Sermon – Genesis 3.8-15, Mark 3.20-35, P5, YB, June 6, 2021

Tags

anxiety, belonging, discomfort, evil, God, goodness, Holy Spirit, Jesus, listen, relationship, relax, restless, Sermon, sinfulness, summer, The Fall

Last week we talked about the long journey we had made in the liturgical year that helped us get to Trinity Sunday.  After Trinity Sunday, we enter into the next long journey of what we call “ordinary time,” that time that stretches through summer and the fall when we settle into the stories about the life and ministry of Jesus.  In some ways, what happens in the Church is like what happens in the summer – we kick off our shoes, pull up a refreshing beverage, and settle into a good summer read.  The shift should be a palpable sigh of relief as we ease into the familiar stories we love.

Except, nothing about scripture lessons today is remotely relaxing – in fact, our Old Testament and Gospel texts do quite the opposite, making us tense with discomfort and anxiety.  We start with the story in Genesis, traditionally call the story of the fall.  Adam and Eve have already consumed the fruit from the forbidden tree, and today we hear the story of their being “caught.”  Right away, God knows something is amiss, and how do Adam and Eve respond?  In a comical exercise of finger pointing.  Adam blames both Eve and God:  Eve because she “made” Adam eat the fruit and God because God gave Eve to him in the first place.  Eve blames the serpent, recognizing she was tricked.  The curses from God fly:  on the serpent, on the land, and later in Genesis, on the man and woman and their habitation.  Historically, this text has been used to subjugate women, but most theologians know this story impacts all kinds of theological concepts – from our sinful nature, free will, promises of salvation, and the covenant.[i]  But you do not have to be a theologian to read this text and know that the finger pointing of humans when caught in sinfulness is not going to lead to goodness.

Then we get this strange story about Jesus in Mark’s gospel.  Jesus is simply sitting among the people and his disciples when things go crazy.  The scribes come and begin to proclaim that Jesus is possessed by Satan, and anything seemingly good Jesus is doing is rooted in evil.  Then Jesus’ own family assume he has had a mental breakdown and they come to restrain Jesus.  The people who should know and love Jesus best and the people who should be able to recognize the power of the Holy Spirit try to cast him out.  In response, Jesus rejects them all.  Instead, he professes to have no family except those who gather around him and do the will of God.  Jesus does not actually define what the will of God is, so we should be careful not to project our own notions of doing justice or serving those in need.  For now, being a part of the family of Jesus seems to involve sitting around.  As scholar Matt Skinner says, “The way into kinship—belonging—with Jesus is sticking around. It’s to acknowledge that you’ve been caught up into a new reality—this transformational alternate reality called ‘the kingdom of God’—and to hold on for the ride. That’s probably not the entirety of what it means to do or to accomplish or to commit to ‘the will of God,’ but it seems to be the biggest part, as far as Mark is concerned.”[ii]

Perhaps that is our invitation this summer too.  We are still invited to kick off our shoes, sit at Jesus’ feet, and pull up a good book.  But instead of rereading a comforting story, this may need to be a summer of reading the stories that ask us hard questions: of whether we are in right relationship with God or hiding who we really are; whether we are insisting on our own will or way instead of the way of Jesus; whether we are too restless to slow down and simply sit with the Holy Spirit.  In the flurry of regathering, of finally getting to experience some familiar practices like sitting in chairs [pews] we have missed, using our voices to sing [speak] among others, and seeing familiar friends and meeting new ones, we can miss why we love this community so much in the first place.  We can forget that Hickory Neck is a place we like to come because we are a community who does not let each other hide, who challenges one another to follow the way of love, who will remind us to slow down and listen for the soft voice of God.  Who we are and what this community does is the reason why we will continue to livestream services – so those who still need to be at home can be a part of us too, so those who are tending to life’s daily commitments can come back to the video for a good word, and so those who are longing for something more in life can get to know this Jesus – who redefines who is in and out – and sit at his feet with us.  Our experience this summer might not be one you were hoping for after a long, hard fifteen months – but I suspect this summer will be even better than you could have imagined.  Amen.

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[i][i] James O. Duke, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 98.

[ii] Matt Skinner, “Stick Around,” May 30, 2021, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/stick-around on June 4, 2021.

Sermon – Mt. 13.24-30, 36-43, P11, YA, July 19, 2020

Tags

disciples, evil, God, goodness, grace, Jesus, judgment, patient, Sermon, time, weed, wheat

The parable in our gospel lesson today is a story about weeds – actually, one weed in particular, called the darnel.  The darnel is a nasty weed, wrapping its roots around the roots of good wheat, totally indistinguishable from wheat until producing seed, and life-threatening if allowed to mix in with wheat once harvested.[i]  Jesus tells the disciples that this menacing, evil, life-threatening weed is metaphorically planted in the field of the world.  These evil weeds are planted, growing, and thriving side-by-side with the nutritious, filling, wholesome wheat, intimately intertwined, impossible to separate without destruction to both.  And this, Jesus tells the disciples, is our world.  In one short parable, we have the reality of the enemy or devil, the problem of evil in our lives, and an accounting or judgment at the end of life.  Happy Sunday, huh?

In order to find some hint of grace in this parable, we first have to explore the bad news.  The bad news in this parable is like a funnel of evil, which starts out with a wide, removed description of evil, and as the funnel narrows, the evil comes closer and closer to home.  At the wide mouth of the funnel, we find the evil of the world.  We see evil in the world everyday – as people are kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.  We see evil as people are denied basic human rights, work in sweatshops, and are forced to flee from their lands.  We see evil as people live without shelter, food, or medicines.  And although we recognize the outcomes of evil, we get uncomfortable identifying “evil” because we hope for some hint of goodness in everyone and, secretly, we know that we too sometimes participate in the world’s evils.

Our funnel narrows as the master’s field becomes defined as not only the world, but also our church community.  Here is where the notion of “evil” weeds becomes even more uncomfortable.  Jesus experienced evil in the midst of his community, as individuals constantly sought to kill him.  The early Church also experienced evil in the Church’s midst.  And the evil within the Church is still with us today.  There is no perfect church.  I love this parish and the beautiful ways we care for and love one another – but I cannot claim that we are perfectly good.  In fact, each us has at some point been like that nasty weed, capable of choking the nutrients and life-giving water out of true goodness among us – a reality that makes us uncomfortable, both with the idea of judging each other, and with the potential of being exposed ourselves.

Then comes the tightest, most compressed area of the funnel – the spout through which evil finally flows.  The field in which evil is planted is also the field of ourselves.  Paul articulated this evil in his letter to the Romans, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”[ii]  Paul’s words perfectly capture the inner turmoil of being human.  Imagining the weeds and the wheat growing up together in our own beings is not difficult.  We are constantly an intertwined field of great deeds and hurtful wrongs.  We pray that the good seed will yield fruit and the weeds will eventually be burned, but we know both weed and wheat are inside of us.  And so, the funnel shows us that evil is in our world among us, in our faith community beside us, and in our very beings.

The grace is that the funnel also works in reverse.  Grace spews out of the same funnel.  When the servants ask the master about whether they should go ahead and pull out the weeds, the master tells them to wait, letting the two grow side by side, entangled and indistinguishable.  This waiting time is the grace for our own selves.  Recognizing that both good and evil are in ourselves, God gives us time:  time to continue to nurture the good; time to avoid killing the good in our efforts to kill the evil in ourselves; and time to allow God’s grace to work in and through us, so that the goodness in us might be gathered into that barn.  As God is patient with us, so we are to be patient with ourselves.

The same grace moves out of the funnel, out of ourselves, and into our Church.  God gives us time as a faith community too.  The gift of time gives us the opportunity to live into God’s grace – witnessing goodness to one another, so that the evil among us might be overwhelmed and eventually discarded.  The gift of time for the Church also allows us to make amends for those times when we are the agents of evil in the church, confessing our faults weekly, repenting and returning to goodness.  The gift of time for the church allows us to learn and grow in God’s goodness, to marvel in the mystery of God’s grace, and to prayerfully lift up the Church to God.  God is patient with the Church just as God is patient with each of us.

Finally, the funnel of goodness spills over into the world through the gift of time.  The gift of time allows us to work on spreading goodness in the world.  We have time to give one more meal to a hungry person, to comfort one more grieving person, to advocate one more time for a just society.  And we realize in this gift of time that we are not responsible for sorting out the weeds and the wheat.  God will do that.  We can only work to cultivate goodness in our lives, in our community, and in the world – and the rest is in God’s hands.

When we realize that each of us is some mixture of wheat and weed, of holy and unholy, of potentially fruitful and potentially destructive, we can then turn away from God’s work of judging, and turn toward our work of attending to that which increases the potential for holiness.[iii]  In other words, the grace for us in this parable is that we can leave the judgment to God, and do our work of promoting goodness in ourselves, in our community, and in the world.  This is our work.  Let anyone with ears listen!

[i] Talitha J. Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 260.

[ii] Romans 7.19

[iii] Gary Peluso-Verdend, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 264.

Sermon – Matthew 4.1-11, L1, YA, March 1, 2020

Tags

cosmic, devil, evil, good, immature, Jesus, journey, Lent, mature, practice, Sermon, spiritual discipline, temptation

There is an ongoing debate among people who have way to much time on their hands about  the efficacy of most spiritual disciplines during Lent:  whether we are giving up chocolate, alcohol, or swear words; whether we are taking up health improvements, like getting more sleep, walking daily, or practicing yoga; or whether we are committing to something more traditional like fasting, daily prayer, or the reading of scripture.  The argument is that these disciplines domesticate Lent, making Lent akin to New Year’s resolutions instead of the sacred practices the ancient church intended.  There’s even a book entitled, A Grown-up Lent: When Giving Up Chocolate Isn’t Enough, whose title alone insinuates that most of our disciplines are immature, are not “grown-up” enough to be considered worthy of Lent.

Now there are myriad articulations about why our practices are not enough, but one of the reasons articulated uses today’s gospel lesson as their defense.  In today’s gospel, we hear Matthew’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  On the surface, Matthew describes three temptations:  the temptation to satiate a physical need (after forty days, Jesus is hungry and could turn stones to bread to satisfy this physical hunger), the temptation to prove God loves us (Jesus might want to know that God has his back before he takes on this whole savior role), and the temptation to gain political power (any messiah might assume their cause is always better aided by powerful force).  By reading about Jesus’ temptation today, we might easily deduce the reason we assume Lenten disciplines is because we are mimicking Jesus’ temptation for these next forty days.  Like Jesus was tempted by hunger, a desire for comfort, and a desire for power, our disciplines highlight our daily temptations and our desire to not submit to the forces of evil.

But this gets to the heart of why so many are critiquing our spiritual disciplines during Lent.  Theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues, “…the temptation Jesus endures is unlike the temptation we endure, for the devil knows this is the very Son of God, who has come to reverse the history initiated by Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden and continued in the history of revolt by the people whom God loves as his own, namely, Israel.”[i]  In other words, although we are surely tempted by Satan in our own time, today’s temptation of Jesus is about a cosmic battle – the very battle between good and evil, the very evil that is wreaking havoc on the civility and humanity of our country today, making us turn against one another and abandon our baptismal promises to respect the dignity of every human being.  Some would argue that our giving up chocolate, or our eating fish on Fridays in Lent does not get us any closer to routing out the evil seeking to destroy the fabric of our church, our community, and our country; our focusing on physical health does not battle the things we confessed in the Great Litany today:  pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, deceits of the flesh, and dying suddenly and unprepared.

Now, while I get the academic protest about the simplistic nature of our disciplines, here is what I know.  A week ago, after a wonderful celebration of the end of Epiphany, and after a glorious honoring of the spirituals of our religious tradition, I lost my voice.  Despite my croaking despair with my doctor, he told me, rather unsympathetically, no matter what my job was, no matter if a big event, like, say Ash Wednesday with its three services, one ecumenical potluck, and Ashes to Go, were on my agenda, in no way was I to use my voice.  In essence, I was forced into silence on a week where I needed to lead.  Or, I suppose put more spiritually, I was gifted the opportunity to truly embrace the classic invitation of Lent: fasting (in this case from speaking) and meditating on God’s holy word (since I certainly could not speak God’s word).  The irony of this gift was not lost on me – an extrovert prone to powering through any challenge being forced to slow down and keep quiet is what Lenten disciplines are all about, right?  Take our biggest spiritual struggles, and then use disciplines to help ourselves correct behavior and get right with God – this is classic Lenten stuff!

I can tell you, this past week has been a profound week of learning.  All of those things we confessed in the Great Litany were in my face this week.  Nothing attacks one’s pride, vanity, and envy like watching other people do the job I was made to do but could not do in my weakness.  And while I was able to patiently be silent, working alone from my home office on the day before Ash Wednesday, I realized about half-way through Ash Wednesday my vocal chords were hurting not from physically trying to speak, but from tensing them in the desire to speak – my longing to speak manifested itself in a anticipatory tension of use, which became dangerously close to having the same effect of actually using my voice.  When I finally realized what was happening, why I was feeling worse, I had to mentally force my throat to relax, my shoulders to release their tension, and my mind to accept I could not simply do everything I normally do, simply removing one minor part – that of speaking.  No, being mute on Ash Wednesday would mean taking on another way of being.

I tell you all this not because Lent is all about me and my laryngitis.  I tell you all this because although I understand the academic critique of Lenten disciplines, I also see with fresh eyes the very blessing of Lenten disciplines.  Perhaps the critique is true that giving up meat, or taking up Pilates, or even reading a devotion is not going to help us battle the spiritual forces of evil; but taking on those practices will shake up our senses in really meaningful ways.  Daily resisting of patterns, or daily assumptions of new patterns, creates in us a retraining of our bodies so we can begin to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch God in new ways.  And that shaking – whether big or small – shakes up other things in our lives.  We begin to see more clearly where we have had a blindness of heart; where we have delighted in inordinate and sinful affections; where we have hardened our hearts again our black, Latino, young, old, Republican, and Democrat neighbors; where we have even held in contempt God’s word and commandments.  These disciplines are not juvenile – these disciplines, when embraced and practiced open up renewed relationship with Christ, with ourselves, and with our neighbor.

In essence, what spiritual disciplines do is help us fight the devil.  Now I know that might sound extreme, but stick with me a bit.  Hauerwas argues, “The devil is but another name for our impatience.  We want bread, we want to force God’s hand to rescue us, we want peace – and we want all this now.  But Jesus is our bread, he is our salvation, and he is our peace.  That he is so requires that we learn to wait with him in a world of hunger, idolatry, and war to witness to the kingdom that is God’s patience.  The Father will have the kingdom present one small act at a time.  That is what it means for us to be an apocalyptic people, that is, a people who believe that Jesus’ refusal to accept the devil’s terms for the world’s salvation has made it possible for a people to exist that offers an alternative time to a world that believes we have no time to be just.”[ii]

So, I say, give up chocolate.  Read your devotional.  Play Lent Madness.  Pray before the kids or pets wake up or after they go to sleep.  Commit daily acts of kindness.  Take that daily walk.  You may feel like you are doing something simple.  But in our simplicity, we are participating in the cosmic work of Christ.  In bringing intentionality into those things we can control, we bring intentional focus on those things we cannot control – those things only God can fight for us.  Our forty-day journey is not the same as Christ’s.  But taking this journey aligns us with the work of Christ, and helps us claim the light in a world overwhelmed by darkness.  May God bless our Lent, and make our Lent holy.  Amen.

[i] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 51.

[ii] Hauerwas, 55.

On the Need for Mirrors…

Tags

advocacy, anger, baptismal covenant, blame, broken, evil, God, God's word, guilt, immigration, judgment, justice, race, shame, values

Photo credit:  https://fineartamerica.com/featured/mirror-reflection-loriental-photography.html?product=art-print

This weekend I was at the pool with our children.  We had the pool to ourselves for a while until a group of kids joined us toward the end of our time.  A few minutes after their arrival, the lifeguard called break, in keeping with the regularly scheduled breaks.  The new kids were justifiably disappointed, but what happened next was not justifiable.  About five minutes into the break, one of the teenagers starts ranting loudly about why a lifeguard should need a break – claiming his job was not all that hard.  She then asked the lifeguard directly how much longer the break would be.  The lifeguard did not seem to totally understand her question (our lifeguards are usually international students here for the summer), and she spoke to him as if he were a child.  I found my anger rising.  Her taunting behavior continued after the break, and another teenager joined her in disrespecting the lifeguard with audible side comments, and ignoring his instructions about safety.  The lifeguard finally blew the whistle, saying the pool was closed, and everyone would have to leave.

Fortunately, we were on our way out already, as the teenagers’ behavior had angered me so much that I was no longer having fun.  The lifeguard apologized profusely on our way out, and I reassured him that I totally supported his decision, given how disrespectful the other guests were being.  As we walked home, my children asked me why I was so mad.   I explained part of my anger – that we never disrespect others the way those teens did, and their behavior made me mad.  But what I didn’t share was I suspected the teens’ behavior was also related to the lifeguard’s ethnicity.  With tensions around race and immigration these days, I suspected the teen felt she was superior in some way to this man, and I wondered why.

But mostly, I was mad at myself.  As the night wore on, I felt nauseated about the fact I had said nothing to that teenager.  Though my body language probably reflected disdain for her behavior, I said nothing to defend the lifeguard.  The more I thought about it, the more I wished I had approached the teen and talked to her about her inappropriate behavior.  In reflection, I could not figure out why I said nothing to her; I just knew I was ashamed by my inaction – so ashamed, I have felt it for days.

As a country and community, I have heard many conversations about how our government is broken and the other side (whomever we view as the other side) is leading us into evil.  This weekend I began to wonder if, instead, we are the ones who are broken.  We have lost the very values we claim in our baptismal covenant – to respect the dignity of every human being, to strive for justice, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons.  I wholeheartedly support advocacy work and protest movements when we see injustice.  But this week, I humbly ask you to join me in the work on ourselves – to shift from being people outraged by injustice and to start doing justice; to shift from being hearers of God’s Word, to being doers of God’s Word; to turn our criticism of others to a constructive criticism of ourselves.  Next time you hear me complaining about the degradation of our morals or values, please ask me what I am doing about it.  I promise to do the same for you in return.  Let’s get started!

On Shielding the Joyous…

Tags

cautious, evil, God, grow, happy, joy, joyous, prayer, shield, sinfulness, spread

Photo credit:  https://www.rebeccahintze.com/blog/2018/1/23/how-to-create-joy-in-your-life/

A couple of weeks ago a parishioner of mine asked me what had changed.  “Changed?” I asked.  “Yes,” he said.  “You seem full of joy lately.  You are almost glowing at the altar.”  I have been thinking about his observation and wondering what the cause could be – what might be the reason my countenance has changed.  And then I realized what it must be.  I am happy.  I am full of joy and that joy is evident.

As a pastor, and someone who sees the worst of the worst at times, I am very cautious about claiming joy or happiness.  I think there is something deep in the recesses of my subconscious that is afraid to claim joy or happiness because I am afraid to jinx it.  If I simply say aloud, “I’m happy,” surely some tragedy will come along and steal my joy.  I also think the power of evil slips in at times and tries to convince me that joy or happiness is equal to perfection; if life is not perfect, it cannot be happy or joyous either.  On one level, my hesitancy around claiming joy is silly and superstitious.  But on another level, I have begun to wonder if it is selfish.  By not claiming my joy, claiming my happiness, I do not allow those around me to know how happy they make me.  But, equally important, by not claiming my joy, I do not allow God’s joy to spread.

In The Book of Common Prayer, one of my favorite prayers comes from Compline.  It reads, “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.”   (BCP, 134)  I have always loved the petition “shield the joyous,” because we ask God to protect not just those who are suffering, but also those who are experiencing joy.  Maybe we ask that because joy can be fleeting.  But maybe we ask that because we know the sinfulness of the world would rather squash joy than have it thrive, grow, and spread.

Knowing full well I could jinx things, I ask your prayers that God might shield my joy:  that God might help me to celebrate the myriad ways I love my church and the joy my parishioners give me every day; that God might help me honor my daughters and husband by telling them how much joy they give me, even in the tiny things; that God might help me to shout on the mountaintop how much we love being a part of Williamsburg, the friends we are making, the connections we are establishing, and the service in which we are engaging.  And then, I ask your prayers that I might take that protection of my joy and share it with others – so that we might be a people of joy, sharing joy, spreading joy.  If you need a little joy, or you want to pile on some joy, let me know.  I am happy to share and receive.  And when my well of joy runs low, I will look for your joy to bring me back up.  Together we will keep praying for God to shield the joyous, for all of our sakes!

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 – Matthew 4.1-11, Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7, L1, YA, March 5, 2017

Tags

church, corrupt, disciplines, doubt, evil, God, goodness, identity, insecurity, Jesus, Lent, question, relationship, repentance, Satan, Sermon, sin, temptation, trust

On this first Sunday in Lent, I usually like to talk about Lenten disciplines.  The season of Lent is one of the few times in the Church that we take a hard look at our faith life and then actually commit to doing something tangible to strengthen our walk with Christ.  When I hear about your disciplines, I get some clue as to what feeds each of you spiritually – whether you long to connect with Holy Scripture, or hope to deepen your prayer life; whether you know that denial of certain parts of your life will create a needed discomfort or disruption, or instead find taking up something to create needed transformation; whether you are motivated by something fun and engaging (like Lent Madness), or you prefer something more philosophical (like our Lenten study group focusing on the spirituality of the Eucharist).  Lenten disciplines also give me a tiny clue about what sinful behaviors have been pulling you away from God.  As we prayed the Great Litany today, there were countless options:  pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, envy, hatred, malice, desires of the flesh, and hardness of heart.  Or, perhaps you are inspired to help one of those we prayed for in the Litany:  the lonely, the sick, the homeless, the imprisoned, broken families, the oppressed, or those suffering injustice.  There really is no wrong way to approach Lenten disciplines – that we are taking them on demonstrates a commitment to enriching our faith and growing closer to God.

Given the beginning of those practices, the text of Jesus’ temptation every year on this first Sunday in Lent has always seemed most appropriate.  How better to encourage us to engage in repentance and reformation than to remember that Jesus too was tempted – tempted to ease the discomfort of hunger, tempted to test God’s loyalty and support, and tempted to take on power – even if ill-gotten – for the greater good?  And even better that this year in Lent, we get that powerful lesson from Hebrew Scriptures of Adam and Eve’s temptation – the temptation to eat beautiful fruit, to learn what God knows but won’t tell us, to take control of our destiny.  And all of those temptations would be plenty.  But what has been striking me more powerfully this year has been what is at the root of the temptations of Satan.  You see, in all of those tests for Jesus, and even in the simple offering of forbidden fruit, Satan does something even more insidious.  Through his temptations, Satan works to undermine our relationship with God – to sow the seed of mistrust that promises to unravel the very foundation of our faith.

We can talk all we want about deepening our faith, working on our sinful behaviors, or becoming better Christians in Lent.  But much scarier to talk about is the power of evil to undo our faith altogether.  Many of us know the darkness of this power from Satan.  If we have not had a spiritual identity crisis in our lives, someone we know has.  Enough people around us die, enough suffering happens in the world, enough pain comes our way that slowly we begin to wonder if God cares at all.  We watch what Christians do to one another or how they fail to care for one another, we see the misdeeds of the Church, or the Church’s clergy disappoint us, and slowly, slowly, we begin to doubt God is even present.  As I have been watching the news, as our country becomes more deeply divided, as suffering seems to be epidemic, and as we dehumanize one another, sometimes institutionalizing that dehumanization, I see the power of evil planting seed after seed of mistrust.  Who hasn’t asked, “Where is God?” in the last year?  Who hasn’t thought, “Maybe I should stop trusting God, and start taking care of things myself.”?  Who hasn’t wondered if God is slipping into irrelevance as the world falls apart around us?

As I have pondered the temptations of Adam, Eve, and Jesus, the power of evil to corrupt has been much more powerful, potent, and pressing this year.  The “crafts and assaults of the devil” and the desire to “beat down Satan under our feet”[i] we heard in the Great Litany are much more powerful in our current climate.  I am much less worried about Adam and Eve’s original sin than I am worried about their original insecurity.  The serpent comes along and sews mistrust among Adam and Eve.  He starts out with a simple question, “Did God really say…”  And so begins the serpent’s assault on their relationship with God – misrepresenting and undermining God’s instructions, suggesting God is keeping something from them.  And as scholar David Lose suggests, once this primary relationship is undermined, Adam and Eve are “susceptible to the temptation to forge their identity on their own, independent on their relationship with God, and so take and eat the forbidden fruit… [They] forget whose they are and so lose themselves in the temptation to secure their identity on their own.”[ii]  Though Adam and Eve’s sin is grave, how the serpent gets them there is much scarier to me.

Satan attempts to do the very same thing with Jesus.  “The devil also tries to undermine Jesus’ relationship with God by suggesting [the relationship] is not secure, that he should test [the relationship] by throwing himself off the mountain, or that he should go his own way by creating food for himself, or that he should seek the protection and patronage of the devil rather than trust God’s provision.”[iii]  Satan is good!  He even tries to twist Jesus’ use of scripture to convince Jesus of God’s unworthiness of trust.  What is frightening about Satan’s tactics is that he is not just about tempting us to do bad things.  He is meddling in our relationship with God, sewing distrust, confusion, questioning our identity as beloved children of God.  And that kind of meddling leads to much worse problems than poor behavior.  Satan tries to upend who we are.

Last week, we baptized two members into the household of faith.  We talked about how baptism marks for us who and whose we are.  We gave thanks for the reminder and celebrated as a community.  We were not unlike Adam and Eve, who upon their creation, God says it is very good.  We were not unlike Jesus, who at his own baptism, which occurs immediately before his temptation today, God says, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  But Satan takes goodness and blessedness, and tries to taint that goodness and blessedness with doubt, mistrust, and insecurity.  He tries to confuse us, making us forget who and whose we are.

Several years ago, the movie The Help debuted.  In the film, there is a maid who cares for a child who gets a lot of verbal abuse from her mother.  In several key scenes, the maid takes the child aside and teaches the child a mantra of sorts.  In her rough grammar, she reminds the child, “You is smart, you is kind, you is important.”  Eventually the maid is fired, and the audience is left hoping that the mantra she taught the child will remind her that no matter what verbal abuse she receives, she can remember who she is – smart, kind, and important.

We do not always have caretakers in our lives who will instill in us a mantra that holds us in the face of adversity.  But we do have a church.  We have a church that will tell us we are made in the image of God, that our very creation is rooted in goodness, and that we are beloved children of God.  When we begin to be assaulted by the power of evil, which would rather us question our identity, the church reminds of us of our baptismal covenant, our identity-making set of promises, which tells us we are enough, there is plenty to go around, and we need not live in fear.  While the forces of evil will try to isolate us and send us into questions of identity, the church comes together every week to remind us that we are beloved children of God – a people of value, worth, and purpose.[iv]

I do not know what spiritual discipline you are taking up for Lent this year.  But if you do nothing else this Lent, come to church.  Come gather with the community that reminds you who and whose you are.  Come be with a people who are also assaulted by the doubts, questions, and fears of the day, but who ground themselves in their identity, and find meaning, encouragement, and purpose in this place.  Come.  Together, we will stamp down Satan under our feet as we shine light on our God who redeems, reveres, and renews us.  Amen.

[i] BCP, 151-152.

[ii] David Lose, “Lent 1A:  Identity as Gift and Promise,” February 28, 2017, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2017/02/lent-1-a-identity-as-gift-and-promise/ on March 2, 2017.

[iii] Lose.

[iv] Lose.

Sermon – John 18.33-37, P29, YB, November 22, 2015

Tags

ambiguity, angst, bizarre, Christ the King, communion, divinity, Eucharist, evil, faith, follow, Jesus, king, mystery, Pilate, Sermon, terrorism, uncomfortable, violence

Every once in a while, I am reminded of how bizarre our faith can sound to others.  When a child asks a seemingly basic question, or when a non-believing stranger asks me a question that is not easy to explain, I can imagine how strange my responses sound.  But having been raised in the faith, the strangeness never bothered me.  And if I really was not sure about something, I found myself comfortable with the explanation, “It’s a mystery.”

But lately, I have been barraged by incidents where “It’s a mystery,” just does not cut it!  The first instance was the First Holy Communion class I did with David and William a few weeks ago.  David and William actually went pretty easy on me.  But those classes are always challenging because they do not allow you to simply experience Holy Eucharist – I have to explain Holy Eucharist:  from why we process and reverence an instrument of death (the cross had the same purpose as our modern-day electric chair); to what to do when we don’t necessarily believe everything in the Nicene Creed; to why the priest holds out her hands during the Eucharistic prayer.  The second instance of “It’s a mystery,” not cutting it was in Bible Study class last week.  The group is reading John and John’s rather gory discussion of eating flesh and drinking blood.  The group wanted to know what Episcopalians believe about what happens to the bread and wine when the priest consecrates the elements – and how that differs from what other denominations believe.  I am fairly certain that if I had told the group that what happens in Eucharist is a mystery, they would not have let me off the hook so easily.  The final instance of “It’s a mystery,” not cutting it has been in reading the book, The Year of Living Biblically.  In this past week’s assignment, our author, A.J. Jacobs finally makes his way into the New Testament.  As an agnostic Jew, the author discusses his fears about trying to live the Bible literally if he cannot get behind the idea of Jesus as the Messiah and the idea of Jesus being both human and divine.  As a cynical New Yorker who confesses he has no desire to convert, I am sure my “It’s a mystery,” explanation would get him nowhere.

The challenges of our faith are not limited to worship, Eucharist, and Jesus’ divinity.  Today we celebrate yet another bizarre element of our faith – Christ the King Sunday.  On this last Sunday of Pentecost, before we enter into the season of Advent, we declare Christ as our King.  On the surface, that is not a bizarre claim, I realize.  Many communities have kings, and the way we venerate Christ is not unlike the way many kingdoms venerate their kings.  Given the familiarity of that image, we might imagine that Christ the King Sunday is about regal processions, festive adornments, and praise-worthy songs.  In fact, we will do some of that today.  The problem though with Christ the King Sunday is not that Jesus is our King.  The problem is what kind of king Jesus is.

We have seen evidence of what kind of king Jesus is.  Most famously would be the Palm Sunday procession.  Jesus does not ride into Jerusalem on horseback with a sword and an army.  No, he rides into town on a borrowed donkey, accompanied by a little crowd – nothing newsworthy really.  There are other clues too.  There is that time when the Samaritans refuse housing to Jesus and his disciples.  The disciples ask, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”[i]  But Jesus just rebukes the disciples and keeps on going.  Even when Jesus knows Judas is going to betray him, he does not stop Judas.  Instead of stopping Judas or outing Judas, Jesus quietly lets Judas leave to betray him.

So we should not be surprised today at the interaction between Pilate and Jesus and why this passage, of all passages, should be selected for Christ the King Sunday.  Pilate is perplexed by this man who is being labeled (or more accurately, is being accused of having claimed to be) the king of the Jews.  So Pilate asks repeatedly whether Jesus is indeed the king of the Jews.  Jesus mockingly explains that if he were a traditional king, his people would be fighting to save him – which they are decidedly not doing.  Jesus cryptically further explains that his kingship does not look like kingship in the traditional sense – and in fact, his version of kingship is the only kind of kingship that can save anyone.  Violence, retaliation, and revenge will not work.[ii]  A battle of wills will not win control.  The only thing that will win is sacrifice, selflessness, and ceding.  Jesus will not overcome the evil of the world by matching wills with rulers like Pilate.  Jesus will only overcome by allowing himself to be overcome.  When we really think about Jesus’ kingship, his kingship is yet another bizarre thing about our faith.  Who pins their faith on a weak, non-violent, forgiving man?

Given the multiple terrorist attacks we have witnessed over the past week, the irony of Christ the King Sunday is not lost on me.  Just this past week, at Lunch Bunch, we were discussing the challenges of engaging in war to stop terrorism verses isolationism.  The discussion we had was the same discussion that hundreds of theologians have had for centuries.  I have even witnessed top scholars debate the ethics of intervention versus non-violence.  We watch Jesus turn the other cheek – in fact, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, give away our tunics, go a second mile, give to borrowers, and love our enemies.[iii]  But we watched what happened in World War II when we stayed out of the war as long as possible – a genocide happened.  And we have seen what sanctions do in foreign countries – though they are non-violent, the brunt of the restrictions hit the poorest of the country.  And yet, we are also only one country.  We cannot possibly fight every force of evil, have troops in every country, and wage war every time evil emerges.

This is one of those times when I would love to say, “It’s a mystery!”  We say that phrase because the answer is beyond our knowing – or because we just do not know the answer.  Any kind of guessing about “What Would Jesus Do,” is not likely to get us very far.  We know that Jesus does not fight Pilate today, and has no intention of answering evil for evil.  But we also know that Jesus is wholly other – the Messiah, the Savior, the sacrifice for our sins.  His death is different from our deaths, and the kingdom he brings is both already and not yet.

Despite the fact that I cannot give you answers about what we should do about ISIS, about terrorism, or about violence, what I can tell you is that the ambiguity of Jesus’ identity as Christ the King is actually good news today.  Now I know ambiguity does not sound like a gift.  But in this instance, I believe ambiguity is where we can put our faith today.  Ambiguity is a gift today because ambiguity makes us uncomfortable.  Because we do not have definitive answers, we are forced to stay in prayer and keep discerning God’s will in this chaotic world.  Because we do not have a king who answers violence for violence (which is quite frankly, a very easy black-and-white formula to replicate), we are forced to contemplate our faith in light of the world.  Because we follow Christ the King, we do not get to say, “It’s a mystery,” as an excuse not to wrestle.

As I think about the conversations I have had with David and William, with our Thursday Bible Study Group, and even the conversation I would have with A.J. Jacobs, I realize ambiguity is the most honest, vulnerable, real way we can start any conversation about faith and Jesus Christ.  And if we ever want a young person, a non-believer, or even someone wise beyond their years to trust that they can have an authentic, meaningful conversation with us about faith, then we have to be willing to step into the ambiguity of faith.  One of Jacobs’ advisors talks about the “glory of following things we can’t explain.”[iv]  That is what Christ the King offers us today – the opportunity to follow things we cannot always explain.  Jesus invites us share our ponderings and struggles with knowing this king who is sometimes counterintuitive.  He invites us to relinquish our angst about the ambiguity, and instead to celebrate the King of ambiguity.  Amen.

[i] Luke 9.54.

[ii] David Lose, “Christ the King B:  Not of this World,” November 16, 2015 as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2015/chirst-the-king-b-not-of-this-world/ on November 19, 2015.

[iii] Matthew 5.39-48.

[iv] A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically (London:  Arrow Books, 2009), 203.