"A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners..."

I borrowed, heavily and unapologetically, from the work of Mick Mooney for this sermon. 

If we got as upset over the nearly sixteen million children in America who cannot be certain where their next meal is coming from (or if there will be one) as we get over Ebola being present in the United States... if we were as interested in sick people on the continent of Africa as we are about the three people in the USA who have gotten Ebola, there is no end to the problems we could solve.

It's time to get serious... to really, truly do what Jesus would do.

Matthew 22:34-46

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. and a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

This is the Word of the Lord.

“MedecinsSans Frontieres,” or “Doctors Without Borders,” was created in 1971 with the idea that doctors and medical professionals should go where the patients are, be it a war zone, a nation stricken by famine, or a part of a continent battling a dreaded disease. “Doctors Without Borders” has treated, in its time, over one hundred million patients, in all areas of the world… including Guinea, in west Africa, where people are dying of Ebola. Supplies are short, medicine is short, protective gear is short… these doctors and health professionals, like Craig Spencer, go anyway. “Doctors Without Borders” claims no religious affiliation, and over eighty-four percent of every dollar raised goes directly to program services.

We heard none of this on Thursday, though, did we? Not a word about the selfless work of these doctors, going into harm’s way to bring healing and hope, or at least some measure of comfort and protection, to a corner of the world most people never even think about. When Dr. Spencer checked himself into Bellvue, and tested positive for Ebola, all we heard that was Ebola has invaded New York City.

Never mind that more Americans have been married to Kim Kardashian than have died of Ebola. Never mind that, if I may paraphrase humorist Andy Borowitz, Americans are more frantic about three cases of Ebola in the US than they are about thirty-nine school shootings – one of them the day after Dr. Spencer's diagnosis was announced – if you pay attention to the media hype, we have collectively lost our minds.

The calmest headlines said, “New York Doctor Tests Positive for Ebola,” but of course there was also this jewel of a headline: “Ebola Strikes New York City!” I fully expected to see “Zombie Apocalypse in Manhattan, Panic In The Streets, Film at 11” next.

I do not know Dr. Craig Spencer’s religious affiliation, if any. I do know that he worked in Guinea for about a month, earning far less than he would have in the same period at his job with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He didn’t go to Guinea for fame, or for the money, he went because people are dying and they need medical help. He did it in spite of the very real danger to his life.

“What is the greatest commandment?” the Pharisees ask Jesus.

Now, we can talk all day about how Jesus turned the Pharisees’ attempt to discredit him on its head, we can talk about how he proved to them that their expectations of the Messiah were far too narrow. That’s the kind of stuff I like to do. I like to pull on threads of the narrative, look at the historical context behind this polite confrontation, explore the interplay between what we think we read and the intention of the original languages. It’s fun, and in far too many ways, it’s easy.

But I want to talk about those commandments. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I know I don’t have to remind you that love, and especially the kind of love Jesus refers to here, has nothing at all to do with how we feel. This is not a romantic, emotional, felt kind of love. This is an active, expressed, lived love. It is love as a verb. It is a love that is spelled out not by our words, not by our creeds, but by our actions.

Dr. Cornell West says, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” Judging by that criteria, what can we say about the way we love? How many Americans thought that Ebola was unfortunate, but not that big a deal as long as it was “over there,” as long as it was citizens of the nations of West Africa that were dying, and not Americans… and how many are in a panic right now, spurred on by those “Ebola Strikes New York” headlines and those FaceBook posts insisting that the CDC is lying to us and that Ebola is airborne? Is it love to not really be concerned about problems on the other side of the world until the media start screaming about it being our problem?

Is that love? Is that loving God, is that loving our neighbor as ourselves?

I think Dr. Craig Spencer, and his colleagues at Doctors Without Borders, might have a different view of what love looks like.

Love is messy. Love is dangerous. Love takes us places we are not comfortable going.

Do you know why the Pharisees hated Jesus so much? Yes, partly because of his teachings – they likely were real fans of the fact that he separated the worship of God from the Temple, and emphasized the importance of worship in everyday life. That’s one of the main bones that the Pharisees picked against the Sadducees, after all. But there were a lot of other places, like healing on the Sabbath, where Jesus flew in the face of what they “knew” God wanted.

A bigger problem, though, was that the Pharisees saw how many people were looking to Jesus as the promised Messiah, but when they looked, Jesus didn’t measure up! Not as much because of what he said as what he did and who he spent time around!

Jesus did not live in a bubble of holy rollers, going through the same worship songs over and over, hiding away from society in prayer meetings and revival events. Jesus was in the midst of the party of life. He was at the center of the celebration, with people, all kinds of people, from all kinds of walks of life, with all kinds of world views and lifestyles. He went to weddings, he went to dinners. He walked and talked and laughed among those the Pharisees referred to as “people of the dirt.” He got a reputation as a “glutton and a drunkard” because of the people he enjoyed associating with.

And Jesus was in the midst of the brokenness of life. When a woman was set to be stoned for her immorality, Jesus was there to defend her from the angry religious crowd. Jesus started a conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well, a woman no one would talk to – not even her own people! And Jesus touched and healed the lepers, the ones that no one dared get close to for fear of having the sin rub off on them. He healed those who shared his religion, and those who were of other religions – the servant of the centurion comes to mind, as well as the daughter of the Syrophonecian woman.

Love is not found in demanding that there be a travel ban on the continent of Africa. Love is found, rather, in the actions of those who provide help, hope, and healing to suffering people of all races, nationalities, social castes, religions, orientations and identities. “Living Waters for the World,” Dr. Craig Spencer and Doctors Without Borders, are two very obvious examples.

In between last week's reading, where the Pharisees teamed up with the Herodians to try and discredit Jesus, and this week's reading, “Pharisees: Reloaded,” The Sadducees took their own pot shots at Jesus. And make no mistake: the whole aim of everything the Pharisees are doing here, including using an expert in the Law of Moses to test Jesus, is calculated to expose him as a heretic, a liar, a false Messiah.

The Pharisees, and for that matter their bitterest rivals, the Sadducees, saved their harshest words for those who did not practice Judaism with the fervor that they expected, who were not willing or able to attend every Temple event. They kept themselves scrupulously separate from undesirables, like Samaritans, Gentiles, lepers, prostitutes...

Jesus, to put it mildly, didn't do any of that. At all. He reserved his harshest words for the religious elite, those who used religion for financial gain, who held themselves not simply separate from, but superior to, the poor, forgotten, despised and marginalized. And he spent all of his time – all of it! - with those marginalized, despised, forgotten and poor.

To quote Mick Mooney, Jesus “doesn't just rock the boat of religion, ...he sets it on fire and then jumps into the water and swims to shore.”

I know that I don't have to spend time expounding on who our modern-day lepers and Gentiles and Samaritans are. I don't have to say that a modern-day Jesus wouldn't be in Mountain Brook very often; he'd be hanging out in Atmore or in the neighborhoods around Legion Field, the two poorest zip codes in Alabama (in order).

Jesus was a reckless lover of people, and he refused to bow down to the religious expectation of loving from a distance. He was up close, real, embracing all people, from all walks of life. He was hated by the religious elite because of his love, a love not made up of the words he spoke, but by the life he lived.

So what does all of this have to do with “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself?”

Well, let me ask: If Jesus, who the religious elite called a “...a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of... sinners” lived out these commandments in his every action, and if the ultimate goal of every citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, everyone who calls themselves by the name of Christ, is to be like Jesus...

...what should we doing? With whom should we be identified? What should they call us?

Let us pray.

Mary Sang and John Danced...

This sermon got its fuel through the generosity of my Twitterfriends. I started a conversation about us Protestants not knowing what to do abouot Mary, and received lots of suggestions and eye-opening guidance from Keke Pounds, Minister Bob Chapman, Rev. Heather Dethloff, and Rev. Katie Mulligan. While only Heather's quote made it into the sermon, they were all instrumental in helping me see important messages in the Lucan account of Mary and Elizabeth.

Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me, this phenomenon of social networking. This past week, the loose group that identifies itself by the #outlawpreachers hashtag on Twitter lost one of our own. Gideon Addington, whose Tillich quote helped write my sermon two weeks back, passed away. To one degree or another, many of us have been reeling from this, - shock, raqe, loss, it's all there. By all appearances Gideon should have been no more than a collection of letters in groups of 140 characters or less. Instead, I've lost a friend, somehow.

I've got no real smooth way to transition from that into the message, so I won't try. I look forward to your comments.

Luke 1:39-55
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?
For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the LORD,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."


This is the Word of the Lord.

She woke up in that breathless, shocked kind of way that says she hadn't realized she'd gone to sleep in the first place. Her mind had raced all night, replaying again and again what she had seen, what she had heard, how she had answered when the angel revealed her destiny. It had been so exciting, the thrill of being used by God to bring the Messiah into the world!

But now, in the stark light of day, she began to see the trouble ahead. A virgin with child? Yeah, right. She was barely even engaged, and now she could kiss marriage to Joseph goodbye. Her parents were going to freak when they found out!

Just then she thought about Elizabeth, about that strange story circulating about her pregnancy – Her husband had been struck mute, hadn't said a word since the day he had performed his priestly duties in the Holy of Holies.

It had gotten out that he'd seen an angel who had prophesied about Elizabeth having a child, and lo and behold she was six months along by now! And oh, how the gossip mill was grinding over that one! Surely, if anyone would know what to do, if anyone would believe her at all, it would be Elizabeth!

Her parents were more than willing to let Mary go; Elizabeth was a relative, after all, and not getting any younger, so having Mary there to help around the house made perfect sense.

I can imagine that, as she walked the road to Elizabeth's house, Mary's spirits lifted and her thoughts soared. Imagine – God chose her, a teenager from a backwater town, as the one to bring the Hope of Israel into the world! At last, after all these centuries, these thousands of years of waiting, the Messiah would enter into the world!

It seems like we Protestants only really talk about this unwed teenage mother once a year, this Sunday before Christmas. Yet there she is, kicking up the dust of the narrow country road as she hurries to Elizabeth's house – she is what Reverend Heather Morgan Dethloff calls “the first evangelist,” and her response to Elizabeth's excited and prophetic greeting – “My soul magnifies the LORD, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...” was “her first sermon.”

But this was more than a sermon, more than a song. It was prophesy.

God had for too long been transcendent, remote, and unreachable. In many ways, it could be argued that this remoteness was something that humankind – or at least the part of humankind with voice and authority – found comfortable. A God who was appeased by sacrifices and communicated to through a professional priesthood (if at all) was in many senses a predictable, a controllable deity. If the only way to God is through a priest or some religious official, then both the people and, in some sense, God, can be kept in a manageable position.

But a God that can be controlled, predicted, limited, held at arm's length? That is no God at all.

Anyone who reads Scripture consciously can see that this transcendent God fully intended all along to be immanent, to be present with Creation, to be involved and invested and immediate! All of the sacrifices are done away with in that once-for-all sacrifice of God made flesh! The barriers to all of humankind being in direct relationship to their loving Creator are, like the Temple veil, forever torn away! And now, as Mary sings her song, as Elizabeth's son dances in her womb, that great day of Emmanuel, God-With-Us, is at hand!

At hand... but, as Mary sings and John leaps with joy, (and like so many things in our spiritual journey), not yet. Scripture tells us that Mary and Elizabeth stayed together for three months. Reverend Kate Huey quotes Henri Nouwen, saying “'For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them.'” Huey goes on, “As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: 'They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community.'”

This final week of Advent, we are reminded that we, too, wait. And like Mary and Elizabeth, we wait not as individuals, but as community – as the Body of Christ. We wait not just to celebrate the fist coming of Christ as to experience that “meteor of grace” that will be Christ's second coming! Like Mary and Elizabeth, we wait in community... supporting, guiding, and most of all praying for one another. Timothy Mulder writes, "here is a preface for Emmanuel. We humans are not meant to go through the tough or the wonderful alone. Both need to be shared.”

And we Resurrection people share not only with one another, but with the risen Christ, through that same Holy Spirit which gave the good news to Elizabeth, which gave Mary song.

Whatever gifts await us under the tree, whatever Santa brings, we share with one another that greatest of gifts – Christ has come, has died, and has risen again! And that same Christ both lives in us, unites us as His Body – and will come again!

Thanks be to God!

Sermon for September 6, 2009: "When the Gospel Went to the Dogs"

Mark 7:24-37
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.

Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

This is the Word of the Lord.


I am indebted to the writings of Sarah Dylan Brauer and Heidi Husted, who calls our Gospel reading “the day the Gospel went to the dogs,” for some of the ideas behind this sermon.

"Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I am not the only preacher who has read our Gospel passage this morning and contemplated basing the sermon on the Epistle or the Old Testament reading. The Jesus we meet in today's Gospel reading, frankly, makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

We're used to seeing Jesus heal everyone who asks, and even a couple who don't ask. We're used to seeing Jesus lay the verbal smackdown on the scribes and Pharisees. But to refuse to heal? To use the common disparaging term of his day in calling this Syrophonecian woman, and by extension all Gentiles, “dogs?”

We're tempted to tap this Jesus on the shoulder and ask, “who are you and what have you done with the real Jesus?” After all, Jesus, you're traveling around in Tyre, for cryin' out loud. Gentile Central. If I go to a police station, I'll very likely meet a cop. If I go to a barber shop, I'll probably meet a barber (who will wonder what I'm doing there).

If you go to Tyre, you're gonna meet a gentile, dude. If you're not here to provide healing and teaching for the Gentiles, what on earth are you doing in Tyre in the first place?

Now, I do not want to suggest that my answer is the only correct answer; I don't presume to speak for Reformed Theology or have enough of a grasp on Biblical criticism to claim any authority. What I am suggesting is something we've done before; we're exploring a “what-if” scenario. With that said, I think the answer to what in the world Jesus was doing in Tyre that day is that Jesus was learning.

There are some apocryphal “Gospels” floating around out there, most notably the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” which portray the childhood Jesus as someone fully aware of Who they were, able to perform all manner of miracles and to make prophetic proclamations. This fictional child Jesus brings clay pigeons to life, parts the water in a pond, strikes some folks dead, raises some others from the dead... he is, in short, a monster.

No, the real Jesus had to do it the hard way – like everyone else. He had to be potty trained. He had to learn to feed himself. He had to learn to walk and talk and dress himself and everything else every human child has ever had to learn.

He learned Joseph's trade, he learned the Scriptures... he spent the first three decades of his life learning and preparing for his ministry.

Now, something that is important to remember in any context is that when a person stops learning – be they 12 or 30 or 48 or 65 or 80 years old – that person is either dead or dangerous. The old cliché, “you learn something new every day,” is true. Sometimes the lessons are painful, like finding out the heating elements in an oven are hot (don't ask). Sometimes the lessons are fun (for example, did you know that Brent Spiner, who played Data on Star Trek/Next Generation has a Twitter account? I'm a geek, I admit it). But the point is, we learn. We grow.

The argument can be made that the Pharisees stopped learning, because at some point they decided that they knew everything there was to know about how to rightly keep the Law and the Jewish faith. In our own time, people like Fred Phelps and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church could safely be accused of no longer learning, with their hateful websites and angry picketing at soldiers' funerals. Try as I might, I can think of no positive example for any person or any group that ceased to learn.

So is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Jesus was in Tyre because his Father wanted to show him something?

To be sure, not compassion, and not an openness to including the marginalized in his ministry. After all, this is the same Jesus who touched lepers, ministered to Samaritans and even made one the hero of one of his most famous parables, who ate with tax collectors and sinners. That the Syrophonecian woman dares to speak to him at all, and that he actually acknowledges her right to speak to him, is an astounding departure from the cultural norms of the day. People are always more important than propriety.

Yet up to this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been ministering to people who are ostensibly Jewish in that they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Gentiles, on the other hand, would have been members of one pagan society or another, worshiping a plethora of greater and lesser gods. Whereas Jesus shared a common culture with the Jewish people, Tyre was given over to Greek ideas and lifestyles.

And as much as Jesus tried to keep his presence in Tyre a secret, word got out, and it wasn't long at all before a woman came in the house where he was staying and fell at his feet. She needed healing for her daughter, and whatever gods she worshiped, whatever things she believed, she knew that this Jewish prophet had healed people before, had cast out demons before, and it didn't matter if he said “no,” she'd heard “no” before; it didn't matter if he called her a dog, she'd been called a dog before; she was not going to stop until he did it again.

I don't want to read too much into the story here, or to suggest something that may be unScriptural, but I wonder.

I see the scene: Jesus standing in the middle of a room in a Greek-style home, a woman crumpled at his feet, pleading for her daughter. When he speaks to her, it's not in a dismissive, angry tone, but in the voice of someone who is trapped by policy, who can't do what needs to be done because that's not in his job description: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I see the woman look up at him, fire in her eyes. The fact that she would reply at all is breathtaking, I mean, that sort of thing just wan't done in those days – her courage radiates even through the fear for her daughter. She answers in a strong voice: "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

I wonder if Jesus had an ah-ha moment? You know what I mean, a moment of realization, where you learn something you didn't know before, and it changes everything. One thing is certain, from that moment forward no one, Jew or Gentile, is excluded from the healing and teaching and attention and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Now, if this is true – if that's what happened – then we have both a glorious promise and a life-and-death directive.

The Syrophonecian woman prayed earnestly, and was unwilling to give up until her prayer was answered, and as a result, everything was changed. The glorious promise then is summed up in the words of an old bumper sticker: prayer changes things! Scripture tells, time and time again, of events and judgments and outcomes that were altered by prayer... and we can rest assured that events and judgments and outcomes are changed still today when we pray.

The life-and-death directive is to follow the example of Jesus – to be open to having our minds changed, to bne open to new experiences and new people and new ideas that alter the course of our faith journey, that change our lives. If we had a few hours I could give examples of how that's happened in my life – how a group of teenagers at a Waffle House in Vestavia made me a better Christian and a better person – and I'm sure you could tell me similar stories.

When we are no longer open to change, to growth, to learning, we cease to function as Christians and as human beings. We are on a faith journey, and as long as we have a pulse the journey continues.

How will you be changed today – this week – by the people God brings into your life?

Almighty God,
We pray that we are challenged daily... hourly... moment by moment, to see all people as beloved community. To see all people as worthy of our attention, our advocacy, our thoughts and our prayers. Help us to be like Jesus, to engage with one another outside of our comfort zone, and stretch us
mightily for your work in this world.

We bring confident prayers this morning for (prayer needs list)...

In the name of Jesus, our Lord and savior, who taught us to pray... (Lord's Prayer)