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Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C, "Raise Your Heads," Luke 21:25-36

2024-12-02T10:10:00.003-05:00

Sermon 12/1/2024

Luke 21:25-36

Raise Your Heads

Last Sunday, I was guest preaching at a church in New Jersey, and my text was one of the classic lectionary texts for Thanksgiving Sunday - the text from Matthew’s gospel, from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount where he talks about how we should not worry, but instead strive after bringing about the reign of God on earth here and now, trusting in God’s love and care for us, trusting in how deeply God treasures and values us. It’s a bit jarring, then, to switch from that to this text for the first Sunday in Advent. The same Jesus who tells us not to worry also tells us that the sun and moon and stars will be giving us signs that cause distress on earth and the roaring of the seas. He talks about people fainting from their fear and anxiety about what is going to happen. He talks about how we should “be on guard” so that we’re not caught unaware when Christ returns, as if we’ve been snared in a trap. Instead, we have to “be alert at all times” so that we have strength to escape all the terrors foretold, ready to stand confidently before Christ. Oof. Hearing his words in this week’s text, it’s harder to hold on to Jesus’s “do not worry,” when in fact, it seems we very much should be anxious.

And it indeed, it is hard not to be anxious, isn’t it? I’ve had this image stuck in my head: When I drive to Syracuse, where my Mom lives, from New Jersey, where I study and teach, I drive through the Poconos Mountain region. It’s the place where I first glimpse the colors of falls - the foliage in the region is stunning. And it’s also the region where I’m mostly likely to hit snowy weather in winter. With the increase in elevation, it’s usually significantly colder in the area. My trip this week was no different - it wasn’t snowing, but there was snow on the ground, something we still haven’t seen yet in New Jersey this season. And I noticed another thing - there were so many trees that were bent over, practically leaning into the road. I’m not sure what happened - but they looked like they’d been bowed by a heavy weight - a big snowfall? Ice storm? I’m not sure. But there were dozens of trees along my drive that looked like they might never stand tall again. And there was just something about that image that caught my attention: how weighed down those trees seemed. The load they had been asked to hold was too much, and they looked drooping and defeated.

And I couldn’t help but resonate with them a bit! Maybe you can too. There’s a lot that can be weighing us down as we look at the world around us. I’ve been weighed down by the election cycle and its results and potential consequences, especially for some of the most vulnerable people in my life. There are wars and violent, devastating, indiscriminate loss of life that fill our news everyday and leave us feeling helpless. Perhaps we enjoy less snow to shovel, but we can’t help but have climate change niggling at the back of our mind, reminding us of the price we pay. People have been struggling financially, and the gap between rich and poor is ever growing, both in the US and globally. And none of this speaks to the personal crises we might be wrestling with - illness, anxiety, broken relationships, relentless work and family expectations. Weighed down. I relate to those trees!

And so what do we do with a text like this, at the beginning of Advent when we could use some baby Jesus, prince of peace, but all Matthew has for us is grown up Jesus, full of dire warnings?

This scripture passage belongs to a genre of biblical writing called apocalyptic literature, along with some parts of the book of Daniel, snippets from the prophets like Ezekiel and Zechariah, a stray passage in 2 Thessalonians, a few passages in the gospels, and of course the Book of Revelation. When we hear the word “apocalypse,” we think “end of the world,” and with good reason - apocalyptic texts are full of dramatic, world-changing imagery. But the word apocalypse actually means “uncovering” or “unveiling” - it’s a “revealing” - that’s why the book of Revelation has that name - its Greek name is apocalypsis - the revelation - the uncovering. But what, exactly, do apocalyptic texts reveal?

When I was a child, my mother encouraged me to read my Bible daily, and since I was an obedient child, I did just that - read the Bible cover to cover. I didn’t understand it all, of course, but it shaped my faith deeply and stayed with me. But she told me I shouldn’t read the Book of Revelation - it was too scary, too grown up, too hard to understand, and would just leave me too worried. But in this, I disobeyed. I knew its reputation - that it was about the “end of the world” - and I was curious. I wanted to know - how will it end? And so I read. There was a lot that I didn’t understand of course. Still don’t - the book is highly symbolic, and has been interpreted and interpreted, but of course, we can’t know what was in the mind of its author. But what I did understand was the message that I thought seemed pretty clear: If you are faithful, you don’t have to worry. Everything works out well for the faithful followers of Jesus. Eventually, when I studied Revelation as an adult, I learned that my childish take away held up - Revelation seems to be about encouraging the early Christians to remain firm in their faith despite the persecution they were facing from the Roman government. It’s a dramatic book meant to give hope more than it is meant to scare and alarm.

What if, when we read apocalyptic passages in the Bible, we can interpret them with that lens, with those assumptions about their intent and purpose. Even though the imagery can be overwhelming or frightening, apocalyptic texts are trying to comfort us, not alarm us. They’re trying to bring us hope. And in Jesus’s case, I think he’s trying to remind us: God is coming. That’s not meant to be a threat - not when we’re trying to be faithful followers of God and God’s way. It’s meant to be a promise in which we can put our hope and trust. God has, and is, and will be among us and working among us.

Look back with me at some of the details of the text, and read them again. Jesus says that when these distressing signs of trouble take place, his followers should “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” To be redeemed is to be saved. Now, to be “saved” is certainly a loaded theological word, but in context here, we can at least understand that to be redeemed or saved is a desirable outcome. Just when things are seeming particularly ominous, Jesus says, lift up your heads: redemption is coming.

Next, Jesus talks about fig trees. You know, he says, when the trees are about to blossom. There are so many signs that summer is on its way, and you can tell when the trees are ready to blossom. You’ll also know, he says, when the kin-dom of God, God’s reign on earth, is on its way and soon to arrive. You’ll see signs. God’s reign, God’s way, on earth as in heaven. You’ll see glimpses of the fulfillment of those promises all around you.

And finally, when Jesus is talking about traps and escape, what he says more specifically is that the way we prepare is this: “‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.” Jesus is again telling us that it is worry that can make it hard to draw close to God. He’s not asking us to be worried about the future. He’s telling us that the more we can seek not to be overwhelmed by this life, but instead trusting that God’s reign, and God’s way, is drawing near, the more ready we will be for its arrival.

I’m not trying to convince you that apocalyptic language isn’t over the top, or attention-grabbing. It is meant to be! It is extreme imagery for extreme world circumstances. The early Christians, living under occupation, facing threats to their existence, facing obstacles from following Jesus: it felt like their world was ending. And it was, in many ways. The world they knew was changing rapidly. There were threats to Judaism and Christianity, persecution, wars, turnovers in leadership and policies from the ruling Roman Empire, and then, just a few centuries later, the seemingly eternal Roman Empire was toppled, a future that I’m sure none in Jesus’s day could even imagine. And in the midst of that, words like Jesus offer promises. The world is ending - the world we know. Things are changing. But they have to - for unjust systems to be dismantled the world we know has to end. For a world that’s guided by God’s way and God’s reign, the current powers-that-be must be overthrown. For the long arc of the universe to find its way to justice and righteousness, we should be on the lookout for the sign of things bending towards hope.

I think of those trees, bent and drooping, weighed down, on my drive home. Eventually, they’ll stand tall again. Eventually, they will bud and blossom. Eventually, winter gives way to spring, and signs of new life abound. As we wait, as we long, as we hope in this Advent season, let us wait with confidence in the promises, not the threats, that Jesus shares. Raise your heads. The day of redemption is coming. That’s a promise. Amen.

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, "Remnants and Restoration," Psalm 126 and Jeremiah 31:7-9 (Proper 25B, Ordinary 30B)

2024-11-05T18:04:00.001-05:00

Sermon 10/27/24

Jeremiah 31:7-9 and Psalm 126

Remnants and Restoration

I have been thinking about you all in this challenging season. As I reminded you when I first joined the preaching rotation here, this church was the site of my first job during seminary. I was the youth pastor from 2000-2001. As part of my role I also helped lead in worship and preached about once a month, and this was my first job at a church other than my “home” church. I felt nervous and unsure of myself, but I was also excited to be in seminary and to be really “doing it,” this ministry thing I’d felt called to for a long time. I know this is a painful time. I remember the busy congregation of 25 years ago, and I know you’ve seen and mourned a lot of change, and I know the upcoming change of closure will be the hardest yet.

I’ve been thinking about what it feels like to lose a place of deep connection in our lives, in our formation. The first home I ever really lived in, from infancy until I was about 9 years old, is still standing, and from the outside it looks the same. But the family that bought it from us completely tore out the inside. The rooms that were once my bedroom, my playroom, the rooms where my extended family gathered for so many Thanksgivings - they’re not there any more, not in any recognizable way. My grandparents’ home, around the corner from my childhood home, has been vacant for many years now, and is slowly crumbling, not safe for anyone to enter. The place I went to high school was demolished, making way for the district’s athletic offices, and a new high school across town. I can’t go into the halls I once walked as a student, a find my old lunch table or the music and theatre rooms where I spent most of my time. And my childhood church, where attend church with my grandparents and family until we moved twenty minutes away - that church closed many years ago now - a tiny country church that shrunk along with the town, and that has now been converted into a private home.

It’s painful, it fills us with loss, I think, when we feel cut off from a part of our lives, particularly a part, a place, a season, a time that shaped us deeply. Our scripture readings for today both speak to communities who have known this kind of pain on a grand scale. The Ancient Israelites of the scriptures are marked by two major themes: the Exodus story, and Exile. After a season of warnings from the prophets to repent and return to following God, after warnings that they were failing to enact justice for the poor and marginalized, after warnings that their rituals were empty if the people did not truly give their hearts to God, and after warnings that if they did not change, then God would not prevent them from being conquered and controlled by foreign rulers, the Israelites found themselves sent out from their homeland. They were exiled from home. And it was devastating. The scriptures are full of lament and sorrow in the midst of exile. There’s a deep sense of loss. There’s fear, abandonment, grief, a replaying of everything that might have been done another way.

But there’s also always still, even in the midst of what feels like the harshest punishment, God’s presence. God and God’s promises remain with Israel, even in exile. We see these themes in our scripture texts: In Jeremiah, the people are asking God: “Please, save us - the remnant. The leftover bits of your people.” The exile has come at a cost - lives have been lost. People have scattered. The clear identity of God’s people has been dulled. God, save the remnant. And God responds, “With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back.” The Psalm follows a similar pattern: “Restore our fortunes, God,” the people cry. And the Psalmist offers a blessing, imaging how God may answer: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.” The remnant is enough. The people are saved. God restores. There’s a homecoming.

Homecoming is certainly a theme in the scriptures - we can think, for example, of the powerful parable of the prodigal son, welcomed home by the loving father, no questions asked. A welcome home is such a powerful thing, isn’t it? As much as I started by sharing with you so many places in my life where I can never “go home” again, I find myself in a strange season in life where I am a student at Drew Theological School again twenty years after I attended here the first time. I graduated with my Master of Divinity in 2003, and in 2020, I started my PhD at Drew. I returned to a very familiar campus. I returned to many of the same faculty who were my wise professors the first time around, and have continued to teach me now, all these years later.

But even though I have returned “home” to Drew, of course, it is not all the same. I don’t have the same classmates. The places I lived twenty years ago have been upgraded into luxury housing I could never afford. Seminary Hall has an addition - for which I’m thankful - but which also changes the building a lot. Many students take classes online, and fewer are on campus, in the building. And I’m different. I started the MDiv at Drew when I was 21 years old, not even five years out of high school. Now I’m a person who is in my 40s and who has spent years in ministry and had so much life experience that I didn’t have the last time at Drew. I’m home at Drew - but home is different, and “me” is different too. And thank goodness for that. I loved Drew then, and I love Drew now, but I’m reminded that being “home” at Drew has more to do with its values, its commitments to justice and love and compassion that I resonate with, its pursuit of diversity and wisdom that inspire me, rather than some unchanging material aspects.

I’ve been thinking about my Drew homecoming as I think about these Exile texts and as I think about you all. I hear you in the voice of the prophets and the voice of Jeremiah - a remnant - the remaining people, perhaps feeling like you are about to be exiled, and perhaps already longing for home. What do God’s promises look like for you? Because I do believe God’s promises are with you. I do believe that God will restore, rebuild, grow new life in and with you. But what does that look like when you can’t come home in the way that you might have hoped?

I mentioned to you that my childhood church is now a private home. I have so many memories of my little childhood church. It is where I learned the stories of the bible, and memorized scriptures in Sunday School. It’s where I was confirmed - it happened a few years earlier than usual there, since we were a small congregation. It was where I first took communion. It was there, as a five year old, that I collected the used bulletins after church each week to save because I was going to be a pastor when I grew up. It was where I made my first request for a favorite hymn at a hymn sing, and where I first made a prayer request out loud on my own. So many precious memories. When we voted on the closure of that church at our Annual Conference, my Uncle, who was a District Superintendent at the time, when to speak at the microphone. And what he said was: this church may be closing, but the impact it has had is not over, because this church produced pastors, and church leaders, and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ who continue to follow Jesus even though it won’t happen from inside those same walls anymore. This church planted seeds, and produced fruit, and the harvest will still continue. This church has a legacy that matters.

Friends, remnants sometimes get treated as a byproduct, waste of something else that was created that is leftover and not worth much. But thankfully, we serve a God who can do a whole lot with a very little. God loves a remnant. God brings life from what is leftover. God work restoration where it seems there was nothing left. God takes the pieces of our broken hearts, and rebuilds. And so even when “home” isn’t here to return to, God builds home within us, and we bear the fruit of all the seeds that have been planted in us along the way.

Some of the details of what is “home” are changing. And we are changing, ever and always. But the constant is God, who is with us at home, and with us in exile, and with us as we find home again. Thanks be to God, our home. Amen.

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, "Picnic and a Boat Ride," John 6:1-21 (Proper 12B, Ordinary 17B)

2024-07-29T08:48:00.002-05:00

Sermon 7/28/24

John 6:1-21

Picnic and a Boat Ride

Our gospel lesson today is a text that’s probably familiar to most of you, at least somewhat. And it is one of the rare events that appear in all four gospels outside of Jesus’s death and resurrection. So we get the sense that this story is important. Of course, each gospel writer gives it their own spin, and John, whose gospel is the most different from the other three, also has the most variations in his account of this event. So let’s make sure we read carefully.

Jesus has been teaching and healing. He crosses the Sea of Galilee with his disciples, and the crowds follow him, because of the healing work he’s been doing - they see it as a sign from God, and also, of course - they want to be healed! When Jesus sees the crowds coming, he turns to Philip, one of the Twelve, and asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” In other gospels, it is the disciples who raise this question. But John says that Jesus poses this question in order to test Philip, because Jesus already has a plan of action.

Philip and the other disciples seem a bit overwhelmed by Jesus’ question. Philip notes that even a large sum of money wouldn’t feed such a huge crowd - and Jesus and the disciples evidently don’t have a large sum of money. Andrew has noticed a boy with five loaves of bread and two fish, but what could that amount of food - plenty for a few - do for a crowd of 5000 people? But Jesus simply has them all sit down, and then he gives thanks over the food, and starts passing it out. Everyone somehow eats all that they want, and now there is even food left over. The leftovers gathered, and there are now 12 baskets of leftover food where there was once only 5 loaves and 2 fish. A miracle.

When the people see the miracle, they call Jesus a prophet, and they want to force Jesus to be their king. They want him to be their leader, their ruler. This isn’t what Jesus is about, though, not in the way they want. And so he withdraws from the crowds on his own. The next verse I’ve never really noticed before, but it caught my eye this time thanks to a commentary by Alicia D. Meyers that I was reading. We read, ‘When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.” The disciples just…leave. I’m not sure where they were going. Maybe they had plans already, and knew Jesus would meet up with them. But they don’t go looking for Jesus, as far as we’re told, anyway. They don’t ask him what they should do next. They don’t check in. They just get back on the boat and leave town.

And then the sea becomes rough and a strong wind is blowing over the water. It’s a dark and stormy night - but suddenly they see Jesus, walking along on the water, coming to them in the boat. They’re terrified. We’re not sure why; they’ve seen Jesus do miracles, after all. But maybe walking on water was just a next-level kind of thing. But Jesus says to them something he says many times, particularly in John’s gospel: “Do not be afraid.” And then suddenly, they’ve reached their destination safely.

It can be interesting to use this text to consider what we think about miracles, particularly the supernatural kind, the bend-the-laws-of-the-universe kind. Did Jesus miraculously make the food multiply? Or did something else happen? Did Jesus really walk on water? How? Why don’t we see miracles like that today? Or were they reserved for Jesus, never to be repeated? But although these questions can make for an interesting conversation (or sermon), I want to push us in a somewhat different direction today. I think we learn in this passage both something about what we might expect (or not expect) from Jesus, and what Jesus expects from us.

That’s right: Jesus has some expectations for us, his disciples. In our text, John tells us that Jesus wanted to test the disciples, and see what solutions they would come up with to address the hungry crowds, even though he already knew what he planned to do. How do we feel about that - the idea of Jesus testing us? The other gospel authors don’t mention anything like this, and this idea of the disciples being tested is more consistent with John’s style of writing and his understanding of how Jesus was at work in the world. But still, it’s here for us to wrestle with. I will admit that the idea of God testing us doesn’t really jive with my theology most of the time. It makes God seem too manipulative to me, like we’re being set up, guinea pigs in some divine experiment. I don’t think God is like that.

But I have to remind myself, and maybe you do too, not to conflate “test” with “trick” or “trap.” Sometimes tests can be designed to be tricks or traps, but they aren’t necessarily the same. Sometimes being tested is a good thing, a necessary thing. We use tests all the time, so that we can assess what people know and what they don’t and whether they’re ready for the next thing. Right now, believe it or not, my nephew Sam is 17 years old, and he’s just about ready to take his road test for his driver’s license. We have to test young drivers to see if they’re ready to be on the road by themselves, for their safety and the safety of other drivers. A road test isn’t a trap or a trick. It’s an assessment. Sometimes a test reveals areas where we’re not prepared. Even failing a test isn’t always the worst thing that can happen. I think of my best friend in high school - it took her three failed road tests before she finally got her license. Now she’s an adult and a mother and a nurse and a more grounded and careful person than she was at 16. She failed a test - and it helped her mature as a driver and a person, and now I feel very safe being her passenger! We might know some things very well, but a test might reveal that we’ve overlooked a particular topic or have an area of misunderstanding. It might reveal that we’ve made progress, but we’re not ready yet to move on to the next thing. Tests can be hard. They can give us some anxiety. But they don’t have to be tricks or traps.

So when I read here that Jesus is testing the disciples, I ask myself what he was looking for in his disciples. I think he wondered what they had learned so far in their time with him, as they’d accompanied him in his teaching and preaching and healing. And I think he wondered what they were ready for. How far would they follow him? How would they be as leaders themselves? Well: neither the crowds nor the disciples make a good showing, I’m afraid. Because the crowds are too focused on what they want from Jesus: signs and magic and a king. And the disciples are busy fleeing to the other side of the sea without Jesus. A consistent theme in John, and in John 6 in particular, is that the crowds want to know what Jesus can do for them tangibly: they want food, they want physical healing, and they want him to be a king, maybe one who can overthrow the oppressive Roman government. I sympathize with their longings - who wouldn’t want someone to lead who could do those things? Why wouldn’t we want to follow someone who can keep us fed and keep us healthy? But it seems like that’s all they want from Jesus. The crowds seem far less engaged in what Jesus is teaching, less interested in letting their lives be transformed by God.

And then there’s the disciples, those closest to Jesus. First, even those they’ve already seen Jesus do amazing, unexplainable things, they can’t imagine a solution to his question: “How will we get these people something to eat?” Maybe they’re content to let Jesus figure out the answers. How could they be expected to come up with a solution - they’re not Jesus, after all. Maybe they’re not sure they can trust him yet. Is it all too good to be true? And then, again, when Jesus has withdrawn from the crowds anxious to make him a king, we hear nothing of the disciples. What are they doing? Are they, too, trying to force Jesus into a role? Are they helping manage the crowds? Or standing off to the side, waiting for Jesus to tell them what’s next? I wonder what they’re thinking when they decide, in fact, to leave, to go back across the water to where they came from. Are they ready to ditch Jesus altogether? Are they anxious to be away from the unexplainable events of the day? Just go back to their normal routines? We just know that when Jesus shows up, walking on the water, they’re afraid. Maybe afraid of what this means for them. How can they be good enough to follow Jesus? Yet, how can they do anything but try to keep following? No wonder they’re afraid: awed and dazzled by Jesus, feeling confused, unworthy, incompetent, and yet feeling like what choice do they have but to keep trying to follow him anyway.

It’s easy to look at the disciples in the gospels and see all the mistakes they make, and convince ourselves we’d do better. But I think they’re portrayed as they are so that we can take comfort, actually, in knowing that we’re not the first to struggle with fears and doubts in our discipleship. We’re not the first to wonder if we can trust Jesus, and yet also want Jesus to fix all of our problems. We’re not the first to feel incompetent at discipleship, and yet keep coming back to try again. The disciples get it wrong, a lot, and even worse than this. But they keep going. Jesus keeps teaching them. I don’t think they ever feel quite ready. But somehow, they’ve changed our lives, changed the world, millennia later.

Jesus does test us, I think: checking in on where we are in our discipleship. But I’m reminded of the grades I used to get in elementary school. Not the grades for how well I was performing academically. Instead, there was a whole section on how we were performing socially. Were we learning to be thoughtful, well-adjusted classroom citizens? You couldn’t fail in that section. You could get an “unsatisfactory.” But teachers tended to opt for the more hopeful “needs improving.” Or the encouraging “improving” that might come on the way to “satisfactory” or “excellent.” I think when Jesus tests us, the scale is a little bit more like that. Ready to challenge us where we need improving. But always ready to affirm us, build us up, teach us some more, lead the way, and tell us: Do not be afraid. So, take heart, friends. Jesus wants to know what we’re going to do about the broken-hearted world around us. Probably, we’re going to mess it up. But instead of demanding that Jesus fix it for us, or running away altogether, let’s stay and learn from the teacher, and then practice, practice, until we’re improving, until we’re thriving, until we’re ready for whatever Jesus calls us to next. Amen.

Thanks to Alicia D. Meyers, at The Working Preacher for sparking this line of thought. “Commentary on John 6:1-21.”

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-17-2/commentary-on-john-61-21-6

Image: JESUS MAFA. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48287 [retrieved July 29, 2024]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, "Finish It," 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 (Proper 8B, Ordinary 13B)

2024-07-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

*Posted out of order, but here's a sermon from earlier this summer.

Sermon 6/30/24

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Finish It

Have you ever seen an unfinished building or construction project? I remember growing up one of my best friends lived in a home that her father had just built. Only there were little bits and pieces that he never quite finished. For example, there was a door that was meant to go to a porch and stairs into the yard - but the porch and stairs never got built. Be careful - that door led to a ten foot drop! Years later it did get finished, but I was well into adulthood before that happened. There are several famous building projects around the world that have never been completed like some of these we see on the screen, including this one, the National Monument of Scotland, also known as “ Edinburgh’s disgrace.” (1) Closer to home, many of you have probably visited Boldt Castle in the 1000 Islands region, the castle built in the early 1900s by millionaire George C. Boldt, and then abandoned while still mid-construction because of the sudden death of his beloved wife Louise. Some of you may have even visited the castle years ago, as I did as a child, when not much had yet been done to restore the property, and everything was covered in graffiti and it all radiated: abandoned project.

There is something both fascinating and sad about these unfinished projects. A lasting and visible reminder of plans someone had that ultimately weren’t completed, a vision that couldn’t be carried out for whatever reason. What about projects in your own life? Are you the type of person who always finishes whatever project you begin? Or do you have a tendency to get intrigued by many things and give them a try, but maybe leave some partly done and move on to the next thing? My own record is kind of a mixed bag on this. I tried to teach myself how to knit, for example, and worked on the project of trying to knit a scarf at irregular intervals over the course of several years before I finally acknowledged it was never going to happen and gave my 2/3 of a scarf away for someone else to finish. Sometimes, I’m sure I’ve found a new passion - but then I lose interest. Other times, though, I’m pretty disciplined about following through. For example, the ordination process in The United Methodist Church took me 9 years to complete, start to finish, and at the time I was ordained, that meant I had been in the process for more than a third of my life! But I never wavered. I pasted the document listing the steps of the process on my wall, and checked them off one by one. Sometimes, I’m committed to finishing what I started, no matter what. What’s something you were determined to do and committed to seeing your vision through to completion?

Foremost on my mind these days is finishing my PhD. I’m in what is hopefully my last year of a five year program, working on writing my dissertation. The PhD student drop out rate is incredibly high - some statistics I’ve seen suggest that more than 50% of people who start a PhD never finish it. Sometimes people drop out right at the start, because they find out the program is more rigorous than expected and they weren’t quite prepared. But there’s a lot of other reasons folks drop out too, even quite near the end, when all that is left is the dissertation. It’s expensive, being a PhD student, and sometimes people drop out for financial reasons - they don’t have enough income, they need to go back to full time work, they can’t make ends meet. Sometimes they don’t have enough support from advisors and faculty who encourage them and check in. And sometimes people who do well with the structure and deadlines of the coursework part of a PhD really flounder when there is no structure or clear timeline when you get to the dissertation part of the program and have to be very self-directed. Sometimes people just decide all the struggle is not worth it. I’m quite certain every PhD student has at least considered throwing in the towel. I know I’ve had my moments. But I am determined. I will finish this thing.

That’s the apostle Paul’s advice in his letter to the Corinthians from our text for today. “Finish it,” he says. The church at Corinth had committed a year ago to take up a collection, a financial offering to go and support the work of the church in Jerusalem, the “home base” congregation of Christianity in the early church, a community that was frequently in financial need and relied on the support from congregations in wealthier communities. The Corinthians had pledged their support and started gathering funds. But for some reason, they’ve delayed in completing their task. Things are taking longer than planned, and maybe some folks aren’t even sure they want to give anymore. Early in 2 Corinthians and elsewhere in his letters, Paul alludes to tensions between the Jerusalem church leadership and other parts of the growing Christian movement. There were many disagreements and debates to work out over who was leading the movement, who could be included, and how people could become part of Christianity. Perhaps, in the midst of the struggles, the fervor of the Corinthian church for supporting the church in Jerusalem had waned. Perhaps, with the passage of time, people were no longer as excited about the mission as they’d once been. Perhaps they’d encountered more struggles, more demands on their resources. Whatever the reason, Paul’s letter seems to imply that there’s a real question of whether or not the Corinthians will complete the task to which they’ve committed themselves.

But if they listen to Paul, they will finish it. Paul builds them up, reminding them of their gifts, their love, their excellent generosity. He doesn’t command them, he says, but he does want to see if their promises were genuine or not. He reminds them of Christ’s generosity, and of the generosity of congregations that have less abundant financial resources than they do. And he says to them: “Finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it.” You had a vision, you planned to give from your abundance - now do it. See the task to completion.

Friends, I know that you are in a season of transition. It’s been a season of upheaval and change in our denomination, and though I have longed for some of the changes that have been made, I know they’ve also come at a cost to congregations and clergy and resources. We’re in a long and ongoing season of transition around the role and influence of the church in the larger society that can be discouraging. And I know that you are also in a season of pastoral transition, which is always one of the most difficult times for congregations. I’ve been through lots of pastoral and congregational transitions - I know it can be exceptionally easy to sort of “opt out” during seasons of change. It can be easy to lose sight of the plans and vision that you once had, especially if now, carrying out that vision looks different than it did when you were first dreaming together. I know that the lure of complacency, of apathy, of taking the path of least resistance and least effort can be so strong.

But I also know that staying the course is worth it. Where do we find the strength? As Paul urged with the Corinthians, I think we find strength by remembering the gifts God has given us. We recall the commitments we’ve made. We remember how God has been with us, and how God promises to go with us into the future. We put our faith in a generous Christ, who calls us to follow him. We count our blessings. And we declare: We will finish it. In this season of change, I encourage you to think about the plans and visions, the hopes and dreams you have both in your personal journey of discipleship, and as a congregation. What plans and promises have you made? When you were dreaming big, what did you see in the future? Where have you felt God’s presence, and God’s leading? What have you felt inspired to do? How did you feel when you were first stepping out on faith? In the past, what has helped you stay motivated, dedicated? Remember, and renew your commitment. Recommit to the vision. God is still present, still leading, and still giving you all the resources you need to move forward with purpose. Speaking to another congregation, the church in Philippi, Paul says, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6) God is faithfully completing good works in our lives day by day. Let us be faithful too, completing what we’ve begun. With God by your side, finish it. Amen.

https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/10-famously-unfinished-buildings-around-the-world

Image source: https://foundr.com/articles/leadership/personal-growth/finishing-the-project

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Proper 11, Ordinary 16), "Of Sheep and Shepherds," Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, Jeremiah 23:1-6

2024-07-22T11:57:00.002-05:00

Sermon 7/21/24

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, Jeremiah 23:1-6

Of Sheep and Shepherds

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about leadership lately, and who it is we want to lead us and why. Yes, as you can imagine, I’ve got the upcoming presidential election on my mind. No, don’t worry, I’m not about to get into who to vote for - or who not to vote for - or why. Today I’m more interested in thinking about what we value in leaders. What kind of leader do you think the President of the United States should be? I found an article that addressed several characteristics that seem to make for effective presidencies in American history, and the top qualities include: A strong vision for the country's future, an ability to put their own times in the perspective of history, effective communication skills, the courage to make unpopular decisions, crisis management skills, character and integrity, wise appointments, and an ability to work with Congress. (1) That sounds like a pretty decent list. But it is a rear view mirror list. In other words, it was a list made reflecting on presidencies after they were over, not in the midst of electing a new president. I tried to find something that gave a good sense of what we’re looking for when we’re electing a new president. The best I could find was a recent survey that asked people how they rated a pre-selected list of attributes. So, the survey decided on some important traits, but people got to rank them. There were some party-line differences, but people valued strength, honesty, and competence. Most of all? Across party lines, people said “taking responsibility” was their most desired characteristic in a leader. (2) Now, that desire can be interpreted in a lot of ways, but I suspect at least part of why people say they want someone who will take responsibility is because they feel like our leaders don’t do this already. How often do we hear our leaders - presidents or governors or members of congress or otherwise - say: that mistake was my fault and I accept responsibility? Examples do not immediately spring to my mind.

I read recently on social media some words from John G. Stackhouse Jr.: “God, after all, has a long record of allowing societies to reap what they sow and get the leadership they deserve. It's called judgment, not blessing.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot. This idea: God gives people the kind of leader they want, even if it turns out to be an awful decision, even when it turns out the people are really bad at choosing leaders. Are we bad at choosing leaders? Stackhouse is certainly commenting on current events, but he’s also making observations about the biblical record. Our history, as people, of choosing poorly when it comes to leaders, is not new. It’s in fact a quite, quite old problem. That’s what our text from Jeremiah is talking about. When God first called together a people, Israel, God said that God would be the only ruler they needed. But eventually, the people started clamoring for a king, because they wanted to be like the other nations around them - they all had earthly rulers, and the Israelites wanted one too. And so God gave them what they wanted. And, as Stackhouse suggests, it mostly turned out to be a terrible decision. With few exceptions, ruler after ruler did what was evil in God’ sight, leading the people down destructive paths, resulting in wars, and poverty, and hardship, and most of all: idolatry and alienation from God.

In Jeremiah, God has had it with rulers who are not the shepherds God intends them to be. Shepherds are supposed to care for and protect the sheep - at all costs! But instead, God says, the rules of Israel have been destroying and scattering the sheep - God’s people. There are consequences, God says. But as always, God makes promises too: God will be the shepherd earthly rulers are not, and gather the people. And God will raise up shepherds who will lead with righteousness and justice so that the people can live in safety. So what kind of leader do we want? What kind of shepherd does God seek out for us? Can we accept the shepherd God longs for us to have, instead of insisting we know better?

There’s more talk about sheep and shepherds in our gospel lesson, where we start out with Jesus just seeking some peace and quiet after the relentless pace of his teaching, healing, and ministry. Picture this: you are exhausted. It has been a long week at work. Some things have gone wrong. And all week, you’ve been looking forward to a quiet Saturday at home, where you can sleep in. You’re just going to relax. No agenda. No schedule. No plans. And then, there’s a knock at the door. Or the phone rings. And suddenly, that time for rest and relaxation has vanished. And it’s not even that whoever interrupted your time is not a friend, a person you enjoy. It’s just that you were so exhausted, and you so needed a break. Has this ever happened to you?

That’s what happens to Jesus and the disciples. They were trying to take just a little break, because with all the work they’ve been doing, they haven’t even had time to eat. But the people, who so want to see Jesus, experience his teaching, his healing, find out where he’s going, and while Jesus is traveling by boat, they hurry ahead on foot, so that by the time Jesus reaches his destination, they’re already there waiting for him. And Jesus doesn’t groan when he sees them all waiting. He doesn’t huff and puff and demand that he needs his alone time. Instead, we read: “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved with compassion. The Greek word in the Bible for compassion is my very favorite. The word is a mouthful: ἐσπλαγχνίσθη - esplangchnisthe. It means something to the effect of: your guts are tied up in knots with the level of concern you have for someone. You are physically moved with emotion for the person you’re considering. You feel such concern, such care that it affects you physically. And this word is mostly used in the Bible to describe how Jesus feels about the crowds, the people. In fact, this word is used more times about Jesus than all others instances in the Bible combined. When Jesus sees people, his guts twist with the deepness of his concern. Compassion. His intestines twisted in knots in deep concern for what he saw. A true shepherd, like the one the prophet Jeremiah wrote of, is like this one: one who laments when the sheep are without a shepherd, and is moved to the core of their being to step in and lead, to step in and be that shepherd.

I wonder: is compassion a leadership skill? Do we want a leader who is compassionate? What kind of leader does it make you if your best skill is that you have gut-wrenching compassion for people like Jesus does - all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations, some of their own making, some deserving more than they’ve gotten, some deserving less - all kinds of people? What kind of leader does it make you if your best skills are compassion, mercy, grace? Well, we can see what kind of leader his signature compassion makes Jesus into: It makes Jesus the kind of leader who can’t seem to stop pouring himself out for others, even when he’d really love a nap. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who says that he came to be a servant of all. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who eschews every attempt to elevate and glorify himself, to take a throne, to rule over. It makes him the kind of leader who cherishes children as those with important wisdom to share. It makes him the kind of leader who notices the widows, the poor, those who have been deemed sinful, those whom no one wants to touch,even the ones who are considered enemies - he notices and sees and embraces. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who gives his life for others. It makes him a true shepherd, a good shepherd, who cannot just pass by when he sees lost sheep.

Sometimes I think we need reminding of just who it is we’ve committed to following. As people of faith, we’ve committed to following someone whose leadership skills may not be on the top list for presidential candidates. Elections matter. Secular leaders matter. Of course they do. I think we should vote, and vote thoughtfully, faithfully, trying our best to vote in alignment with our deepest held values. But I’m reminded of a post that was going around on Facebook way back in the Obama/Romney election in 2012. It showed Romney and Obama each with a statement near them that read: “Hope of the world.” But then it was crossed out. And it said at the bottom: “That job’s already taken.” I love that. Jesus is the hope of our world and the only one we should seek to follow. The empires of the earth - all of them - rise and fall. But Jesus is eternal, and our place in God’s heart is forever, and God’s love and compassion for us is everlasting. Let’s be followers of the leader God chooses for us. Let’s have the characteristics and qualities of Jesus be the ones we seek out. Let it be the compassion of Jesus that we long for the most, and most strive to imitate. Let’s be sheep in the fold of the shepherd who loves us down to his very guts. Amen.

Sermon, "In Denial," Mark 8:31-37

2024-02-20T19:30:00.001-05:00

Sermon 2/20/24

Mark 8:31-37

In Denial

My sermon title is both a reflection of our gospel text for today, and a reflection of how I felt about preaching today. I’ve come to this moment kind of dragging my feet, for a variety of reasons. And one of them was that I just did not want to preach on this text. Of course, I didn’t have to - we don’t demand lectionary preaching in chapel. But I just felt like I wanted to preach from the lectionary during Lent. The other texts for today are all about Abraham and Paul’s take on Abraham, and let’s just say those passages were not filling me with inspiration. Briefly, I was imagining a sermon on the Transfiguration text - it is an alternate text for today. But then our wise friend Leah Wandera chose that, appropriately, for Transfiguration last week when it is the primary lectionary choice, and preached a powerful message - you should give it a listen if you missed our online service last week. So here I am, and here we are.

Truthfully, I’ve always liked this text, and specifically, what I consider the heart of this passage - “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Please don’t tell this to my dissertation committee and give them encouragement to come up with more questions to ask me about my prospectus draft, but I’ve always liked it when things are challenging rather than easy. I mean, easy things have their place, for sure. But I like a challenge, and Jesus’s words are certainly that. Whenever Jesus describes discipleship in ways that seem demanding, I’ve found them motivating rather than discouraging. I like to think that rather than setting the discipleship bar low so we can all just step over it, Jesus sets the bar high and then helps us reach high enough. So, this call to deny one’s self and take up a cross is a challenge I want to rise to meet. What good is easy discipleship?

But my dear friend Heather, another clergywoman, and now also a Drewid, a DMin student here, has always hated this text. It raises her feminist hackles. Women, she says, are always being asked to deny parts of themselves already. They are always being asked to give up pieces of themselves, to give up parts of themselves for the good of others. She doesn’t need Jesus asking her to do it too, making women denying themselves into an act of religious faithfulness.

Is that what Jesus means when he asks for self-denial? Sacrificing parts of ourselves? Our contemporary culture, at least in the United States, has tended to interpret self-denial like a second opportunity to make good on New Year’s Resolutions that have failed shortly after January 1st. Lent becomes a kind of season of self-improvement. We can deny ourselves chocolate for Lent and get a two-for-one deal: obeying Jesus, and trimming some excess from our diets and our bodies. Our Lenten journeys become disordered reflections of our disordered views of ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves very much already, and we don’t love our bodies, and we don’t love the skin that we’re in, and we don’t love who we are, perhaps we welcome a chance to deny ourselves - we’re ready to shed the person we are that we’re so ready to and so easily able to find fault with anyway. Deny myself? Yes please! Lent in this way becomes just another promise of new and improved selves that can never meet our hopes.

If not that, what, then, does Jesus want from us? What is it, exactly, that we need to deny of ourselves, about ourselves? Does self-denial mean stripping ourselves of our individual identities? We’re all one in Christ - we’re disciples, united in cause and purpose - and identity? Is this the self-denial of the way of the cross? This doesn’t fit right either. One of the things I’ve learned at Drew is that denying myself, denying pieces of myself, can actually be a privilege that gives me power over others. I am, to draw on a favorite essay by Donna Haraway, situated. (1) I have a particular perspective. I am White. I am a citizen of the United States. I am a cisgender straight woman. I am a Christian in a Christian-majority nation. I am a middle-class person, even if I’m also taking on the role of broke grad student for a few years. I’ve had access to - let’s be honest - excessive amounts of schooling. I am situated. Is self-denial about denying all the particulars of who we are? Haraway likens that to what she calls the “god trick” - pretending that we have the same all-seeing and all-knowing perspective of the divine being, looking down from on high. Jesus does say we should set our minds on divine things, doesn’t he? Is self-denial about striving for God’s point of view instead of our own? Can we accomplish that through self-denial, and trying to shrug off labels of our particularities?

In the midst of all of these unappealing ways of denying ourselves before we’ve even gotten to the part about taking up a cross, is there any chance for saving our lives here? I’m pretty sure I remember that in the text somewhere. Losing our lives, yes. But saving them too. That’s in there, right? How do we deny ourselves, lose our lives, and save them all at once? Are there ways that we can understand the call to self-denial that lead to life?

As Yeongrok and I were talking about music for chapel today, he said my sermon text made him think of the song The Summons. I almost didn’t include it, but I had been thinking about it too, and the words from John Bell in one of the verses. It’s a question from God to us: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name?” What is the “you” that you’re hiding?

I think when Jesus talks about self-denial with the disciples - in the particular context of the oppressive state violence that Jesus believed was in his future as a person who kept relentlessing prodding at systems of injustice - I think he’s telling his disciples that they need to lay down their clinging to self-protection, to safety and security, so that they can take on the cross - rather than the sword - with courage, as they face off against Empire. Our particular context is different, of course. But these words call to us all the same.

What if denying ourselves looks like denying our obsession with individualism? Not as in denying that we are situated, and acknowledging the positionings that sometimes give some of us extraordinary power and place. Rather, maybe denying ourselves looks more like putting away the misguided notion that we are somehow self-contained. Putting away a notion that we are in control, and a contained, boxed-in self that stands alone. Thinking again of our music for today, I’m amazed at the number of Lenten songs that put us in isolation - it’s just me and Jesus in the lonesome valley, doing it all by ourselves. I’m always wary of anything that suggests that it’s just between us and God, when Jesus so firmly and frequently reminds us that all of our neighbors fill the spaces between us and God. Maybe denying ourselves actually means we can deny this privatized notion that we have that we are solo, contained, doing it on our own, so “unique” that we cannot be in solidarity and in community.

Taking up a cross and confronting injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves isn’t the work of an individual. I think maybe taking up the cross is always the work of a community. In fact, the image of Simon of Cyrene being called on in the gospel to help Jesus carry the cross comes to my mind. Jesus needs help carrying the cross too. Denying ourselves is the ongoing, difficult work of shedding the beliefs that we can or should do it on our own, that we are on our own in our pain and struggles, on our own in confronting the powers and principalities, that we’ve got it figured out on our own, that we only need our own perspective, that we can box ourselves in. Deny this understanding of what self means. Take up the cross, the work of a community - the work of solidarity, of kinship, of working for justice. The work of carrying the cross, together.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Amen.

Haraway, Donna. "‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective'." (1988) In Space, gender, knowledge: Feminist readings, pp. 53-72. Routledge, 2016.

Sermon for Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, "All Things," 1 Corinthians 9:16-23

2024-02-06T09:51:00.003-05:00

Sermon 2/4/24

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

All Things

“You can’t please everyone.” “You can’t make everyone happy.” “You can’t do everything.” “Know your limits.” “Don’t try to do it all.” “You can’t be all things to all people.” Have you heard these words? Said them? Felt them? I know I have. I’ve been having a busy semester this Spring, and my mother frequently says something like this to me. And I’ve certainly doled out these words more than once. “You can’t make everyone happy.” Being a people-pleaser can be exhausting. Now, I’m not saying we can’t try to be kind and loving - I think we absolutely should do that! But trying to make everyone happy all the time usually leads us to exhaustion, which is bad enough, but it also means we end up compromising ourselves, our values, our integrity, because we’re working so hard to make sure everyone else is happy with us, that everyone likes us. There are limits to what we can do, right? We can’t be all things to all people.

And yet, what springs to mind is a scene from one of the best movies I’ve seen, a movie that’s on many people’s lists of best movies: the 1993 film Schindler’s List, the Steven Spielberg film about a man named Oskar Schindler, who worked to rescue Jews from being sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust by employing over a thousand workers in his factory. His motives begin with profit for himself, but eventually his mission becomes one of compassion and urgency. In the end, in one of the most moving scenes from the film, Schindler expresses his deep despair that he could have done more but did not. He says:

“I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just... I could have got more.” Stern, the man to whom he’s speaking, replies: “Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.” But Schindler goes on: “If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just...I didn't do enough! This car. [He] would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people. This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could have gotten one more person... and I didn't! And I... I didn't!”

There’s a tension that Schindler’s dilemma exposes. Was he solely responsible for every life saved or lost in his sphere of influence? That’s a lot of weight to put on one person. He did so much! But could he have done more? Should he have? What kind of expectations are reasonable for him to place on himself? Must we try to be all things to all people, as much as it is in our power? And if we’re thinking about how hard we’re working to make sure others know of God’s love and grace, if we do less than we could, if we are not all things to all people, are we at fault?

That’s a question that our reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians seems to answer, and in Paul’s usual definitive way, he seems to have a clear and bold answer for us. “An obligation is laid on me,” Paul says, “and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! . . . I have become all things to all people, so that I might by all means save some.” Paul’s words come in a chapter when Paul is trying to show the Corinthians who he is as an apostle of Christ. When I read Paul’s words, I am struck by two feelings. First, I’m filled with a deep level of exhaustion. Trying to be all things to all people sounds like an impossible task with ridiculously unreasonable expectations. Have you ever tried to be all things to all people? How did it work out? How long could you sustain it? It comes with a cost, trying to be all things, and I think in the long run, we cannot sustain it. No matter what we try to do, it seems it is never enough, and that we always carry the burden of knowing that we should be doing more. This burden is a tremendous weight to bear, a sometimes immobilizing weight. We could be giving more. We could be feeding more people. We could be volunteering more, serving more. We could be, we could be… We know we should be doing more that we aren’t doing, and so we do nothing at all.

Was Paul actually doing everything he said he was? Was he all things to all people? I think we need a bit more context to his words. See, there is a bit of tension in the New Testament between Paul and the other apostles, Peter and James and the rest of the twelve who were Jesus’ first followers. And the tension comes from a couple of sources. First, Paul never met Jesus in person. Yes, he had a powerful encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus where he heard Jesus’s voice and turned from persecuting Jesus-followers to inspiring others to become Jesus-followers. But he did not follow Jesus during his earthly life for years like the other disciples. And at first, that’s a source of tension. Does Paul have equal claim to leadership and authority with the twelve? Should he? Does it matter? So Paul is out to prove himself, a bit. Earlier in the chapter, he compares himself not so subtly with other disciples, noting that he does not take advantage of all the privileges that some of the other apostles do. Paul wants to be in it for serving Jesus, and he wants his purpose and integrity to be above question.

The other source of tension is that while some of the other apostles wanted to focus on sharing the gospel of Jesus with other Jewish people - after all, Jesus was Jewish, and the twelve were Jewish, and Jesus himself mostly taught and worked and healed among Jewish communities - Paul wants to share the gospel with Gentiles, who might be eager to hear about Jesus and God’s grace even though they have no intentions of converting to Judaism. So, in his words to the Corinthians - a community of Gentile Christians - Paul is trying to tell them that his only interest is in sharing the gospel, and he’ll share it with anyone and everyone. He’s ready to be in community with anyone so he can share the good news.

That brings me to my second feeling I’m struck with when I first read this text. Being all things to all people? I am not sure being all things to all people is really desirable even if we could somehow pull it off. My first read of this passage makes Paul seem like a chameleon, generously described, and manipulative and inauthentic, if I’m going with my gut. Do I want to be in relationship with someone who is going to pretend to be more like me in order to have an “in” with me? I don’t think I really want someone in my life who is going to pretend that they think like I do, so that they can better persuade me to whatever end they have in mind. “To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law … so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law … so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.” Do we want to hear good news from someone who is just pretending to share an identity with us?

Fortunately, I’ve had some help in thinking beyond my gut reactions to Paul’s words. This week at one of Drew’s weekly chapel services, professor of Christian history and Methodist Studies at Drew Rev. Dr. Kevin Newburg preached on this text from 1 Corinthians, and I found his sermon both challenging and inspiring. He summed up both Paul’s message and his own approach to pastoring as “Love people and preach the gospel.” I like his way of interpreting Paul’s words. What if, instead of Paul trying to deceive people into believing he’s just like they are in order to convince them to follow Jesus, Paul is trying to tell us that he’s committed to building relationships with anyone and everyone so that they can all share in Christ? What if we think about Paul as modeling for us that we can be in deep, authentic, meaningful relationship with all kinds of people.

When we think over our lives, we might find that we spend a lot of time with people who are just like us. Sure, they might have different hobbies, or like a different sports team than we do. But we tent to spend most of our time with people who are in the same economic class as we are, who have the same amounts of education as we do, who are in the same racial or ethnic group as we are, who share our religious identity already. Studies even show that our social media pages tend to reflect our own perspectives back at us. We develop cultivated facebook feeds, for example, where we see people supporting the political candidates as we do, and holding the same point of view on social issues.

Paul is committed to something different. When I hear Paul saying that he’s become all things to all people, I’d like to think that he means that he is always crossing boundaries and spending his time not with people just like him, who think like him, and worship like him, and act like him, but with all kinds of people, building relationships that are built on his openness to the other. It is hard work. It is indeed costly for Paul, the amount of work he puts into fulfilling his commission, his calling, his commitment to the good news of Jesus. But I don’t think he means it to be the recipe for exhaustion that it seems at first glance.

Instead, I think about it like this: When we are our whole selves, and we allow others to be their whole selves, I think the gospel can flourish so much more easily. Because we believe, I hope, that the gospel, the love and grace and forgiveness and reconciliation that we’ve experienced in Christ - that’s news that is so good that it is for all people, in all places. Paul’s vision of God’s work in the world is expansive, and inclusive, and I hope ours is too.

All things to all people? I’m not sure we’re up to that task. But I believe we serve a God who is all things for all people. And we’re called to be messengers of that most excellent news, crossing boundaries, building relationships, and loving people, all people, in the name of Christ whom we serve. Amen.

A Sung Communion for the Season of Advent - Updated - Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus

2023-12-10T11:15:00.005-05:00

Note: I recently updated my "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" text from Singing at the Table for our Advent Lessons and Carols service at Drew Theological School. (You can hear the liturgy at the end of our service here.)

A Sung Communion Liturgy

for the Season of Advent/Lessons and Carols

(Tune: HYFRYDOL, 87.87 D, UMH #196)

Text: Beth Quick, 2019, 2023.

Incorporating phrases from “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” Charles Wesley, 1744,

and “Comfort, Comfort, O My People,” Johann Olearius, 1671, Catherine Winkworth, trans.

To the table, you’re invited.

Lift your hearts to God and sing.

Praise to God, who has created

All the earth, each living thing.

God, we lift our hearts in longing

as we trek the Advent road.

Seeking peace, yet still we struggle.

Crumbling under sorrow’s load.

Holy, Holy, you are Holy!

Blessed is the One who comes.

All your works are full of glory.

Join in the unending hymn:

Sing Hosanna! Sing Hosanna!

Now your gracious kin-dom bring.

Child of Peace shall come among us.

Let the earth with praises ring!

Come, oh long-expected Jesus.

Teach us how to work for peace.

From our fears and wars release us.

Let us now your justice seek.

You’re our strength and consolation;

Hope of all the earth you are.

Source of goodness, well of wisdom:

You’re the joy of every heart.

On the night he was arrested,

Jesus shared some bread and wine.

Thanking God, he blessed and gave it:

Grace for all of humankind.

“Bread - this is my body given.

Wine - My life, poured out for you.

Eat and remember that you are forgiven.

Reconciled, you are made new.”

Come, O Spirit, we call on you:

Be poured out upon these gifts

Take these signs and make them into

Body, spirit, life of Christ.

Send us out now to serve your people

Sharing in Christ’s gracious ways.

By your strength we work for justice,

God of peace, lead us always.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Laughing at God," Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 (Proper 6, Ordinary 11)

2023-06-19T12:06:00.001-05:00

Sermon 6/18/23

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

Laughing at God

I had the opportunity to see again recently a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, one of my favorites of his works. Some of you might remember that my brother Todd specializes in classical acting (although he now is a professor of acting and teaches and directs more than he acts) - his focus and love is the work of Shakespeare, and so I’ve seen him in a number of productions over the years, including more than one production of Macbeth. I’ve always loved it. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the plot, but the gist is this (and sorry for the spoiler alert if you haven’t seen or read it yet, but it’s been out for a while now!): Macbeth is a leader who is given more power and authority by his king. His wife, creatively named Lady Macbeth, is eager for him to get even more power and position. Macbeth happens upon some witches who give him a prophecy that Macbeth will in fact become king, though his friend Banquo will be the father of kings. And on receiving this prophecy, rather than waiting to see how things will unfold, Macbeth and his wife scheme to make the part of the prophecy they want to come true come true faster - like right now - and scheme to avoid the parts of the prophecy they don’t like - even if they must murder friends and allies to make it so. They manipulate, they scheme, they plan, in order to claim what was told to them. Of course, Macbeth is a tragedy, so suffice it to say it doesn’t end well for the Macbeths.

Maybe the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible isn’t quite the tragedy of Macbeth, but I couldn’t help but have Macbeth on my mind this week as I was reading our text from Genesis. Our reading this week begins with God appearing to Abraham in the form of three visitors who come to the tents of Abraham and his family. In Abraham’s culture, hospitality and God’s presence are closely tied together, and so we see Abraham going out of his way to welcome these unexpected guests. They are given water, bread made with choice flour, a meal of meat and curds and milk, food washing, rest.

After a bit, the visitors ask after Sarah, and one of them says, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Now, Sarah and Abraham are advanced in years by this time, and Sarah being pregnant seems impossible - she’s reached menopause already. Sarah, who is just outside the tent listening when the visitors make their pronouncement, laughs at the ridiculousness of such a claim. “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” God - in the form of one of these visitors - the details get a little blurry here - seems a bit taken aback that Sarah would laugh. “Why would she laugh?” God wonders. “Is anything too wonderful for God? I’ll return at the right time, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah, now anxious and afraid that she’s offended God, denies laughing, but in a strange back and forth, God insists that she did. The end of our reading skips forward in time. We read that God dealt with Sarah just as God had said. Sarah has a child, named Isaac - meaning, “one of laughs.” And Sarah reflects, “God has brought laughter for me, and everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

Ok, maybe this doesn’t sound a lot like Macbeth. But there’s a connection, I promise. In our passage today, we get plopped into the middle of a larger story. Way back in Chapter 12 of Genesis, God first calls Abraham, then known as Abram. We actually looked at this passage together back in early spring. God says, “Go to this new place I’m leading you to, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, and make your name great.” Abraham goes, but the journey is meandering, with years long detours. Along the way, though, God repeats the promise: I will give you this land, you and your offspring, and your offspring will be as numerous as the specks of dust that make up the earth.

Eventually, though, Abraham gets impatient. God says Abraham will have a great reward, but Abraham is skeptical: “God, what will you give me? For I continue childless. I have no heir, no offspring. One of my slaves will inherit all I have.” But God repeats the promises already made: “Look at the stars - your descendents will be just as numerous.” And still more time passes.

Finally, Sarah is out of patience. God’s made a promise, and Sarah is ready to make the promise happen. She does not seem to be getting pregnant, so she will find another way to make sure Abraham has an heir. She gives Abraham her slave, Hagar, an Egyptian woman, and says he should have a child by her. (Hagar, enslaved, has no say here.) Sarah’s plan works, and Hagar becomes pregnant. But Sarah seems to immediately regret her decision, because Hagar is now looking at Sarah with contempt. Sarah complains to Abraham, she treats Hagar badly, Hagar runs away, and in the wilderness Hagar encounters God and is folded into God’s promises. Hagar’s child Ishmael is born.

Again though, God reminds Abraham of God’s promises to him and his family, this time specifically naming Sarah: “Sarah will give rise to nations” God says. Abraham is skeptical, but God says that within a year, Sarah will deliver a son named Issac. It is after all of this that we finally get to chapter 18, where our text from today begins.

So, maybe now you see a bit of the Macbeth connection. No, Sarah and Abraham don’t set out on a murderous rampage to receive what they’ve been promised. But they do engage in attempts to bring about God’s plans and promises in a way and on a schedule that works better for them than it seems to for God. And whenever they try to control the path of God’s promises, things do not go as they’ve anticipated, causing sometimes more harm than good.

It could be easy for us to blame Sarah and Abraham for their lack of trust in God’s promises, for their constant need for reassurance and reiteration, for Sarah’s plans to get Abraham the heirs he needs. But I can’t help but especially feel some pity for Sarah, and the ways in which she’s been kind of a pawn in all the events that unfold. For example, along the way to receiving God’s promises, Abraham twice denies that Sarah is his wife when they’re visiting other communities. Abraham is worried that because of Sarah’s beauty, he’ll be killed by the leaders of the foreign lands he visits, so that they can take his wife. So instead, he just kinds of hands her over, calling her his sister. (She is, in fact, his half sister - an allowable relationship for marriage at the time.) So Sarah has to endure being given over to strange men in strange places, separated from her husband, without any voice in the matter. She also has to bear the burden of her seeming infertility, something that was considered entirely the woman’s fault in ancient culture. She treats Hagar with cruelty - but Sarah has learned that women have few or no choices about their own lives, and so it is perhaps not surprising that she treats Hagar this way - the only person over whom Sarah has any power. No wonder Sarah tries to shape God’s promises into her own timeline, by her own methods! And no wonder she laughs at God’s outrageous plans. Wouldn’t you laugh at the sheer impossibility?

Here’s the thing though - even though God seems confused by Sarah’s laughter, God isn’t angry. Instead, God is just faithful. God deals with Sarah just as God said, just as God promised. That’s what God does. And Sarah is still laughing - but the laughter of skepticism, discomfort, and doubt has turned into the laughter of joy.

Friends, I think we are all like Sarah sometimes. Hopefully not like the Macbeths, but definitely a little like Sarah. Skeptical that the joy God promises could be for us. Impatient with God’s timing. Trying so hard to force outcomes that we’re sure will bring us happiness. Frustrated when things don’t unfold according to our plans yet again. Laughing that God has the audacity to promise us such impossible things.

But here’s the good news. When we doubt, God reminds. From God’s initial call to Abraham, to the time Isaac is born, God repeatedly demonstrates to Abraham and Sarah that the promise still stands, that God remembers, that they are still God’s people, that God still has blessings in store. God is so patient with them. God is so patient with us. And maybe we can learn to be patient with God, letting ourselves laugh in wonder at the amazing ideas God comes up with, and laughing some more when God’s dreams bear fruit.

“God has brought laughter for me,” Sarah says, “and everyone who hears will laugh with me.” May God bring laughter to us, too, as God’s faithfulness fills our hearts with joy. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Mercy and Sacrifice," Psalm 50:7-15, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (Proper 5/Ordinary 10)

2023-06-12T09:27:00.001-05:00

Sermon 6/11/23

Psalm 50:7-15, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Mercy and Sacrifice

A few weeks ago, just before I came to Central New York for the summer, I packed up my apartment in New Jersey and moved from one town to another. Not a huge move - just about 15 minutes away. And not a huge amount of things - I moved in with other PhD students, so other than my bedroom furniture, I didn’t have much I needed to bring. As far as moves go, since I have moved so many times as an itinerant pastor and often moved from one five bedroom parsonage to another, this one was pretty simple. Except… as a PhD student, I have to move “student-style,” finding a truck and getting some friends who are willing to help for the reward of my thanks and some pizza for lunch. And, except - I was moving from a second floor apartment, requiring a lot of up and down stairs. And, except this: both of my knees need replacing. They’ve been deteriorating for years, and now they’re down to bone on bone, and walking is painful enough but stairs are even harder, and stairs while carrying heavy things are near impossible. Thankfully, I have good friends. But on moving day, I had to basically sit and watch while they did all of the work of loading and unloading my things, taking trip after trip up and down the stairs at my old place, on what was of course the hottest day of that week. And while that might sound great - sitting back and watching others do the hard work - I suspect for most of us, actually, being helped, while we can’t contribute anything, is more stressful than not. I spent a lot of the day feeling guilty, frustrated, and helpless, wishing I could help, wishing things were different. My helpers? They weren’t doing anything to make me feel guilty. They were thoughtful, appreciative of the lunch I bought, efficient, and done and moved on, while I was still wrestling with how much I hated having to rely on them to get the job done.

You’ve probably heard the expression: it’s more blessed to give than receive. And I think most of us find that to be the case. We love giving to others. It brings us a lot of joy, doesn’t it, giving? Being able to lift others up through our actions? But being able to receive, graciously, thankfully, when we’re in a place of need and someone else can meet our need that we can’t do ourselves? I think receiving is actually harder than it looks. Maybe it’s fine on Christmas, on birthdays, on occasions where being the recipient of gifts is expected. But outside of that? Where we are receiving not even gifts but “help”? Mostly, I think we really chafe against needing help. I think many of us would do just about anything to avoid appearing helpless, being helpless.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week as I read our gospel lesson. Our gospel lesson from Mathew is really three stories in one. In the first part, Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him. Matthew does, immediately. Jesus is then eating dinner - perhaps at Matthew’s house? - and there are many other “tax-collectors and sinners” joining in the meal. Then the Pharisees - the religious leaders of the community - discover who has been at this gathering, they criticize Jesus to his disciples, that he eats with what they consider unfit company. Jesus overhears and says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,”” paraphrasing from the prophet Hosea. He continues, “For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

Then we skip ahead a bit into what might seem to be two unrelated healing stories, both of which you might be familiar with. First, Jesus gets a message from a leader of the community that his daughter has died, but asking Jesus to come and lay hands on her, trusting that the girl will live. On the way to the leader’s house, Jesus is approached by a woman who has been suffering with hemorrhages for over a decade. And she’s confident that if she can just touch Jesus, even his cloak, she will be healed. Jesus takes notice of her right away, saying to her, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well,” and indeed, she has been made well. Finally, Jesus gets to the leader’s house and finds everyone in the household already in mourning over the daughter who has died. Jesus sends them all away, insisting the girl is only sleeping. Everyone laughs - the girl is clearly dead! But when the crowd of mourners leave, Jesus takes the girl by the hand, and she gets up, alive and well. Our text closes with Matthew reporting that news of these events spread quickly throughout the region.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice, Jesus says. I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners. What does Jesus mean? Righteousness, after all, means something like being in “right relationship” with God and one another. And it seems, throughout the scriptures, that God very much does long for us to be in right relationships, just relationships. Isn’t that what God wants? isn’t our journey of discipleship about just that - learning how to set right our relationships with God and one another? And, what does it mean that God desires mercy? I understand that God is merciful - compassionate and forgiving. But how do mercy, sacrifice, righteousness, and sinfulness relate? I can’t think Jesus means that we have to relish our sinfulness so that God has more opportunity to show us mercy. I don’t think that Jesus wants us to pretend to be in need of help so that God can get the joy of rescuing us. So what does Jesus mean?

I think first - and this is a hard one - first, God’s primary audience is not always us. Sometimes we’re like the lost sheep - but sometimes, especially if we’ve been on the path of discipleship for a long time, seeking to grow deeper and deeper in our faith - we’re just one of the sheep who is safe in the pasture. God’s priority is the sheep who is lost. And we can be jealous that God is tending to the lost sheep, or we can be thankful that we’re already safe and sound.

As for righteousness? Well: like everything else we might come to have, it is a gift of God. If we learn to grow in discipleship, and set right all our relationships, it is through drawing on God’s strength, embracing God’s grace, and imitating God’s love. When we start believing righteousness is something we’ve achieved by our own efforts, that’s self-righteousness, and self-righteousness is pretty far from God’s intent for us. Being in right relationship with God and others isn’t a destination we can reach and just settle at. It’s a practice, a discipline, something that we grow in with God’s help.

And there it is: God’s help. Friends - we need God’s help, always. We stand in need of God’s mercy, always. Rather than this gospel being some strange suggestion that we have make ourselves appear to be in a position of needing mercy in order for us to get God’s attention, we need to recognize that we’re already there. We are in need of God’s help. We need God’s mercy. We do sin. We are broken. We do turn away from God. We do fail to live in right relationships. We can’t do it by ourselves. We need God’s help. Unfortunately, our culture is full of really destructive messages about being in need of mercy, about needing help. Our society implies that if you need help, especially too much help, or for too often, or for too long, you are weak, you’re wrong, you’re less than. Instead, we cultivate this myth of self-made people who’ve pulled themselves up by their own power and strength, no help needed.

When I look at the vignettes in our scripture today, I see stories of people who knew that they needed help/ Matthew, the unnamed sinners and tax collectors, the leader seeking help for his daughter, the woman Jesus healed - they needed help, and they knew it, and they weren’t afraid to accept the help Jesus offered them. Can we be vulnerable enough to know that we need help, and to accept the help that Jesus offers? Can we recognize our own failings, and receive mercy from God who is ever-ready to offer it to us? It’s not that God isn’t interested in righteousness. I think, rather, it’s that our ability to claim the label “righteous” isn’t the standard for entry into God’s reign that we think it is. Rather, God wonders, how receptive are we to receiving God’s grace and mercy? How ready are we to receive all that God wants to give us? I think, friends, that part of our readiness to receive from God includes letting others receive mercy and grace without judgment from us. Those who received healing, welcome, and a calling from Jesus in our text from today: they demonstrate to us the incredible vulnerability of being able accept God’s mercy. God wants to be merciful to us too. God wants to help us, because we need it. May we open our hands and our hearts, ready to receive what we need. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, Year A, "God in Community, Holy in One," 2 Corinthians 13:1-13, Matthew 28:16-20

2023-06-04T17:39:00.001-05:00

Sermon 6/4/23

2 Corinthians 13:1-3, Matthew 28:16-20

God in Community, Holy in One

I was torn between directions for my sermon when I picked our hymns for today. They mostly focus on our text from Matthew and the Great Commission and what it means, but I’ll have to save those thoughts for another sermon, because I just couldn’t stop thinking about the Trinity on this Trinity Sunday, and what I might say about this most unique aspect of Christianity. Our scripture texts are chosen in the lectionary because they both use a Trinitarian formula - “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” naming the three persons of the Trinity. Last week, as we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, I mentioned that I find the Holy Spirit to be a little weird. Well: the Trinity? Definitely also weird. And it’s not just me who thinks so. Our conception of God as a Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, Parent/Child/Spirit, however we phrase it, our Christian understanding of God as Three Persons/One God: Well, of all of the many things that set religious traditions apart from each other, we can find common ground in so many ways. But the Trinity? It’s rather unique. Most Christians understand ourselves to be monotheistic - in other words, believing in one and only one God. But from the outside, people from other religious traditions hear this idea of the Trinity - that Jesus is also Divine, God in the flesh, that the Holy Spirit is also God - and declare that you can’t be Trinitarian - believing in a three-in-one kind of God, and still be monotheists, believing in one God without quite so many layers, or personalities, or complications.

And indeed - there are lots of reasons for those who are not Christian to be confused by the Trinity, because, honestly, we Christians are confused by the Trinity, sometimes without even realizing it. First: The word Trinity? It never appears anywhere in the Bible. The Bible says a lot of things about the nature of God, about who God is and gives us ideas about how to describe God from titles to descriptions of God’s character. And we learn a lot from the scriptures about Jesus and his relationship to God, and as we discussed last week, we get a lot of descriptions of the Spirit and what the Spirit does, and the sense that the Spirit is of God, is in Christ, is sent by God, by Jesus, to be with us. And yet, despite all this, nowhere does the Bible say: Hey, God is a Trinity, a Three-in-One deal.

So where do we get the notion of Trinity from? It’s an extrapolation. In other words, it’s a conclusion we reach by taking all the witness of the scriptures and trying to figure out what they’re telling us about God. Even though the word “Trinity” isn’t there, the early church leaders came to understand “Trinity” as the best way to describe God and the relationship between God who creates, who is the divine parent of Jesus and humanity, and Jesus who is the Christ, God-with-us, God in the flesh, and God’s Holy Spirit, sent through the ages to fill the hearts of God’s servants. It wasn’t exactly a simple and smooth process, though, coming to understand God as Trinity through the witness of the scriptures …

I remember that during my church history class in seminary we spent a lot of time talking about what can loosely be called the Trinitarian controversies - a variety of arguments about exactly what the Trinity is. Church leaders debated these fiercely contested questions at church councils, and there were strong “parties” that supported certain views. One party, for example, thought that any concept of Trinity would need to show that Jesus, the Son, was not comparable to God the father. But another group wanted to insist, with a very specific Greek word configuration, that God the father and God the son were “like according to substance,” even though this is never clearly stated in the scriptures anywhere. Even still, this same group who wanted to emphasize the divinity of Jesus also wanted to make it clear that only the Christ person of the Trinity was incarnate, enfleshed. God the Father does not suffer death on the cross, only Jesus the Christ, even though the Christ is one person of the Trinity. Another debate was over whether Christ was “begotten” or “made” – created by God, or existing with God in the beginning in a way different from the creation of human beings. Another debate questioned whether or not the fully human person of Jesus Christ was part of the Trinity, or just the divine Son. And they questioned what to do with that strange Holy Spirit thing, perhaps like we do today. They wanted to know if the Holy Spirit came from God the Father directly, or from the Father and the Son together.

All these details they eventually hammered out, though not always - not usually actually - in a friendly way, not always without labeling each other as heretics and running anyone who disagreed out of the church. Today, though, most of us, if trying to describe the Trinity? We’re (unintentionally) heretics too. All of the metaphors we have for describing the Trinity? For example, any Children’s Sermons you might have seen trying to teach kids about the Trinity that talk about the petals of a clover, or about how steam and water and ice are all forms of the same thing, or about how a person can be a parent and child and an aunt and a sister all at the same time while still being the same person - basically every one of those explanations is a form of modalism - our one God shows up in three different modes - a heresy rejected by the early church. I think fondly of one woman from my last appointment in Gouverneur - I shared with a Bible study group our tendency towards being heretics about the Trinity - and she was always trying to come up with an example that would be theologically correct according to our ancient predecessors. And every time, I’d have to tell her: Nope, that’s still modalism! We worship one God, three person. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the Father is not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is not the Spirit. But The Father is God. The Son is God, the Spirit is God. And they are three-in-one, One God. Simple? Not exactly. So, most of us are unintentional heretics. The Trinity is a central doctrine of Christianity, but most of us can only explain what it means in ways that have been, technically, deemed theologically incorrect. And if, then, most of us can’t even rightly say what the Trinity is, does the Trinity matter?

Of course, I think it does. Here’s why. I think the Trinity - and the history of debates, sometimes painful debates about the Trinity - help us wrestle with whether our notion of God is limited or expansive. We may not be participants in the church councils of the early church. But I think we do often engage in the same behavior as those folks did – we’d really like to get a fix on God if we can. We’re always trying to define God, define our faith, define a set of rules for our life with God. It’s a reasonable urge – we want to know our Creator better, we want to know who this Being is who gives us life and who we gather to worship. We want to know who this God is that makes us and shapes us and calls us to do all of these things that are so difficult and challenging and frustrating. We want to know better who it is who gives us love and grace and calls us children, as we call this Being a divine parent. It’s good and natural to want to know this God with whom we’re in relationship. But sometimes we cross a line, where we go from wanting to know God better out of a desire for relationship, to wanting to know God so that we can contain and control God. After all, if we can control God, perhaps we can limit God’s control on us, and not feel so obligated to follow all of those pesky commands about loving our neighbors and enemies, about giving away all of our stuff, about following wherever we’re led.

But instead of seeing the Trinity as a way to contain God, I think the Trinity is meant to help us understand how expansive our God is, how beyond the scope of our human limitations. I remember when I was a young child, my dearest friend, Krissy, who of course also went to church with me, was working on a project. She was searching through the Bible, looking for all of the different names of God, making a list. Of course, these days, we could quickly grab that information online. But she was doing it by hand, marveling at so many different ways God is named, described, so many ways God is revealed to us. The Trinity helps us understand a God who is expansive and dynamic, who contains relationship right within God’s own self, even as God calls us towards deeper relationships with God and with one another and with all of creation. God models in God’s very own being how God wants us to live with one another. I especially love the description used by Rev. Thom Shuman, whose liturgies I have often used. He calls the Trinity “God in Community, Holy in One.” I really love that.

Our God is not only our Creator, but also one who is willing to come and be with us in human form, to take on all that it means to be a human on earth. And God is not only one who does those things, but also one who is willing to dwell within us, to live in our hearts, and so guide our lives right from within the very core of our beings. This is a God who will seek us out for relationships in any way possible, so desirous is God of being a part of who we are, and having us be part of who God is. Our God is persistent, asking again and again, to be let into our lives. Our God is creative, meeting us where we’re least expecting to find God. And our God is pervasive, permeating every part of our existence. That’s the Trinity, even if it’s not a very defined definition. Indeed, it seems some of the very best things in the world are the ones we are least able to put into clear words, concise definitions. For all of the writings we have, movies and poems and books and classes that talk about love, for example, it’s very hard to “define” love. But that doesn’t reduce love’s power or potency, or our desire to give and receive love in our lives. Love seems to be something you have to simply experience to know. Perhaps it is the same with this God who is God in Community and Holy in One. Hard to define, but worth all the conversation. Easier to experience God – the best way we can go about knowing God.

I’ll probably never be able to describe the Trinity perfectly without being a little bit of a heretic modalist. But what’s better is that I can be in relationship with the Trinity, and learn to be in relationship with others because of this expansive God who knows me and seeks relationship with me and with you. God who creates us and parents us so well. God who lives among us and walks beside us. God who dwells within us, as close as our breath. God in Community, and Holy in One. Let’s give thanks for this mysterious God who defies our definitions, who exceeds our expectations, and who loves us without limits. Amen.

Sermon for Easter Sunday, Year A, "Dos and Don'ts," John 20:1-18, Matthew 28:1-10

2023-04-16T12:06:00.003-05:00

Sermon 4/9/23

John 20:1-18, Matthew 28:1-10

Dos and Don’ts

I’ve been telling you, on Palm Sunday, and again on Maundy Thursday, that our best strategy for being disciples is to stay close to Jesus. “Stay with me,” Jesus was asking us. But today, this Easter morning, Jesus’s message is strikingly different: “Don’t hold on to me.” - “Go!” How do we get from one to the other? Why does Jesus tell Mary not to hold on to him, to stay with him? And what do his words mean for our discipleship?

Today we’ve heard the Easter stories from two gospels - John’s gospel - the most well known version - and Matthew’s account. This phrase - “don’t hold on to me” - occurs only in John’s version, although I think the meaning of the phrase is in Matthew’s account too. At first brush, Jesus’s words sound kind of dismissive to me, as if Mary is somehow being too clingy. And I don’t know about you, but if I thought that my dearest loved one, my teacher, who I’d devoted my life to, had died, been put to death, and then suddenly they seemed to somehow be alive after all, resurrected: well, I’d be clingy. I wouldn’t want to let them out of my sight for a second. Instead, the first thing, nearly the only thing Jesus really says to Mary, aside from getting her to recognize who he is, is this “Do not hold on to me.” Jesus says that he is “ascending to God,” as if that explains everything, and while he tells Mary what not to do, he does also tell her what she should do: “Go and tell.” Go and tell the disciples what she’s seen. She does. “I have seen the Lord.” Mary is the first preacher of the resurrection news.

Still, why the “don’t hold on to me?” I’ve been trying to think about where I’ve heard this phrase in my life - it was sort of striking at my memories. “Don’t hold on to me.” When do we say that? And it struck me: My 8 year old niece Siggy says this to me all the time, whenever she is trying to do something daring, some trick she’s working out, some gymnastic maneuver, some tumbling feat, some wild antic she has a vision of in her head, and I, Aunt Beth, have visions of broken bones and the potential for head injuries, and I just want her to be safe, and so I want to hold on to her - steady her, make her more secure, make her take a bit less of risk. “Aunt Beth, don’t hold on to me,” said with a little exasperation, and a little thrill at whatever feat of daring she’s about to try. And so I try - I try to let go enough for her to be the brave and bold person she wants to be.

I can only imagine that Mary, that others, seeing Jesus, who they thought they had lost, would want to “keep” him. They failed to protect him before - but now that they have a second chance, they will protect him from harm. They won’t let him out of their sight. This time, they will stand up to his enemies, they won’t fall away, they will get it right, and they will stick to Jesus like glue. But things have changed. Now, if they want to stay with Jesus, they have to let go, because Jesus is on the move. Jesus has things to do. Jesus is going to God, and the best way to be with Jesus now will be to let him go, so that they can get to work sharing the good news of resurrection and life. It’s a big shift to make. I can only imagine how Mary must have felt, leaving Jesus at the tomb. But whatever hesitation she might have been feeling, and however much she worried, however much her impulse was to resist the “don’t hold on to me,” she does just what Jesus asks.

Matthew’s Easter story is a bit different, but I think it actually mirrors John’s gospel well. In Matthew, Mary Magdalene is accompanied by another Mary - Jesus’s mother perhaps, or one of the other women with this common name. They first find an angel, a messenger of God at the empty tomb. Matthew also starts with a “don’t” - don’t be afraid. “Don’t be afraid,” the messenger says. “You’re looking for Jesus, but he has been raised.” And, as in Matthew, the messenger doesn’t want the women to linger. They get to “come and see,” but then they have a task: “Go - quickly - and tell.” The women obey, both full of joy, but still full of fear, despite instructions. But before they can get to the disciples, they see Jesus himself. Perhaps sensing that they haven’t yet listened fully to the messenger’s “don’t,” Jesus repeats it and their task. “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell.” We don’t know if the women remained afraid or not, but we don’t hear about it again. So perhaps, from Jesus’s own mouth, they could let those words sink in. “Don’t be afraid.”

It isn’t that Jesus doesn’t want us to stay close to him once Easter hits, once the resurrection happens. It’s that we have to make sure we’re staying close to Jesus for the best reasons. Are we holding on to Jesus because of his risk-taking that makes us uncomfortable? Is it that we want Jesus to be safe - so we can be safe? Does Jesus and his way of confronting, and breaking boundaries, and making a stir scare us? Do we want to hold on, to stay close, to keep an eye on Jesus? There’s a deep connection between “Don’t hold on to me” and “don’t be afraid.” Jesus knows our default mode is to be afraid. As much as we long for new life, new life is actually pretty scary too. It is so unknown. New life changes everything. And as much as we might be ready for change, the lives we know are comfortable. Safe. “Don’t be afraid.” Again and again in the scriptures, and again right here - “don’t be afraid.”

One of my favorite theologians, Walter Brueggemann, writes: “Being unafraid is an odd vocation; but it is the vocation of all those who have been baptized. We are different when baptized. The Acts account of the early church says that the Spirit of God came upon Jesus in baptism …. What the Spirit does is visit our lives … with the freedom of God, so that we are unafraid in the world, able to live differently, not needing to control, not needing to dominate, not needing to accumulate, not driven by anxiety.” The disciples, he says, were “known, named, and unafraid people,” who “turned the world upside down.” “Or better to say, they turned the world right side up.” He continues: “The truth is that frightened people will never turn the world, because they use too much energy on protection of self. It is the vocation of the baptized, the known and named and unafraid, to make the world whole.” (1)

“Don’t hold on to me, Aunt Beth.” Maybe I’ll never read John’s Easter account again without Siggy’s voice ringing in my ear. And oh, I want to hold on! I want my girl to be safe, and sometimes, her antics leave me full of fear! But more than I want to hold on, I want her to experience life to the full. I want her to be brave, to take big risks so that she finds great joy.

And that’s what God wants for us, too. “Don’t hold on to me,” says Jesus. Resurrection is risky stuff. And it’s active. New life means being on the move. Jesus has things to do. And as resurrection people, staying with Jesus means letting him go, so he can go ahead of us into the world, and we can follow. Don’t hold on, but don’t be afraid. Instead, come and see, and then go and tell, and go and tell, and go and tell.

Amen.

A Way Other than Our Own, 60-61.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday, Year A, "Staying or Leaving," Matthew 26:20-29, 36-46

2023-04-16T12:05:00.001-05:00

Sermon 4/6/23

Matthew 26:20-29, Matthew 26:36-46

Staying or Leaving

You’ve probably heard that when animals feel like they are on high alert, under stress, or under attack, they have a “fight or flight” response. Some animals, when in danger, will do everything they can to get away as fast as possible. Some, when cornered, will lash out, ready to fight, ready to harm in order to get free. There’s actually another option - “freeze” - some animals freeze, like the proverbial deer caught in the glare of headlights, immobilized with fear. Of course, we are animals too, we humans, and we sometimes find ourselves deeply driven by fight, flight, and freeze responses too. Sometimes we are in genuine danger - and we must figure out if we need to flee or fight or freeze in response to a threat, to abuse, to something or someone that can do harm to us.

But sometimes, we react like we’re responding to a threat, to danger, but our minds are confusing danger and discomfort. Here’s what I mean: Those of you who’ve known me for some time now might remember that I will admit that my default mode is to be a conflict-avoider. I think that mostly falls into the “flight” response category to stress, but I also manage to try to pretend a conflict just isn’t happening sometimes too. I do not like conflict. I don’t like it when people are arguing, when people are being unkind and hurtful. I don’t like it when people’s feelings are hurt - the emotional pain of others really bothers me. And when I see that happening as a result of conflict, my impulse is to try to fix, to smooth things over, to do anything I can to suppress the sense of conflict.

My conflict-avoidant response is something I’ve had to work on a lot over the years, particularly because leadership roles and the flight response or the “pretend this isn’t happening” response don’t work so well together! In fact, a lot of leadership guidebooks will tell you that a good technique for leaders is knowing when to “turn up the heat” on tense, conflict-ridden situations. Conflict, when handled thoughtfully, can actually be an ingredient for new life in an organization, in a community, in a congregation. Staying committed and attentive and ready to work through things during a conflict in healthy relationships can lead to meaningful transformation. One of my favorite scholars, Donna Haraway, calls this “staying with the trouble.” If you can work past the fight, flight, and freeze responses of conflict, if you can “stay with the trouble,” stay committed to the work, something really transformative might happen.

I mentioned in my sermon on Sunday that the events of Palm Sunday are the start of this pressure-cooker intensity where Jesus is pretty consistently confrontational, taking actions and making statements that require a response. Jesus is “turning up the heat.” And all of those who have been following Jesus - the crowds, the women who supported his ministry with time and money, the disciples - they are all confronted with a decision in response to the increasing pressure: fight, flight, freeze. Or… or, another way. Staying with the trouble. Staying with Jesus. A path that might lead to transformation.

I’ve read the gospel accounts of the passion narrative, the last days of Jesus’ pre-resurrection life, so many times, preached on them, taught about them so many times. And yet somehow I never noticed until this week that in Matthew’s account - our focus today - and in Mark’s account, Jesus, while dining with the disciples at what we call The Last Supper, brings up Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial before he says the words that have become our sacrament of communion. In other words, Jesus says: I know that among you, my closest followers who I have spent years with, one of you will deny ever knowing me, and one of you will betray me into the hands of those who want to execute me - and then he shares with them the bread and cup, signs of his body, his blood, his life given for those very disciples. In Luke’s account, it’s the other way around - Jesus shares the new covenant of communion, and then, as things are wrapping up, talks about Peter’s pending denial. So Jesus is sitting with the knowledge of what will unfold, but the disciples are (mostly) blissfully ignorant. But here in Matthew, everyone has to stay at the table together with this painful, awful truth Jesus has just lobbed into their midst. Denial and betrayal are about to unfold - but right now they have to sit together still. Right now, they have to accept the unfathomable grace of God poured out literally and figuratively by Jesus, as he breaks the bread, as he passes the wine. Jesus turns up the pressure - and they just have to sit there.

Somehow, they made it through that meal, a meal that I can only imagine was so fraught with unspoken questions, accusations, explanations. But eventually, the pressure, the confrontation, the truth Jesus speaks to them - the disciples fall away. Judas departs, returning only to see Jesus handed over to the authorities. Peter will deny Jesus, just as Jesus said. But even before that, he and James and John escape into sleep, finding a way, perhaps like my technique, of pretending the conflict around them just isn’t happening. Maybe they can just sleep through it, and Jesus - and his words - will be easier to take the next day. The next day, though, only has more heartache in store.

I said on Sunday that we need to stay close to Jesus - but staying with Jesus is pretty hard on a night like this, isn’t it? Jesus always stays close to us. But can we stay close to Jesus? On this holy night, I wonder: how have we - how are we putting distance between ourselves and Jesus? When the path of discipleship gets to be too much, how do we try to turn down the heat, avoid the conflict, deflect the responsibility and work and risk and sacrifice that discipleship entails? And on this holy night, I wonder: how can we draw closer to Jesus? How can we stay? Stay with the trouble. Stay through the crisis. Stay through our doubts and fears. Stay through our failures. Stay through the discomfort. Stay even when staying means Jesus shining a light on everything we don’t want to examine in our lives and world. Jesus asks us: Will we stay?

Let’s linger, a little, in the garden, in the dark, in the midst of heartache, in the grieving. Even though we want to get to Easter, where it’s bright and sunny and pastel and joyful, let’s stay. Because our task, our purpose, the very meaning of discipleship is to be where Jesus is. We have to stay with him. And tonight, Jesus is at his most vulnerable, and asking if we can stay, if we can share with him and in him even though it is so hard, and so uncomfortable, and so demanding, and so full of grief and pain. Let’s stay. Amen.

Sermon for Palm/Passion Sunday, Year A, "Verse Twelve," Matthew 21:1-11

2023-04-16T12:03:00.004-05:00

Sermon 4/2/23

Matthew 21:1-11

Verse Twelve

I don’t usually give a message on Palm/Passion Sunday. My preaching professor in seminary, the late Dr. Charles Rice, always said that the combined events of celebrating the Triumphant Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem with palms and Hosannas and of remembering the Passion of Jesus Christ by concluding with the telling of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion was enough. The text preaches itself, he said. We don’t need to add more words. Over the years, I’ve found his words to ring true, and because of the vividness of the readings, and the juxtaposition of the crowds yelling, “Hosanna, God save us!” at the start of the worship service and then yelling, “Crucify, Crucify him!” by the end, I’ve found Palm/Passion Sunday to be one of the most meaningful worship services of the year. And so I’m not really giving a lengthy sermon today either, I promise! Just a little contextualizing, I think. The events of Palm Sunday and of the Passion of Jesus are as compelling as ever, but I want to help focus our attention just a bit.

Have any of you seen the TV show How I Met Your Mother? Really, the content of the show doesn’t matter - but I wanted to talk about a technique they use in one episode. In one episode, it begins with the whole gang at a restaurant, out to brunch, pausing for a photo that looks perfect - everyone is dressed up, everyone is smiling, and it seems to capture a happy moment. But then in the rest of the episode, we find out everything that has led up to that moment of the photo, and everything that happens afterwards, and let’s just say, it isn’t all so happy and lovely as the freeze-frame photo will look.

I’ve had that episode in my mind - that “freeze frame” image in my mind as I’ve read Matthew’s account of Palm Sunday. Imagine that the photo, the freeze frame of Palm Sunday is Jesus, riding into Jerusalem, crowds spreading their cloaks on the ground, or spreading branches out before him, a sign of honor, or shouting the greeting that is also a plea: Hosanna - God save us - blessed is the one who comes in God’s name - familiar lines of scripture that also signified that this crowd at least saw Jesus as a king, a savior, a messiah - an anointed one who would fix things, maybe work for the overthrow of Rome. It makes a vibrant, exciting image, and it has always left me feeling like I wanted to be part of that parade, part of that crowd, welcoming Jesus, crying, “Hosanna!”

But if we “zoom out” on the freeze frame photo of Palm Sunday, we find a more complicated story. The beginning several verses of our text from Matthew show Jesus and the disciples finalizing details for entering Jerusalem. Matthew’s account seems to involve a complicated arrangement of both a colt and a donkey, and Jesus inexplicably riding on both, because Matthew, God bless him, didn’t really understand the repetitive nature of Hebrew poetry, the scripture he is trying so hard to show Jesus fulfilling. But however he gets there, eventually Jesus is on a donkey - or two - headed into Jerusalem. It isn’t in Jerusalem, though, that the crowds are cheering him. It’s on the road heading into the city that Jesus and the disciples are accompanied by a crowd. Who are these people? We don’t really know. Were they Jesus followers already? Had they been listening to his teaching and preaching? Had they been healed by Jesus? Where are they coming from? Did some come from Jerusalem to meet and escort him in, or are these all out-of-towners? Whoever they are, it is this crowd who seems excited about Jesus, anxious for his saving power to be at work in their lives, even if we might wonder if they had the same idea as Jesus about what it meant to be saved.

But once Jesus gets into Jerusalem, the joyous parade changes in tone. In verse 10 we read that “the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’” The word “turmoil” there has some interesting definitions. Turmoil means shaken to and fro like a poised spear, shaken to the foundation. It is a word that describes earthquakes. It is concussion-causing agitation or disturbance. It’s a word used with accusation, spite, extortion, and blackmail. (1) The Jerusalem crowd is in turmoil - shaken to their core - when Jesus comes into town. They know him to be a prophet, and they don’t seem excited to greet him. When the parade hits Jerusalem, everything is different.

That’s where our text for today ends. But of course, that’s not where the story ends. Next comes verse 12. The Jerusalem crowds are shaken, and they should be, because in verse 12, a newly-arrived-to-town Jesus heads straight to the temple, and drives out all of those who are buying and selling in the temple, implying that those partaking in the long-established temple are nothing better than robbers in a house of prayer. Some - those with little standing in society - come to Jesus - the blind and lame come for healing, and children in the temple are still honoring Jesus with Hosannas. But those who “counted” in temple life - the chief priests and scribes - are less excited. Jesus “cleansing the temple” - as these events are called - happens on Palm Sunday too. It’s not part of the perfect parade picture - but it’s still the same day.

Palm Sunday sets up the contrasts - between who is with Jesus on the road, and who encounters Jesus in the city; between those on the margins of society who embrace Jesus, and those in the center of things who feel like they’ve been through an earthquake when they’re in his presence; between those who have little access to power structures, and those who are wielding great power at the expense of others. And Palm Sunday starts this sequence of events that just increases in intensity. After the cleansing of the temple, Jesus spends the next day teaching in parables and continuing to fight with the religious leaders. These parables are “lighter” parables about seed and forgiveness and the lost and found. They’re about preparedness, judgment, and people who miss Jesus’s message, miss what God is trying to say. Palm Sunday is the day that the pressure cooker of Holy Week starts to increase the temperature. Jesus is confrontational with everyone, even a fig tree that isn’t bearing fruit! Always confronting.

This Palm Sunday, this Holy Week, can we look beyond the freeze frame photo of the Palm parade? As always, our best strategy is to stick as close to Jesus as possible - on the margins, instead of at the center, in the places where power is shared insead of gathered up. Stick close to Jesus. In Holy Week, from Verse Twelve on, we see that sticking with Jesus is no easy task. Judas, Peter, the rest of the twelve, the religious leaders, others who are condemned by the same system of oppression that condemns Jesus - so many find it difficult to continue following Jesus when the palms stop waving. We might find it difficult too. And sometimes Jesus is confronting us - calling us out, calling us to accountability, calling us to repentance. Even so - stick close. Search the stories for those who stay with Jesus. Search for those who find their way back again. Search out the ways God keeps calling us. After the parade, then what? We’ve shouted our hosannas. Where will Jesus us find us next?

Amen.

Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.,

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29sei%2Fsqh&la=greek&can=e%29sei%2Fsqh0&prior=*)ieroso/luma&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0155:book=Matthew:chapter=21:verse=10&i=1#lexicon

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A, "I Belong to Laurel Kearns," 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

2023-02-09T10:40:00.003-05:00

Sermon 2/7/23

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

I Belong to Laurel Kearns

I belong to Laurel Kearns! I know probably a third of you are here just to figure out what I mean by that. So, aside from teaching you about my true gift - how to write a catchy sermon title - let me explain.

A few weeks ago when we had our chapel service during Spring orientation, I asked our new students - and all our worship attendees - to think about the people who had brought them to Drew. Who are the friends and family members, the mentors and guides who helped you discern a call, make a decision, who encouraged you in the midst of doubts, challenged you to move out of your comfort zone, who helped you see gifts that could be developed in seminary, who supported you with time, with words, with money, with love? I invited us to name those people. Even now, you might be naming those people in your head - the people who have shaped and supported us.

I’ve been thinking, too, about the ways we are shaped in academia, and how we talk about who influences us. I’m a student in the PhD program here, and when you apply for a PhD program, you typically include in your application who you want to work with at a particular school and why. And so when I was applying to come back to Drew, I reached out to Dr. Kearns before I applied and talked to her about what I wanted to study, and then when I submitted my application, I wrote about how I wanted to work with Dr. Kearns. I wrote about her reputation in the field of Christianity and Ecology, about what other people had said about her skills as a mentor, and I said that I wanted to come to Drew in particular so I could study with her, be one of her students, her advisee. There are many gifted faculty at Drew and I’ve been grateful to study with all of them, but your advisor in a PhD program has a huge impact on the kind of scholar you become. Prospective students consider with care which scholars they want to work with, who they want to align themselves with, what name their own work might be linked with. To adopt, for a moment, the language of Paul, “I belong to Laurel Kearns.” With care and thought, I’ve chosen to link my name to hers in my academic formation.

Indeed, who studied with whom is something we pay a lot of attention to in academia. I remember one of my TAs when I was an MDiv student here proudly writing on the board her sort of academic family tree - she was a student of Dr. Keller who was a student of, who was a student of, who was a student of. My TA was really proud of her academic lineage, of what it seemed to say about her scholarship - who she studied with. And I just took my “history and theory” comprehensive exam in December (hip hip hoorah!), and I spent a lot of time thinking about (and writing about) people like Marx and Weber and Durkheim and their legacies - how do contemporary environmental social theorists see their work as grounded in the work of classical sociologists? We might describe sociologists today still by their “schools of thought” - Marxists, Weberians, and so on. Scholars can be pretty insistent on and attached to whose scholarship we get linked to. It matters who we cite or who we don’t cite, and how we reflect or break away from the scholarship of our advisors, and whether we see ourselves as part of this school of thought or that one.

On the other hand, I think about the many pastors who have been part of my spiritual formation over my lifetime. And I think about the pastors who I followed, and who followed me in the churches I have pastored over the years. One of my colleagues was fond of saying that pastors always think the worst pastors are the ones who came right before and right after them. In other words, if I began serving at a church as pastor, I might soon learn about all the things my predecessor pastor was doing so wrong, and thinking about how I would fix them. Or once I left the pastorate of a church, I might hear about what my successors were doing, and wonder how quickly they would undo all of the good work I had done there. Kind of a cynical perspective, and thankfully, mostly doesn’t reflect my experience! Instead, I think what we hope for, anyway, is that although our ministry styles may differ, we’re still working toward the same purposes - nurturing, growing, tending a congregation as they seek to follow Jesus. We hope that our congregants focus more on following Jesus than on following any one particular pastor.

Our reading from 1 Corinthians touches on these themes. Back in chapter 1, Paul began with the imagery that he continues here in chapter 3. In chapter 1 he says that he’s heard reports that the faith community at Corinth has been arguing - members are divided. Specifically, it seems like the Corinthians are aligning themselves with particular teachers - with the mentors and guides who brought them into the church. “... Each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Then, in chapter 3, in today’s text, he argues that the Corinthians’ arguing over who has been taught by whom demonstrates that they are spiritual infants, not ready for the solid food of divine life with Christ. “When one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?” Paul asks. “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

So, according to Paul, it really doesn’t matter who shared the gospel with the Corinthians, as long as the gospel is received. It’s God who is doing the work anyway - not Paul, not Apollos. Paul can’t seem to resist pointing out that he is the sower while Apollos is just the one watering, and in verse 10 which we didn’t read he humbly tells us that he is “a skilled master builder” who laid the foundation that Apollos is building on, but still, that foundation is Christ, and as long as we belong to Christ, that’s the main thing. It doesn’t matter to Paul who shaped and influenced the Corinthians as long as they end up as fruitful followers of Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but the skeptic in me says this kind of unity in the body of Christ that Paul proclaims isn’t quite so easy. Sure, we belong to Christ. But doesn’t it matter what other “belongings” we claim? Does it not matter all who shaped us, what schools of thought we ascribe to, who taught us what, who we “belong” to, as long our first place of belonging is to Christ? The currently-under-way split in my own tradition (and Drew’s tradition) The United Methodist Church, with many disaffiliating, leaving for the new Global Methodist Church, suggests that just belonging to Christ hasn’t been enough. What does it mean to count on an identity in Christ if that can mean so very many different things? It seems any unity we proclaim as Christians can only be a very shallow and surface unity, one that comes at a cost of denying a lot of the specifics of what we’ve come to believe and why, and with whose help and guidance.

Methodist movement leader John Wesley wrestled with some of these questions in his oft-quoted sermon “Catholic Spirit.” His sermon is based on the exchange between Jehu and Jehonadab in 2 Kings 10:15: “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours? … If it is, give me your hand.” In it, Wesley argues that if, as the verse from 2 Kings suggests, our hearts are both “right,” even though we have different understandings of how we practice Christian faith, we can join hands in Christian unity. But if you really read his sermon text, you’ll soon discover that Wesley understands your “heart being true to mine as mine is to yours” to encompass a great deal. For Wesley, the question implies all of these other questions, (paraphrased by me): Do you believe in God and God’s perfection? Do you believe in Jesus? Is Jesus revealed in your soul? Does he dwell in your heart? Is your faith filled with the energy of love? Do you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind? Are you busy doing God’s will and work in the world? Do you serve God faithfully and reverently? Is your heart right toward your neighbor? Do you love all people without exception, even your enemies? Do you show your love with good works? Yes, Wesley has room in his heart for more than other Methodist-leaning Christians. Oneness in Christ was deeply important to him. But he had some very clear ideas about what it meant to belong together in one catholic spirit. Beneath a shared “belong to Christ” label, Wesley needed to belong to a shared set of values, a shared ethos, to find kinship and community in Christ.

It does matter who has shaped us, who we’ve learned from, whose wisdom we claim. I can agree with Paul that God is the one who nurtures growth in us. But, as my advisor Laurel Kearns would tell you, the kind of soil we’re nurtured in, and the quality of the water we’re watered with matter too! I belong to God: that’s the first claim that shapes my life, and sometimes I need Paul’s reminders to focus on following Jesus instead of following the followers of Jesus. But I’m thankful for the web of belonging that shapes me, for the shared values and ethos that shape the communities of Christ of which I am part, for those who have planted seeds in my heart and watered my soul. I belong to God, and I claim that belonging because of so many who have shown me a God of justice, compassion, love, and liberation. You belong to God. But who else do you belong to? I think it matters. Amen.

Sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Year A, "Here Is My Servant," Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

2023-01-09T09:56:00.000-05:00

Sermon 1/8/23

Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

Here Is My Servant

I’ve been thinking a lot about our Christian concept of call in the last couple of years. One of the most important things my mom taught me about faith was that God calls all of us. Being called by God isn’t something that’s just for pastors, for preachers. No, she reminded me often that everybody is called - it’s just a matter of figuring out what it is that you’re called to do. So, I was always on the lookout for my call from God. Mom never told us being called by God would look like any one thing, and indeed, my siblings and I took very different paths. But, as seems to be somewhat of the family way, I slowly realized I was called to pastoral ministry. And I went to seminary, and I pastored churches for 17 years. And during my years of pastoring, I’ve loved talking to other people about listening for and finding and answering their call from God. I love helping people discern what God is up to in their lives.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if the way we’ve talked about being called by God in the church has been too confusing, or too narrow, too limiting for people. Not everyone has had the same journey with “call” as I have had. My brother Tim, for example, really struggled to find a career path. These days, he works in international banking doing something I don’t understand at all. But I know he would never describe his work as a “call.” And with my other brothers working in higher education and in vocational rehabilitation, Tim sometimes feels like the odd one out. He’s never felt like God was calling him to a particular kind of work. I worry that we’ve tied “call” and “career” too closely together. “Careers” as we think of them today weren’t really a thing in the scripture, anyway. Nobody was picking college majors in Jesus’s day.

And then there’s me: I was pastoring in the local church, but I’m not anymore. I loved a lot about being a pastor, and the people I served were wonderful, but eventually some of the stresses and strains of pastoring started to outweigh the joys. I’m reminded of theologian Frederick Buechner’s words about vocation - words I bet my Uncle has shared with you at some point - that the “place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” (from Wishful Thinking.) I certainly wasn’t miserable in my life as a pastor. But neither was I finding my deep gladness any longer. Do calls from God end? Do they get replaced with a new one? When I decided to go back to school to work on my PhD, I wasn’t necessarily feeling called by God to that particular path. But I did think it might bring me some deep joy to be in school again. Is that “enough” to “count” as a call? Or is it only a call from God if we feel we are being pointed by God to take a very specific path?

As it would happen, a couple of the thinkers I’ve encountered in my PhD work have helped me think about how we’re called in some new ways. My focus is on Christianity and Animals. Dr. David Clough, a scholar in the field, writes that the although humans are more like nonhuman animals than we like to think, what sets human apart might be our vocation - our call. And for Clough, our call from God, our purpose, is laid out for us right in chapter 1 of Genesis: we’re made in God’s image - and being God’s image in the world is our purpose! (1) Imagine how your life would be shaped if you focused all your attention on trying to be the best reflection of God in the world you could be! It wouldn’t matter so much what career you chose, although there are certainly some careers that might make it easier for us than others to try to reflect God in our work. Instead, all aspects of our lives could be fulfilling our call from God. Dr. Christopher Carter is another scholar whose work I really admire. As he thinks about the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals, he says that our human task is to figure out what it means to be human and that doing that figuring out takes practice. We have to practice being the kinds of humans God means for us to be. (2) There’s something comforting to me about that idea - that we don’t always do a great job of being the humans-created-in-God’s-image we’re meant to be, but that we can practice, work at it, get better at it - better at loving, caring, growing, and reflecting God’s image. So - what if the biggest call from God that we need to hear (again and again) is the call to be God’s image in the world? And what if we spend our lives practicing and practicing this work until we can say that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, and really mean it. That’s a call that we won’t outgrow, a call that doesn’t fit for just one season of our lives.

And it is, in fact, the call of our baptism. Martin Luther, the 16th century excommunicated Catholic priest who was a leader in what we call the Protestant Reformation, taught an understanding of the scripture and the meaning of baptism that we still hold called “the priesthood of all believers.” Luther argued that Christians didn’t need to rely on a mediator, a priest, to go between them and God. Christians had direct access to God through their own faith life. And for Luther, it is baptism that provides the marker of our relationship with God - the entry point, in a sense. In baptism, we are all made “priests” of sorts, not because we will all be leaders of congregations and preside over the sacraments, but because, as 1 Peter 2:9 says, “we can show others the goodness of God.” God calls us to service and discipleship in the baptismal waters. In baptism, we’re reminded that we are created in God’s image. Baptism is a way of answering God’s call to a life of faith, and answering “yes” to God’s invitation of grace.

Today, we remember that Jesus was baptized too. Jesus’s baptism has always been kind of puzzling. If Jesus is God’s child, is God, is without sin, why does he need to be baptized? And Jesus never really explains to John why Jesus has to be baptized - we see that in our reading from Matthew today. His “it’s proper, it makes things right” doesn’t really answer all my questions anyway. In fact, even the gospel writers seem to me a little puzzled by the scene (hence their including John asking the question they and we are all asking: why does Jesus need to get baptized?), but they know it is really important. It marks the beginning of his ministry. It serves as the dividing line between his life before, which we know so little about, and his life after - his preaching, teaching, death, and resurrection. Can remembering Jesus’s baptism help us understand our own baptism? How can it help us as we ponder our purpose, our call?

I think of our reading today from the prophet Isaiah. In our passage, God is describing a servant, full of wisdom and justice, who will help Israel, God’s people, in a time of great need. This servant is upheld by God, chosen by God, one in whom God delights. The servant is full of God’s spirit. The servant works to bring forth justice, persists in the midst of struggles, and pursues justice even when things are challenging. God leads the servant, and sets them as a light to the people. The servant works to open the eyes that are blind, to bring prisoners out of dungeons and darkness. Through the servant, God does new things.

We tend to see passages like this as descriptions of Jesus - whether because Isaiah was predicting the future (even while he certainly believed he was just writing about his own context, and a hoped for earthly leader amidst the war and chaos of his time), or because we at least read back into these texts and see in Isaiah’s hope for a kind of ideal leader a description that only Jesus could fulfill so completely. But either way, I think when we read this description of God’s servant, by seeing this is clearly “about Jesus,” we miss how it is about us too. Because if this text is only describing Jesus, it can’t possibly be describing something we might need to fulfill through lives of discipleship. If only Jesus can be the kind of leader the prophets envisioned, then our discipleship isn’t so important - no one is depending on us.

Instead though, again and again in the gospels, Jesus asks us to follow him not from a distance, awed by his mighty deeds that we could never do; no, Jesus asks us to follow closely and learn how to do everything he does. Jesus shares power. Jesus says we can do what he does and more. Jesus wants us, calls us, to be like him. And I think that we can be like Jesus because Jesus is like us. I think Jesus is baptized because we are baptized. Jesus is God-with-us - that’s what we’ve just celebrated in Christmas. And being baptized with us is another way of being with us, joining us together in one purpose, one call. If Jesus is God incarnate, then we are God imaged. Jesus shows us God in the flesh and then asks us to do the same for one another. Jesus show us the goodness of God, and then we spend our lives showing the goodness of God to others.

I’m about halfway through my PhD program, and I’m still not sure what particular path I’m taking - if I’ll teach, or work for an organization, or even a church again, or somehow figure out a way to go back to school for an 89th time. But I still trust my mom’s advice. We’re all called. We’re called to follow Jesus and be as much like him as we can. We’re called to reflect God’s image to the world. We’re called to show God’s goodness to others. It will take practice. But that’s what being human is all about, and Jesus promises to join us in our work, being like us, so we can be like him. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Clough, On Animals Vol 1: Systematic Theology
Cite Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food

Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "The Life that Really is Life," 1 Timothy 6:6-19

2022-12-28T11:24:00.001-05:00

*I'm quite(!) delayed in posting this sermon, but I'm finally getting to it.

Sermon 9/25/22

1 Timothy 6:6-19

The Life That Really Is Life

Our text for today ends with a phrase I find so compelling, so thought-provoking. We’ll come back to what leads into it, but for now, we’re beginning with the ending. The author, a mentor writing to encourage a younger, emerging ministry leader, finishes this section with these words, this aimed-for conclusion: “so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” “Take hold of the life that really is life.” This is the goal. Now we have to figure out how our mentor tells us we disciples should get there. The phrase “life that really is life” implies that there is life that isn’t really life, and that we can, without realizing it, settle for this other life, this non-real-life life. Timothy’s mentor suggests that he knows how to tell the difference between non-real-life, and life that is really life, and how, then, to claim the life that really is life.

So, do you have hold of the life that really is life? A couple of things pop into my mind. First, I think of great movie from the 1990s, The Truman Show. How many of you have seen that? One of Jim Carrey’s better films, the premise is that this man, Truman, unbeknownst to him, has been the star of a TV show his whole life. Everything in his life is a fake, so people could enjoy watching his life unfold for entertainment. Eventually, Truman realizes that his life isn’t really real life. And although the TV studio creator tries to convince him that this “fake” world Truman lives in is better, safe, less hurtful than life in the “real world,” Truman would rather take his changes. He doesn’t want a glossy masquerade of life, even if it is easier. He wants real life.

Another piece of media: One episode of the TV show Scrubs featured a beautiful song by Colin Hay called “Waiting for my Real Life to Begin.” In the song, the narrator imagines themselves in different scenes - just about to leave on a ship and sail away, just about to slay a dragon and prove the hero. He’s just waiting, waiting for the “just about” to happen, waiting for real life to begin. But in the meantime, the person to whom he’s singing keeps urging the singer to live in the now. The lyrics go: “And you say, be still my love / Open up your heart / Let the light shine in / But don't you understand / I already have a plan / I'm waiting for my real life to begin. And you say, just be here now / Forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin / Just let me throw one more dice / I know that I can win / I'm waiting for my real life to begin. In this case, the sense we get as listeners is that while the narrator is waiting for his “real life” to begin, his actual real life, including an actual real person who loves him, is just passing him by. In both these examples, there is, as there is in our scripture text, a sense that there’s real life to be had, but that there are also many ways we settle for lives made up of illusions. How can we take hold of the life that really is life?

Timothy’s mentor has some ideas for him about taking hold of this life that really is life. A key, I think, is in the verse first of our reading. We experience great gain in life when we pursue godliness - which means a life marked by devotion, piety, attention to God; and we experience great gain when we cultivate contentment in our life. Godliness and contentment. Godliness isn’t a very common word for us to use anymore to describe ourselves, or others, and I think the strangeness of the world can make it feel like something we can’t pursue or achieve. Something meant only for holy and pious people - not us, not regular, ordinary people. But I see godliness as immersing ourselves in our relationship with God, tending to our relationship with God, tending to our spiritual lives. Of course, being part of a faith community is a way we can tend to our spiritual lives. The author wraps up godliness with words like faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. I think it is a way we connect with God and with one another. How are we tending to our souls on a regular basis so that we are forming our characters, practicing love until it is a habit? Godliness is just that, I think: a habit. We’re always making habits of actions and behaviors. But what actions, what behaviors are we making into habits? Godliness is a habit of waiting on God, listening for God’s voice, seeking after God, through prayer, through worship, through being part of a community of faith, through loving like Jesus loves. And godliness, our author says, is part of the path to the life that really is life.

The other part - and that part where our author really spends his time, is contentment. To experience great gain, to really live, we must be content. I think we hear the word content and we think “happy,” but contentment is something a little deeper than we usually mean - or achieve - by chasing happiness. Contentment is deep satisfaction. It is a feeling that you already have everything you need to be satisfied with your life. Contentment means you aren’t ruled by what you want, what you think you need. It means your focus isn’t on getting more, and more, and more. Instead, contentment is a deep feeling of enough. Not just barely enough. But enough that your life feels quite full, complete. Content.

Ironically, the more stuff we have, the more money we have, the richer in things we are, the more difficult it is to experience contentment. That’s what our mentor warns about repeatedly in our text. “We brought nothing into the world, and we take nothing out.” “Those who want to be rich are tempted and trapped by senseless and harmful desires that lead to destruction. “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” “In their eagerness to be rich, many wander away from faith.” “The rich shouldn’t be haughty.” “Don’t depend on riches.” “Only what God gives us makes us rich.” “Be rich in good works. Be generous. Be ready to share. Store up eternal treasure.” I count nearly 8 different sentences in this passage warning us that collecting things and money are more likely to lead us away from contentment than toward it. New Testament scholar A.K.M. Adam says that “the insatiable appetite for wealth narrows [our] field of vision; when [we gaze] fixedly at wealth, [we] cannot look around at [our] neighbors who demonstrate that riches are not necessary for abundant life.” (1) Instead of increasing our options, the pursuit of wealth limits our abilities when it comes to our ability to draw closer to God and one another, our ability to serve God and neighbor with our whole hearts. Whatever energy we spend seeking after accumulating more stuff, more wealth, more status, is heart and soul that we can’t spend seeking after God and God’s ways. Whether we consider ourselves wealthy or not, most of us are sure we’d be happier if we could at least get a little more. But the relentless pursuit of a little more and a little more means that we’re never content. It’s never enough. And if we’re never content? Then have we ever taken hold of the life that is really life?

We can read the mentor’s words to Timothy as I think they are meant to be - words a loving, wise, older friend or relative or guide wants to impart to a young person, one getting started, perhaps, in the next phase of life, so anxious to help them understand what’s really important in life, so wishing to help them thrive, to find joy. (2) The mentor wants Timothy to experience the life that really is life. What wisdom would you share with a young person just starting out about what really matters in life? What would you tell them is the most important thing to spend your time, your heart, your life pursuing? What would you tell them has brought you the deepest, most lasting joy? What would you tell them has brought you closest to God? And then, friends, are we spending our days following our own advice? Let us, too, set our hope, set our hearts, on God, who richly provides us with all we need to be content, and with that strong foundation, let us take hold of the life that really is life. Amen.

A.K.M. Adam, “Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:6-19,” The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-1-timothy-66-19
H/T to Sunggu Yang for this line of thinking, “Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:6-19,” The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-1-timothy-66-19-5

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "God is Change," Exodus 32:7-14

2022-09-07T20:54:00.002-05:00

Sermon 9/6/22

Exodus 32:7-14

God is Change*

I’m not sure our scripture text for today has made it onto many “favorite Bible passage” lists. I know it is not on mine! In this text, we see God’s reaction to what’s going on at the bottom of the mountain, the mountain where God has been talking to Moses, giving the law that will govern the people that God has just rescued from slavery in Egypt and led to “freedom.” What’s going on down at the bottom of the mountain, of course, is that the people, feeling abandoned by God and by Moses, come to Moses’s brother Aaron lamenting, “We don’t know what’s happened to that Moses guy who we’ve been following. He ditched us without explanation. So, please, make us some gods who will lead us, because we seem to have been left by the God we were following.” Aaron complies, and makes a golden calf, crafted from the donations of gold jewelry from all the people, perhaps items that were symbols of their enslavement. He declares the calf to represent the gods who have redeemed Israel, and the people celebrate with a festival day.

Our text begins with God realizing what’s going on at the bottom of the mountain. God tell Moses: “Quick, get back down the mountain. Your people who you brought out of Egypt are acting perversely. They’ve quickly abandoned the path I set for them. So, go back down to them, these stiff-necked people, and leave me alone, so I can hang out and be full of wrath and plan how I’m going to consume them all. Don’t worry, though, I’ll still make you into a great nation.” (1)

Moses, though, doesn’t take God up on this offer. Instead, as is Moses’s habit, he settles in for a good argument with God. Moses makes sure God remembers whose people these are. “God, why does your wrath burn against your people, the people you brought out of Egypt?” And Moses flatters God into wanting to save face in front of other nations: “Hey God, you don’t want the Egyptians to say you were a bad, evil God, right?” And Moses reminds God of history: “Hey, God, remember Abraham and Issac and Israel and your promises to them?” And Moses tells God: “You can change your mind about this.” And God does. God changes God’s mind. And the author of our text clearly takes a point of view - God changes God’s mind about God’s people.

Like I said, I’m not sure how many people count this text as a favorite passage, because it is kind of troubling, isn’t it? Although there are plenty of biblical passages that mention God’s wrath, God’s anger, God wanting to punish, I know I’d mostly rather think about God’s love, God’s peace, God’s call to community. And here, God’s wrath and punishment isn’t even directed at enemies of God’s people, where we could at least get some satisfaction about seeing our enemies get their due. No, here God wants to ditch God’s people and start fresh with some new people for Moses, and Moses, the human Moses, has to talk the God of the Universe out of it, talk God down, calm God down, remind God of God’s promises. Troubling.

So troubling, in fact, that many of the commentaries I looked at don’t really mention the content of our passage today in articles meant to be about our passage. Several commentaries focus on the “golden calf” scene of verses 1-6, even though they aren’t a part of the lectionary reading. The commentaries focus on our human sinfulness and propensity for idolatry. They have very little to say about God’s response, God’s behavior. Some scholars sympathize with the fear that the people probably felt, the trauma they’ve endured, and suggest a gracious response toward the people in our preaching to all that they’ve been through. But what they don't do is address how God responds in this text of ours, how Moses must plead with God for mercy. In fact, many commentaries don’t directly address God’s response in this text at all. I can only conclude that they avoid mentioning it because they don’t know what to do with a God who doesn’t fit the picture of God we have. Best just not to think about it.

I can relate. I don’t think it ever gets easy to have our picture of someone be troubled by conflicted information, much less our picture of God. God is supposed to be our Rock. Dependable. Never wavering. The One on whom we can count no matter what. But what if God is inconsistent? What if God changes on us? How can we depend on a God like that? This isn’t a new question, of course, and the scriptures, naturally, don’t have a single answer. In contrast to our reading today, for example, 1 Samuel includes a verse which explicitly states: “[God] will not recant or change God’s mind; for God is not a mortal, that God should change God’s mind,” (1 Sam 15:29) almost implying that even questioning such is ludicrous. Many traditions proclaim that “God is the same yesterday today and forever,” a claim based on a verse from Hebrews (13:8) about Jesus. And God’s Immutability - God’s unchanging nature - is a teaching that is still a part of many Christian traditions.

Still, ever since I took Process Theology with Dr. Keller during my time as an MDiv student some years ago, I feel like I’ve embraced a God who changes, that I desire a God who changes, who is responsive, who responds to the world, perhaps even responds to me, not with rigidity but fluidity. Passages like this, though, make me wonder if I’m really so ready for a Changing God as I say. Because this God doesn’t just change. God “relents” from wanting to destroy, to kill, to punish, to wipe us out. “And God changed their mind about the disaster they planned to bring on their people,” we read. Just barely shy of saying, “And God repented.” That’s how we often describe repentance, isn’t it? A change of direction? A change of mind? Reversing the course of our mind, our thoughts, our actions? Can we depend on a God who changes their mind?

I think our impulse - my impulse at least, and maybe that of the commentaries I read this week - is to figure out how to let God off the hook of these difficult questions. But Moses never lets God off the hook here. Moses holds God to the high standard promised by God. Moses demands that God be all that God has promised to be. Although Moses has his own hot rage to reckon with later in this very chapter, Moses doesn’t hesitate to question God, demand of God, expect from God. Perhaps we can give ourselves permission to keep God on the hook, and ask God our toughest questions, and remind God of God’s promises to us.

And then, we can follow God’s example. One of God’s repeated complaints about the people is that they are stiff-necked, or hard-hearted. Those sound to me like complaints about our unwillingness to be moved, to be changed. God changes. God relents. God, dare we say, repents. And every time I see a notation made about God changing their mind in the scripture, it is in the direction of mercy. When God changes their mind about a course of action, it is in order to forgive after all, to save after all, to continue a relationship after all, to offer grace after all. Do we change? And when we change, are we changing in the direction of mercy? If we’re meant to follow God, to imitate God, to try to pattern our lives after God, and God is a God who changes, then perhaps our biggest task is to learn how to change too. To relent. To soften our hard hearts. To repent, too. God doesn’t ask us to do what God doesn’t already do, already demonstrates for us. God changes. Will we?

Friends, may we, like Moses, be persistent with God, wrestling with God for every drop of mercy promised, for every measure of grace - not only for ourselves, but for all who need it. And then let us do likewise: let us change, becoming people of mercy and grace, deeply moved by the world in which we live.

“And then … God changed their mind.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

* The title for this sermon comes from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

Rolf Jacobson makes note of this “your people” focus in “Commentary on Exodus 32:7-14,” The Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24-3/commentary-on-exodus-327-14

Sermon, "Discipleship by the Sea: Encounter," Mark 14:26-28, 16:7

2022-08-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

Sermon 8/14/22

Mark 14:26-28, 16:7

Encounter

Pastor Beckie has shared with me that you’ve been in the midst of a worship series focused on “Discipleship by the Sea,” and she invited me to take up this week’s theme: encounter. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a language nerd - I’m really fascinated by the meaning of words and how words can have similar meanings but with slight differences that communicate a different tone. And so when I read this week’s theme: Encounter - I was intrigued. I think of “encounter” as a simple meeting between different people or groups. An encounter. But I looked up different meanings of the word, and indeed, there are some nuances that set the broader word apart from the word “meeting.” Although “encounter” can mean just a casual meeting, it often has the sense of unexpectedness. If you encounter someone in your travels, the implication is that the meeting was unexpected or unplanned. The movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind might pop into your head - encounters with alien life would certainly fall for most into the unexpected category. “Encounter” can also imply an unexpected situation that is difficult or in some way hostile. For example, “we encountered an issue” suggests that this unexpected issue is not good, not a desired encounter. (1) Have you had these kinds of encounters? What comes to my mind is a time I was walking at Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville, and I encountered a porcupine, walking directly on the footpath coming toward me. This encounter met all of the potential meanings - an unexpected meeting that was difficult, perhaps hostile. To make things worse, a runner coming from the opposite direction failed to notice the porcupine, and kept barrelling closer to me, completely oblivious, which in turn was causing the porcupine to pick up its pace. Thankfully, at the last minute, the porcupine veered off the path and into the woods. Phew! An unexpected, undesirable encounter.

So what does it mean when we think about encounters in our life and discipleship with Jesus. Hopefully, something less prickly than a surprised porcupine! Our scripture texts, short snippets, give us just a glimpse at encounters. In fact, both texts primarily refer to anticipated but not yet actual encounters. In Mark 14, we find ourselves in the midst of the passion narrative - during what we call Holy Week. It’s what we call Maundy Thursday. Jesus and the disciples are at the Mount of Olives. They’ve shared, earlier, in the last supper. They’ve sung a hymn together, possibly a traditional Passover Psalm, like Psalm 114 that talks about “the seas turning back, rivers fleeing, rocks turning into pools of water, and flint becoming springs.” (2) And now, Jesus says to them: “You’re all going to desert me. It’s like what is written: When someone strikes the shepherd, the sheep scatter.” This time, this encounter with Jesus takes an unexpected turn. The disciples are undoubtedly shocked at Jesus’s words. We should note, too: although Jesus eventually singles out Peter and Judas for their impending denial and betrayal, Jesus calls out all the disciples, suggesting none of them will stick by his side consistently. But still, despite Jesus’s words, the most shocking part of all, perhaps, when we really let sink in what Jesus has just said to them is what he says next: “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” There’s a future encounter that Jesus is planning, despite the fact that the disciples are about to abandon him now and he knows it. When things get hard, the disciples will not stick with Jesus, and he knows it, and still - he’s looking forward to what comes next, what comes beyond their darkest moments, to a season of return and recommitment. They’re about to abandon Jesus, but what is on his mind is a future encounter, where they will understand better what he’s been talking about, and where, in some ways, their true discipleship will really begin.

I don’t know about you: but I’ll confess that when I think I’m about to be deserted, betrayed, abandoned by people, the last thing that’s on my heart to do is tell them how great it will be when we meet up in the future. This year was my twenty-fifth class reunion. I couldn’t attend, but it made me think a lot about how I feel when I run into various people from my past, people I haven’t seen in decades. Have you had that happen? You notice someone in the grocery store or on the street that you haven’t seen in years, and you have to decide: do you go over and say hello, or do you pretend you didn’t see them? Your response might depend on what your last interaction was like. I have some high school classmates where I’ll admit, I’d probably skulk away and try to remain unnoticed if I saw them!

But that’s not the way of Jesus with his disciples. Hours before they leave Jesus devastatingly abandoned, he’s already planning on when he’ll see them next, promising a future encounter. And then this promise is echoed again at his resurrection. The women, encountering the unexpected - the empty tomb - are greeted by messengers in white who tell them to let all the other disciples know that they’ll be encountering Jesus again, in Galilee, just as he promised. In their darkest moments of grief, just like in their darkest moments of desertion and betrayal, Jesus makes sure the disciples know that what seems like the worst thing isn’t the last thing, it isn’t the end at all. There are future encounters with Jesus yet to come. What a relief! What a comfort! What a promise!

Friends, there are so many places where we encounter messages like, “Last chance - act now” and “Time’s running out” and “Once in a lifetime opportunity.” Maybe there are some things where those dire messages are true, and we’ll never have the chance again to take some opportunity or make things right. But that’s not the way of Jesus. Jesus says, “I already know you’re going to desert me. Not just Peter, not just Judas. All of you. And even so: this is not our last encounter. We’ll meet again. There are more encounters to come. I’ll extend an invitation again.” Of course, even though Jesus promises more encounters, we don’t have to keep taking the second chance. We can act now. We can show up for Jesus right now, commit to discipleship now. A life lived as a follower of Jesus - that’s an abundant life worth living. But if we’ve had some encounters with the living God where we weren’t our best; if we have promised to follow Jesus with our whole hearts only to abandon him when things were hard; if we’ve missed out on Jesus’s call to us, then take heart. Even at our worst, Jesus promises we’ll meet again, and again, and always. Amen.

Definitions from google.com
Imagery from Marcia McFee, Worship Design Studio (designer of the sermon series of which this sermon is part.)

Sermon, "CreatureKind," Isaiah 11:1-9

2022-07-31T18:12:00.003-05:00

Sermon 7/31/22

Isaiah 11:1-9

CreatureKind

I’m thankful for Pastor Joyce’s invitation not just to be with you in worship today, but also, more specifically, to talk to you about what led me to become a vegan and to commit to a focus on animals in my studies. I first became a vegetarian in college, years before I became a pastor, but in all of my years of ministry, I’ve never actually focused on why I’ve chosen the path of veganism in a sermon, and so Pastor Joyce’s invitation was a welcome request to think about sharing a passion in this particular way. Because indeed, for me, veganism is a spiritual commitment, and a part of expression of faith.

Before I dive into this topic, though, I want to try to set you at ease. Food - what we choose to eat and why - that’s a really intimate topic. Even though we all eat, every day, for a variety of reasons, what we choose to eat is a topic that has been burdened with a lot of expectation and pressure from society and culture, from our well-meaning friends and family, and from ourselves. We wrap together what we eat with what we’re worth. We judge the food choices of others and we certainly judge ourselves. We struggle with disordered eating. And we blanket food with shame. I want to be clear that although I’m sharing about my journey, and how my relationship with food and animals is part of my faith commitments, I do not seek to shame or judge anyone who makes different choices than me. Food is a necessary part of life. But food, nourishment, is also a gift from God, and a source of joy, a blessing of community. My hope is that we all might experience food as just those things.

I first became interested in animal ethics when I was in high school. My older brother Jim had recently become a vegetarian. I was curious about his decision, and he told me he knew he wasn’t willing to kill his own food, and if he wasn’t willing to do the work of bringing meat to his plate, he didn’t want to eat it. He felt like we, particularly in the US, were disconnected from where our food comes from. I kept thinking about that, and watched him shift what he was eating, and then when I was a freshman in college, I followed in his footsteps and made the switch. My initial motivations, then, weren’t particularly spiritual in nature, but I quickly started to think about my decision in terms of my faith, because that’s what I tried to do with all of my life decisions: consider what God was calling me to do.

The Bible has lots of different messages about animals. In the creation accounts in Genesis, God directs people to eat plants, but not animals. After the flood though, God says people can eat animals too. There are many laws described in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, that give specific instructions for animal sacrifice as an offering to God, or for animals that are off limits to eat, considered unclean for one reason or another. Animals are included in Sabbath rest. In the text from Isaiah we shared today, the prophet imagines a future of peace, symbolized by loving relationships between animals and humans and predators and prey. When the prophet Jonah is sent to Nineveh to warn them of God’s judgment, humans and animals alike engage in acts of repentance. In the gospels, Jesus multiplies fish and loaves for the crowds, and directs his followers on fishing practices. He talks about the value of birds and flowers to God. Paul writes about the whole creation waiting with eager longing for redemption. Peter has a vision where God tells him he can eat animals that Peter thought unclean, for the sake of building relationships with new Gentile followers of Jesus. There’s no single message about animals in the Bible. But, they’re obviously important, since they’re mentioned so frequently. And God created them and called them good. So what can the role of animals in the BIble tell us? What can we conclude about our relationship with animals?

Several years ago, I was presenting a sermon series on women in the Bible and I was preaching about Deborah and Jael in the book of Judges. Jael, if you aren’t familiar, is the woman who helps Deborah and the Israelites to victory by driving a tent peg through the skull of the sleeping military commander who was taking refuge in her tent. A very pleasant story. And I was struggling to figure out what to say about this memorable passage: what “lesson” did I want people to take away. And one of my colleagues reminded me that my task is to make sure I’m sharing the “good news” in the text, wherever it is to be found. That simple reminder helped me a lot that Sunday, and has helped me a lot in my preaching life since then. When we read a text, where’s the good news - the gospel - the message of Jesus? Where’s the message of God’s unconditional love? Where’s the transformational power of God’s reign on earth, right here and now? Where’s the good news?

When I come to the scriptures thinking about animals, I have, at heart, the same question. Where’s the good news for animals? Is there good news for animals? If animals aren’t included in good news, why are they left out? And if they are, what does that look like? The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, actually had something to say about my questions. Surprising to even to this staunch United Methodist, I learned just in the last couple of years that John Wesley spent significant time exploring the place of animals in the New Creation, the reign of God, in a sermon dedicated to the topic titled, “The General Deliverance.” Wesley insists that creatures have a place in heaven, where they, like human creatures, experience renewal and restoration. He writes,

The whole brute creation will then, undoubtedly, be restored, not only to the vigour, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that ... The liberty they then had will be completely restored, and they will be free in all their motions … No rage will be found in any creature, no fierceness, no cruelty, or thirst for blood. (1)

So, Wesley argues that: all animals are restored completely to their full selves in the new earth - not even just to the form and life they had in paradise, but something even better than that. They’ll be freed from both being recipients and perpetrators of cruelty. The suffering animals experience on earth will cease to exist in the new earth and heavens, and animals will experience “happiness suited to their state” “without end.” Further, he says that animals receive recompense for all they once suffered, and they’ll enjoy perpetual happiness.Thus, Wesley says, since God includes animals in God’s plan of redemption, we too ought to show mercy to animals. We should “soften our hearts towards the meaner creatures, knowing that the Lord careth for them.”

In light of Welsey’s understanding of the place of animals in eternity, part of God’s redeemed creation, for me, part of the way I embrace God’s reign and redemption now is by seeking a life for animals now that mirrors what Wesley hopes for their eternal future. Any way we can embody God’s eternal reign in the here and now is what I think the good news of the gospel is all about. If God plans on redeeming all creation, including animals, and if God shows mercy even to animals, we can try to enact now as much as possible (on earth as in heaven, we might say) the vision we believe God has for the future. For me, veganism - eliminating all animal products from my diet, is a way that I try to embrace God’s reign, so that all creation might thrive now.

In my school work and in my work with a Christian animal advocacy agency called CreatureKind, I’ve also been coming to understand more and more how concern for animals deeply ties in with my concern for people, particularly people on the margins. Rev. Dr. Chris Carter, a United Methodist pastor and professor in California, talks about how the systems of domination that try to show a sharp divide between humans and nonhuman animals are the same systems that also make a sharp divide between the ideal human: white heterosexual men in our culture - and humans who don’t “measure up”: women, people of color, and anyone else who isn’t the white male ideal. In fact, often, one of the ways people have belittled humans who “don’t measure up” is by comparing them to animals, animalizing them, trying to take away their humanity. I hope it is clear that this whole system - a system that creates an ideal human image that includes only certain races and genders and classes and types of people, and then makes everyone else less-than - is far outside of God’s vision for us, and for the earth. Instead, in love, God creates us in God’s own image, a part of the whole creation, all of which God calls good, and all of which God longs to see flourish and thrive. And so, for me, when I commit to compassion for animals, I’m also recommitting to pursue justice and right relationship with my human neighbors too. The deeper I dig, the more I see my commitment to animals as part of my practice of faith.

I return to our text from Isaiah 11:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

9 They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain; (NRSV)

This beautiful vision is a text we normally hear at Advent. Perhaps we can only embrace such a vision of the future like Isaiah’s near Christmas, when our hearts are full and we’re anticipating welcoming the Christ Child. But I wonder: what is your vision of how things will be in eternity? And, if we pray that God’s will was done on earth as in heaven, what can you start doing now to bring God’s reign ever closer to earth? However each of us answers those questions, let’s do our best to be about the work of making our dreams with God a reality in the here and now. Amen.

Wesley, John. “The General Deliverance.” Sermons on Several Occasions Vol. V. New York: Ezekiel Cooper and John Wilson, 1806.
Excerpts drawn from a blog post of mine, https://www.facebook.com/unitedmethodistanimaladvocates/posts/176050987624111.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "We've Heard of You," Colossians 1:1-14

2022-07-12T08:43:00.005-05:00

Sermon 7/10/22

Colossians 1:1-14

We’ve Heard of You

“I’ve heard of you.” That simple sentence can be construed in some very different ways, ways that are completely opposite in implied meaning. When we say we’ve heard of someone, we can kind of imbue that with a positive or a negative meaning, can’t we? Oh, I’ve heard of you - as in, “I’ve heard all the bad things about you, I’ve heard about what you’ve done, or what you haven’t done that you were supposed to do. Your reputation - your bad reputation - precedes you.” Maybe even now you’re thinking of someone that would make you say - or at least think - oh, I’ve heard of you in this tone.

Or, “Oh, I’ve heard about you! People who know you speak well of you. I’ve wanted to meet you. I’m excited to meet you.” Can you think of someone you were excited to get to meet, to know, because of all that you’d heard about them in advance? Whose good reputation precedes them? Whether or not the stories we tell about each other might cross the line from simply sharing our experiences to something more akin to plain old gossip, the reality is that we hear lots of things about lots of people, sometimes before we even meet them, don’t we? And what we hear of someone fills us with expectations about how our encounters with them will go. Sometimes our expectations are off base - but nonetheless, if someone has a reputation - good or bad - that we’ve heard of in advance - we form impressions of those people in our hearts and minds.

When Pastor Anna asked me to preach this week, I looked over the lectionary texts for this Sunday - the schedule of scripture readings suggested for the Church year, and I was drawn immediately to our text from Paul’s* letter to the Colossians. In his letter to the community of believers at Colossae, he starts as most of his letters start, with prayer and thanksgiving for the faithful congregation he’s addressing. “In our prayers for you,” our text begins, “We always thank God for you.” What particularly caught my attention was the repeated focus on who has heard of what in this passage. Paul starts by saying, “we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus; we have heard of the love you have for the saints.” (Saints were and are, really, anyone made holy by their relationship with Christ.) And then he says that the Collosians have heard of the hope that is laid up for them in eternity. Here, Paul means not just something they can claim in an afterlife, as he’ll explain later in this letter. Rather, Followers of Jesus claim the hope of eternity in the present, because they die and live with Christ. (1) The Colossians have heard of - and hope in - and experience a taste of eternity in the now. Paul goes on to say that since the day the Colossians heard of the gospel, the good news, their lives have been bearing fruit. In other words, there are tangible results from their discipleship, from their hearing the gospel. They heard and, and they are living it. Finally, Paul says that since the day he and his team heard of the faithfulness, of the love in the Spirit, of the fruit-bearing disciples of the Colossians - something Paul heard from Epaphras, who has been serving and ministering with them and corresponding with Paul - since he has heard all this about the Colossians, Paul and his co-laborers have been praying for their community, praying that they would be filled with knowledge, with an understanding of God’s wisdom, that they might continue to bear good fruit and grow in faith. Paul has heard good things about the Colossians. And they have heard and committed to living out the gospel. And in turn, Paul can only imagine and pray that they will continue to bear the fruit that comes from following Jesus, heart and soul.

So my attention was drawn to all the “hearing” in this text because I have heard of you! I’m friends with Pastor Anna, and when you decided, as a congregation, to become a Reconciling Congregation, I saw her post of celebration on Facebook. She wrote, “If there is only one thing you hear today, let it be this: You are loved. I am so humbled to be the pastor of this church. What a statement! What a love! What a witness! Now the real work begins.” I’ve heard of you! Pastor Anna is often celebrating your faithfulness in her posts online, and this one really stood out. When she invited me to preach, it was the first thing I thought about: ooh, they just became a Reconciling Congregation! And if that’s what I’m thinking, I can only imagine how much of an impact this must have on people who have felt excluded from the church, or hurt by the church - for LGBTQ people to know without a doubt that they are welcome here: I bet many people have heard of you, and are making note of the welcome you’re extending. It’s so important. I have heard of you and your faith, and the fruit of your discipleship.

Of course, what people have heard about us, and what we hear about them - it might not always be accurate. We should never assume we know a person’s character based on rumors about them. Still, though, what Paul says in his letter to the Colossians lines up with the kinds of things that Jesus says in the gospel. We’ll be known by our fruit - what is the fruit that our lives, our discipleship, is producing? If our lives are bearing good fruit, this is what people will hear about us. In fact, bearing good fruit, the evidence of our discipleship, of our commitment to following Jesus, is so important that it is part of our official membership vows in The United Methodist Church. We pledge to practice our faith through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. I think of the word witness as a kind of synonym to showing the fruit our faith in Christ produces. Think of a witness at a trial: a witness tells what they’ve seen happen. As Jesus-followers, we witness to what Jesus has done in our lives. We don’t have to do this with words, like door-to-door evangelists. Instead, I think the most persuasive witness we have is the fruit our lives bear - what we do, how we live because of our faith, because of our seeking to journey in the way of Jesus.

So, friends, what have others heard of you and your faith? What fruit are they seeing that is growing in you? What is the witness your life is giving? If your life isn’t yet bearing the fruit you wish it would, what could you do to make sure that your actions are better aligning with your values, with your commitment to God? And, who is supporting and encouraging you in your journey, like Paul supported and encouraged the Coloassians? Who do you need to thank for lifting you up, and letting you know of the good they’ve heard of and seen in you?

I also want us to look at things from “the other side.” What good fruit are you seeing from someone else’s faith journey? Whose faith have you heard of? And how can you give them a blessing of encouragement? Are you holding them in prayer? Not just saying, “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” but really lifting them up to God in your hearts? Who can you encourage as Paul encourages the Coloassians?

Friends, I have heard of you. I have heard of your faith, and Pastor Anna’s faithful leadership, and I give thanks for you. I have heard of the love that you have for all the saints, and it makes a difference. I have heard of your good fruit that is growing in the world. What have you heard? And what is your life saying to others? May our lives be a witness to the life-giving, unconditional, and world-changing love of God. Amen.

*I acknowledge that the authorship of Colossians is contested, but that authorship is not particularly relevant to this sermon.

Schellenberg, Rayn, “Commentary on Colossians 1:1-14,” The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-colossians-11-14-5

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "The Hard Way," 2 Kings 5:1-14 (Proper 9C, Ordinary 14C)

2022-07-04T09:03:00.004-05:00

Sermon 7/3/22

2 Kings 5:1-14

The Hard Way

I’ve been thinking about the way we talk about whether the situations we experience in life are hard or easy and what kind of value we place on those words. For example, sometimes we talk with disdain about someone trying to “take the easy way out.” Or we might say, “Oh, that person had it so easy.” Right now, for example, I’m preparing for some exams in my schoolwork, and I feel like it has been a lot of work. But there are some students (including my roommate) in a different area of my program, - the people who are in Biblical Studies - and their exam structure is much different than my area’s exams. And I will admit I’ve said something along the lines of “you have it so easy” to my roommate. On the other hand, we might say, “hey, take it easy!” if someone is getting too angry about something, or giving someone else a hard time. We might say, “go easy on them!” if we fear someone will give another person too severe of a reprimand or punishment. We talk about the value of hard work and hard workers. But we also sometimes find ourselves wondering at someone: why do you have to do everything the hard way? When we see someone making a situation complicated that could have been very easy, we’re baffled. I think of my mom: she has a terrible sense of direction. But she can memorize how to get from one place to another. But she can’t connect the different sets of directions she’s learned. So sometimes she’ll drive from point A to point B - a path she knows - and then from point B to point C - another path she knows - when it actually would have been much faster and simpler and easier - to go directly from point A to point C. I’d say she’s doing things the hard way. Of course, for my mom, navigating a new path is the hard way, and going on a path she’s memorized, even if it is longer, is the easy way. Either way, it seems we don’t have a clear or consistent sense of whether we think people should be trying to do things the easy way or the hard way. Are they foolish for making things harder than they need to be? Or lazy for trying to take the easy way out? We don’t seem to know.

I’ve been thinking about the hard way and the easy way as I studied our scripture text for today. In the book of 2 Kings, a history book of the Bible, we read about a man named Naaman. Naaman was a commander in the army of the king of Aram. Aram was an enemy of Israel, and the Arameans have caused a lot of “violence, loss of life, homes, and livelihood, and untold suffering to the people of Israel.” (1) Naaman, as their army’s commander, would have been disliked and feared, to put it mildly.

Naaman, we read, has leprosy. Leprosy is a word used in the Bible to describe several kinds of diseases, especially skin diseases. You might remember that in the gospels, Jesus heals lepers, who were sometimes ostracized from society, considered unclean because of their disease. But that kind of isolation, separation from community usually only happened in advanced stages. (2) Although Naaman has leprosy, it hasn’t yet kept him isolated from society. Still, he suffers from his disease.

And then, an unexpected figure intervenes: a child, a young Israelite girl, who has been captured and enslaved by the Arameans, is a servant to Naaman’s wife. As with so many women in the Bible, we don’t learn this young girl’s name. But, despite her circumstances, she speaks up with boldness, telling Naaman’s wife that there is a prophet in Samaria who could cure Naaman’s leprosy. In other words: in the lands where she came from, in the lands where Naaman has been leading violent acts of war, there is someone who could cure Naaman. A cure is at hand - but what a hard way to have to get it - from your enemy!

Still, Naaman seizes the opportunity. He tells the king what the young girl has said, and the king sends Naaman and a letter to the king of Israel, along with a hefty “payment” - silver and gold and supplies. In the letter, the king of Aram asks the king of Israel to cure Naaman’s leprosy.

Receiving the letter, the king of Israel seems to feel helpless. He, the king, cannot heal Naaman, and he feels like the king of Aram is trying to start a fight. The king of Israel seems to dread that this is all some ruse for further acts of military aggression against Israel. But Elisha, a prophet of God, hears about the letter. Elisha is the successor to the prophet Elijah, and he, like Elijah, is known for his relationship with God, for his ability to demonstrate God’s power and authority. Elisha tells the king to have Naaman sent to him. So, Naaman and his entourage and all the gifts from the king of Aram locate to Elisha’s front entrance - but they don’t go in. And Elisha doesn’t come out Perhaps Elisha, though ready to act in his role as prophet - doesn’t want to invite someone who has harmed the Israelites so deeply into his home. (2) And perhaps Naaman is not eager to show himself in a position of weakness, and doesn’t want to have to be a “guest” inside Elisha’s house, relying on Elisha’s hospitality. So even though Naaman is at Elisha’s door, Elisha sends word to Naaman through a messenger. Elisha says, “wash in the Jordan river seven times, and you’ll be clean, you’ll be healed.”

Rather than rejoicing at this news of a cure, Naaman is angry. He’s angry that Elisha didn’t come out to speak to him, angry that there was no spectacle where Elisah called on his God, and waved his arms around to make a cure. He’s angry that Elisha seems to imply the waters in Israel are curing, but not the waters of Aram. He’s enraged. He’s ready to leave, uncured, unwilling to try. But his servants boldly speak up. They say to him, “if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?” In other words, “why are you making things so hard?” Naaman finally concedes. He goes to the Jordan, washes seven times, and, just as Elisha says, he is healed completely.

That’s where our text ends, although there is more to the story that you can read in the rest of chapter 5. Naaman commits to worshiping Elisha’s God, and wants Elisha to accept all the gifts he has brought. Elisha refuses any payment but sends Naaman in peace. However, a servant of Elisha’s named Gehazi is filled with greed, upset that Elisha let Naaman off so easy without taking any of the gifts Naaman brought. He tricks Naaman into giving him some of the items after all, and when Elisha finds out about the deception, he curses Gehazi with the leprosy that once clung to Naaman.

When I read this story, I’m struck by how Naaman was sure that the means for his healing had to be complicated and difficult. And I think he was sure of that for two reasons: first, I think Naaman believes that someone of his status - a prestigious military leader - someone of his status would “deserve” a complicated healing ritual, complex and dazzling and befitting of his importance. Surely, he should have to do something special that “ordinary people” wouldn’t have to do. And second, and perhaps more importantly, I think Naaman has this idea that God makes us “jump through hoops,” so to speak, in order to receive healing, wholeness, salvation. Surely, God can’t just offer something as a gift without strings attached! So Naaman can’t believe that he can be healed of something that has plagued him for so long because this God that Elisha serves is more generous that Naaman can understand.

What about you? What about us? I wonder if we’re so different from Naaman. Sure, hopefully we don’t believe that we’re so special that we require God to work for us only through dazzling displays of power. But I think we, too, sometimes can’t believe that God is ready to be so easily generous with us, especially when we feel undeserving of God’s generosity. I think when we’re tempted to make bargains and engage in mental negotiations with God, if we could just get God to do what we want, we’re choosing the “hard way.” We’re imagining that we have to manipulate and persuade God into doing what we want. Instead, God seeks to do not necessarily what we want, but that which will bring us life, abundance, wholeness, peace, and joy, and God wants to do it out of love, goodness, and generosity. The “easy way” with God is to trust God and put our lives and hearts into God’s hands. So often, though, we make things harder, expecting God to behave in the same sort of ways we act with each other, always keeping track of status and position and power.

The other aspect of this text that strikes me is how we see power and status at work throughout the story. We have two kings, a general, a prophet, and several servants, including a young captive girl far from home. The king of Israel, leader of a nation, expresses his sense of powerlessness. What could he do to help? He can only lament that he is not God - he doesn’t have God’s powers, and without that, he sees nothing he can do to help. He only sees potential danger, despite an enemy seeking aid from him. On the other hand, anonymous servants, unnamed, who should be the people with the least power, are the ones who make almost everything in this story happen. Naaman only accepted the “easy way” of healing offered to him by Elisha because of his servants boldly speaking up. And of course, he only knew about it because of an enslaved child. I’m not sure what motivation they all had for helping Naaman. Naaman wouldn’t have known what he was missing. But even though they seem to be “powerless,” despite their low status, these servants, this young girl - they are the reason that Naaman is healed. Sure, Elisha offers the healing treatment. And yes, God is the healer. But in this story, the servants are the ones with the wisdom, and the kings and typically powerful leaders are the ones who seem afraid and helpless.

When we are feeling powerless, unable to change the world around us that seems so very broken, what if we remembered this young girl, who despite her status, claims her agency and takes action? And what if, when we’re sure that we have the power and status and know what’s best, we learned to listen to wisdom from those who usually get overlooked? After all, that’s the way of Jesus, who teaches that the first is last and last is first, the exalted are humbled and humbled are exalted. In our broken world, whose voices have we been drowning out? Whose voices, whose wisdom, should we be listening to? In what unexpected places can we find the voice of God, speaking through others? Who has knowledge and wisdom that could help us draw closer to God? What are we missing out on by only listening to voices at the center, that represent power or status or position?

The hard way, the easy way. Which way does God want us to take? I don’t think the answer to that is, well, easy. But hopefully our journey with Naaman, Elisha, and these bold, unnamed, but not forgotten servants, helps us to claim both our own wisdom and power, when we need to speak up against injustice, when we need to witness to the ways we see God at work in the world. Hopefully their voices help us to listen for the wisdom and knowledge we’ve overlooked when we put ourselves or figures of power and position at the center and neglect those on the margins. And hopefully, our journey with Naaman and his quest for healing reminds us that we are children of a God who loves us and seeks our thriving, giving to us with generosity and joy. Whether our way is easy or our path is hard, God is with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Haslam, Chris, “Comments,” http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/cpr14m.shtml
Hawk, L. Daniel, “Commentary on 2 Kings 5:1-14,” The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-14-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-14-8

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "Set," Luke 9:51-62 (Proper 8C, Ordinary 13C)

2022-06-27T13:59:00.004-05:00

Sermon 6/26/22

Luke 9:51-62

Set

I have to confess that my working title for this sermon was “Oof.” “Oof,” because that’s what I thought when I read this text from Luke’s gospel. Oof - Jesus has some hard words for us. Not hard to understand, exactly, although I never want to assume I know exactly what Jesus means. But hard as in demanding, full of expectation. Jesus lays out some challenges for “would-be disciples,” - that’s what my bible titles this section of scripture - and he doesn’t really mince words here. In our closing verse, Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Oof. Am I fit for God’s reign? I’m not sure. Oof - my first response. Eventually, I had some more to say and to think about, but if your first response to hearing Jesus’ words today is “Oof” or something similar - I’m with you!

The start of our text today, the first line, actually represents a shift in the whole of the gospel of Luke. “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” From this point on in the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ ministry moves from a focus on his time and teaching in Galilee to a narrative that is on the move. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. It will take him the next ten chapters of Luke to get there, arriving with the scene we hear on Palm Sunday - Jesus’ triumphant entry, followed quickly by the passion - his arrest, trial, death - and resurrection. That journey starts here, with this odd phrase, “he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” It implies a resoluteness, a determinedness to his journey. (1)

The first stop on Jesus’ journey is a Samaritan town where he is not welcomed. Luke says Jesus isn’t welcomed because his face is set toward Jerusalem, although we get no more explanation on that. James and John are upset, though, reacting with their usual - lack of attunement to Jesus’ style, offering to command fire and destruction on the town. Jesus rebukes them, and they move on. Then we’re treated to several quick vignettes as Jesus continues traveling. Three times, someone approaches Jesus or Jesus approaches someone with a claim of discipleship. “I will follow you,” two of them say. “Follow me,” Jesus calls to another. But in all three situations, despite claiming to commit to discipleship, there is some barrier, or something else that must happen first. Jesus seems to warn the first that discipleship is always on the move - not for those looking for comfort and stability. The second wants to bury their father before following Jesus - a request Jesus dismisses, directing the person to go, right away, and start proclaiming God’s reign, God’s way. The third wants to say some goodbyes before following Jesus, but Jesus says that starting to plow a field and then looking back makes one unfit for the task (these pieces of farm equipment in Jesus’ day required your total attention to work properly. (2)) He implies that anyone wanting to be a disciple who looks “back” in any way is unfit for work with God.

All in all, frankly, it is a discouraging set of interactions for those of us who are trying to follow Jesus. How could any of us call ourselves “fit” for God’s reign, fit to truly call ourselves disciples? Jesus doesn’t seem to leave us any space for any excuses, for anything else to have a claim on us, for any preparation. He wants it all, and all right now - and I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’m “fit” by Jesus’ standards. So I wonder: Does Jesus really mean what he says? Why is he being so harsh here? After all, Jesus says he has no place to lay his head, and Jesus may not have had a permanent residence, but he did have a family home, and he did have friends and others with whom he would stay while on the road. And while Jesus speaks harshly to the one who wanted to bury his father, Jesus himself spent time mourning and weeping for his own friend Lazarus before he raised him from the dead. And while Jesus certainly never seems to turn back from his purpose, his mission, his disciples certainly seem to engage in the “two steps forward, one step back” approach to faith. They exasperate Jesus I bet, but he seems to have hope that they might yet be fit for the kingdom of God. So what exactly is Jesus saying? And who can follow Jesus if it is this hard?

I return to the unique language that sets the tone for the shift that happens in this passage, that marks that Jesus is now heading toward Jerusalem. His face is “set.” We hear that language twice in the first three verses. Jesus is resolute in his focus. The wording suggests he is unwavering - he is going to Jerusalem, and nothing will dissuade him from his intent.

Jesus’ resoluteness brings a few things to mind. There is a person in my life who loves to give you updates on her family, her children in particular. That’s no unique thing in itself. But what sets her apart is her determinedness to tell you stories about her children no matter what may be happening around you. You may be at a party or an event or with others who are also trying to get your attention; it may be difficult to hear; it may be inconvenient in your setting to listen to an extended story; no matter - she will tell you detailed stories about what her kids have been doing. She is set, resolute in her purpose. Nothing will sway her from her task.

I think about my dear friend who had a vision for her life. She decided, in her organized, planning sort of way, that she wanted to be married and to have children. So she went on a dating site, and met a man. They hit it off. She had a timeline in her mind for when she wanted to be engaged to him - and indeed, her timeline was met. She decided she wanted two children two years about, and indeed, her two daughters were born nearly exactly two years apart. She had this vision for her life and she was set, resolute in her purpose. I still tease her about how she somehow managed to will this all into being.

I think about dancers - when they do turns - pirouettes and the like - they use a technique called spotting that you start learning about as a young, new dancer. You fix your eyes on a spot, and then you try to keep your eyes on that spot, coming back to that spot everytime you turn. Returning your eyes to that spot is what keeps you centered, what keeps you from getting dizzy even though you’re spinning and spinning. Dancers are set in their focus.

I think about Olympians, how determined they are to reach the top of their field. How they train, and train, and train, and compete, and compete, and relentlessly pursue their goal - the gold. Resolute in their purpose.

Jesus is set in his purpose. Resolute - times 1000. He is headed to Jerusalem. He knows that danger awaits him there, but he also knows that his purpose - announcing that God’s reign, God’s way is at hand for us to claim and live into right now - his purpose requires that he go to Jerusalem, and announce this good news even to the religious leaders who will seek to end his life because of the way he threatens their authority. He’s determined. Nothing can dissuade him from carrying out his purpose, from fully embodying God’s unconditional love for us, from proclaiming the good news in a way that will ensure that everyone hears the message.

What about us? Are we “set”? I think that’s what Jesus is really getting at in the exchanges with these “would-be followers” of Jesus. How resolute are we in our purpose? I specifically notice that two of the “would-be” followers use similar language with Jesus: They say, “I want to follow you, but first, let me do this other thing.” They have something else that they want to put first, and then they will be set in their discipleship. God wants us to have full, abundant lives. Jesus tells us he comes that we might have just that. But God wants to be first with us. Jesus wants our discipleship to be our first priority. God is longing for us to put our relationship with God first, to pursue a closer relationship with God with resoluteness, with our faces set on God. Are our faces set? What is important enough to you that you would set your face resolutely on that purpose?

Jesus has some challenging words for us. Maybe even overwhelming. Maybe you’re feeling the “oof” that was almost my sermon title. But of course, right after this scene, Jesus sends out 70 disciples, giving them a mission to announce the good news, to share with him in his work and purpose. They weren’t always successful at keeping their face set in the direction of Jesus. They still got it wrong, so wrong, so many times. And they were still disciples, loved and treasured by Jesus. Jesus expects a lot from us. But thanks be to God, Jesus gives us so much more.

And so Jesus invites us, again and again, to join him. Maybe we’ve never been ready to set our face on God and God’s purposes. Maybe we had our faces set, responding to God’s call, but we got knocked off balance, were distracted by the many other things clamoring for our attention. Maybe we had our faces set on something else, and weren’t ready to put God first. We’re invited again, here and now: Jesus wants our all, our first commitment, our whole hearts, our faces set on discipleship. And when we fail, Jesus invites us again, as we learn to set our eyes resolutely on God, our feet on God’s path. Because Jesus’s face is set, without wavering, on a mission of good news that includes us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) Brown, Jeannine K. “Commentary on Luke 9:51-62.” The Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-13-3/commentary-on-luke-951-62-8

(2) Haslam, Chris. “Comments.” http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/cpr13m.shtml

Sermon, "Don't Boast!," Romans 5:1-5 (Trinity Sunday, Year C)

2022-06-14T08:46:00.003-05:00

Sermon 6/12/22

Romans 5:1-5

Don’t Boast!

What kind of pet peeves do you have? When you think about the little mannerisms and characteristics that really irk you, what comes to mind? For me: it’s boasting. When people want to tell me how awesome they are at something, when they just can’t help but toot their own horn, it really irritates me. I’m not quite sure why it bothers me so much. I guess if I traced it back it was probably something my mom instilled in me when I was little - teaching me good manners, and teaching me to be kind and thoughtful and to not boast about anything that I thought I was good at, not boast about any advantage I thought I had over others. And apparently it stuck. Boasting - I really dislike it.

In these internet days, there is even a special category of boasting - which, to be clear, I also dislike - called the “humble brag.” The humble brag” is when you “try to get away with bragging about yourself by couching it in a [false] show of humility.” (1) So you might say something like, “Your [canoe] is way cooler than my 80-foot yacht. You get to be so much closer to the water and to nature. I envy you, I really do.” (1) And I’d know you just wanted me to know that you had an 80-foot yacht. Still boasting. Still my pet peeve.

Why does boasting irritate me so much? I guess I believe that if you have a quality worth boasting about, you don’t need to tell me about it - I’ll see it. And if I want to compliment you for it, praise you for it, I will. But boasting is like asking for compliments. And how sincere are compliments that you’ve had to ask for? Not very. Boasting, to me, seems disingenuous on the part of the boaster, and it kind of pulls the respondent into a disingenuous interaction too, making them feel pressured to praise you - as you basically asked them to - in response to your boasting. No thanks.

Still, I try to also think about what motivates someone to boast (besides being full of themselves!) I think when we’re tempted to boast, it comes from a place of insecurity. We might be proud of something we did - and that’s ok - but we’re afraid we won’t be recognized for our hard work, or afraid that we won’t be noticed. Maybe we’re always overlooked, and we feel that if we don’t ask for compliments by boasting, we’ll never get any. And compliments feel good - we all need them - we need to check in with each other to feel secure. I try to remember, when someone is boasting - that they probably need something they don’t feel they’re getting elsewhere. I try to remember that so I can be more patient with boasting.

Believe it or not, all this is on my mind because of our scripture lesson for today from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Over the years of my discipleship, from as long as I can remember being a Bible-reader on my own, for my own faith-development, I’ve struggled with the apostle Paul. There are a few things that challenge me about Paul’s teachings, but the thing I struggle with most? Paul boasts constantly! He has the spirit of the humble-brag down to a T, saying things like, “If anyone was going to boast on their own merits, I’d be the best one to do it, because I am soooo qualified as a perfecter follower of God’s law - but, all those ways I excel are not important now that I’m a follower of Jesus.” Sure, he tells us his awesome qualities don’t matter anymore - but he makes sure we know them all the same. Boasting - ugh!

What then, are we to make of a text like today’s reading from Romans that actually invites us all to join in boasting? Listen again: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Ok - so here Paul is telling us to boast in our hope in sharing the glory of God, and to boast in our suffering - because the way Paul calculates - our suffering is eventually a path to hope, and we can trust in our hope in God. But do we really need to boast to get to hope? Is that necessary?

We have to remember, though, that the early followers of Jesus faced incredible obstacles in their path of discipleship. Following Jesus meant being an outsider, on the fringes of community, facing derision and persecution. When Paul speaks in this passage of suffering, he isn’t just talking about having a bad day - he’s talking about the years of rejection, persecution, imprisonment, accusations, beatings and more that he and other disciples have experienced because of their commitment to discipleship, finding themselves both outside the Roman culture and practices and outside of the Jewish faith community too. To remain a follower of Jesus in the face of such challenges took daily dedication, and a deep trust in the path they were following. And so, in the face of that … Paul calls for a bit of boasting. Paul uses this technique of boasting to take what might seem like nothing, or at least nothing good, and turn it into something worth having - worth seeking after. Paul takes the suffering the church experiences, and transforms it into hope. He gives people something to boast about when they’ve been crushed, and in doing so, urges them to remain faithful. He says that their nobody-status as outsiders is actually leading them to have God’s love poured right into their hearts, into being filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul is giving a pep talk, and using whatever he can to persuade his audience: even boasting, a quality that we otherwise might dismiss as simply bad behavior. (2)

Ok - so, I might understand Paul’s motives a bit better, and give him a little leeway on his boasting when I better understand his purpose. But what does this mean for us? Because as mostly white, mostly middle-class Christians in a nation of predominantly Christian adherents - probably few of us can claim to have experienced the kind of persecutions and sufferings Paul and the early followers of Jesus did. Mostly we’re not in the vulnerable place of feeling like we have nothing and we are nothing in the face of being pushed out of the community because of following Jesus. And so, too, we can’t quite give ourselves permission to boast, as Paul does, even if we’re only boasting about our hope of sharing in God’s glory. I don’t think we’ll be well-received in our boasting!

I do think, though, that Paul’s words can help embolden us toward more risk-taking discipleship. Sometimes, when we’re thinking about stepping out on faith, we can only imagine what losses we might experience if we fail, the standing we might lose, the security and sense of place we might lose. Paul’s words remind us that when our aim and purpose is following Jesus, our loss is gain, a fulfillment of hope whose value is immeasurable. Paul reminds us that God transforms what seems like nothing into sustaining abundance. So: what risks is God calling you to take? Is God calling you to be an ally and advocate for the marginalized and oppressed and excluded? Is God calling you to speak out against violence and injustice that brings terror to our communities? Is God challenging you to let go of some of your comforts in order to be more free to serve others? Is God asking you to minister, to heal? The scriptures are full of stories of God asking people to take life-changing risks. And then God is right there with them, turning their worlds upside-down, yes, but also meeting every hopeful expectation with promises fulfilled. I think God has a story to tell with us, too, if we’ll take the risk.

And once we’ve taken those risks with God? Well, we might even be entitled to a little boasting - boasting in God’s faithfulness to us. Amen.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Humble%20Brag
Themes drawn from Crystal Hall, “Commentary on Romans 5:1-5,” The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/the-holy-trinity-3/commentary-on-romans-51-5-5

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C, "True Love," 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

2022-01-26T18:56:00.003-05:00

Sermon 1/25/22

1 Corinthians 13

True Love

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Even people who aren’t very familiar with the Bible often know this passage of scripture – 1 Corinthians 13 – the “love” chapter – even if they can’t identify exactly where in the Bible it’s from. You’ve probably heard this passage of scripture read at many, many weddings. I would guess, that out of all of the weddings I’ve officiated in my years of pastoral ministry, probably close to fifty percent of the ceremonies included this passage as the couples’ scripture of choice, and I will admit, sometimes, on realizing I would have to give another reflection on 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding, I felt a little less than 100% enthusiastic. Still, I would always take the opportunity to tell the couple - and the wedding guests - that 1 Corinthians 13 isn’t about romantic love, although the words can certainly apply. Rather, Paul is writing to a community, and his focus is on helping the community learn to build one another up in the body of Christ. Love builds up, and when we love one another well, we build good community together. 1 Corinthians 13 is really just a meditation on what Jesus says are the greatest commandments: first, to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, and second, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Paul is just giving us some details.

And yet, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves is kind of complicated. And I think it is so complicated not because it is so difficult to do, but because we take it to heart in some unintended ways! When I was a first year college student, taking my first religion class, my professor said something that shocked me. He said, “What Jesus got wrong with “Love your neighbor as yourself” is that most of us don’t actually love ourselves very much.” I was shocked on the one hand because I’d never heard someone suggest Jesus might have said something wrong before. But once I got beyond that, I was shocked because my professor’s critique seemed so apt. Often, we are loving others as we love ourselves - poorly, incompletely, inconsistently. What good is it to seek to love others as ourselves if we don’t love ourselves?

That’s why I actually love 1 Corinthians 13 - just not the part that usually gets read at weddings. I love the last part of the chapter. Paul writes in verse 12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Mirrors in Paul’s day weren’t like they are today. They were often made out of polished metals or other materials that would at best offer blurry, muddled reflections to the viewer, not crisp images like we are used to. People couldn’t often see their physical selves clearly like we can today. But Paul’s writing suggests that it’s more than our physical bodies that we don’t perceive clearly, although we can include our faulty impressions of our physical selves still.

When you take stock of yourself, your life, how do you perceive yourself? Do you think you have a clear picture of who you are? And do you find that person to be worthy of love? Part of the reason I’m here at Drew Theological School for a second time, working on another degree, is because I treasure the community here. I feel valued. I feel connected to my peers. I feel nurtured by faculty and staff. I feel a sense of shared ethical commitments that are important to me. But being in an academic community again these last couple of years has also heightened my sense of imposter syndrome. That’s when we feel like we’re frauds, not really measuring up to the impressions people have of us, waiting to be outed as not really smart enough to do the work we’re being asked to do. I especially struggle with those feelings at the beginning of each semester when I get my syllabi and feel temporarily overwhelmed by all that professors are expecting for the semester. Maybe you feel that too: the vulnerability of being assessed, your thoughts evaluated, translated into grades. Maybe it feels like you are being evaluated, and you aren’t measuring up. Maybe you feel the vulnerability that comes with being in a season of discernment, the hard process of answering God’s call and finding a path that you might wrestle with during seminary. Or maybe you’re pretty confident in your academic life, but you’re struggling with what you find in the rest of your life, in your relationships, in your work. Are you succeeding with the goals you’re setting? Are you well-liked? Does your life have meaning and purpose? How do you perceive yourself?

Like my professor once suggested, I suspect that our self-reflections will reveal that we don’t, in fact, always love ourselves well. I think Paul knew this too - but he believed something else was possible. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Oh, how I long for that, even as it sounds terrifying - to be fully known, and, we can conclude from Paul’s theme, loved. Fully known, fully loved. Paul anticipates that we’ll be able to know love fully in an eschatological telos that is “by and by” - a future event, when we are united with God. But - but being fully known and loved? Paul speaks of that as our already-present reality. We are already fully known by God, in whose image we have been created, by God, who knows, perceives, and loves us entirely. Is there a way, though, for us to have a better mirror now? To know more fully who we are now? Can we learn to love ourselves more fully now?

Paul obviously believed that striving for the more excellent way of love was a worthy endeavor - a necessary endeavor for the communities of faith in the here and now. And Jesus, certainly, preaches a message of God’s very-present reign here and now. However it works, whatever the order of loving is, Jesus tells us that our love for ourselves and love for one another are bound up in each other. We need both, we need to do both. I think Paul gives us practices that cultivate love. They often get translated passively, but the words of verses 4-7 are action words. We might read it as “Love waits patiently; love acts kindly” and so forth. (1) And we might try applying Paul’s love verbs not only to one another, but also to ourselves. What might it mean, for example, to rejoice in the truth of who you are? And how might that rejoicing fill you up to love others well? How can waiting patiently on someone with love remind you to be patient with yourself, too?

As we practice love - and oh, it takes practice! - for ourselves and for each other, we’re polishing each other’s imperfect mirrors. Maybe we can’t yet fully know, as God fully knows. But in community, in love, we can begin to perceive more clearly. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” May our striving for love shape the “then” of Paul’s promise into our “now.” Amen.

Melanie A. Howard, The Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-1-corinthians-131-13-7