This coming week brings two unhappy anniversaries: the bombing of the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and the Columbine (Colorado) High School massacre on April 20, 1999.
That doesn't have anything to do with the following... or does it? Could a properly recognized life's purpose offer alternatives to the Kleibolds and McVeys of the world?
Acts 9:1-20
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord." The Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight."
But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name." But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name." So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God."
Revelation 5:11-14
Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, "To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" And the elders fell down and worshiped.
John 21:1-19
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.
But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished.
But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me."
This is the Word of the Lord.
Fred Snodgrass was the center fielder for the New York Giants from 1908 through 1915. He played in three consecutive World Series, and after retiring from baseball in 1916, went on to become a beloved husband and father, successful banker, as well as a popular city councilman and mayor in Oxnard, California. He died in 1974, and he’s buried in Ventura, California, where he was born. I tell you all of that to tell you this: throughout Fred’s life, and even in his obituary in the New York Times, Snodgrass was remembered for one thing, and one thing only: failure.
In the 1912 World Series, Fred’s Giants were playing the Boston Red Sox. They were in the eighth and final game of the series, and had gone into extra innings. Clyde Engle, pinch-hitting for Smoky Joe Wood, led off with an easy fly ball to Fred Snodgrass in center field. Snodgrass dropped the ball, and Engle reached second base.
Although Snodgrass made a beautiful fly-ball catch for an out on the very next batter, he was forever marked. He had made what sportscasters at the time called, “The $30,000 Muff,” a reference to the difference in the winner’s share and the loser’s share in the Series.
I think Fred Snodgrass and the Apostle Peter have something in common, don’t you? Throughout the Gospels, we read about Simon Peter again and again – as one of Jesus’ inner circle of friends, present on the Mount of Transfiguration, boldly stepping out of the boat to meet Jesus walking on water, responding to Jesus asking “who do you say that I am” by confirming that He is the Christ, the son of the living God… yet when we think of him, and all too often when he is preached about, we remember not his faith in stepping out of the boat, but the fact that he sank. We remember not his bold affirmation of Jesus as the Messiah, but his denying Christ three times the night Jesus was betrayed.
Our Gospel reading today tells us, “Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’
It seems such an odd thing to do, doesn’t it, especially for someone like Peter, who doesn’t think of fishing as a leisure activity, but as a way to make a living. “Well, Jesus is risen. We’ve all seen him, even Thomas is satisfied with the evidence… OK, well, I’m going to work, y’all!” What’s even weirder is that they all said, “Great idea! We’ll join you!”
It is probably instructive to them that they spent all night doing the thing they were supposedly professionals at… and it took Jesus showing up for them to catch a thing! But at least they got breakfast out of it. And Peter got a lot more than just charcoal-broiled fish, as it turns out.
I wonder how heavily his failure, denying he even knew Jesus, weighed on Peter, even after having seen Jesus, risen from the dead. When I’ve preached about this passage in the past, I’ve focused on a lot of different things, like how Jesus uses a different Greek word for “love” than Peter does, even the significance of the number of fish that they caught, but I confess that it always kind of confused me that Jesus would ask the same question, and give a variation of the same answer, three times.
Hear the Word of the Lord from the 18th chapter of John’s Gospel:
Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest's courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in.
You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter.
He replied, "I am not."
It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.
… he was asked, "You are not one of his disciples, are you?"
He denied it, saying, "I am not."
One of the high priest's servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, "Didn't I see you with him in the olive grove?" Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.
David Lose of Luther Seminary says that the three questions relate to the three denials. Jesus is offering Peter forgiveness, absolution, if you will, for the three denials. More than that, with each word of forgiveness, Jesus gives Peter a commission, a purpose, a way to grow and go beyond mere forgiveness.
“Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”
These aren’t just empty responses to Peter’s answer, and they are certainly not warm, fuzzy “caring for the cute little animals” phrases. Peter will go on from this point to be arguably second to the Apostle Paul in his influence in establishing and expanding the church. He will remain transparently human, still making mistakes and needing correction, but ever faithful, even to the point of dying for his faith.
Jesus didn’t just forgive Peter.
There’s been a lot of research lately on what, exactly, makes people “happy.” Once you get past the “enough money to pay the bills” stuff, two things appear to be absolutely essential to feel happy: a sense of belonging to a community and the belief that what you do matters. The key predictors of fulfillment and productivity are, simply stated, belonging and purpose.
That’s really what Jesus is giving Peter here, isn’t it? He is brought back into community and he is given meaningful work to do. Forgiveness always leads to mission, restoration to purpose, and inclusion to calling.
Now, it’s kind of unfair to talk about forgiveness, restoration, inclusion, mission, purpose, and calling against the backdrop of Saul’s dramatic conversion and Peter’s morning walk on the beach with the risen Christ. Very few of us have experiences to equal the drama and intimacy of these accounts.
Yet while few, if any of us, can point to a true Damascus Road experience, or boast about Jesus cooking us breakfast, each of us enjoys the forgiveness of the risen Christ, and a purpose, a mission, a calling exactly like Peter’s. “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”
How feeding lambs and tending sheep looks in your particular corner of the Body of Christ will very likely be different than it looks for anyone else. According to tradition, the Apostles spread all over the known world, bringing the Good news to different people in different places. Even for Peter and Paul, who were martyred close to the same point in time in the same city, Rome, their paths crossed and diverged many times, touching different people, speaking to different issues and groups and belief systems in different ways, yet with always the same core message – the Good News of God’s love, grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
The same is true for each of us. However our paths may diverge from this place and time, whoever we touch, however we minister, we share that same great Good News of God’s love through Jesus Christ!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
"Doubting" Thomas...
If I had another service to preach this week, I'd do it on this astounding statement, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." After all, instead of permission to hold a "holy grudge" against people, it's in effect a reminder that forgiveness is not just a gift to ourselves, but a duty to carry out. Seventy time seven, and all that sort of thing.
But poor old Thomas, and his unfair representation as the eternal doubter, is the subject for this attempt at a sermon. I hope you'll comment, constructively criticize, etc.
Acts 5:27-32
When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."
Revelation 1:4-8
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
This is the Word of the Lord.
If you held a contest to decide who the Biblical figure most maligned by tradition is, it would likely be a close race between Mary Magdalene and Thomas.
Mary Magdalene has had a hard time because tradition has labeled her a reformed prostitute, a claim which Scripture never makes. On the strength of our Gospel reading today, Thomas has been, for millennia, unfairly labeled “The Doubter.”
What’s more, we don’t really even know Thomas’ name! We’re told that Thomas was called “The Twin,” which in the Greek is “Didymus;” what we often miss is that the Aramaic word for “twin” is, in fact, “Thomas.” Some scholars have supposed that Thomas’ real name was “Judas,” which is possible, since “Judas” was a very common name in that era. They surmise that the Biblical writers wouldn’t have wanted to cause confusion with Judas Iscariot, so they called him by his nickname.
In any case, when you look at what little we know about Thomas, doubt was never his problem, and fear doesn’t seem to have been a big factor, either.
Here’s what I mean: We only hear from Thomas three times in the Gospels, and they’re all in John. When, in the 11th chapter, Jesus sets off toward Bethany, it is apparent to everyone that it’s far too close to Jerusalem and those who want Jesus killed. Everyone listening to Jesus knows that for him to go to Lazarus is to sign his own death warrant. Thomas is the one who stands up, dusts himself off, and says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” There is no doubt in those words, but resolution, even courage. The worst is yet to come, yes, but we’ve come this far with Him, let’s finish the journey.
In Chapter 14, at the Last Supper, at one point Jesus says to his disciples, “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” It is left to Thomas to ask Jesus the one question which had to be pounding in the disciples’ heads: “Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Thomas is not rebuked for “doubting,” but is rewarded with one of the clearest Scriptural statements about who Jesus is and why He came to live and die among humankind: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
And now we come to the day of the Resurrection. The disciples are still locked up tight in the Upper Room, still afraid that at any moment the Romans or the temple guards were going to come looking for them to nail them up just like they’d done to their leader. Well, ten of them were, anyway. Where was Thomas?
Could it be that Thomas wasn’t letting fear control him? Maybe not, maybe he’d simply not gotten the memo about the meeting, or perhaps he’d drawn the short straw and had gone out to get food, but I like to think of Thomas getting sick of hiding behind locked doors and leaving. Just walking out in the open for all to see, visiting with family, hanging out in the marketplace, whatever.
Maybe he just needed some space to think, to come to grips with the loss of his beloved Rabbi, maybe to figure out how on earth to atone for having let Jesus down when He had needed Thomas the most.
We have to remember, we Resurrection people, that the only person who had actually seen Jesus at this point was Mary Magdalene, and there’s nothing to suggest that anyone had believed her when she told the disciples what she’d seen that morning. Perhaps they dismissed it as the lunatic ravings of a distraught woman, perhaps they didn’t know what to make of it, but it’s apparent that no one besides her, and possibly the Apostle John, thought anything about the empty tomb beyond the idea that someone, for some nefarious reason, had stolen Jesus’ body. So they were all still dealing with the fear, still processing the grief, still coming to grips with this harsh, cold, hateful new reality.
The next moment, Jesus was there.
I have no idea how the disciples reacted. I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to have someone that I was absolutely certain was dead and gone suddenly appear in the room with me – physically, really present, not some apparition or impression or whatever it is that scares the Ghost Hunters so much every time the promos come on the TV. Shock, terror, horror, certainly fear. I cannot imagine joy or relief or an ounce of comprehension in their minds.
And the first word Jesus spoke to them was not what they expected, certainly! After all, they had betrayed him, abandoned him, forsaken him, and left him to die. Yet He said, “Peace.” They saw him, perhaps touched him, felt him breathe on them and say “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Not a word of condemnation or disappointment or reproof, only peace, purpose, and the promise that things would never, ever be the same.
Then he was gone.
Sometime later, either Thomas came back, or perhaps the disciples went and found him, and the stories they had for him… well, think about it: would you have believed them? “Dude, Jesus is alive! No, seriously, we saw him! No, really, right there in the upper room!”
He must have thought they had all, to a person, gone stark raving mad!
But when you look at what Thomas actually said to the disciples, what did he asking for?
All he demanded is that he experience the same thing the other ten had: the risen Lord. I have to tell you, that isn’t doubt!
However you and I define our faith, whatever shape or direction our different faith journeys have taken, the common denominator is that they are uniquely contoured and defined by our experiences with the risen Christ.
We may share a common language, may hold the same basic theological definitions of the central tenets of the faith, but in the same way that Thomas could not be satisfied that Jesus had risen simply on the breathless, excited, and perhaps incomprehensible babbling of ten wild-eyed friends, we cannot depend on one another’s faith and experience to take us where we are going!
Yet it could well have been the testimony of the ten that had Thomas in that same room a week later. Without them, Thomas may well have missed seeing Jesus altogether! However certain it is that our faith journey is and must be our own, we most certainly depend upon one another for fellowship and support in the journey.
And Thomas didn’t really need to put his fingers in the nail-holes after all, did he? All he needed to do was see for himself… and when you think about it, that is all any Resurrection person has ever needed – to, in our own way and in our own time, have seen the risen Christ.
But poor old Thomas, and his unfair representation as the eternal doubter, is the subject for this attempt at a sermon. I hope you'll comment, constructively criticize, etc.
Acts 5:27-32
When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."
Revelation 1:4-8
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
This is the Word of the Lord.
If you held a contest to decide who the Biblical figure most maligned by tradition is, it would likely be a close race between Mary Magdalene and Thomas.
Mary Magdalene has had a hard time because tradition has labeled her a reformed prostitute, a claim which Scripture never makes. On the strength of our Gospel reading today, Thomas has been, for millennia, unfairly labeled “The Doubter.”
What’s more, we don’t really even know Thomas’ name! We’re told that Thomas was called “The Twin,” which in the Greek is “Didymus;” what we often miss is that the Aramaic word for “twin” is, in fact, “Thomas.” Some scholars have supposed that Thomas’ real name was “Judas,” which is possible, since “Judas” was a very common name in that era. They surmise that the Biblical writers wouldn’t have wanted to cause confusion with Judas Iscariot, so they called him by his nickname.
In any case, when you look at what little we know about Thomas, doubt was never his problem, and fear doesn’t seem to have been a big factor, either.
Here’s what I mean: We only hear from Thomas three times in the Gospels, and they’re all in John. When, in the 11th chapter, Jesus sets off toward Bethany, it is apparent to everyone that it’s far too close to Jerusalem and those who want Jesus killed. Everyone listening to Jesus knows that for him to go to Lazarus is to sign his own death warrant. Thomas is the one who stands up, dusts himself off, and says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” There is no doubt in those words, but resolution, even courage. The worst is yet to come, yes, but we’ve come this far with Him, let’s finish the journey.
In Chapter 14, at the Last Supper, at one point Jesus says to his disciples, “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” It is left to Thomas to ask Jesus the one question which had to be pounding in the disciples’ heads: “Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Thomas is not rebuked for “doubting,” but is rewarded with one of the clearest Scriptural statements about who Jesus is and why He came to live and die among humankind: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
And now we come to the day of the Resurrection. The disciples are still locked up tight in the Upper Room, still afraid that at any moment the Romans or the temple guards were going to come looking for them to nail them up just like they’d done to their leader. Well, ten of them were, anyway. Where was Thomas?
Could it be that Thomas wasn’t letting fear control him? Maybe not, maybe he’d simply not gotten the memo about the meeting, or perhaps he’d drawn the short straw and had gone out to get food, but I like to think of Thomas getting sick of hiding behind locked doors and leaving. Just walking out in the open for all to see, visiting with family, hanging out in the marketplace, whatever.
Maybe he just needed some space to think, to come to grips with the loss of his beloved Rabbi, maybe to figure out how on earth to atone for having let Jesus down when He had needed Thomas the most.
We have to remember, we Resurrection people, that the only person who had actually seen Jesus at this point was Mary Magdalene, and there’s nothing to suggest that anyone had believed her when she told the disciples what she’d seen that morning. Perhaps they dismissed it as the lunatic ravings of a distraught woman, perhaps they didn’t know what to make of it, but it’s apparent that no one besides her, and possibly the Apostle John, thought anything about the empty tomb beyond the idea that someone, for some nefarious reason, had stolen Jesus’ body. So they were all still dealing with the fear, still processing the grief, still coming to grips with this harsh, cold, hateful new reality.
The next moment, Jesus was there.
I have no idea how the disciples reacted. I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to have someone that I was absolutely certain was dead and gone suddenly appear in the room with me – physically, really present, not some apparition or impression or whatever it is that scares the Ghost Hunters so much every time the promos come on the TV. Shock, terror, horror, certainly fear. I cannot imagine joy or relief or an ounce of comprehension in their minds.
And the first word Jesus spoke to them was not what they expected, certainly! After all, they had betrayed him, abandoned him, forsaken him, and left him to die. Yet He said, “Peace.” They saw him, perhaps touched him, felt him breathe on them and say “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Not a word of condemnation or disappointment or reproof, only peace, purpose, and the promise that things would never, ever be the same.
Then he was gone.
Sometime later, either Thomas came back, or perhaps the disciples went and found him, and the stories they had for him… well, think about it: would you have believed them? “Dude, Jesus is alive! No, seriously, we saw him! No, really, right there in the upper room!”
He must have thought they had all, to a person, gone stark raving mad!
But when you look at what Thomas actually said to the disciples, what did he asking for?
All he demanded is that he experience the same thing the other ten had: the risen Lord. I have to tell you, that isn’t doubt!
However you and I define our faith, whatever shape or direction our different faith journeys have taken, the common denominator is that they are uniquely contoured and defined by our experiences with the risen Christ.
We may share a common language, may hold the same basic theological definitions of the central tenets of the faith, but in the same way that Thomas could not be satisfied that Jesus had risen simply on the breathless, excited, and perhaps incomprehensible babbling of ten wild-eyed friends, we cannot depend on one another’s faith and experience to take us where we are going!
Yet it could well have been the testimony of the ten that had Thomas in that same room a week later. Without them, Thomas may well have missed seeing Jesus altogether! However certain it is that our faith journey is and must be our own, we most certainly depend upon one another for fellowship and support in the journey.
And Thomas didn’t really need to put his fingers in the nail-holes after all, did he? All he needed to do was see for himself… and when you think about it, that is all any Resurrection person has ever needed – to, in our own way and in our own time, have seen the risen Christ.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Resurrection People!
It's fascinating, isn't it, that in none of the Gospels is a word written about that Saturday between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection...
That really has nothing to do with the following sermon, but it kind of does, too. We tend to forget, or have never realized, just how desolate that day would have been for Jesus' friends and closest followers. What do you do, where do you go, when all is lost? When there is nothing left?
And what does it mean when all of that is flung aside like grave-clothes which are no longer needed?
What does it mean, really mean, to be a Resurrection person?
Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord —
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent — its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is the Word of the Lord.
I had a wonderful conversation on Saturday with a youngster who has only recently come to believe in Jesus as her Savior. It shocked me, at first, that I was forewarned, but completely unprepared, for talking about her decision with her. I'm knocking on the door of fifty years old, and I'm used to carrying on theological discussions with people twenty-something through eighty-something, but speaking to an eight-year-old about what it means to be a Christian, and what it means to be baptized, was like speaking a different language.
The Book of Order says that those presenting themselves for baptism “profess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, renounce evil and affirm their reliance on God’s grace, declare their intention to participate actively and responsibly in the worship and mission of the church,” and so on. Since not very many eight-year-olds know what words like “profess” and “renounce” and “affirm” and “reliance” and “intention” mean, it forced me to simplify the message, to distill the meaning into something that she could digest. I had to take it all down close to the bone. Our talk only lasted ten or fifteen minutes, but it was one of the most meaningful conversations I have ever had.
What does it mean to be a Christian – to be a Resurrection person?
We Christians live not only in the shadow of the cross, but in the shadow of the empty tomb. We are all Resurrection people, we live in the Resurrection, and we've had two thousand years to contemplate, postulate, investigate, argue over, codify, verify, testify, solidify, sanctify, theologize, homogenize, and package for public consumption this idea of a risen Savior. We Resurrection people have developed our own language of multisyllabic words and a thesaurus full of ways to explain how and why and for whom Christ arose. And for far too many of us Resurrection people, this idea of Resurrection is just that – an idea, a concept, a point of doctrine that we must mentally and verbally assent to in order to be allowed to take part in church. And while it has been necessary to take the journey through understanding and verbalizing what it means to say “Christ arose,” and “Jesus is Lord,” to explain the whys and the hows, I wonder if we have in the process added more and more layers of separation between ourselves and this central, astounding act of God's grace.
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
It's Sunday. Of course, if you're Jewish, like Mary Magdalene and everyone in the room, it's been Sunday since sunset, and they've all been cooped up in this room since Friday just before sundown. The tables are still set up from the Passover Seder, the couches still in place... Mary tries to keep from looking at that one couch, at the head of the table, but her eyes keep going back to it. That empty couch, the one He had reclined in during the meal. No one sat there, of course. No one dared to. She could see them all look that way from time to time, then glance away quickly, ashamedly, knowing that the Master would never lay there again.
Some of them had been nearby when they laid him in the tomb. Mary and the other women had been very close, of course; it was the womenfolk's job to prepare the body for burial. The stone had been rolled in place, and a wax seal had been placed across it with the Roman governor's seal. Guards were there to prevent anyone from stealing the body – Mary scoffed, thinking about it: steal the body? Who? These men, this band of cowards, jumping every time a dog barked in the distance, certain the Temple guards were coming for them like they came for Jesus? Or perhaps the women of the group, who together couldn't muster the strength or leverage to roll the stone from the tomb's entry, much less lug a corpse any distance? Ridiculous.
And her eyes went back to that empty couch again. There had been hushed, urgent conversations at first, among the disciples. There had been tears and mournful embraces, but as the hours rolled on, everyone had grown more and more silent, more inside themselves, all contemplating, as best they could, what it meant. Jesus was dead. All the promises of God's Messiah lay mouldering in a rich man's donated tomb. There could be no kingdom if the king lay dead. No redemption for Israel if the redeemer was gone. All of that big talk and all of those wild dreams were gone. For a group of people whose whole reason for living was found in this itinerant Jewish miracle-working rabbi, the future was black, hopeless, pointless.
The sun wasn't up yet when Mary had finally had enough of the cramped, airless room, fetid with the smell of fear and failure. She slipped out, and walked without thinking toward the last place she'd seen Jesus. Jesus, who had done so much for her, whose feet she had washed with her tears, whose words she had clung to like a drowning person clings to a lifeline. Whose words would offer her hope now? Where would she ever again find hope for the future, the promise of eternal life? All of that was gone, dead, wrapped in burial linens and sealed in the to...
Where are the guards? Had Pilate come to his senses, realizing none of Jesus' followers had the guts or foresight to steal the... but the tomb, its entrance is open! With the sky becoming lighter, Mary can see the stone rolled away, the seal broken, why would anyone have done this?
She ran back to the house, and found Peter and John just outside the door, their faces creased from fear and grief. The horrible news poured out of her mouth in a confused gasp, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!” and like an arrow shot from a bow, they were gone at a full run. She ran behind, slower, dreading what they'd find, but knowing what they'd find.
And now she was alone at the tomb, alone in her confusion and grief. Peter and John had left, because what could they do? Finally she bent down and looked in there, no reason, really, but she looked in, and there were... people there... sitting where Jesus had been... odd. They asked her why she was crying, and she told them, but they didn't say anything else. It was too much to process, really, so she turned back and saw the gardener. Suddenly embarrassed to be a woman alone in such a remote section of the city, she turned away, not daring to make eye contact. Even in grief, there were certain things that were simply not done.
Yet if he was the one who tended the gardens, who cared for the land around the tomb, perhaps he knew where Jesus had been taken! Who knows, after all, perhaps the rich man had second thoughts about giving his tomb to a man Pilate had condemned, and had ordered Jesus removed and taken to another sepulcher. “Sir,” she said, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Ridiculous, of course, there was no way she could carry a body that size anywhere, but...
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
In that instant, Mary Magdalene became a Resurrection person. Not because she understood what had happened, not because it made sense, not because of a solid grounding in theological teaching or because she had studied the Westminster Shorter Catechism or said the Sinner's Prayer or gotten baptized or recited the Apostle's Creed, but because Jesus was alive! He had called her name!
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
You and I are Resurrection people, too. If we dare to peel it all away – set aside the particular doctrines we've professed, the churches we were attending when we came to believe, our age or how wet we got when we got baptized, all of the stuff we've heard and learned and taught and thought, if we allow our faith to get down close to the bone, what we find is this:
Just like Mary, we are Resurrection people, we live in the Resurrection not because we know or understand or profess anything, but because Jesus is alive. We are Resurrection people because Jesus has called our name!
That really has nothing to do with the following sermon, but it kind of does, too. We tend to forget, or have never realized, just how desolate that day would have been for Jesus' friends and closest followers. What do you do, where do you go, when all is lost? When there is nothing left?
And what does it mean when all of that is flung aside like grave-clothes which are no longer needed?
What does it mean, really mean, to be a Resurrection person?
Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord —
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent — its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is the Word of the Lord.
I had a wonderful conversation on Saturday with a youngster who has only recently come to believe in Jesus as her Savior. It shocked me, at first, that I was forewarned, but completely unprepared, for talking about her decision with her. I'm knocking on the door of fifty years old, and I'm used to carrying on theological discussions with people twenty-something through eighty-something, but speaking to an eight-year-old about what it means to be a Christian, and what it means to be baptized, was like speaking a different language.
The Book of Order says that those presenting themselves for baptism “profess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, renounce evil and affirm their reliance on God’s grace, declare their intention to participate actively and responsibly in the worship and mission of the church,” and so on. Since not very many eight-year-olds know what words like “profess” and “renounce” and “affirm” and “reliance” and “intention” mean, it forced me to simplify the message, to distill the meaning into something that she could digest. I had to take it all down close to the bone. Our talk only lasted ten or fifteen minutes, but it was one of the most meaningful conversations I have ever had.
What does it mean to be a Christian – to be a Resurrection person?
We Christians live not only in the shadow of the cross, but in the shadow of the empty tomb. We are all Resurrection people, we live in the Resurrection, and we've had two thousand years to contemplate, postulate, investigate, argue over, codify, verify, testify, solidify, sanctify, theologize, homogenize, and package for public consumption this idea of a risen Savior. We Resurrection people have developed our own language of multisyllabic words and a thesaurus full of ways to explain how and why and for whom Christ arose. And for far too many of us Resurrection people, this idea of Resurrection is just that – an idea, a concept, a point of doctrine that we must mentally and verbally assent to in order to be allowed to take part in church. And while it has been necessary to take the journey through understanding and verbalizing what it means to say “Christ arose,” and “Jesus is Lord,” to explain the whys and the hows, I wonder if we have in the process added more and more layers of separation between ourselves and this central, astounding act of God's grace.
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
It's Sunday. Of course, if you're Jewish, like Mary Magdalene and everyone in the room, it's been Sunday since sunset, and they've all been cooped up in this room since Friday just before sundown. The tables are still set up from the Passover Seder, the couches still in place... Mary tries to keep from looking at that one couch, at the head of the table, but her eyes keep going back to it. That empty couch, the one He had reclined in during the meal. No one sat there, of course. No one dared to. She could see them all look that way from time to time, then glance away quickly, ashamedly, knowing that the Master would never lay there again.
Some of them had been nearby when they laid him in the tomb. Mary and the other women had been very close, of course; it was the womenfolk's job to prepare the body for burial. The stone had been rolled in place, and a wax seal had been placed across it with the Roman governor's seal. Guards were there to prevent anyone from stealing the body – Mary scoffed, thinking about it: steal the body? Who? These men, this band of cowards, jumping every time a dog barked in the distance, certain the Temple guards were coming for them like they came for Jesus? Or perhaps the women of the group, who together couldn't muster the strength or leverage to roll the stone from the tomb's entry, much less lug a corpse any distance? Ridiculous.
And her eyes went back to that empty couch again. There had been hushed, urgent conversations at first, among the disciples. There had been tears and mournful embraces, but as the hours rolled on, everyone had grown more and more silent, more inside themselves, all contemplating, as best they could, what it meant. Jesus was dead. All the promises of God's Messiah lay mouldering in a rich man's donated tomb. There could be no kingdom if the king lay dead. No redemption for Israel if the redeemer was gone. All of that big talk and all of those wild dreams were gone. For a group of people whose whole reason for living was found in this itinerant Jewish miracle-working rabbi, the future was black, hopeless, pointless.
The sun wasn't up yet when Mary had finally had enough of the cramped, airless room, fetid with the smell of fear and failure. She slipped out, and walked without thinking toward the last place she'd seen Jesus. Jesus, who had done so much for her, whose feet she had washed with her tears, whose words she had clung to like a drowning person clings to a lifeline. Whose words would offer her hope now? Where would she ever again find hope for the future, the promise of eternal life? All of that was gone, dead, wrapped in burial linens and sealed in the to...
Where are the guards? Had Pilate come to his senses, realizing none of Jesus' followers had the guts or foresight to steal the... but the tomb, its entrance is open! With the sky becoming lighter, Mary can see the stone rolled away, the seal broken, why would anyone have done this?
She ran back to the house, and found Peter and John just outside the door, their faces creased from fear and grief. The horrible news poured out of her mouth in a confused gasp, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!” and like an arrow shot from a bow, they were gone at a full run. She ran behind, slower, dreading what they'd find, but knowing what they'd find.
And now she was alone at the tomb, alone in her confusion and grief. Peter and John had left, because what could they do? Finally she bent down and looked in there, no reason, really, but she looked in, and there were... people there... sitting where Jesus had been... odd. They asked her why she was crying, and she told them, but they didn't say anything else. It was too much to process, really, so she turned back and saw the gardener. Suddenly embarrassed to be a woman alone in such a remote section of the city, she turned away, not daring to make eye contact. Even in grief, there were certain things that were simply not done.
Yet if he was the one who tended the gardens, who cared for the land around the tomb, perhaps he knew where Jesus had been taken! Who knows, after all, perhaps the rich man had second thoughts about giving his tomb to a man Pilate had condemned, and had ordered Jesus removed and taken to another sepulcher. “Sir,” she said, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Ridiculous, of course, there was no way she could carry a body that size anywhere, but...
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
In that instant, Mary Magdalene became a Resurrection person. Not because she understood what had happened, not because it made sense, not because of a solid grounding in theological teaching or because she had studied the Westminster Shorter Catechism or said the Sinner's Prayer or gotten baptized or recited the Apostle's Creed, but because Jesus was alive! He had called her name!
What does it mean to be a Resurrection person?
You and I are Resurrection people, too. If we dare to peel it all away – set aside the particular doctrines we've professed, the churches we were attending when we came to believe, our age or how wet we got when we got baptized, all of the stuff we've heard and learned and taught and thought, if we allow our faith to get down close to the bone, what we find is this:
Just like Mary, we are Resurrection people, we live in the Resurrection not because we know or understand or profess anything, but because Jesus is alive. We are Resurrection people because Jesus has called our name!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Mary's Story
I hope you'll forgive a little flight of fancy this week. I'm taking a lot of artistic license with this sermon, trying to be inside Mary's head as she pours the perfume on Jesus' feet and dries them with her hair.
Yes, I could have talked about the meaning of this and the significance of that. Others have done so, and better than i could ever hope to. What strikes me about this passage is the absolute abandon with which Mary worships Jesus.
Please offer comments and constructive criticism. Even if your name is Ken Silva, such comments are welcome.
(Thanks MissBossyPants for the help!)
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
This is the Word of the Lord.
What a strange sight it must have been, even after so many days, seeing him lying there on that couch, eating with his friend Jesus. Laughing, conversing, listening, engaging the other disciples in discussion... you know, just being Lazarus, same as he had always been Lazarus. Look at him, telling that same old joke he always tells about the peddler and the housewife, laughing at the punchline as if he'd never heard it before!
Everyone else always laughs, not because the joke is still funny, but because you can't be around Lazarus and not laugh, not enjoy life just a little bit more.
Mary stood in the corner, ostensibly to be close at hand in case one of the dinner guests needed anything... but in reality someone could have shattered dinnerware at her feet and she wouldn't have flinched. Martha, busily serving the dinner, no longer minded. Truth be told, she would rather have dropped everything and spent all her time clinging to her brother Lazarus, just to experience him being here, just to remind herself that it was real.
Lazarus, their brother, had been dead. Not “dead” as in “spiritually lost,” like the Prodigal Son, no. Really, permanently dead.
The three of them, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, they had known for awhile who Jesus was, and why he had come. When Lazarus fell ill, the first thing they did was send for Jesus, to ask him to come and heal his friend. Days passed, and no Jesus. Then, no more Lazarus. Just like that, the anchor that kept Martha from working herself into the ground and Mary from flitting off like a butterfly, gone. Entombed. Dead.
For four days Mary and Martha had moved around their house like ghosts, like zombies, doing what had to be done, but feeling nothing. At some point, through the fog, Martha told Mary that Jesus was here, and was asking for her. Mary remembered weeping at his feet. She remembered Jesus' tears.
She remembered the stone being rolled away, and everyone recoiling at what they expected to smell.
She remembered Jesus saying the silliest thing she'd ever heard, yelling at an open tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” and the impossible, the unbelievable, the overwhelming joy of Lazarus doing just that!
She knew what that had cost Jesus. It lay there, like a rock in the pit of her stomach, the knowledge that, even now, the Temple leaders were plotting his death. Such a display of authority, such a demonstration that even death could not defeat the Christ – and rather than fall at his feet, as she had, rather than hailing him as God's anointed, their lust for power and dedication to their own greed and grandeur had driven them to a thirst for blood. And now Jesus was less than two miles from their power base, Jerusalem. She had heard some of the men talking, had heard Lazarus making sure that Jesus knew what it meant, this trip to Jerusalem.
He was signing his death warrant, walking right into the jaws of the beast.
Of course he knew. Everyone knew what it meant. Jesus had known what it would mean when he had the stone rolled away, but he did it anyway. And because of Jesus, she had Lazarus back.
How do you say “thank you” for something like that? Oh, she had said the words, over and over so many times. But she owed him more than thanks. She owed him everything.
It was almost as if she were watching someone else do it. She walked to her room, where she had kept, hidden away, that jar of spikenard. She had bought it a few weeks back, to pour on Lazarus' body, but the tomb had been sealed too quickly.
She wouldn't be too slow this time.
Made from an extract of the roots of a plant which grew only in the Himalayas, spikenard was stunningly expensive – the jar held enough to pay a years' wages to a common laborer. Thousands of dollars, but Mary didn't hesitate. Money meant nothing, dignity meant nothing, propriety meant nothing, not in the face of the gift that Jesus had given her.
As she entered the dining room, she did something that women never did in public: she let down her hair. Kneeling by the couch where Jesus reclined, she broke open the jar and poured the contents on his feet, and wiped them dry with her hair.
The weight of the shocked silence pressed in on her. No one understood what she was doing, no one understood the depth of her gratitude, the compulsion to worship at the feet of the One she knew – she knew – to be the Messiah.
The fragrance of the spikenard filled every corner of the house, thick enough to cut, as she looked into his eyes – a bold move, but there was nothing left of propriety now, was there? – someone was protesting, and loudly. One of the Apostles. It didn't matter, she could see that Jesus understood.
Less than two miles – that's all that's left between Jesus and the night where he will wash the feet of his disciples – all of his disciples – even the feet of Judas. Less than two miles separate Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane. Less than two miles from the trial, the torture, the scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross. Less than two miles from the cold, dark, silent, airless tomb.
What should our faith cost us?
What did faith cost Mary?
Mary probably didn't understand what Jesus' death would mean for humanity. She didn't understand any of the six or more doctrines of atonement, didn't understand the weight of sin that Jesus would bear on that cross, probably had no concept, even with Lazarus sitting right there across the table, that Jesus would conquer death once, for all. She didn't know that the redeeming work of this man, whose feet she knelt at, would permeate every nook and cranny, every time and place of creation like the perfume that still hung in the air of that house. All she knew is that no amount of money, no level of dignity, no expectation of social propriety was as important as this man, this teacher, this Lord, this Messiah.
The theology, the doctrine, the nuances meant nothing. Mary had seen what salvation looks like. She had seen salvation as it walked into the sunlight from the open tomb door. She had seen the face of salvation when she loosed the rag over Lazarus' eyes.
Our time? Our treasures? Our dignity? Our social standing? Does any of this really matter in the face of the Cross?
What should our faith cost us?
Yes, I could have talked about the meaning of this and the significance of that. Others have done so, and better than i could ever hope to. What strikes me about this passage is the absolute abandon with which Mary worships Jesus.
Please offer comments and constructive criticism. Even if your name is Ken Silva, such comments are welcome.
(Thanks MissBossyPants for the help!)
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
This is the Word of the Lord.
What a strange sight it must have been, even after so many days, seeing him lying there on that couch, eating with his friend Jesus. Laughing, conversing, listening, engaging the other disciples in discussion... you know, just being Lazarus, same as he had always been Lazarus. Look at him, telling that same old joke he always tells about the peddler and the housewife, laughing at the punchline as if he'd never heard it before!
Everyone else always laughs, not because the joke is still funny, but because you can't be around Lazarus and not laugh, not enjoy life just a little bit more.
Mary stood in the corner, ostensibly to be close at hand in case one of the dinner guests needed anything... but in reality someone could have shattered dinnerware at her feet and she wouldn't have flinched. Martha, busily serving the dinner, no longer minded. Truth be told, she would rather have dropped everything and spent all her time clinging to her brother Lazarus, just to experience him being here, just to remind herself that it was real.
Lazarus, their brother, had been dead. Not “dead” as in “spiritually lost,” like the Prodigal Son, no. Really, permanently dead.
The three of them, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, they had known for awhile who Jesus was, and why he had come. When Lazarus fell ill, the first thing they did was send for Jesus, to ask him to come and heal his friend. Days passed, and no Jesus. Then, no more Lazarus. Just like that, the anchor that kept Martha from working herself into the ground and Mary from flitting off like a butterfly, gone. Entombed. Dead.
For four days Mary and Martha had moved around their house like ghosts, like zombies, doing what had to be done, but feeling nothing. At some point, through the fog, Martha told Mary that Jesus was here, and was asking for her. Mary remembered weeping at his feet. She remembered Jesus' tears.
She remembered the stone being rolled away, and everyone recoiling at what they expected to smell.
She remembered Jesus saying the silliest thing she'd ever heard, yelling at an open tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” and the impossible, the unbelievable, the overwhelming joy of Lazarus doing just that!
She knew what that had cost Jesus. It lay there, like a rock in the pit of her stomach, the knowledge that, even now, the Temple leaders were plotting his death. Such a display of authority, such a demonstration that even death could not defeat the Christ – and rather than fall at his feet, as she had, rather than hailing him as God's anointed, their lust for power and dedication to their own greed and grandeur had driven them to a thirst for blood. And now Jesus was less than two miles from their power base, Jerusalem. She had heard some of the men talking, had heard Lazarus making sure that Jesus knew what it meant, this trip to Jerusalem.
He was signing his death warrant, walking right into the jaws of the beast.
Of course he knew. Everyone knew what it meant. Jesus had known what it would mean when he had the stone rolled away, but he did it anyway. And because of Jesus, she had Lazarus back.
How do you say “thank you” for something like that? Oh, she had said the words, over and over so many times. But she owed him more than thanks. She owed him everything.
It was almost as if she were watching someone else do it. She walked to her room, where she had kept, hidden away, that jar of spikenard. She had bought it a few weeks back, to pour on Lazarus' body, but the tomb had been sealed too quickly.
She wouldn't be too slow this time.
Made from an extract of the roots of a plant which grew only in the Himalayas, spikenard was stunningly expensive – the jar held enough to pay a years' wages to a common laborer. Thousands of dollars, but Mary didn't hesitate. Money meant nothing, dignity meant nothing, propriety meant nothing, not in the face of the gift that Jesus had given her.
As she entered the dining room, she did something that women never did in public: she let down her hair. Kneeling by the couch where Jesus reclined, she broke open the jar and poured the contents on his feet, and wiped them dry with her hair.
The weight of the shocked silence pressed in on her. No one understood what she was doing, no one understood the depth of her gratitude, the compulsion to worship at the feet of the One she knew – she knew – to be the Messiah.
The fragrance of the spikenard filled every corner of the house, thick enough to cut, as she looked into his eyes – a bold move, but there was nothing left of propriety now, was there? – someone was protesting, and loudly. One of the Apostles. It didn't matter, she could see that Jesus understood.
Less than two miles – that's all that's left between Jesus and the night where he will wash the feet of his disciples – all of his disciples – even the feet of Judas. Less than two miles separate Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane. Less than two miles from the trial, the torture, the scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross. Less than two miles from the cold, dark, silent, airless tomb.
What should our faith cost us?
What did faith cost Mary?
Mary probably didn't understand what Jesus' death would mean for humanity. She didn't understand any of the six or more doctrines of atonement, didn't understand the weight of sin that Jesus would bear on that cross, probably had no concept, even with Lazarus sitting right there across the table, that Jesus would conquer death once, for all. She didn't know that the redeeming work of this man, whose feet she knelt at, would permeate every nook and cranny, every time and place of creation like the perfume that still hung in the air of that house. All she knew is that no amount of money, no level of dignity, no expectation of social propriety was as important as this man, this teacher, this Lord, this Messiah.
The theology, the doctrine, the nuances meant nothing. Mary had seen what salvation looks like. She had seen salvation as it walked into the sunlight from the open tomb door. She had seen the face of salvation when she loosed the rag over Lazarus' eyes.
Our time? Our treasures? Our dignity? Our social standing? Does any of this really matter in the face of the Cross?
What should our faith cost us?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Extravagant, Overwhelming, Breathtaking... and Unexpected God
If I ever meet Barbara Brown Taylor, I owe her, at the very least, lunch. Yes, I thank her in the sermon text, but I what I don't say is that her sermons gave me some direction last week, and changed my entire sermon path this week, and in a very good way, I think.
As always, comments, criticism, and the like are deeply appreciated.
Joshua 5:9-12
The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.
While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-the best one-and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
This is the Word of the Lord.
Many thanks this morning to the writing of Barbara Brown Taylor for help in building this sermon.
Our God is a God of the unexpected. An extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God!
Now, this isn't so easy to see in our Gospel reading this morning; after all, the parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the best-known, most-preached parables in the Gospels. We approach it as a parable about repentance, most of the time, because to our 21st-century Western minds, that's the obvious message: no matter how bad we mess things up, if we repent, God is faithful –eager, even – to take us back, to restore us to fellowship with God.
There's nothing wrong with that view, of course; yet as you might expect, there's more to this parable than meets the eye.
Remember that when Jesus told this parable, he was speaking not to 21st-century American urban and suburban Protestants, but to first-century Middle Eastern Jews. Most of those listening to Jesus were farmers who worked and lived on land that had been in their family for generations untold. In their society, one didn't grow up and move away, one didn't strive to make it alone, to be self-sufficient, independent, autonomous. Each generation took the place of the one before it on the land, raising the next generation to do the same after. Your livelihood, your status in the community, your identity, all of this came from the soil.
So for a son to refuse to fulfill his duty to the family was reprehensible. Horrible! And it gets worse! The patriarch of the family, the father, held a place of honor in society. Patriarchs didn't run. Patriarchs didn't get up from the table when a guest arrived. Patriarchs did not plead with their sons, they told their sons what to do, period. Add to that the fact that a son would never, ever receive his inheritance while the father was still alive! The rabbis had a saying: “three cry out and are not answered: he who has money and lends it without witnesses; he who acquires a master; he who transfers his property to his children in his lifetime.”
What's more, dividing the inheritance meant more than just writing his son a check. The father had to divide the land, then watch as his son put that land up for sale – there was no way the community could not see the shame, both of the disrespectful son and the father who could not control his children. I mean, honestly! What is a bag of gold when you have land? Who ever heard of such a thing?
And of course the son throws his money away, losing it all to Gentiles, no less, and of course he is reduced to wallowing in the mire with pigs. And up to now, the people listening to Jesus are right there with him. Nothing at all out of the ordinary with this scenario, happens all to often. So often, in fact, that the Talmud describes a ceremony to deal with it—a qetsatsah ceremony, to punish a Jewish boy who loses the family inheritance to Gentiles.
Here’s how it works. If he ever shows up in his village again, then the villagers can fill a large earthenware jug with burned nuts and corn, break it in front of the prodigal, and shout his name out loud, pronouncing him cut off from his people. After that, he will be a cosmic orphan, who might as well go back and live with the pigs.
Perhaps some of the people who have been around Jesus for awhile hear the Prodigal's words, “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands,'” and thought that making the son a hired servant would be a very compassionate, loving thing to do. Certainly better than qetsatsah, and perhaps the son could work enough to buy back a little of the land he'd lost. Perhaps, in time, if the son is faithful in his service to the father, he can earn a place at the foot of the table. Surely this is the message of the parable! That even when we sin and dishonor God, we have the opportunity to work our way back into God's good graces. What a message of freedom, what a message of hope!
But they ain't heard nothin' yet!
Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. The son returns, and before he can approach the house his father does that thing that patriarchs do not ever do! He runs! Runs! Crashes into his son with a warm embrace, and before his son can get out his well-rehearsed speech, his father has covered his rags with a robe, has put a ring on his finger, has killed the fatted calf!
I've said it before, I'll say it again: preposterous! What kind of patriarch – what kind of father – what kind of God – would do such a thing? Ignore propriety, thumb his nose at tradition, flout the rules? You don't just forgive, man! There are procedures for this kind of thing! There are expectations! What will the neighbors think?
Propriety? Tradition? Expectations? God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. There are more important things than rules, than what the neighbors will think!
Not many more days now, and Jesus will top that last hill overlooking Jerusalem. He may look like he's walking, but no. If we are the Prodigal in this story, then he is the father, and he is running – to the Cross? Yes. Because in the mind of our extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God, what is important is not what we have done to hurt the relationship – how many times we've sold our inheritance, wallowed in the slop, and come dragging back up the road. What is important is reunion –reconciliation – healing the relationship between ourselves and our God.
All during the season of Lent, I've been asking questions about our faith: should it cost us something, and if so, what? And here, while the party is going full blast inside, stands the other son. He is angry, and isn't afraid to let his father know all about it! “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”
And you know, when it comes right down to it, he's right! It isn't fair, is it? It isn't right, is it? We can take the high road, and deplore the faithful son for refusing to take part in his father's joy, but can we – must we – not also admit that we understand – even agree with – his point?
Maybe that's part of what faith should cost us, though – the right to be “right.” The right to be angry at who the father wraps in his embrace, insulted at who gets to wear the ring and the robe, indignant over who gets the fatted calf.
And isn't it interesting that the father doesn't just let the indignant son stew in his own juices, doesn't ignore the problem because he's too busy having a party? The father doesn't react in anger to being chewed out by his son, or love him any less for it! “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Faith costs us something. Peace and reconciliation always involves change, always provokes a crisis. You can’t have peace and stay exactly who you are, or even who you want to be. Sometimes you have sacrifice things as real as land that has been in the family forever. Sometimes you have to sacrifice honor, rightness, and even self-respect. Sometimes you have to run like crazy to protect your loved ones, even those loved ones who have done you irreparable harm. It’s all a matter of priorities, and for this father, reunion is all that matters. Extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking reconciliation. Reunion that finds the lost and brings them home. Reconciliation that brings the dead back to life.
Oh, yes, it feels good to stand in the yard. It feels good to know who’s right, who’s wrong, and which one you are. But there is a banquet going on. You can hear the music and the dancing even out in the yard, and there is plenty left to eat.
Faith costs us something. We can go to the party as we are, as long as we don’t insist on staying that way. Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. God's banquet doors are flung open wide, the table is spread and the chairs pulled out for anyone who will come.
So... you gonna stay out here all night, or are you coming in?
As always, comments, criticism, and the like are deeply appreciated.
Joshua 5:9-12
The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.
While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-the best one-and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
This is the Word of the Lord.
Many thanks this morning to the writing of Barbara Brown Taylor for help in building this sermon.
Our God is a God of the unexpected. An extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God!
Now, this isn't so easy to see in our Gospel reading this morning; after all, the parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the best-known, most-preached parables in the Gospels. We approach it as a parable about repentance, most of the time, because to our 21st-century Western minds, that's the obvious message: no matter how bad we mess things up, if we repent, God is faithful –eager, even – to take us back, to restore us to fellowship with God.
There's nothing wrong with that view, of course; yet as you might expect, there's more to this parable than meets the eye.
Remember that when Jesus told this parable, he was speaking not to 21st-century American urban and suburban Protestants, but to first-century Middle Eastern Jews. Most of those listening to Jesus were farmers who worked and lived on land that had been in their family for generations untold. In their society, one didn't grow up and move away, one didn't strive to make it alone, to be self-sufficient, independent, autonomous. Each generation took the place of the one before it on the land, raising the next generation to do the same after. Your livelihood, your status in the community, your identity, all of this came from the soil.
So for a son to refuse to fulfill his duty to the family was reprehensible. Horrible! And it gets worse! The patriarch of the family, the father, held a place of honor in society. Patriarchs didn't run. Patriarchs didn't get up from the table when a guest arrived. Patriarchs did not plead with their sons, they told their sons what to do, period. Add to that the fact that a son would never, ever receive his inheritance while the father was still alive! The rabbis had a saying: “three cry out and are not answered: he who has money and lends it without witnesses; he who acquires a master; he who transfers his property to his children in his lifetime.”
What's more, dividing the inheritance meant more than just writing his son a check. The father had to divide the land, then watch as his son put that land up for sale – there was no way the community could not see the shame, both of the disrespectful son and the father who could not control his children. I mean, honestly! What is a bag of gold when you have land? Who ever heard of such a thing?
And of course the son throws his money away, losing it all to Gentiles, no less, and of course he is reduced to wallowing in the mire with pigs. And up to now, the people listening to Jesus are right there with him. Nothing at all out of the ordinary with this scenario, happens all to often. So often, in fact, that the Talmud describes a ceremony to deal with it—a qetsatsah ceremony, to punish a Jewish boy who loses the family inheritance to Gentiles.
Here’s how it works. If he ever shows up in his village again, then the villagers can fill a large earthenware jug with burned nuts and corn, break it in front of the prodigal, and shout his name out loud, pronouncing him cut off from his people. After that, he will be a cosmic orphan, who might as well go back and live with the pigs.
Perhaps some of the people who have been around Jesus for awhile hear the Prodigal's words, “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands,'” and thought that making the son a hired servant would be a very compassionate, loving thing to do. Certainly better than qetsatsah, and perhaps the son could work enough to buy back a little of the land he'd lost. Perhaps, in time, if the son is faithful in his service to the father, he can earn a place at the foot of the table. Surely this is the message of the parable! That even when we sin and dishonor God, we have the opportunity to work our way back into God's good graces. What a message of freedom, what a message of hope!
But they ain't heard nothin' yet!
Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. The son returns, and before he can approach the house his father does that thing that patriarchs do not ever do! He runs! Runs! Crashes into his son with a warm embrace, and before his son can get out his well-rehearsed speech, his father has covered his rags with a robe, has put a ring on his finger, has killed the fatted calf!
I've said it before, I'll say it again: preposterous! What kind of patriarch – what kind of father – what kind of God – would do such a thing? Ignore propriety, thumb his nose at tradition, flout the rules? You don't just forgive, man! There are procedures for this kind of thing! There are expectations! What will the neighbors think?
Propriety? Tradition? Expectations? God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. There are more important things than rules, than what the neighbors will think!
Not many more days now, and Jesus will top that last hill overlooking Jerusalem. He may look like he's walking, but no. If we are the Prodigal in this story, then he is the father, and he is running – to the Cross? Yes. Because in the mind of our extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God, what is important is not what we have done to hurt the relationship – how many times we've sold our inheritance, wallowed in the slop, and come dragging back up the road. What is important is reunion –reconciliation – healing the relationship between ourselves and our God.
All during the season of Lent, I've been asking questions about our faith: should it cost us something, and if so, what? And here, while the party is going full blast inside, stands the other son. He is angry, and isn't afraid to let his father know all about it! “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”
And you know, when it comes right down to it, he's right! It isn't fair, is it? It isn't right, is it? We can take the high road, and deplore the faithful son for refusing to take part in his father's joy, but can we – must we – not also admit that we understand – even agree with – his point?
Maybe that's part of what faith should cost us, though – the right to be “right.” The right to be angry at who the father wraps in his embrace, insulted at who gets to wear the ring and the robe, indignant over who gets the fatted calf.
And isn't it interesting that the father doesn't just let the indignant son stew in his own juices, doesn't ignore the problem because he's too busy having a party? The father doesn't react in anger to being chewed out by his son, or love him any less for it! “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Faith costs us something. Peace and reconciliation always involves change, always provokes a crisis. You can’t have peace and stay exactly who you are, or even who you want to be. Sometimes you have sacrifice things as real as land that has been in the family forever. Sometimes you have to sacrifice honor, rightness, and even self-respect. Sometimes you have to run like crazy to protect your loved ones, even those loved ones who have done you irreparable harm. It’s all a matter of priorities, and for this father, reunion is all that matters. Extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking reconciliation. Reunion that finds the lost and brings them home. Reconciliation that brings the dead back to life.
Oh, yes, it feels good to stand in the yard. It feels good to know who’s right, who’s wrong, and which one you are. But there is a banquet going on. You can hear the music and the dancing even out in the yard, and there is plenty left to eat.
Faith costs us something. We can go to the party as we are, as long as we don’t insist on staying that way. Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. God's banquet doors are flung open wide, the table is spread and the chairs pulled out for anyone who will come.
So... you gonna stay out here all night, or are you coming in?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The Sermon (I never thought I'd) Preach
This is the text of the sermon I shared on Pastor Nar's "Losing My Religion" podcast. I welcome constructive criticism and dialogue.
Mark 1:40-45
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Back in the mid-1980’s, I worked at a local television station as a studio manager and camera operator. One of the shows we did was a daily talk show, with tons of guests, comedians, musicians… I got to meet folks like Rita Mareno, Fannie Flagg, James Gregory, Sinbad, even Harlan Ellison – which for a science fiction nut is a really big deal.
One morning, though, we got news that one of the guests was a nurse who worked directly with AIDS patients.
Now, you may remember that back in the mid-‘80’s we didn’t have a lot of information about AIDS and HIV. I can’t speak for the scientific or medical communities, but we in the general public weren’t too sure of how easy it was, or how many ways there were, to “catch” AIDS. It sounds kind of stupid now, but we were afraid to one degree or another of salad bars, toilet seats, door handles… and when we found out this person was coming to the studio, some of us got nervous. One of our jobs, you see, was to put a lavaliere microphone on the guest, which meant, by design, close contact – touching. This person was surrounded by AIDS every day… what if we could “catch” AIDS by miking her?
You have no idea how much I wish I could stand here and say that I was the heroic one who stepped up and told the others how ridiculous they were… I mean, honestly. Touching someone gives you AIDS? Please. I wish I could tell you that I boldly went and miked the guest and got on with my day.
No… the heroic one was a tiny little blonde with big 80’s glasses and hair. She heard what we were talking about and just blew up! I don’t think I have been as effectively ripped to shreds before or since.
The nicest thing she said to us was, “You guys are idiots! Never mind – I’ll put the mike on her!” And as she walked off she was muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid…”
The guest got miked, the show went on, and of course no one got sick. I honestly hate to tell that story, because it does nothing to improve either my self-image or my dignity before others. It is not at all an example of being Christ-like, and what is worse; it isn’t even the worst example from my life of being un-Christ-like. But whenever the Gospel discussion of leprosy comes up, this is what comes to mind.
Our Gospel reading paints the picture of Jesus traveling all around Galilee, preaching and casting out demons. Somewhere on the road, or in some town, a bell dingles, and a voice cries out “unclean!”
The people surrounding Jesus recoil in horror at this stinking, walking pile of dirty rags and festering sores. You can almost hear the voices hissing in revulsion, “leper!”
This leper then did something that was strictly forbidden by the Law – he approached Jesus. He got close. He fell to his knees in the Galilean dirt and said something astounding: “If you choose to, you can make me clean.” What an interesting phrase – “you can make me clean,” not “you can heal me.”
What he was asking for was healing, yes, but in fact he was asking for so much more.
Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, still exists today. According to the World Health Organization, over 212,000 cases exist worldwide, though those numbers are dropping.
The disease is not very contagious, is quite curable with multiple-drug therapy, and while no one is sure what exactly causes Hansen’s, experts agree across the board that it is unnecessary to ostracize the infected person. Even so, leper colonies still exist in countries like India, Japan, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, South Korea, Vietnam… and the United States.
Saying all of that gives us some modern perspective, it’s true, but it kind of talks around what was going on in the Gospel reading today. Isn’t it interesting that Mark doesn’t call him a man, or a person, or give him a name; he is identified only by his disease, a “leper.” This removal of humanity from a human being is, to say the least, instructive.
For the Jews in Jesus’ day, the discussion of leprosy began with the book of Leviticus, the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters. In the thirteenth chapter you’ll find a very detailed discussion about identifying leprosy. You’ll also see the words “clean” and “unclean” used a lot.
You see, the word that has been translated as “leprosy” is “Tzaraath,” and it’s a very generic term that is applied to humans, clothing, and houses. It got translated as “leprosy” about 250 years before Christ when the Hebrew Bible was translated from Hebrew to Greek.
“Tzaraath” comes from the Hebrew word for “smiting,” because – and this is important – in the Jewish understanding of the day, the skin diseases and, well, mildew described in Leviticus were thought to be punishment for sin.
Thus a person was not “diseased” or “healthy,” they were either “clean” – meaning acceptable to take part in the community and its worship activities – or “unclean” – meaning unacceptable to the community, untouchable, dirty, sinful, and ostracized from that community and prohibited from worship. These people were required by the Law to mess up their hair, wear rags, and live away from friends, family, and prohibited from taking part in the worship of God. As the children of Israel inhabited the Promised Land, and city populations grew, these people were required to ring bells and cry out “unclean, unclean” wherever they went. They could not be touched, could not come into close contact of any kind with any other – “clean” – human being, until they died, or until they were somehow cured.
I have to confess to you that I really, really have a problem with this. I know, yes, it’s in Leviticus, for the most part, and yes, Leviticus is part of the Scriptures, and yes, the Scriptures are the written word of God.
And I guess I should understand, because I remember full well the terror over the AIDS epidemic, and not knowing if you could catch the disease from mosquito bites or being sneezed on.
Yet it still turns my stomach to think of someone being denied their family, their life, their livelihood, and their hope because of something that might well have been a nasty case of psoriasis, we don’t know, and in any case it wasn’t at all about the lepers being sick – it was about the lepers being the walking, talking, embodiment of sin. Keep them away lest their sin infect you through their speech or through their actions or through the very air. Don’t touch them lest the sin rub off on you. They are no longer humans, they are lepers, and their very existence is an abomination!
“If you choose to, you can remove this sin from me. You can let me go home to my family. You can let me work for a living again. You can let me go to the Temple and sing Psalms again.”
There’s something fascinating about what happens next. You see, many ancient manuscripts say what our reading this morning says, that Jesus was “moved with pity.” However, there are a lot of ancient manuscripts that use a very different word, a much more uncomfortable, challenging word: they say that Jesus was not moved to pity, but moved to anger.
Jesus saw this disheveled man, reduced to wearing rags and bells, utterly cut off from all human contact, hated, loathed, and feared by everyone, robbed of his humanity, reduced to groveling in the dirt, and begging not for healing but for forgiveness… and it made Jesus mad!
I wonder – why anger? Of all the emotions one might feel when confronted by this stinking, diseased mass of humanity, groveling in the dirt – revulsion, disdain, compassion, horror, perhaps love – anger? Why was Jesus angry… and with whom was Jesus angry?
The possibilities are intriguing. Could Jesus have been angry at the way a simple set of instructions, meant to keep a nomadic people safe from disease on a long sojourn, had been corrupted and maligned in order to make scapegoats of people who may well have suffered from Hansen's or any variety of skin conditions? Power loves to scapegoat, after all, even when that power is a king of Israel or Judah, or a group of powerful priests. Even a cursory glance at history will prove that when a regime wants to bolster its power, it finds someone to focus their people's hatred upon – Jews or the Irish or African-Americans or Asian-Americans or Muslims or gay and trangendered people...
I wonder if Jesus was angry about how things were about to change for him? After all, up to this point he had enjoyed a moderate fame, enough to garner a group of listeners whenever he came into town and spoke, but not so many as to impede his progress or put him in danger of being pulled off-message. Could it be that the leper presented Jesus with a choice – respect the status quo, keep the oppressed in their place, stay in a comfort zone and do just enough to get by with fulfilling his calling, or break through the barriers, rip wide the curtain, and open the floodgates of healing and hope for all humankind. Respond to the leper's plea, and nothing will ever be the same.
The narrow streets of the towns and cities won't hold the crowds straining to see, hear, and touch this healer-prophet, he'll have to spend all his time out in the countryside; people will be more and more interested in seeing a miracle than in hearing the healing words of the Kingdom of God; those in power will become more and more interested in, and threatened by, this itinerant Rabbi from Judean flyover country, and events will be set in motion which will culminate with a cross.
I don't know why Jesus got angry, but I know that his anger produced an astonishing response.
Well, “astonishing” is probably the wrong word. More like “shocking.” He did something which was horrifying, unthinkable, repulsive to everyone around him.
This kneeling leper said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”
And Jesus did the one thing that a person in first-century Palestine must never, ever do, no ifs, ands, or buts, no discussion groups about the pros and cons, no opposing views on a split-screen on CNN, no questions, just do not do this ever: Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him!
“I do choose. Be made clean!”
He knew what would happen to his ministry, he knew that this one touch would end with the scourge and the cross, he knew this!
He touched anyway.
I wonder if we who are in the institutional Church have ever really read this passage of Scripture?
Now, please understand that I am a card-carrying member of the mainline Protestant Church, the fully organized and institutionalized and westernized and homogenized and sanitized-for-your-protection middle-class North American Church.
I have been a member of evangelical, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and mainline churches, and have taken part in worship with Catholics and Episcopalians of both traditional and charismatic stripes. I have been to faith healings, baptisms of varying degrees of wetness, tent revivals, prayer vigils, and meetings too numerous to count. I am in the club. I know the password and the secret handshake.
And I am here to tell you that somewhere along the way, while we were debating theology and doctrine, arguing and fighting and suing and splitting up over the nature of Christ and the meaning of the Eucharist and the importance of baptism and the rightness of slavery and of segregation and of excluding women from ordination, while we were whoring ourselves out to this political cause or that candidate, we lost our way. We forgot who we are and Whose we are, and it may well be too late to fix it, I don't know.
I know, I know, I'm coming in too hot on this, but hear me out. I am an utter and unrepentant theology and church history geek. Ask me about Reformed Theology or about the Council of Nicea and I can bore you to death for hours talking about it with gusto and passion. Historically speaking, the institutional church is the best possible vehicle to determine orthodoxy, direct orthopraxy, provide structure and accountability and offer support for local church bodies.
Yet when theology and doctrine becomes not a stepping-stone to a closer relationship with out Savior, but a checklist to determine who is in and who is out, when theology and doctrine becomes not a beacon of hope to the lost and marginalized but a bludgeon to all who dare disagree with our obviously perfected understanding of all things God, when we have divorced our first love in favor of a nice, safe, predictable set of mental assertions and codes of conduct, we have become little more than one of the hundreds of pagan temples dotting the first-century Roman empire, where one's outer performance was everything and one's inner spiritual state was irrelevant.
We no longer reach out to touch, because we know who is clean and unclean. Touch this one and you might get AIDS, or that one and you might catch the gay. Our youth groups are more concerned with making sure the students we have are well-behaved and properly entertained than in reaching out to the freaks and geeks and the malcontents and ne'er-do-wells. Our pastors are more concerned with making sure the stewardship campaign and the building program is healthy and the PowerPoint is working and the Praise Team is on cue than in shining the light of Christ into the city's darkest corners. As long as our numbers are good, as long as our Christian Clubs on the high school campus are well-attended, as long as the paychecks cash and our people say all the right things and vote the right way and write their congressman when we tell them to, we are all good. No reason to reach out to the leper. We don't need the leper.
Oh, we talk a good game, we do. Every now and again, one of us preacher types will pop up and wish aloud that we could be like the first-century Church. I admit that I always laugh at that, because when we say that we generally want to pick and choose the ways in which our modern, westernized church should imitate the earliest believers. Do you really, really want to be like the first-century church? Do you, pastor, want to give up your salary and your staff and your buildings and your support structure? Do you want to meet in secret in people's homes, do you want to have to sneak around and be in constant fear of getting caught? Do you really want to be in danger of being imprisoned, of being tortured in ever-more-imaginative and horrifying ways, of seeing your family slowly and carefully killed before your eyes?
Well, of course not, but I must admit that there are elements of the first-century church that we could very well embrace, which very well might save the institutional church from obsolescence, if there is still time.
See, the thing about the first-century church is, once the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples, all bets were off. People were coming to faith in Christ all over the place, in greater and greater numbers, and for these disciples, born and raised in Judaism, they were struggling to deal with the fact that many of those receiving the Holy Spirit were people who had always been excluded – sometimes with solid Scriptural backing – from worshiping Jaweh. There were Samaritans and Gentiles, women, even a eunuch!
No one was left out, no limits were placed on how and when and where and to what degree God's Spirit could move. The Apostles may well have looked at one another and said the same thing that Adam said to Eve: “Stand back, honey, I don't know how big this thing's gonna get!”
All of this was happening not because their doctrine was precise or their theology flawless – quite the opposite, in fact. As the letters and Gospel accounts were being written – the books that would, several hundred years later, be canonized as New Testament Scripture – what you believed about atonement and the nature of Christ and his deity depended not on your denomination but on which letters and Gospels your section of the world had access to. The test of faith was not mental assent to a set of core beliefs, but a dangerous declaration which, when uttered, placed you in direct opposition to the mores of the society you inhabited, and in immediate conflict with the governmental authorities. That declaration was simply “Jesus is Lord.”
Yet even not knowing where the road was leading, except to certain persecution and conflict and torture and death, the church reached out, grew, thrived. Despite the dangers, they touched anyway.
Look, I know that we in twenty-first century Western Christianity have our lepers, our groups and people and thought patterns and belief systems which are repugnant, frightening, off limits, despicable – things that strike us with the same level of revulsion as the thought of drinking raw sewage. The tendency has always been, when threatened by danger, to circle the wagons, strengthen the things which make us unique, find safety in people who are like us. Yet this has never been what the description of “church” should be. We are the Body of Christ, and as such, we are called, commissioned, depended upon to be like Jesus, our Head. We are called to break through the personal and societal barriers and mores and limitations and expectations and to reach out to the very people and institutions and places and belief systems which threaten us.
We are called to touch anyway.
Reverend Carlton Pearson was a well-known pastor, a protege of Oral Roberts, whose church boasted attendance of over 5,000 people every Sunday.
He had everything a minister could hope for, all the fame and adulation and power and creature comforts, until one day he lost it all. He didn't embezzle money or have an affair, no. But one evening he stopped believing in Hell, which, for an Evangelical, is tantamount to praying to Satan. He lost his church, and his denomination ousted him and labeled him a heretic. No one reached out to him, no one tried to listen or to just be his friend through this journey.
He became a Universalist, which is another matter altogether – one wonders if a more gentle approach from his denomination would have influenced him differently – but he was utterly alone. He took whatever speaking engagements he could, and tried to find his way.
One of the speaking engagements was with a group he would not have been caught dead with before – a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians. After he spoke, the woman who had asked him to the conference invited him to go down into the audience, the congregation, and let them minister to him. There were touches, warm embraces, healing words... and then, from the stage, the woman reappeared with a bowl of water. Right there, in that auditorium, she washed Carlton's feet.
The lesson of the story, for me, at least, is this: If we, the Church, are counting on the lepers to touch the lepers, it is already too late. We should stop right now, take the cutesy sayings off the marquee out front, nail the doors shut and paint “Ichabod” across the threshold. We're done.
Or, we can resolve that, whatever the cost to us in membership and prestige and political clout, even if we lose the high-five- and low-six-figure salary, even if the denomination disowns us and people talk bad about us on the radio, we will touch anyway.
Yeah, it'll be dangerous. It'll be dirty. And we don't know how big this thing is gonna get. But if the institutional Church is going to put truth to their claims of caring about the lost and the hungry and the homeless and the naked and the imprisoned and the fatherless and the marginalized and the misunderstood, there is only one choice.
Be like Jesus.
Touch anyway.
Mark 1:40-45
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Back in the mid-1980’s, I worked at a local television station as a studio manager and camera operator. One of the shows we did was a daily talk show, with tons of guests, comedians, musicians… I got to meet folks like Rita Mareno, Fannie Flagg, James Gregory, Sinbad, even Harlan Ellison – which for a science fiction nut is a really big deal.
One morning, though, we got news that one of the guests was a nurse who worked directly with AIDS patients.
Now, you may remember that back in the mid-‘80’s we didn’t have a lot of information about AIDS and HIV. I can’t speak for the scientific or medical communities, but we in the general public weren’t too sure of how easy it was, or how many ways there were, to “catch” AIDS. It sounds kind of stupid now, but we were afraid to one degree or another of salad bars, toilet seats, door handles… and when we found out this person was coming to the studio, some of us got nervous. One of our jobs, you see, was to put a lavaliere microphone on the guest, which meant, by design, close contact – touching. This person was surrounded by AIDS every day… what if we could “catch” AIDS by miking her?
You have no idea how much I wish I could stand here and say that I was the heroic one who stepped up and told the others how ridiculous they were… I mean, honestly. Touching someone gives you AIDS? Please. I wish I could tell you that I boldly went and miked the guest and got on with my day.
No… the heroic one was a tiny little blonde with big 80’s glasses and hair. She heard what we were talking about and just blew up! I don’t think I have been as effectively ripped to shreds before or since.
The nicest thing she said to us was, “You guys are idiots! Never mind – I’ll put the mike on her!” And as she walked off she was muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid…”
The guest got miked, the show went on, and of course no one got sick. I honestly hate to tell that story, because it does nothing to improve either my self-image or my dignity before others. It is not at all an example of being Christ-like, and what is worse; it isn’t even the worst example from my life of being un-Christ-like. But whenever the Gospel discussion of leprosy comes up, this is what comes to mind.
Our Gospel reading paints the picture of Jesus traveling all around Galilee, preaching and casting out demons. Somewhere on the road, or in some town, a bell dingles, and a voice cries out “unclean!”
The people surrounding Jesus recoil in horror at this stinking, walking pile of dirty rags and festering sores. You can almost hear the voices hissing in revulsion, “leper!”
This leper then did something that was strictly forbidden by the Law – he approached Jesus. He got close. He fell to his knees in the Galilean dirt and said something astounding: “If you choose to, you can make me clean.” What an interesting phrase – “you can make me clean,” not “you can heal me.”
What he was asking for was healing, yes, but in fact he was asking for so much more.
Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, still exists today. According to the World Health Organization, over 212,000 cases exist worldwide, though those numbers are dropping.
The disease is not very contagious, is quite curable with multiple-drug therapy, and while no one is sure what exactly causes Hansen’s, experts agree across the board that it is unnecessary to ostracize the infected person. Even so, leper colonies still exist in countries like India, Japan, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, South Korea, Vietnam… and the United States.
Saying all of that gives us some modern perspective, it’s true, but it kind of talks around what was going on in the Gospel reading today. Isn’t it interesting that Mark doesn’t call him a man, or a person, or give him a name; he is identified only by his disease, a “leper.” This removal of humanity from a human being is, to say the least, instructive.
For the Jews in Jesus’ day, the discussion of leprosy began with the book of Leviticus, the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters. In the thirteenth chapter you’ll find a very detailed discussion about identifying leprosy. You’ll also see the words “clean” and “unclean” used a lot.
You see, the word that has been translated as “leprosy” is “Tzaraath,” and it’s a very generic term that is applied to humans, clothing, and houses. It got translated as “leprosy” about 250 years before Christ when the Hebrew Bible was translated from Hebrew to Greek.
“Tzaraath” comes from the Hebrew word for “smiting,” because – and this is important – in the Jewish understanding of the day, the skin diseases and, well, mildew described in Leviticus were thought to be punishment for sin.
Thus a person was not “diseased” or “healthy,” they were either “clean” – meaning acceptable to take part in the community and its worship activities – or “unclean” – meaning unacceptable to the community, untouchable, dirty, sinful, and ostracized from that community and prohibited from worship. These people were required by the Law to mess up their hair, wear rags, and live away from friends, family, and prohibited from taking part in the worship of God. As the children of Israel inhabited the Promised Land, and city populations grew, these people were required to ring bells and cry out “unclean, unclean” wherever they went. They could not be touched, could not come into close contact of any kind with any other – “clean” – human being, until they died, or until they were somehow cured.
I have to confess to you that I really, really have a problem with this. I know, yes, it’s in Leviticus, for the most part, and yes, Leviticus is part of the Scriptures, and yes, the Scriptures are the written word of God.
And I guess I should understand, because I remember full well the terror over the AIDS epidemic, and not knowing if you could catch the disease from mosquito bites or being sneezed on.
Yet it still turns my stomach to think of someone being denied their family, their life, their livelihood, and their hope because of something that might well have been a nasty case of psoriasis, we don’t know, and in any case it wasn’t at all about the lepers being sick – it was about the lepers being the walking, talking, embodiment of sin. Keep them away lest their sin infect you through their speech or through their actions or through the very air. Don’t touch them lest the sin rub off on you. They are no longer humans, they are lepers, and their very existence is an abomination!
“If you choose to, you can remove this sin from me. You can let me go home to my family. You can let me work for a living again. You can let me go to the Temple and sing Psalms again.”
There’s something fascinating about what happens next. You see, many ancient manuscripts say what our reading this morning says, that Jesus was “moved with pity.” However, there are a lot of ancient manuscripts that use a very different word, a much more uncomfortable, challenging word: they say that Jesus was not moved to pity, but moved to anger.
Jesus saw this disheveled man, reduced to wearing rags and bells, utterly cut off from all human contact, hated, loathed, and feared by everyone, robbed of his humanity, reduced to groveling in the dirt, and begging not for healing but for forgiveness… and it made Jesus mad!
I wonder – why anger? Of all the emotions one might feel when confronted by this stinking, diseased mass of humanity, groveling in the dirt – revulsion, disdain, compassion, horror, perhaps love – anger? Why was Jesus angry… and with whom was Jesus angry?
The possibilities are intriguing. Could Jesus have been angry at the way a simple set of instructions, meant to keep a nomadic people safe from disease on a long sojourn, had been corrupted and maligned in order to make scapegoats of people who may well have suffered from Hansen's or any variety of skin conditions? Power loves to scapegoat, after all, even when that power is a king of Israel or Judah, or a group of powerful priests. Even a cursory glance at history will prove that when a regime wants to bolster its power, it finds someone to focus their people's hatred upon – Jews or the Irish or African-Americans or Asian-Americans or Muslims or gay and trangendered people...
I wonder if Jesus was angry about how things were about to change for him? After all, up to this point he had enjoyed a moderate fame, enough to garner a group of listeners whenever he came into town and spoke, but not so many as to impede his progress or put him in danger of being pulled off-message. Could it be that the leper presented Jesus with a choice – respect the status quo, keep the oppressed in their place, stay in a comfort zone and do just enough to get by with fulfilling his calling, or break through the barriers, rip wide the curtain, and open the floodgates of healing and hope for all humankind. Respond to the leper's plea, and nothing will ever be the same.
The narrow streets of the towns and cities won't hold the crowds straining to see, hear, and touch this healer-prophet, he'll have to spend all his time out in the countryside; people will be more and more interested in seeing a miracle than in hearing the healing words of the Kingdom of God; those in power will become more and more interested in, and threatened by, this itinerant Rabbi from Judean flyover country, and events will be set in motion which will culminate with a cross.
I don't know why Jesus got angry, but I know that his anger produced an astonishing response.
Well, “astonishing” is probably the wrong word. More like “shocking.” He did something which was horrifying, unthinkable, repulsive to everyone around him.
This kneeling leper said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”
And Jesus did the one thing that a person in first-century Palestine must never, ever do, no ifs, ands, or buts, no discussion groups about the pros and cons, no opposing views on a split-screen on CNN, no questions, just do not do this ever: Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him!
“I do choose. Be made clean!”
He knew what would happen to his ministry, he knew that this one touch would end with the scourge and the cross, he knew this!
He touched anyway.
I wonder if we who are in the institutional Church have ever really read this passage of Scripture?
Now, please understand that I am a card-carrying member of the mainline Protestant Church, the fully organized and institutionalized and westernized and homogenized and sanitized-for-your-protection middle-class North American Church.
I have been a member of evangelical, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and mainline churches, and have taken part in worship with Catholics and Episcopalians of both traditional and charismatic stripes. I have been to faith healings, baptisms of varying degrees of wetness, tent revivals, prayer vigils, and meetings too numerous to count. I am in the club. I know the password and the secret handshake.
And I am here to tell you that somewhere along the way, while we were debating theology and doctrine, arguing and fighting and suing and splitting up over the nature of Christ and the meaning of the Eucharist and the importance of baptism and the rightness of slavery and of segregation and of excluding women from ordination, while we were whoring ourselves out to this political cause or that candidate, we lost our way. We forgot who we are and Whose we are, and it may well be too late to fix it, I don't know.
I know, I know, I'm coming in too hot on this, but hear me out. I am an utter and unrepentant theology and church history geek. Ask me about Reformed Theology or about the Council of Nicea and I can bore you to death for hours talking about it with gusto and passion. Historically speaking, the institutional church is the best possible vehicle to determine orthodoxy, direct orthopraxy, provide structure and accountability and offer support for local church bodies.
Yet when theology and doctrine becomes not a stepping-stone to a closer relationship with out Savior, but a checklist to determine who is in and who is out, when theology and doctrine becomes not a beacon of hope to the lost and marginalized but a bludgeon to all who dare disagree with our obviously perfected understanding of all things God, when we have divorced our first love in favor of a nice, safe, predictable set of mental assertions and codes of conduct, we have become little more than one of the hundreds of pagan temples dotting the first-century Roman empire, where one's outer performance was everything and one's inner spiritual state was irrelevant.
We no longer reach out to touch, because we know who is clean and unclean. Touch this one and you might get AIDS, or that one and you might catch the gay. Our youth groups are more concerned with making sure the students we have are well-behaved and properly entertained than in reaching out to the freaks and geeks and the malcontents and ne'er-do-wells. Our pastors are more concerned with making sure the stewardship campaign and the building program is healthy and the PowerPoint is working and the Praise Team is on cue than in shining the light of Christ into the city's darkest corners. As long as our numbers are good, as long as our Christian Clubs on the high school campus are well-attended, as long as the paychecks cash and our people say all the right things and vote the right way and write their congressman when we tell them to, we are all good. No reason to reach out to the leper. We don't need the leper.
Oh, we talk a good game, we do. Every now and again, one of us preacher types will pop up and wish aloud that we could be like the first-century Church. I admit that I always laugh at that, because when we say that we generally want to pick and choose the ways in which our modern, westernized church should imitate the earliest believers. Do you really, really want to be like the first-century church? Do you, pastor, want to give up your salary and your staff and your buildings and your support structure? Do you want to meet in secret in people's homes, do you want to have to sneak around and be in constant fear of getting caught? Do you really want to be in danger of being imprisoned, of being tortured in ever-more-imaginative and horrifying ways, of seeing your family slowly and carefully killed before your eyes?
Well, of course not, but I must admit that there are elements of the first-century church that we could very well embrace, which very well might save the institutional church from obsolescence, if there is still time.
See, the thing about the first-century church is, once the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples, all bets were off. People were coming to faith in Christ all over the place, in greater and greater numbers, and for these disciples, born and raised in Judaism, they were struggling to deal with the fact that many of those receiving the Holy Spirit were people who had always been excluded – sometimes with solid Scriptural backing – from worshiping Jaweh. There were Samaritans and Gentiles, women, even a eunuch!
No one was left out, no limits were placed on how and when and where and to what degree God's Spirit could move. The Apostles may well have looked at one another and said the same thing that Adam said to Eve: “Stand back, honey, I don't know how big this thing's gonna get!”
All of this was happening not because their doctrine was precise or their theology flawless – quite the opposite, in fact. As the letters and Gospel accounts were being written – the books that would, several hundred years later, be canonized as New Testament Scripture – what you believed about atonement and the nature of Christ and his deity depended not on your denomination but on which letters and Gospels your section of the world had access to. The test of faith was not mental assent to a set of core beliefs, but a dangerous declaration which, when uttered, placed you in direct opposition to the mores of the society you inhabited, and in immediate conflict with the governmental authorities. That declaration was simply “Jesus is Lord.”
Yet even not knowing where the road was leading, except to certain persecution and conflict and torture and death, the church reached out, grew, thrived. Despite the dangers, they touched anyway.
Look, I know that we in twenty-first century Western Christianity have our lepers, our groups and people and thought patterns and belief systems which are repugnant, frightening, off limits, despicable – things that strike us with the same level of revulsion as the thought of drinking raw sewage. The tendency has always been, when threatened by danger, to circle the wagons, strengthen the things which make us unique, find safety in people who are like us. Yet this has never been what the description of “church” should be. We are the Body of Christ, and as such, we are called, commissioned, depended upon to be like Jesus, our Head. We are called to break through the personal and societal barriers and mores and limitations and expectations and to reach out to the very people and institutions and places and belief systems which threaten us.
We are called to touch anyway.
Reverend Carlton Pearson was a well-known pastor, a protege of Oral Roberts, whose church boasted attendance of over 5,000 people every Sunday.
He had everything a minister could hope for, all the fame and adulation and power and creature comforts, until one day he lost it all. He didn't embezzle money or have an affair, no. But one evening he stopped believing in Hell, which, for an Evangelical, is tantamount to praying to Satan. He lost his church, and his denomination ousted him and labeled him a heretic. No one reached out to him, no one tried to listen or to just be his friend through this journey.
He became a Universalist, which is another matter altogether – one wonders if a more gentle approach from his denomination would have influenced him differently – but he was utterly alone. He took whatever speaking engagements he could, and tried to find his way.
One of the speaking engagements was with a group he would not have been caught dead with before – a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians. After he spoke, the woman who had asked him to the conference invited him to go down into the audience, the congregation, and let them minister to him. There were touches, warm embraces, healing words... and then, from the stage, the woman reappeared with a bowl of water. Right there, in that auditorium, she washed Carlton's feet.
The lesson of the story, for me, at least, is this: If we, the Church, are counting on the lepers to touch the lepers, it is already too late. We should stop right now, take the cutesy sayings off the marquee out front, nail the doors shut and paint “Ichabod” across the threshold. We're done.
Or, we can resolve that, whatever the cost to us in membership and prestige and political clout, even if we lose the high-five- and low-six-figure salary, even if the denomination disowns us and people talk bad about us on the radio, we will touch anyway.
Yeah, it'll be dangerous. It'll be dirty. And we don't know how big this thing is gonna get. But if the institutional Church is going to put truth to their claims of caring about the lost and the hungry and the homeless and the naked and the imprisoned and the fatherless and the marginalized and the misunderstood, there is only one choice.
Be like Jesus.
Touch anyway.
The Scapegoat...
Here's the sermon! Please feel free to comment, offer constructive criticism, etc.
Isaiah 55:1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you
because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the LORD while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play." We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
This is the Word of the Lord.
On the morning of September 15, 1963, a group of children were filing into the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Just outside the basement, 22 sticks of dynamite had been planted on a time-delayed fuse.
At about 11:22 am, that dynamite went off. 22 children and adults were injured, and four children, Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Diane Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, were killed in the blast.
I learned details about the bombing some years later, of course, since I was not yet two years old at the time, and one of the strangest things I heard was a rumor that circulated in the white community about why those girls died. It was told that these four had sneaked into the bathroom of the church to smoke cigarettes, and that's why the bomb blast killed them! It's breathtaking in its audacity, isn't it? This idea that it wasn't the fault of “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, or Bobby Frank Cherry or Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. or possibly a couple of others – the men who designed and built and planted the bomb – it was the fault of the little girls that they died!
I've talked before about well-known preachers who blame natural disasters on the victims – Pat Robertson's comments about the earthquake in Haiti, for example, or John Piper blaming a tornado in Louisville, Kentucky on the gathering of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, where they decided to allow the ordination of practicing homosexuals – but the sad fact is that most, if not all, human beings practice scapegoating in one form or another.
We want the universe to make sense, for the laws of cause and effect to apply to people we don't like or agree with... or sometimes even to ourselves.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells about her days as a hospital chaplain, when she sat with the mother of a little girl undergoing an operation for a brain tumor.
“On the day of the operation, I found her mother sitting under the fluorescent lights in the waiting room beside an ashtray full of cigarette butts. She smelled as if she had puffed every one of them, although she was not smoking when I got there. She was staring at a patch of carpet in front of her, with her eyebrows raised in that half-hypnotized look that warned me to move slowly. I sat down beside her. She came to, and after some small talk she told me just how awful it was. She even told me why it had happened.
“'It’s my punishment,' she said, 'for smoking these... cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.' Then she started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: 'Now I’m supposed to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m going to kill my own child!'”
In our Gospel reading this morning, some of the people with Jesus mention the doubly horrifying deaths of some Galilean pilgrims, who were not only slaughtered by Pilate, but whose sacrifices were defiled by their blood. Surely something so horrifying as this was the fault not of the bloodthirsty Roman governor, but the result of some sinfulness on the part of the victims!
And isn't it interesting that Jesus really doesn't engage the question of degrees of sinfulness beyond a single-syllable “no.” He immediately puts the focus of the people's attention not on the errors and shortcomings and perceived evil of others, but where it should be: on themselves. On personal repentance.
Remember that repentance doesn't mean simply asking forgiveness, doesn't mean groveling in the dirt and thinking of yourself as lower than a worm, wearing sackcloth and ashes. Rather, repentance means “to think differently.” A change of mind, a change of the heart.
This Lenten season, I've asked the question, “should faith cost us something?” Part of the answer is that, yes, faith should cost us our preconceptions, our expectations, faith should cost us our comfort level. Faith should cost us the freedom to focus on the shortcomings of others, and should compel us to look at ourselves.
Now, I do not at all believe that our salvation, our faith journey, is works-based: we not only cannot do anything to come into relationship with Christ, without God's grace we lack even the desire to come into relationship with Christ. It isn't just that there is a gap between man's sinfulness and God's holiness that we can't bridge, it's that we just don't care that there's a gap or that there's a God or that God has provided the bridge in Christ Jesus!
That being said, it is incumbent upon us, during Lent and in every other season of the year and of life, to take to heart the reminder Paul offers us in the Epistle reading that, even when recounting the sins of the wandering children of Israel, the lesson is not what they did, but that repeated phrase “we must not. We must not.” We are called upon, in the ongoing practice of repentance, to examine ourselves for the ways in which our thoughts and practices and beliefs and our stuff compromises and impedes a closer relationship with our Creator. Through the guidance and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we are day by day and moment by moment drawing closer to the One who loves us and died for us. That is the faith journey.
But the question comes up, doesn't it? What about those other people? What about the ones who are living wrong, doing wrong? One of the ways we might understand the parable that our Lectionary concludes the gospel reading with is this: God is not asleep. God doesn't simply ignore or dismiss the things that humankind's innate tendency toward sinfulness produces.
Jesus is, at this very moment in our Gospel narrative, headed to Jerusalem, where he will endure torture and a humiliating death so that God can provide a completed work – can do everything possible to bring sinful humanity into relationship with God. He is tilling the soil with his stripes, and fertilizing the roots with his blood. We share the Truth of the Gospel in word and in deed with everyone around us, regardless of who they are or what they are doing, even if – especially if – it makes us uncomfortable or unpopular, and we trust God to do the rest.
We trust God.
Isaiah 55:1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you
because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the LORD while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play." We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
This is the Word of the Lord.
On the morning of September 15, 1963, a group of children were filing into the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Just outside the basement, 22 sticks of dynamite had been planted on a time-delayed fuse.
At about 11:22 am, that dynamite went off. 22 children and adults were injured, and four children, Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Diane Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, were killed in the blast.
I learned details about the bombing some years later, of course, since I was not yet two years old at the time, and one of the strangest things I heard was a rumor that circulated in the white community about why those girls died. It was told that these four had sneaked into the bathroom of the church to smoke cigarettes, and that's why the bomb blast killed them! It's breathtaking in its audacity, isn't it? This idea that it wasn't the fault of “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, or Bobby Frank Cherry or Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. or possibly a couple of others – the men who designed and built and planted the bomb – it was the fault of the little girls that they died!
I've talked before about well-known preachers who blame natural disasters on the victims – Pat Robertson's comments about the earthquake in Haiti, for example, or John Piper blaming a tornado in Louisville, Kentucky on the gathering of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, where they decided to allow the ordination of practicing homosexuals – but the sad fact is that most, if not all, human beings practice scapegoating in one form or another.
We want the universe to make sense, for the laws of cause and effect to apply to people we don't like or agree with... or sometimes even to ourselves.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells about her days as a hospital chaplain, when she sat with the mother of a little girl undergoing an operation for a brain tumor.
“On the day of the operation, I found her mother sitting under the fluorescent lights in the waiting room beside an ashtray full of cigarette butts. She smelled as if she had puffed every one of them, although she was not smoking when I got there. She was staring at a patch of carpet in front of her, with her eyebrows raised in that half-hypnotized look that warned me to move slowly. I sat down beside her. She came to, and after some small talk she told me just how awful it was. She even told me why it had happened.
“'It’s my punishment,' she said, 'for smoking these... cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.' Then she started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: 'Now I’m supposed to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m going to kill my own child!'”
In our Gospel reading this morning, some of the people with Jesus mention the doubly horrifying deaths of some Galilean pilgrims, who were not only slaughtered by Pilate, but whose sacrifices were defiled by their blood. Surely something so horrifying as this was the fault not of the bloodthirsty Roman governor, but the result of some sinfulness on the part of the victims!
And isn't it interesting that Jesus really doesn't engage the question of degrees of sinfulness beyond a single-syllable “no.” He immediately puts the focus of the people's attention not on the errors and shortcomings and perceived evil of others, but where it should be: on themselves. On personal repentance.
Remember that repentance doesn't mean simply asking forgiveness, doesn't mean groveling in the dirt and thinking of yourself as lower than a worm, wearing sackcloth and ashes. Rather, repentance means “to think differently.” A change of mind, a change of the heart.
This Lenten season, I've asked the question, “should faith cost us something?” Part of the answer is that, yes, faith should cost us our preconceptions, our expectations, faith should cost us our comfort level. Faith should cost us the freedom to focus on the shortcomings of others, and should compel us to look at ourselves.
Now, I do not at all believe that our salvation, our faith journey, is works-based: we not only cannot do anything to come into relationship with Christ, without God's grace we lack even the desire to come into relationship with Christ. It isn't just that there is a gap between man's sinfulness and God's holiness that we can't bridge, it's that we just don't care that there's a gap or that there's a God or that God has provided the bridge in Christ Jesus!
That being said, it is incumbent upon us, during Lent and in every other season of the year and of life, to take to heart the reminder Paul offers us in the Epistle reading that, even when recounting the sins of the wandering children of Israel, the lesson is not what they did, but that repeated phrase “we must not. We must not.” We are called upon, in the ongoing practice of repentance, to examine ourselves for the ways in which our thoughts and practices and beliefs and our stuff compromises and impedes a closer relationship with our Creator. Through the guidance and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we are day by day and moment by moment drawing closer to the One who loves us and died for us. That is the faith journey.
But the question comes up, doesn't it? What about those other people? What about the ones who are living wrong, doing wrong? One of the ways we might understand the parable that our Lectionary concludes the gospel reading with is this: God is not asleep. God doesn't simply ignore or dismiss the things that humankind's innate tendency toward sinfulness produces.
Jesus is, at this very moment in our Gospel narrative, headed to Jerusalem, where he will endure torture and a humiliating death so that God can provide a completed work – can do everything possible to bring sinful humanity into relationship with God. He is tilling the soil with his stripes, and fertilizing the roots with his blood. We share the Truth of the Gospel in word and in deed with everyone around us, regardless of who they are or what they are doing, even if – especially if – it makes us uncomfortable or unpopular, and we trust God to do the rest.
We trust God.
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