into conflict with an open mind, with listening ears, and a discerning heart, we will become a people who do not avoid conflict, but understand conflict as the purifying fire that burns away the mess of life and leaves behind the fertile ground for creating something new and holy.[v]  So yes, Jesus is still the Prince of Peace, who brings peace upon earth.  But the path there is not a smooth, straight, simple path.  The path there will take us through conflict, tension, and pain.  But the peace that awaits on the other side is more glorious than any community that will sit through passive aggressive avoidance just to maintain a false sense of security.

And just in case you are already feeling weary, wondering where you can muster the strength to survive such a rocky path, our letter to the Hebrews today gives us a clue, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…”[vi]  That group of people you are going to be in conflict with – whether your biological family, or the crazy family you selected as your church home – is the same group of people who have left us an example of how to work our way through conflict.  They have shown us how to survive the race toward peace and reconciliation, reminding us that Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter who gets us there.  We will not get there avoiding conflict.  But we will get there together, holding hands when we disagree, loving each other when we say helpful but painful truths, and rejoicing when we push through to the side of reconciliation, renewal, and rebirth.  Amen.

[i] Luke 12.51.

[ii] Richard P. Carlson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 361.

[iii] Luke 1.51-53.

[iv] Audrey West, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 360, 362.

[v] Elizabeth Palmer, “Living By The Word:  August 14, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” Christian Century, July 26, 2016, as found at http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-07/august-14-20th-sunday-ordinary-time on August 11, 2016.

[vi] Hebrews 12.1-2a.

On hope and falling…

Tags

Christ, cross, Easter, falling, God, hope, Lent, love, rejoice, repent, resurrection, sin, trust

Photo credit:  http://fscaston.org/events/advent-retreat/

This time of year, clergy and parish offices are in the throes of Lent and Easter planning.  Although the average parishioner will ease their way into the Lenten journey, the clergy and parish office are already ordering supplies for Holy Week and Easter celebrations, having mostly confirmed everything for Lent.  Though that reality may not be a surprise, what you may not realize is how challenging it is to hold two very different seasons in one’s heart and mind with authenticity.  It is hard to plan for Easter when we haven’t journeyed through the forty days of Lent.  It is difficult to jump to the command to rejoice, when we have not yet mourned Christ’s death.

Many of my parishioners will be the first to tell you how much they loathe Lent.  They love the joy of Christmas and Easter, and even enjoy the beauty of Epiphany and the season of Pentecost.  But Lent feels like a season of imposed darkness and gloom.  They do not like the dreary hymns and the long, sad journey and examination of our sinfulness.  My response is always the same:  how can we celebrate at the tomb if we haven’t mourned at the cross?

But as we have done our planning for Easter this year, I realized how insensitive I have been in my question.  The truth is I am only able to sit at the foot of the cross because I am fortunate enough to know what waits on the other side.  The disciples, followers, and family of Jesus did not have that luxury.  Their darkness was real, their fears justified, and their doubts reasonable and expected.  I do not mean to suggest that we “pretend” our way through Lent as some sort of contrived experience in repentance.  Instead, what I realize is that the only way I am able to explore my own sinfulness and depravity so deeply and authentically is because of the promise of and hope in the resurrection.  I am able to fall because I know Christ will catch me.  That does not mean the falling is any less scary.  No one likes to really delve into their brokenness and confess their faults to our God.  But we do so out of the promise of a God who loves us no matter what.

I hope you will explore our Lenten offerings at St. Margaret’s this year and take full advantage of a time for true self-examination and prayer.  Our God and the Church are journeying with you.  You are not alone, and you can trust in the never-failing love of Christ to catch you!

Sermon – 2 Samuel 18.5-9, 15, 31-33, P14, YB, August 9, 2015

Tags

Absolom, Christ, confession, cross, David, God, guilt, judgment, loser, losing, loss, redemption, sin, tragedy, victory, We Are Marshall, winning

I recently watched the film We Are Marshall.  The film details the true story of a tragedy in 1970 that happened to Marshall University.  After an away football game, most of the team and coaches, as well as several boosters, took a private plane back to the university.  The plane crashed just minutes from landing, killing everyone onboard.  The town was bereft as they mourned their sons, friends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, and teammates.  The University’s Board was set to cancel the 1971 football season, when the few surviving players petitioned to play anyway.  The president was then tasked to find a coach who would be willing to step into this tragic situation – coaching a season that many thought was inappropriate given the deaths, to find enough players when Freshmen were not yet allowed to play per NCAA rules, and to find a supporting coaching staff, including trying to recruit the only assistant coach who had not been on the plane.  The season moves forward and after the first game, which Marshall loses, the head coach and the surviving assistant coach have a heart-to-heart.  The assistant coach explains that the deceased former head coach had always said that the most important thing in football was winning.  And if the current team was not going to win, the assistant didn’t want to coach, because they would be dishonoring the former coach’s memory.  After a long pause, the current head coach confesses that before he came to Marshall, he would have said the same thing:  that winning is the most important thing.  But now that he was there, in the midst of the Marshall community, the most important thing to him was simply playing.

We are a society that glorifies winning.  Not just in sports, but in all of life, we want to be winners.  No one likes to lose because losing, when we are really honest, is not fun.  Of course, we try to teach our children that we cannot always win.  Many a play date argument is settled by the conversation that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.  We even have a word for being comfortable with losing.  We say we are being “good sports.”  But being a good sport takes work.  We do not like losing.  Losing itches as something deep inside of us – both internally and externally reinforced.  We want to be winners.

Of course no one knows more about losing than King David.  History labels him as a winner, but as we reread his story, we know that David was an intimate friend of losing.  We hear the deep pain of his losing in his final words today, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!  Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”  We know the pain of losing a child – the sorrow and the grief of that kind of losing.  But David is not just mourning the loss of his child in these words.  He is morning the loss even more deeply because he knows he is indirectly guilty of his son’s death.[i]  If you remember, in the reading we heard last week, Nathan told David that because of his sinfulness with Bathsheba and Uriah that his household will be plagued by a sword.  Through Nathan, the Lord proclaims, “I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun.  For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.”[ii]

God stays true to God’s judgment.  Between last week’s reading and this week’s reading, David’s family starts to fall apart.  His first child with Bathsheba dies.  One of David’s sons rapes his half-sister.  When David does not punish that son, another son, Absalom, takes action, killing his half-brother.  Absalom then flees, and spends years amassing a revolution against David.  Absalom manages to take Jerusalem, and further humiliates David by sleeping with ten of David’s concubines in front of everyone.  David is forced to battle against Absalom to restore the kingdom, but he does so begrudgingly.  Today we hear David trying to make victory as painless as possible, asking his men to deal gently with Absalom.  But Absalom had made too many enemies in the family and kingdom, and when the time came, he was killed in battle.  Though many saw Absalom’s death as a victory, David knew the truth.  Victory in this case was not winning for David.  Victory was just another reminder of the ways in which David’s life had become about losing – about the painful reminder of his sin hanging over his head.

David reminds us of what we have all learned about losing.  Though none of us like losing, we know losing is a necessary and probably valuable part of life.  You see, losing helps us in many ways.  First, losing reminds us of our finitude.  Though we might like to think we are without limits or we can control everything, losing reminds us of the “futility of our personal striving and the frailty of our existence.”  Second, losing gives us the opportunity to reexamine our goals and outlook on life.  Losing can help us see when perhaps we have become overly self-serving, have developed unrealistic expectations, or we have just become distracted by the wrong things in life.  Finally, losing reminds us that our lives are in need of redemption.  Losing can give us a much-needed opportunity to renew our relationship with God.  As one scholar explains, “In this moment of realization, we are liberated to renew our trust in God’s power and in [God’s] purpose for our lives.”  That does not mean we should give up, stop trying, or be overcome by the fear of losing.  Instead, maintaining our trust in God gives assurance that “ultimately, there is no losing without the possibility of redemption.”[iii]

Think for a moment about the ultimate symbol of our faith – the cross.  The cross is both a symbol of loss and victory.  We always remember the victory of resurrection and redemption, but first, the cross was a symbol of death and defeat.  The cross was a humiliating reminder of the brutal death of the one we insist is the Messiah.  Our main symbol was the symbol of ultimate loss – the place where losers go to lose:  lose their life, their dignity, and their power.  That symbol of being a loser is only redeemed because the Redeemer redeems it.  Of course, we should not be surprised.  Every week, we as a community gather and remind ourselves at how we are losers when we confess our sins.  We kneel down and young, old, male, female, single, partnered, good, and bad confess that we lost.  Every single week we confess how, once again, we have lost.

I sometimes wonder how David coped with the sword in his house.  Sure, he had moments of redemption.  Solomon taking the helm at David’s death was one of the best redemptive moves in his family.  But I wonder, on that deathbed, how all the losing in David’s life weighed on him.  In last week’s lesson, David did what all of us do.  He confessed.  He confessed, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  His confession did not make Absalom’s death any less painful.  But his confession, like ours, is redemptive.  Like David, when we acknowledge and confess our senses of incompleteness, “we are able to be freed from the entrapments of a win/lose culture.  God accepts us despite our failings.  This relationship is not earned; [this relationship] is a divine gift.  Accepted and forgiven, we are liberated to celebrate life.  Affirmed and fulfilled by God, we are released to care for others.  These affirmations point to the redemptive side of failure, to the God who accepts losers.”[iv]

When we wear a cross, or we reverence the cross in church, we reverence both the winning and the losing of the cross.  We honor the ways in which the cross represents not just the loss of Christ, but also the brokenness in each of us – the ways in which we have failed.  Only when we honor that loss can we then hold that cross as a symbol of victory.  That cross becomes a symbol of the ways in which Christ redeems us, but also the ways in which we too made new through our losing.  When we embrace the cross in its fullness of expression, we also recognize the fullness of our lives – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  We know that without the embracing of our losing we can never fully claim the victory of our winning through the cross.  Amen.

[i] Ted A. Smith, “Commentary on 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33” 2009, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=365 on August 6, 2015.

[ii] 2 Samuel 12.11-12.

[iii] The ideas in this paragraph and the quotes within come from Carnegie Samuel Calian, “Theologizing in a Win/Lose Culture, Christian Century, vol. 96, no. 32, October 10, 1979, 978.

[iv] Calian, 979.

Sermon – Mark 8.31-38, L2, YB, March 1, 2015

Tags

community, cross, deny, discipline, God, Jesus, Lent, love, Sermon

How many of you have taken on a discipline for Lent?  I have been talking to many parishioners and most of us are taking on something.  Either we have agreed to say our prayers more regularly, we are reading a book or scripture more often, or we are doing some kind of community service or good deeds.  Many of us have committed to playing Lent Madness, which sounds like fun, but still involves reading about the saints each day.  In this way, our Lenten disciplines are burdens – things that we might not make time for normally or are just things we don’t really enjoy doing, but we do them hoping to learn something.  Or perhaps, as we hear Jesus say in our gospel lesson, we are denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Jesus.

To be honest, I am not sure most of us know how to deny ourselves.  We are trying to deny ourselves by following Lenten disciplines.  We are denying ourselves chocolate.  We are denying ourselves more time on Facebook or Instagram so that we have time to learn about saints.  We are denying ourselves extra sleep so that we have time to get up and exercise.  But I am not sure that is what Jesus means when he says we should deny ourselves.  I think what Jesus means when he says we need to deny ourselves is that we need to realize that life is not all about us – our needs, our wants, our plans.

Several of our teens and pre-teens are going through a program called Rite-13.  One of the parts of that program is a liturgy in which we bless a transition they are facing in life – from being shaped primarily by their parents to being shaped by their peers and community.  In that liturgy they will stand on one side of the church with their parents at the beginning, but then they will move over to the other side of the church with their peers – symbolizing this change.  For the teens, I think they often enjoy this part because the move toward their friends feels like freedom – finally getting rid of their overbearing parents.  But what many teens do not realize is that although the freedom is indeed fun, that freedom is also scary.  They are stepping out of a place of safety and protection – out of a situation where it is “all about you” – into a place of vulnerability and trust – into a situation where it is not going to always be about you.  In fact, very often they will need to tend to the needs and concerns of their friends more than their own needs and concerns.

This is what taking up our crosses and denying ourselves really means.  Taking up our crosses means finally seeing that our faith is not just about us and God.  Our faith involves a community that needs us.[i]  And as we learn more, we will find that not only does our church community need us, but the community outside of these walls needs us.  So denying ourselves and taking up our cross means that we might need to be the Christ-like person who helps someone without enough food.  Taking up our cross is going to mean that we might need to be the Christ-like person who stands up for someone else, either by stopping a bully or by advocating for systemic change.  Taking up our cross is going to mean that we might need to be the Christ-like person who talks about their faith even when talking about God might make you seem un-cool.

Julian of Norwich, who was actually one of the saints who almost won Lent Madness a few years ago, once said, “If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me.  But in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”  We are not guaranteed a carefree and safe path just because we are a part of a community and because we offer love.  But love, which we find in the gift of community, will be with us whether we succeed or we fail.[ii]  One of my favorite pictures is from of a friend of mine who has two boys.  When the second was born, the older brother came to the hospital to see his new younger brother.  My friend took a picture of her older son holding the younger son.  The look on the older son’s face was priceless – the look was a look of utter distain.  In his grimace you could see anger, jealousy, and a sense of betrayal.  That one picture captured perfectly what most of us feel when we realize we are not the center of universe.  For many of us, that is what taking up one’s cross feels like.  We deny ourselves, valuing the community over ourselves.  When we do that, we will often feel the same way that older brother felt.  But what I also know is that eventually, the older brother came to love the younger brother – he found a playmate, a confidant, and a friend.  Like Julian explained, in loving outside of himself, that brother was not always protected from getting bruised up from time to time.  But he has always found love – in others, and especially in God.

That is our invitation today:  not to deny ourselves the simple pleasures in life, but deny ourselves the privilege of being the center of universe.  That work is not always fun, and sometimes we will feel like that older brother with a grimace on our faces.  But sometimes, when we really let go of our focus on ourselves, we find something a lot greater – a love that we could never experience alone – a love that can only come through God and our neighbor.  In that way, taking up our cross and denying ourselves does not seem so bad.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “A Different Kind of Denial,” February 22, 2105 found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3542.

[ii] Becca Stevens, The Way of Tea and Justice (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), 46.  Stevens quotes Julian’s words found in Revelations of Divine Love and adds her own commentary.