My heartfelt thanks go out to the Reverend Candasu Vernon of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Montgomery, Alabama, both for her friendship and for allowing me access to the excellent sermon she delivered at a recent Presbytery meeting, and to the Reverend Gene Anderson, who continues to provide inspiration, education, and direction through his "Rucksack Revolution" blog. I also received help on this sermon from Wayne Brouwer and Schuyler Rhodes of "Sermon Suite." Thanks also to Chad Estes for the story behind his hilarious, and too often painfully true, "Jesus or Squirrel" blog.
Before the sermon, let me ask a favor. My dear friend (and apparent twin brother) Pastor Nar Martinez is in need of transportation. He is a constant force for restoration and community in Struthers, Ohio, as well as in the online community of Outlaw Preachers. His car is literally on its last legs, being held together by the expertise (and possible necromancy) of skilled mechanics, but the car's demise is inevitable.
A PayPal account, PastorNarFund@gmail.com, has been set up, and I would deeply appreciate you prayerfully considering making a donation to help Pastor Nar get a reliable vehicle. Donations are (at this point in time) not tax-deductible, but they are needed and deserved. Thank you for whatever you are able to do.
Exodus 1:8-2:10
Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites.and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”
Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
Romans 12:1-8
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
Matthew 16:13-20
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
This is the Word of the Lord.
It was an interesting place for a stroll, this Caesarea Philippi, especially if you were a devout Jew, and more especially if you were a first-century Jew living under the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire and its power-hungry minions – people like the Herods, for example. Yes, there was more than one, and yes, it was a family, and yes, they were bloodthirsty, power-hungry, greedy, everything that comes to mind when the name “Herod” is mentioned.
Philip the Tetrarch, one of three Herod brothers that, with the backing of Rome, ruled Palestine during the time of Christ, had not many years before established a city here, at the southwestern base of Mount Hermon, named it after his patron, the Emperor of Rome, and added his own name to keep it from being confused with the other Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast. Thus “Caesarea Philippi.”
And what an area this was! Because the waters bubbled and gurgled up from caves at the base of the mountain, area residents had long believed this to be the doorway into the underworld. Here, they thought, the spirits of the deep tried to communicate with creatures on the surface. Sometimes sulfuric gases were emitted, and these only confirmed the presence of other-worldly voices and the breath of Hades.
Over the centuries a variety of religious sects had used the place as a cultic shrine. They cut niches in the rock walls of the mountain just above the burbling caves and set up statues of gods they thought might be resident there. They even gave the place a spiritual name. They called it "The Gates of Hades." Here, they believed, was the doorway between the realm of the living and the abode of the dead. Those with keen faculties would be able to hear the whispers of the departed and the voice of the underworld gods. It was considered to be a very holy place. Over there was a temple to Caesar, and over there was an older temple to the pagan god Pan.
There on the road outside the city, Jesus struck up a conversation. “Hey guys, give me the skinny: What’s the word on the street? Who are folks saying that the Son of Man is?”
This is, by the way, a phrase from the Book of Ezekiel, and signified a human being who is a conduit or messenger of the Divine.
I imagine the disciples glanced at one another, looking to see who wanted to go first. But the responses would have been fairly quick, because it was a subject they were intimately familiar with. They heard, and participated in, these kinds of discussions all the time.
“Well, some folks say you’re John the Baptist,” one said. Another voice, “Yeah, or Elijah, even.” Someone else says “I’ve heard Jeremiah, or one of those kind of prophets.” Any or all of these comments might have gotten a laugh from the group.
Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins, after all. They bore a family resemblance, probably spoke with a similar accent, and as word of Jesus made its way back to Philip the Tetrarch, it no doubt gave that particular Herod the creeps, because he’d seen John the Baptist’s head served up on a platter like a roast pig. In his nightmares, John the Baptist had come back for a public and painful revenge. The laughter would have been soft, because no doubt John’s execution was still heavy on their hearts, but they had seen Jesus and John together; the idea that Jesus was some kind of Zombie John the Baptist was patently ridiculous.
As for Elijah, the Prophet Malachi had written that God would send a messenger before the coming of the Messiah, Elijah, the first of the great prophets, and he would make things ready. Elijah would appear with stern speeches and mighty miracles. The people should get ready, for when Elijah came, God would follow quickly on his heels. Since Jesus spoke with divine authority, and performed miraculous healings, just like Elijah had done, it made sense that Jesus was Elijah, right? Only the disciples had heard Jesus state plainly that it was his cousin John, and not him, who had been the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy. Another silly idea they could chuckle at, just like all the other things they’d heard; this or that prophet come back from the dead.
This was an easy conversation, this talk about what everyone else was saying. No pressure, you could make a joke and go off on tangents, just the kind of stuff for a stroll though the countryside.
But then Jesus turned the question on its head. “But who do you say that I am?”
And things got real quiet, and real tense. Jesus was, after all, their rabbi, their teacher, and you can imagine the fear of piping up in class with the wrong answer. That would be humiliating! But what was the right answer?
It’s a lot like the story my friend Chad Estes tells about this pastor who was using squirrels for an object lesson for the children’s sermon. He started, “I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children nodded eagerly.
“This thing lives in trees… and eats nuts...” No hands went up. “And it is gray… and has a long bushy tail...” The children were looking at each other nervously, but still no hands raised. “It jumps from branch to branch… and chatters and flips its tail when it's excited...”
Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor quickly called on him. “Well,” said the boy, “I know the answer must be ‘Jesus’ ... but it sure sounds like a squirrel!”
I think that the fact we know the answer, we know who said it, and we know how the rest of the Gospel plays out kind of works against us in a lot of ways.
But there in that moment, surrounded by the temples and trappings of a culture that had too many gods for too many things, these men who had been immersed in a tradition where the answers were finite and fixed and immovable, they were confronted with the most important question that had ever and would ever be asked.
Think about it. So often, and this is especially true in the “Western World,” too many Christians are in fact “practical atheists.” We speak of God, go to church, say our prayers… and then too many of us live our lives as though we don't believe any of it. There’s no real danger in answering that question, it’s as simple as reciting a creed or singing a hymn. As a culture, American Christianity has ceased to be a Kingdom movement – a powerful new covenant which replaces empire with a Kingdom of God which erases barriers and overthrows dominions of power and privilege with love and grace. We are instead, far too often, the protector of the status quo, a symbol of good citizenship and a political catchphrase.
But take away the safety of freedom of religion. Remove the comfort of the pew. Erase the familiarity of family tradition.
Instead, you are a first-century Jewish man, barely out of your teens, if that old. Your whole world can be mapped out on a table napkin – there’s the synagogue in your little town, and the coastline where your fishing boat is moored. You push off from the shore each evening as the sun sets, and spend the night throwing the net into the Sea of Galilee, hoping to catch enough fish to help feed the family and pay the bills.
Then one day an amazing man comes along, with words of life and hope that you’ve never heard before, and your life is forever changed. You leave this familiar life behind, and strike off across the countryside, hanging on his every word, amazed at the miracles, astounded by the teaching, terrified by the challenges, your mind is stretched in new and exciting ways.
You have heard, since birth, that this life you’ve lived under Roman rule, where the taxes are heavy and the freedoms nonexistent, is not the life God intended for his people Israel. That there would be a new King – God’s Messiah – who would utterly destroy the power of Caesar, erase the corrupt Temple system, and restore the Throne of David, establishing God’s eternal kingdom. Jesus’ words give you hope that, at last, the time had come.
But power structures like Caesar’s, like the Herods’, like the Sadducees and the Great Sanhedrin which controlled the Temple do not take kindly to talk of revolution. To proclaim what they all, to one degree or another, were thinking was to face death, unless they were right, and this amazing man was indeed here to overthrow Rome, destroy the Herods, and restore Israel to its former glory.
And Simon spoke up. I don’t think this was a matter, though, of simply saying what everyone was thinking. “Messiah,” or “Christ,” after all, means something, but it only goes so far. With “Messiah,” you have an anointed vessel of God, a divinely appointed person who would bring about God’s ultimate will for Israel, and, by extension, all of humankind. “Son of Man” goes quite far enough as a description.
No, there was more to it. In that moment, Simon no longer heard the sound of the other disciples’ voices. He couldn’t see the Temple of Pan off in the distance, or smell the incense burning in Caesar’s Temple somewhere behind him. He looked at Jesus, and their eyes locked for one of those moments that lasts forever.
And I am not saying that Simon, in that instant, knew everything. But God spoke to him, and he heard. He knew. He knew there was more to the story, more to this rabbi than merely being a prophet or even being God’s specially chosen vessel. From this moment on, everything would change. “You are the Messiah… the son of the living God.”
“Who do you say that I am?”
If a stranger stopped us on the street and asked “What do you believe?” how would we respond? Reciting the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed is nice, but it isn’t an answer, it’s something we’ve memorized. “Who do YOU say that I am?”
Are we satisfied to let those around us think that they know what we believe simply because they’ve seen Christian portrayed on TV or in the movies, or they’ve seen a TV preacher or been confronted by a guy with a Gospel tract?
And what if the act of recognizing and proclaiming Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God was more than a creedal confession, more than responding as we are expected to respond? How would our prayers change? How would our actions in the world around us be changed? Would our prayers be conversations seeking the will of God, or would they be the usual requests and reminders of things that God needs to give some attention? Would our primary concern shift from arguing over political and human rights issues to really – really – loving our neighbor?
If we answer the question “Who do you say that I am?” in the way, and with the spirit, that Simon Peter did, then we must acknowledge that everything Jesus said is, in fact, true. The way he told us to live, the way he told us he will be with us always, the way he died for our sins, is all true. It’s true, and it’s frightening.
Because if we admit that Jesus Christ is God – if he is Lord, Savior, and Friend, then our lives have to start to change. If we as individuals, and as a church, and as a Presbytery confess that Jesus is the Messiah, really and truly is the Son of the living God, then we have to be ready to change everything, must be willing to do anything in whatever direction God leads.
And, like Simon, we don’t know everything. But we know this: Jesus is the son of the living God, truly is Lord, and every bit of his life, every bit of his death, and every bit of his resurrection are still in force, still active, still in the business of transformation and restoration and healing and salvation. He still calls us to identify with the poor and excluded. He still wants to turn moments of despair into moments of hope. He still wants to transform lives and make us whole again.
“Who do you say that I am?” Though Simon answered with words, he ultimately answered with his entire life. I hope and pray that we, too, are ready to answer that question with more than words. I hope that we will answer with our lives, our money, our decisions, our kindness and our humility. I hope that we will answer by our actions, loving instead of just talking about love.
“Who do you say that I am?”
Showing posts with label Rev. Gene Anderson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rev. Gene Anderson. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Canaanite Conquers the Israelite...
I made abundant use of many sources of information in the writing of this sermon. Foremost was the work of Paul J. Nuechterlein, Grant LeMarquand, and "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary." You will notice that I also blatantly borrowed ideas from Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton and Marilyn Salmon, and picked the closing prayer whole from Rev. Gene Anderson's excellent blog.
Genesis 45:1-15
Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there: since there are five more years of famine to come — so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
... for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
Matthew 15:10-28
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
This is the Word of the Lord.
And it is the Word of the Lord, even when that Word makes us uncomfortable. And I have to confess to you, few passages of Scripture make me more uncomfortable than this account of Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman. It’s as if someone has stolen my Bible and replaced it with one where the part of Jesus is played by Archie Bunker! Honestly, calling someone a dog? To their face? This would be a good week to preach on the Old Testament reading instead, wouldn’t it?
I’m not alone in my discomfort, it seems. Over the centuries, commentators and preachers have come up with a lot of explanations about the way that Jesus acts here.
Some say that this is all an acted out parable. That Jesus was just saying what he knew his followers thought and he wanted them to see how bad it sounded so he could then correct it. We can call this the “He didn't really mean it” explanation.
Some say that this is an inauthentic saying, words put into his mouth by the early church and the Gospel writer. For these folks, the key to understanding this passage is to decide why the early church would tell such a story of Jesus. This would be the “He didn't really say it” explanation.
Still others say Jesus was not referring to her as a dog but was simply using an old saying or a village proverb, like saying “The early bird gets the worm.” No one gets their feelings hurt over metaphor or clichés, right? This is the “We don't really get it” explanation.
So… what’s really going on?
I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know I should be able to package this whole thing up in a neat, digestible package for you, say the prayer, take the offering, don’t forget to dance, see you next Sunday, but I cannot simply hide behind an easy explanation for a difficult passage.
One of the most difficult readings I have heard was the suggestion that Jesus was absolutely serious when he said “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” There was no twinkle in his eye, no softening of his voice, nothing to suggest he was playing around, bringing out the depth of this woman’s faith.
This reading of the passage suggests that, in his interaction with the Canaanite woman, it is Jesus who is changed, Jesus who is, in a manner of speaking, converted, Jesus who goes from seeing himself as the Savior of the Jewish people only to truly the Savior of the world.
That is a tough pill to swallow. There is a principle of Biblical translation and interpretation that says the most difficult reading is usually the correct one. And this idea of Jesus being changed by his interaction with the Canaanite woman has a lot of merit. After all, as we too often forget, Jesus, though completely divine, utterly God, was completely human as well. We can comfortably assume that Jesus had to learn how to walk, had to be potty trained, had to learn to talk, had to learn how to feed himself, had to learn how to read, had to learn how to dress himself, and on and on and on.
Is it too great a logical leap to say that Jesus may have discovered the scope and direction of God’s plan for him, the breadth and depth of his earthly mission, in part while he was in the midst of his earthly mission?
The Canaanite woman certainly comes out of this account as the one with the upper hand. It is she, and not Jesus, who models the most admirable human behavior. She shows willingness to be vulnerable by seeking help from a longstanding foe whom she knows despises her because of national and racial divisions. She asks for help for her daughter, not for herself. She is persistent in the face of insults and rejection, for her daughter's sake. The Canaanite woman has the best lines in the story, especially her last one. "Call me dog," she says, "but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table." She is the clear underdog (pun intended) who wins the prize of highest value for any mother, Jew or despised Canaanite – her child's health and well-being.
And Jesus appears to go from, frankly, acting like a jerk – a staunch nationalist, a good Jew who won’t have anything to do with unclean Gentiles – to one who is amazed at the faithfulness of someone from outside the Jewish faith, and convinced that God is indeed actively pursuing, constantly calling every human being, no matter their nationality or original belief system, into relationship and into the Kingdom of God.
Or… could there be something else at work here?
Why on earth is Matthew insisting on calling this woman a Canaanite? No one in the first century used that word to describe anyone. It would be like calling New York “New Amsterdam,” or describing a trip to Haleyville as a visit to the “Free State of Winston.”
And besides, what in the world is Jesus doing in Tyre and Sidon anyway, if he’s “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” like he says? He’s in Gentile country, for cryin’ out loud! Guess what, Jesus, the house of Israel is back the way you came, bro!
Well, Canaan had a history with Israel, you see. Back in Joshua’s time, when they were crossing the Jordan to take the Promised Land, God specifically instructed the Israelites, in no uncertain terms, to utterly destroy the Canaanites – if you will, to commit genocide on the entire race. Here it is, from Deuteronomy, the seventh chapter, verses one through four:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.”
The Canaanites were not just pagans. Not just Gentiles. They were the God-ordained enemies of Jewish people everywhere!
So why is Jesus there? Remember, a couple of weeks back, we read about Jesus’ Feeding of the Five Thousand. That was smack-dab in Jewish territory, and everyone who as fed was, presumably, of the Jewish faith. There were enough leftovers, you will remember, to fill twelve baskets. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the connection to the Twelve Tribes of Israel in that gathering, does it?
Immediately following our reading today, Jesus travels along the Sea of Galilee for a bit, climbs a mountain, heals everyone who is brought to him, and feeds four thousand people with seven loaves and some fishes. There is enough left over to fill seven baskets this time… and is it much of a stretch to connect those seven baskets to the seven nations that God commanded Joshua and the Children of Israel to annihilate roughly fourteen centuries before?
I want to suggest to you that we do not have to choose between a Jesus who is playing games with the Canaanite woman, or a Jesus who is taught a lesson by the Canaanite woman. There is a third way, one that does not force us to see Jesus as either the conqueror or the conquered!
The third option is to see him as both: Jesus is first and foremost a conqueror by purposefully letting himself be 'conquered'. By this way of thinking, Jesus does enter into the conversation foreknowing that this woman's faith is up to the test. But instead of flaunting this foreknowledge, or intuition, he lets himself look like an abuser. He lets the tables be turned so that, in an act of faith, the Israelite is conquered by the Canaanite.
The point is this: In Deuteronomy, God commands that the Canaanites, and the six other nations mentioned there, receive no mercy, be granted no covenant. What does the Canaanite woman ask for, on behalf of her daughter? Mercy. What, ultimately, does Jesus give the Canaanite woman? Mercy, and healing.
I do not believe it is an accident that the breaking of the bread there in the Gentile lands, like the breaking of the bread in the Jewish land, seems to foreshadow the breaking of the bread at the Lord’s Supper. If the bread and the cup symbolize for us the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, how much more does the breaking of the bread and the feeding of the four thousand symbolize a covenant with a people whom God had commanded, some fourteen hundred years before, there be no covenant made?
Instead of a God who shows no mercy through the first Joshua, we meet a God of mercy through a new Joshua (and, in fact, the name “Joshua” and the name “Jesus” are exactly the same in Hebrew!), who shows forth that mercy, first of all, through the willingness to suffer violence rather than inflict it, and then, second of all, as the true power of life itself, rather than of death -- namely, through the power to heal the sick and nourish a crowd.
Like the walls of Jericho, the wall between Jew and Gentile have fallen. And the walls are still fallen! Look around you in this place, and look around you, really look around you, when you leave this place today. Look around you everywhere, all week, all the time. We will not, at any point, in any context, in any place, find any person who is too different or too bad or too wrong or too anything to be out of reach of the love and mercy and forgiveness and reconciling grace of God!
Oh, this is not to say that we won’t see people that we are not comfortable imagining being loved by God. We have our own walls – walls of prejudice, walls of sexism, walls of class pride and class envy, walls of privilege and walls built by pain and injury. “For out of the heart,” Jesus said, “come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” Out of the heart comes racism, out of the heart comes jealousy, out of the heart comes pride. “These are what defile a person…” and it is high time we call these things what they are, and begin the hard work of setting them aside.
We can choose to be like the disciples who complained about all the noise the needy Canaanite woman was making, or we can choose to be like the disciples who eagerly distributed the broken loaves and fishes to the hungry Gentile crowd. The difference is this: are we willing to see the walls come down?
Let us pray:
Lord, grant us the wisdom of the Canaanite woman,
To know our need,
To acknowledge your power,
And to share your love with others.
Open our ears and our hearts to the real needs
Of all your children
For Jesus’ sake…
Genesis 45:1-15
Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there: since there are five more years of famine to come — so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
... for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
Matthew 15:10-28
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
This is the Word of the Lord.
And it is the Word of the Lord, even when that Word makes us uncomfortable. And I have to confess to you, few passages of Scripture make me more uncomfortable than this account of Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman. It’s as if someone has stolen my Bible and replaced it with one where the part of Jesus is played by Archie Bunker! Honestly, calling someone a dog? To their face? This would be a good week to preach on the Old Testament reading instead, wouldn’t it?
I’m not alone in my discomfort, it seems. Over the centuries, commentators and preachers have come up with a lot of explanations about the way that Jesus acts here.
Some say that this is all an acted out parable. That Jesus was just saying what he knew his followers thought and he wanted them to see how bad it sounded so he could then correct it. We can call this the “He didn't really mean it” explanation.
Some say that this is an inauthentic saying, words put into his mouth by the early church and the Gospel writer. For these folks, the key to understanding this passage is to decide why the early church would tell such a story of Jesus. This would be the “He didn't really say it” explanation.
Still others say Jesus was not referring to her as a dog but was simply using an old saying or a village proverb, like saying “The early bird gets the worm.” No one gets their feelings hurt over metaphor or clichés, right? This is the “We don't really get it” explanation.
So… what’s really going on?
I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know I should be able to package this whole thing up in a neat, digestible package for you, say the prayer, take the offering, don’t forget to dance, see you next Sunday, but I cannot simply hide behind an easy explanation for a difficult passage.
One of the most difficult readings I have heard was the suggestion that Jesus was absolutely serious when he said “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” There was no twinkle in his eye, no softening of his voice, nothing to suggest he was playing around, bringing out the depth of this woman’s faith.
This reading of the passage suggests that, in his interaction with the Canaanite woman, it is Jesus who is changed, Jesus who is, in a manner of speaking, converted, Jesus who goes from seeing himself as the Savior of the Jewish people only to truly the Savior of the world.
That is a tough pill to swallow. There is a principle of Biblical translation and interpretation that says the most difficult reading is usually the correct one. And this idea of Jesus being changed by his interaction with the Canaanite woman has a lot of merit. After all, as we too often forget, Jesus, though completely divine, utterly God, was completely human as well. We can comfortably assume that Jesus had to learn how to walk, had to be potty trained, had to learn to talk, had to learn how to feed himself, had to learn how to read, had to learn how to dress himself, and on and on and on.
Is it too great a logical leap to say that Jesus may have discovered the scope and direction of God’s plan for him, the breadth and depth of his earthly mission, in part while he was in the midst of his earthly mission?
The Canaanite woman certainly comes out of this account as the one with the upper hand. It is she, and not Jesus, who models the most admirable human behavior. She shows willingness to be vulnerable by seeking help from a longstanding foe whom she knows despises her because of national and racial divisions. She asks for help for her daughter, not for herself. She is persistent in the face of insults and rejection, for her daughter's sake. The Canaanite woman has the best lines in the story, especially her last one. "Call me dog," she says, "but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table." She is the clear underdog (pun intended) who wins the prize of highest value for any mother, Jew or despised Canaanite – her child's health and well-being.
And Jesus appears to go from, frankly, acting like a jerk – a staunch nationalist, a good Jew who won’t have anything to do with unclean Gentiles – to one who is amazed at the faithfulness of someone from outside the Jewish faith, and convinced that God is indeed actively pursuing, constantly calling every human being, no matter their nationality or original belief system, into relationship and into the Kingdom of God.
Or… could there be something else at work here?
Why on earth is Matthew insisting on calling this woman a Canaanite? No one in the first century used that word to describe anyone. It would be like calling New York “New Amsterdam,” or describing a trip to Haleyville as a visit to the “Free State of Winston.”
And besides, what in the world is Jesus doing in Tyre and Sidon anyway, if he’s “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” like he says? He’s in Gentile country, for cryin’ out loud! Guess what, Jesus, the house of Israel is back the way you came, bro!
Well, Canaan had a history with Israel, you see. Back in Joshua’s time, when they were crossing the Jordan to take the Promised Land, God specifically instructed the Israelites, in no uncertain terms, to utterly destroy the Canaanites – if you will, to commit genocide on the entire race. Here it is, from Deuteronomy, the seventh chapter, verses one through four:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.”
The Canaanites were not just pagans. Not just Gentiles. They were the God-ordained enemies of Jewish people everywhere!
So why is Jesus there? Remember, a couple of weeks back, we read about Jesus’ Feeding of the Five Thousand. That was smack-dab in Jewish territory, and everyone who as fed was, presumably, of the Jewish faith. There were enough leftovers, you will remember, to fill twelve baskets. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the connection to the Twelve Tribes of Israel in that gathering, does it?
Immediately following our reading today, Jesus travels along the Sea of Galilee for a bit, climbs a mountain, heals everyone who is brought to him, and feeds four thousand people with seven loaves and some fishes. There is enough left over to fill seven baskets this time… and is it much of a stretch to connect those seven baskets to the seven nations that God commanded Joshua and the Children of Israel to annihilate roughly fourteen centuries before?
I want to suggest to you that we do not have to choose between a Jesus who is playing games with the Canaanite woman, or a Jesus who is taught a lesson by the Canaanite woman. There is a third way, one that does not force us to see Jesus as either the conqueror or the conquered!
The third option is to see him as both: Jesus is first and foremost a conqueror by purposefully letting himself be 'conquered'. By this way of thinking, Jesus does enter into the conversation foreknowing that this woman's faith is up to the test. But instead of flaunting this foreknowledge, or intuition, he lets himself look like an abuser. He lets the tables be turned so that, in an act of faith, the Israelite is conquered by the Canaanite.
The point is this: In Deuteronomy, God commands that the Canaanites, and the six other nations mentioned there, receive no mercy, be granted no covenant. What does the Canaanite woman ask for, on behalf of her daughter? Mercy. What, ultimately, does Jesus give the Canaanite woman? Mercy, and healing.
I do not believe it is an accident that the breaking of the bread there in the Gentile lands, like the breaking of the bread in the Jewish land, seems to foreshadow the breaking of the bread at the Lord’s Supper. If the bread and the cup symbolize for us the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, how much more does the breaking of the bread and the feeding of the four thousand symbolize a covenant with a people whom God had commanded, some fourteen hundred years before, there be no covenant made?
Instead of a God who shows no mercy through the first Joshua, we meet a God of mercy through a new Joshua (and, in fact, the name “Joshua” and the name “Jesus” are exactly the same in Hebrew!), who shows forth that mercy, first of all, through the willingness to suffer violence rather than inflict it, and then, second of all, as the true power of life itself, rather than of death -- namely, through the power to heal the sick and nourish a crowd.
Like the walls of Jericho, the wall between Jew and Gentile have fallen. And the walls are still fallen! Look around you in this place, and look around you, really look around you, when you leave this place today. Look around you everywhere, all week, all the time. We will not, at any point, in any context, in any place, find any person who is too different or too bad or too wrong or too anything to be out of reach of the love and mercy and forgiveness and reconciling grace of God!
Oh, this is not to say that we won’t see people that we are not comfortable imagining being loved by God. We have our own walls – walls of prejudice, walls of sexism, walls of class pride and class envy, walls of privilege and walls built by pain and injury. “For out of the heart,” Jesus said, “come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” Out of the heart comes racism, out of the heart comes jealousy, out of the heart comes pride. “These are what defile a person…” and it is high time we call these things what they are, and begin the hard work of setting them aside.
We can choose to be like the disciples who complained about all the noise the needy Canaanite woman was making, or we can choose to be like the disciples who eagerly distributed the broken loaves and fishes to the hungry Gentile crowd. The difference is this: are we willing to see the walls come down?
Let us pray:
Lord, grant us the wisdom of the Canaanite woman,
To know our need,
To acknowledge your power,
And to share your love with others.
Open our ears and our hearts to the real needs
Of all your children
For Jesus’ sake…
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Guerilla Christianity
Thanks to Rev. Gene Anderson, whose blog post introduced me to this idea of Guerilla Christianity, and (once again) the Reverend Kathleen Lambert, whose incredible insight and heart gave me direction for this sermon.
Gene's blog contains the link to the article I quote in the sermon.
1 Peter 3:13-22
Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
John 14:15-21
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Acts 17:22-31
hen Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Paul had been stirring up trouble. To anyone who has read the Book of Acts, this will come as no surprise; in the seventeenth chapter alone, by the time we get to Paul’s speech before the leaders of the city of Athens, he’d already been forced out of Berea and Thessalonica due to his habit of going and sharing the Good News of the risen Christ wherever he went.
And to be honest, Paul was only in Athens so that Silas and Timothy could meet him. His “handlers,” if you will, had deposited him there because it was a central location where the three of them could regroup and get back to the business at hand. The obvious course of action would have been to lay low, get some rest, and not cause trouble.
But did I mention that we’re talking about Paul here?
In Paul’s day, the residents of Athens were renowned for their love of things intellectual, and for their religious piety. I can imagine Paul walking the streets, and seeing, with every step, and with every corner he turned, another and another and another temple to this or that or the other god: gods for fertility, gods for good weather, gods to win battles, gods to prevent disease, gods to protect crossroads, gods to preside over the opening of doors, gods to preside over the closing of doors, and on and on and on.
Make no mistake, the temples were beautiful: brightly painted, adorned with gold and silver and marble, the idols within crafted by the best and the brightest artisans, no expense spared in honoring a given deity.
And, although he had been the most devoted of Jews before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul had been raised in the Greek city of Tarsus, and was familiar with the ways of pagan worship.
Each temple had its own sounds, its own smells: in this one priests were chanting in unison, in that one a goat was being burned on an altar, in that other one someone was teaching a small group of young men, and in still another a poor woman knelt at an idols feet and wept. Here they were baking bread, there they were selling books, and in still another temple the prostitutes called out to passers-by.
Paul’s heart ached for these people as he walked, seeing all that energy going to waste on false gods which created false hopes, made false promises, promoted false ideals… what if all of that energy, all of that passion, were directed toward the true God?
And then it happened.
Paul walked around a random bend in some road in some corner of Athens, and stopped dead-still at a monument. It was a simple enough affair, yet no less beautiful than the grandest of idols he’d seen. Its inscription read, simply, “To an unknown god.”
Perhaps the idea had been to cover their bases, to have one more altar out there just in case the Athenians had forgotten to honor a given deity. But not for Paul. Paul, you see, was a Guerilla Christian, and like every good soldier, he was always prepared: looking for ammunition, for opportunities to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God.
This idea of Guerilla Christianity is not original with me. In fact, it is perhaps best described by Daniel F. Flores in an article for the Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research. He writes, “Historically, the term “guerrilla” comes from the Spanish resistance tactic of using irregular soldiers to conduct surprise raids against Napoleon’s forces. Quite literally, a guerrilla is a “little war.” This is distinct from acts of terrorism, often committed in the name of God, which operate by inflicting senseless violence for the purpose of causing widespread fear and panic. Guerrilla soldiers are not the elite crack troops such as the Green Berets, Seals, or Rangers. They are irregular fighters - the peasant resistance of the war effort against interloping oppressors… They do the work until the professionals arrive, whether “twelve legions of angels” or “the armies of heaven” being led by one called Faithful and True (Matthew 26:53; Revelation 19: 11, 14). When the term guerrilla is applied to the New Testament apocalyptic, it describes an aggressive action… waged against the realm of the present cosmos by the irregular soldiers of the Kingdom of God.”
Guerilla soldiers make use of their specific skills, the terrain around them, and the existing resources to do battle against invading armies.
Paul used this monument, this altar to an unknown god, as a tool of Christian Guerrilla warfare, to make the case for the one true and living God, who doesn’t operate through idols of gold or silver or bronze or marble, who doesn’t demand sacrifices and chants, and who is not hidden, remote, difficult to discern, impossible to know, but who has reached out to humankind, redeeming them through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, I undertake the use of the term “Guerilla Christian” with some nervousness. Whenever we Resurrection People resort to the terminology of warfare, we run a great risk. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that in war, battles are bloody – people die, things get broken, lives are disrupted. While we honor our fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, it is always with the hope that one day, there will be no more war, no more caskets draped in flags, and no buglers playing “Taps” as sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers are lowered into the ground.
The Guerilla Christian operates differently than any other operative in any other army ever before. To continue with Daniel Florez’ article, “Guerrilla soldiers execute intermittent bursts of sorties to rescue prisoners and demolish the structures of the Enemy.”
The Christian Guerilla does not kill, the Guerilla Christian heals. The Guerilla Christian does not destroy, but restores. The Guerilla Christian uses the tools at hand to rescue the prisoners of despair, poverty, hopelessness – those who are the “lost,” if I may – and destroys the power structures that condemn and oppress, whether they be spiritual or physical.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean by “Guerilla Christianity.” The first time I heard the term “Guerilla Christian” was from Reverend Gene Anderson, a Presbyterian pastor now residing in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gene has been a friend of mine for a couple of years. I first met him when he was pasturing a little church in Mississippi. That church let him go unexpectedly, and he not only lost his income, but he lost his health insurance and his home. For many months, Gene lived out of his car, trying to hold down odd jobs, trying to piece his life together, and in many ways only falling farther and farther behind.
The Reverend Kathleen Lambert, who I mentioned to you last week, literally came to Gene’s rescue. She gave him a job, working with a mission in St. Pete, gave him a place to stay, and it is not an understatement to say to you that Gene has since blossomed… no, that’s not right, Gene has exploded, finding every opportunity and using every resource to show the love of God to St. Petersburg, Florida.
So example one of “Guerilla Christianity” is the Reverend Kathleen Lambert, who saw Gene in need and was able to effectively and immediately fill that need with resources she had at hand: a place to live and something to do
But Gene is example two of “Guerilla Christianity,” and he lives that example every day. When a pregnant, homeless woman showed up at the St. Pete mission, which is called Missio Dei, he stayed with her, helping in labor and delivery, and finding her a place where she and her new baby could stay.
Just last week, Gene went to a Presbytery meeting with Reverend Lambert, and when lunch was over, and the kitchen staff said they had lots of leftovers, please everyone come get some to take home, Gene went into action, convincing the Presbytery staff to donate the food to him. Not too many hours later, the hungry, homeless people in Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg were able to enjoy Ham and Turkey sandwiches, potato salad, cole slaw, apples, bananas, doughnuts and other pastries, eggs, fresh fruit, and more.
This Memorial Day weekend, we pay homage to men and women who died so that we could live in a land that is free and that has abundant resources. But resources without purpose are worse than wasted. As Resurrection People, how can you and I make use of the things we have at hand in a given moment to bring the Good News of hope and new life in Jesus Christ to a world which is sinking, every day, deeper into despair?
Make no mistake, when we do something as simple as listening to a hurting friend, something as easy as buying a hamburger for a hungry person, we are taking part in Guerilla Christianity, because we are helping to destroy despair, and immobilize hunger. When we pray for, or better yet pray with, someone who is seeking direction, someone who needs to respond to God’s revolutionary call to new life and eternal relationship through the risen Christ, we are laying siege to the final stronghold of the enemy, death.
This is no small undertaking, but we do not do this alone. As our Gospel reading affirms, we have God’s Holy Spirit within us, and as members of the Body of Christ we have one another.
We very likely will never find ourselves called, like Paul, before the city leaders, challenged to explain ourselves and the wild claims we are making for a new religion. However, we do find ourselves, every day, faced with new challenges and new situations in which we can bring the hope and love of Christ to someone we may not even know – like those homeless people in Williams Park in St. Petersburg, fed through the generosity of a Presbytery full of people they’d never met. So do we do what Paul’s “handlers” likely hoped he would do, blend in, don’t make waves, wait for someone else to show up and do the heavy lifting? Or do we stand up, get busy, and make a difference now?
Gene's blog contains the link to the article I quote in the sermon.
1 Peter 3:13-22
Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
John 14:15-21
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Acts 17:22-31
hen Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Paul had been stirring up trouble. To anyone who has read the Book of Acts, this will come as no surprise; in the seventeenth chapter alone, by the time we get to Paul’s speech before the leaders of the city of Athens, he’d already been forced out of Berea and Thessalonica due to his habit of going and sharing the Good News of the risen Christ wherever he went.
And to be honest, Paul was only in Athens so that Silas and Timothy could meet him. His “handlers,” if you will, had deposited him there because it was a central location where the three of them could regroup and get back to the business at hand. The obvious course of action would have been to lay low, get some rest, and not cause trouble.
But did I mention that we’re talking about Paul here?
In Paul’s day, the residents of Athens were renowned for their love of things intellectual, and for their religious piety. I can imagine Paul walking the streets, and seeing, with every step, and with every corner he turned, another and another and another temple to this or that or the other god: gods for fertility, gods for good weather, gods to win battles, gods to prevent disease, gods to protect crossroads, gods to preside over the opening of doors, gods to preside over the closing of doors, and on and on and on.
Make no mistake, the temples were beautiful: brightly painted, adorned with gold and silver and marble, the idols within crafted by the best and the brightest artisans, no expense spared in honoring a given deity.
And, although he had been the most devoted of Jews before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul had been raised in the Greek city of Tarsus, and was familiar with the ways of pagan worship.
Each temple had its own sounds, its own smells: in this one priests were chanting in unison, in that one a goat was being burned on an altar, in that other one someone was teaching a small group of young men, and in still another a poor woman knelt at an idols feet and wept. Here they were baking bread, there they were selling books, and in still another temple the prostitutes called out to passers-by.
Paul’s heart ached for these people as he walked, seeing all that energy going to waste on false gods which created false hopes, made false promises, promoted false ideals… what if all of that energy, all of that passion, were directed toward the true God?
And then it happened.
Paul walked around a random bend in some road in some corner of Athens, and stopped dead-still at a monument. It was a simple enough affair, yet no less beautiful than the grandest of idols he’d seen. Its inscription read, simply, “To an unknown god.”
Perhaps the idea had been to cover their bases, to have one more altar out there just in case the Athenians had forgotten to honor a given deity. But not for Paul. Paul, you see, was a Guerilla Christian, and like every good soldier, he was always prepared: looking for ammunition, for opportunities to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God.
This idea of Guerilla Christianity is not original with me. In fact, it is perhaps best described by Daniel F. Flores in an article for the Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research. He writes, “Historically, the term “guerrilla” comes from the Spanish resistance tactic of using irregular soldiers to conduct surprise raids against Napoleon’s forces. Quite literally, a guerrilla is a “little war.” This is distinct from acts of terrorism, often committed in the name of God, which operate by inflicting senseless violence for the purpose of causing widespread fear and panic. Guerrilla soldiers are not the elite crack troops such as the Green Berets, Seals, or Rangers. They are irregular fighters - the peasant resistance of the war effort against interloping oppressors… They do the work until the professionals arrive, whether “twelve legions of angels” or “the armies of heaven” being led by one called Faithful and True (Matthew 26:53; Revelation 19: 11, 14). When the term guerrilla is applied to the New Testament apocalyptic, it describes an aggressive action… waged against the realm of the present cosmos by the irregular soldiers of the Kingdom of God.”
Guerilla soldiers make use of their specific skills, the terrain around them, and the existing resources to do battle against invading armies.
Paul used this monument, this altar to an unknown god, as a tool of Christian Guerrilla warfare, to make the case for the one true and living God, who doesn’t operate through idols of gold or silver or bronze or marble, who doesn’t demand sacrifices and chants, and who is not hidden, remote, difficult to discern, impossible to know, but who has reached out to humankind, redeeming them through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, I undertake the use of the term “Guerilla Christian” with some nervousness. Whenever we Resurrection People resort to the terminology of warfare, we run a great risk. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that in war, battles are bloody – people die, things get broken, lives are disrupted. While we honor our fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, it is always with the hope that one day, there will be no more war, no more caskets draped in flags, and no buglers playing “Taps” as sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers are lowered into the ground.
The Guerilla Christian operates differently than any other operative in any other army ever before. To continue with Daniel Florez’ article, “Guerrilla soldiers execute intermittent bursts of sorties to rescue prisoners and demolish the structures of the Enemy.”
The Christian Guerilla does not kill, the Guerilla Christian heals. The Guerilla Christian does not destroy, but restores. The Guerilla Christian uses the tools at hand to rescue the prisoners of despair, poverty, hopelessness – those who are the “lost,” if I may – and destroys the power structures that condemn and oppress, whether they be spiritual or physical.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean by “Guerilla Christianity.” The first time I heard the term “Guerilla Christian” was from Reverend Gene Anderson, a Presbyterian pastor now residing in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gene has been a friend of mine for a couple of years. I first met him when he was pasturing a little church in Mississippi. That church let him go unexpectedly, and he not only lost his income, but he lost his health insurance and his home. For many months, Gene lived out of his car, trying to hold down odd jobs, trying to piece his life together, and in many ways only falling farther and farther behind.
The Reverend Kathleen Lambert, who I mentioned to you last week, literally came to Gene’s rescue. She gave him a job, working with a mission in St. Pete, gave him a place to stay, and it is not an understatement to say to you that Gene has since blossomed… no, that’s not right, Gene has exploded, finding every opportunity and using every resource to show the love of God to St. Petersburg, Florida.
So example one of “Guerilla Christianity” is the Reverend Kathleen Lambert, who saw Gene in need and was able to effectively and immediately fill that need with resources she had at hand: a place to live and something to do
But Gene is example two of “Guerilla Christianity,” and he lives that example every day. When a pregnant, homeless woman showed up at the St. Pete mission, which is called Missio Dei, he stayed with her, helping in labor and delivery, and finding her a place where she and her new baby could stay.
Just last week, Gene went to a Presbytery meeting with Reverend Lambert, and when lunch was over, and the kitchen staff said they had lots of leftovers, please everyone come get some to take home, Gene went into action, convincing the Presbytery staff to donate the food to him. Not too many hours later, the hungry, homeless people in Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg were able to enjoy Ham and Turkey sandwiches, potato salad, cole slaw, apples, bananas, doughnuts and other pastries, eggs, fresh fruit, and more.
This Memorial Day weekend, we pay homage to men and women who died so that we could live in a land that is free and that has abundant resources. But resources without purpose are worse than wasted. As Resurrection People, how can you and I make use of the things we have at hand in a given moment to bring the Good News of hope and new life in Jesus Christ to a world which is sinking, every day, deeper into despair?
Make no mistake, when we do something as simple as listening to a hurting friend, something as easy as buying a hamburger for a hungry person, we are taking part in Guerilla Christianity, because we are helping to destroy despair, and immobilize hunger. When we pray for, or better yet pray with, someone who is seeking direction, someone who needs to respond to God’s revolutionary call to new life and eternal relationship through the risen Christ, we are laying siege to the final stronghold of the enemy, death.
This is no small undertaking, but we do not do this alone. As our Gospel reading affirms, we have God’s Holy Spirit within us, and as members of the Body of Christ we have one another.
We very likely will never find ourselves called, like Paul, before the city leaders, challenged to explain ourselves and the wild claims we are making for a new religion. However, we do find ourselves, every day, faced with new challenges and new situations in which we can bring the hope and love of Christ to someone we may not even know – like those homeless people in Williams Park in St. Petersburg, fed through the generosity of a Presbytery full of people they’d never met. So do we do what Paul’s “handlers” likely hoped he would do, blend in, don’t make waves, wait for someone else to show up and do the heavy lifting? Or do we stand up, get busy, and make a difference now?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Lazarus, come out!
It's kind of frustrating, being given such a wonderful smorgasbord of readings all on one Sunday. I could feast for weeks on the Gospel reading alone.
Truth be told, my friend the Rev. Daniel Hayward, a minister in the United Church of Canada, let me read his sermon, and gifted me with the lynchpin for the sermon. Like Rev. Gene Anderson says, "Borrowing for a sermon is like playing the blues, it ain't stealing if can play the lick well." It also helps to have permission...
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.
Romans 8:6-11
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law — indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out.
They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Misunderstanding. It was part of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, who mistook being “born from above” with being “born again” from his mother’s womb. Misunderstanding was part of the conversation with the woman at the well, who mistook “living water” for naturally flowing water. And misunderstanding is a feature of today’s reading as well – not just that the disciples misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus being asleep; not just that Martha misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus rising again, but our own misunderstanding of what these verses really mean to Christians, and to the world in general, today. Because, make no mistake: what Jesus says here, and what Jesus does here, changes everything.
First, some background: in the verses preceding today’s reading, Jesus has been in Jerusalem during Hanukah, and the Jewish leaders who opposed him demanded that he tell them, once and for all, whether or not he was the Messiah.
When he said to them, “I and the Father are one,” they tried to stone him! Kill him! Right there in the Temple courts!
Jesus had been causing trouble, you see. Causing trouble simply by talking. Simply by healing. Simply by being alive. So he retreated, with his disciples, across the Jordan, out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind of those who would see him dead.
And now, with mortal danger like storm clouds hanging over Jerusalem, he went to Bethany, just two miles away. Why? Couldn’t Jesus have healed Lazarus days ago, from right where he was, with a word? He’d done it before! Why wait until he’s dead, and four days dead at that? Why put himself, and his disciples, in peril now, when Lazarus is in the tomb, when the mourners are gathered, when nothing more can be done?
I don’t presume to know all the answers about this passage. It is even more complex than the passage about the woman at the well, and I’ve already said that I could make a sermon series out of that one.
But I want to suggest that part of the answer, maybe a glimpse at the “why” of Jesus coming to such a dangerous place, at a time when it seemed like all hope was lost, is found in what he says to Martha when she misunderstands him.
The two of them are standing there, outside the village gates. The disciples are standing a respectful distance away, yet watchful - eyes darting nervously around, remembering the terror of the angry mob, stones in hand, struggling to lay their hands on Jesus in the temple.
Jesus says Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, traditionally the more practical, rational of the two sisters, nods, raising her head, daring to look directly at Jesus through tearstained eyes. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
While that’s true, there’s something more Jesus wants her to understand. They lock eyes, and for a long moment the only sound is the blowing breeze. Then Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live! And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die!”
Silence, again. The rustling breeze, the nervous shuffle of disciples' feet.
Martha absorbs these words, and Jesus begins to see the glimmer of comprehension in Martha’s eyes, the look of grief giving way to confusion, then wonder, then understanding… Finally, he asks: “Do you believe this?”
Notice how Martha responds. She doesn’t say “Yes, I believe you can raise my brother from the dead.” No, her response is more a statement of faith, an acknowledgement of a truth she can’t even begin to comprehend. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Jesus spoke, and Martha heard.
For time's sake this morning we must fast-forward, to that hillside cave, that tomb sealed with a boulder.
Martha had said, "...you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
It’s not just some itinerant Rabbi who stands there in the graveyard, surrounded by perplexed mourners. It’s not some two-bit magician who calls for the stone to be rolled away. That’s no mere prophet who raises his voice in prayer as the crowd covers their noses and steps back in revulsion as the tomb is laid open.
It is the Christ, the Messiah of God, who calls out to Lazarus. God’s only Son speaks those words! God made flesh, God-With-Us, Jesus cries in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard!
From this point forward, there was no denying who Jesus really was. Healing the sick? Impressive, but prophets had done that kind of thing on occasion. Hadn’t Elijah raised a boy from the dead? But Elijah’s guy was pretty recently deceased, and everyone believed in those days that the soul stayed near the body for three days after dying, so maybe it wasn’t resurrection as much as resuscitation.
But this? These mourners had seen the cold, lifeless body of Lazarus, wrapped tightly in burial linens, placed in the tomb. They had seen the door sealed. They had sat with Mary and Martha, mourning in the proper way, and each and every one of them knew that this was no sleight-of-hand, no mistake, no embarrassing miscalculation on the part of some doctor.
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard. Lazarus, who was dead, was alive.
Some believed. Others ran the two miles to the Temple and reported what they’d seen, and the push to wipe Jesus off the face of the earth once and for all went in to high gear.
Because as much as Jesus had spoken to the Temple rulers and the Pharisees, as many proofs as he had offered… as many times as he had called them to come out of their tombs of privilege and power and wealth and fame, as often as he had implored them to be loosed from their graveclothes of religious superiority and doctrinal self-righteousness… they had not heard.
When I spoke at the outset about how we tend to misunderstand what Jesus is really saying in this passage, what I mean is that we tend to stop short of the whole message. This is a passage we hear a lot of times at funerals, for good reason. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Christ, though he died, arose triumphant from the grave and lives forevermore, and in the words of the Apostle Paul, “will come down from heaven, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise…”
This is true, make no mistake. But there’s so much more. You see, when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he isn’t just talking about the Final Resurrection and eternal life, the glorious dawn that awaits us when this twilight ends, as wonderful as that is.
I submit to you that when Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he was, in effect, echoing God's words through the prophet Ezekiel: "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people!"
Jesus meant resurrection and life in the here and now! Not just a glorious, assured resurrection from physical death, but a resurrection from living as if we are dead. Living in sin, lost to all that is worth calling “life.”
When we live selfishly, as if we are dead to the needs of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with insensitivity, as if we are dead to the feelings of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with hopelessness, spiritually dead, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
Jesus calls us to come out and be loosed from our own graveclothes of selfishness and insensitivity and greed and despair, to be set free to live true lives here and now.
Will we hear?
Jesus, who is the resurrection, and who is the life, calls on us today: “come out!”
Will we hear?
Will we live?
Truth be told, my friend the Rev. Daniel Hayward, a minister in the United Church of Canada, let me read his sermon, and gifted me with the lynchpin for the sermon. Like Rev. Gene Anderson says, "Borrowing for a sermon is like playing the blues, it ain't stealing if can play the lick well." It also helps to have permission...
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.
Romans 8:6-11
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law — indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out.
They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Misunderstanding. It was part of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, who mistook being “born from above” with being “born again” from his mother’s womb. Misunderstanding was part of the conversation with the woman at the well, who mistook “living water” for naturally flowing water. And misunderstanding is a feature of today’s reading as well – not just that the disciples misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus being asleep; not just that Martha misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus rising again, but our own misunderstanding of what these verses really mean to Christians, and to the world in general, today. Because, make no mistake: what Jesus says here, and what Jesus does here, changes everything.
First, some background: in the verses preceding today’s reading, Jesus has been in Jerusalem during Hanukah, and the Jewish leaders who opposed him demanded that he tell them, once and for all, whether or not he was the Messiah.
When he said to them, “I and the Father are one,” they tried to stone him! Kill him! Right there in the Temple courts!
Jesus had been causing trouble, you see. Causing trouble simply by talking. Simply by healing. Simply by being alive. So he retreated, with his disciples, across the Jordan, out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind of those who would see him dead.
And now, with mortal danger like storm clouds hanging over Jerusalem, he went to Bethany, just two miles away. Why? Couldn’t Jesus have healed Lazarus days ago, from right where he was, with a word? He’d done it before! Why wait until he’s dead, and four days dead at that? Why put himself, and his disciples, in peril now, when Lazarus is in the tomb, when the mourners are gathered, when nothing more can be done?
I don’t presume to know all the answers about this passage. It is even more complex than the passage about the woman at the well, and I’ve already said that I could make a sermon series out of that one.
But I want to suggest that part of the answer, maybe a glimpse at the “why” of Jesus coming to such a dangerous place, at a time when it seemed like all hope was lost, is found in what he says to Martha when she misunderstands him.
The two of them are standing there, outside the village gates. The disciples are standing a respectful distance away, yet watchful - eyes darting nervously around, remembering the terror of the angry mob, stones in hand, struggling to lay their hands on Jesus in the temple.
Jesus says Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, traditionally the more practical, rational of the two sisters, nods, raising her head, daring to look directly at Jesus through tearstained eyes. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
While that’s true, there’s something more Jesus wants her to understand. They lock eyes, and for a long moment the only sound is the blowing breeze. Then Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live! And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die!”
Silence, again. The rustling breeze, the nervous shuffle of disciples' feet.
Martha absorbs these words, and Jesus begins to see the glimmer of comprehension in Martha’s eyes, the look of grief giving way to confusion, then wonder, then understanding… Finally, he asks: “Do you believe this?”
Notice how Martha responds. She doesn’t say “Yes, I believe you can raise my brother from the dead.” No, her response is more a statement of faith, an acknowledgement of a truth she can’t even begin to comprehend. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Jesus spoke, and Martha heard.
For time's sake this morning we must fast-forward, to that hillside cave, that tomb sealed with a boulder.
Martha had said, "...you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
It’s not just some itinerant Rabbi who stands there in the graveyard, surrounded by perplexed mourners. It’s not some two-bit magician who calls for the stone to be rolled away. That’s no mere prophet who raises his voice in prayer as the crowd covers their noses and steps back in revulsion as the tomb is laid open.
It is the Christ, the Messiah of God, who calls out to Lazarus. God’s only Son speaks those words! God made flesh, God-With-Us, Jesus cries in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard!
From this point forward, there was no denying who Jesus really was. Healing the sick? Impressive, but prophets had done that kind of thing on occasion. Hadn’t Elijah raised a boy from the dead? But Elijah’s guy was pretty recently deceased, and everyone believed in those days that the soul stayed near the body for three days after dying, so maybe it wasn’t resurrection as much as resuscitation.
But this? These mourners had seen the cold, lifeless body of Lazarus, wrapped tightly in burial linens, placed in the tomb. They had seen the door sealed. They had sat with Mary and Martha, mourning in the proper way, and each and every one of them knew that this was no sleight-of-hand, no mistake, no embarrassing miscalculation on the part of some doctor.
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard. Lazarus, who was dead, was alive.
Some believed. Others ran the two miles to the Temple and reported what they’d seen, and the push to wipe Jesus off the face of the earth once and for all went in to high gear.
Because as much as Jesus had spoken to the Temple rulers and the Pharisees, as many proofs as he had offered… as many times as he had called them to come out of their tombs of privilege and power and wealth and fame, as often as he had implored them to be loosed from their graveclothes of religious superiority and doctrinal self-righteousness… they had not heard.
When I spoke at the outset about how we tend to misunderstand what Jesus is really saying in this passage, what I mean is that we tend to stop short of the whole message. This is a passage we hear a lot of times at funerals, for good reason. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Christ, though he died, arose triumphant from the grave and lives forevermore, and in the words of the Apostle Paul, “will come down from heaven, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise…”
This is true, make no mistake. But there’s so much more. You see, when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he isn’t just talking about the Final Resurrection and eternal life, the glorious dawn that awaits us when this twilight ends, as wonderful as that is.
I submit to you that when Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he was, in effect, echoing God's words through the prophet Ezekiel: "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people!"
Jesus meant resurrection and life in the here and now! Not just a glorious, assured resurrection from physical death, but a resurrection from living as if we are dead. Living in sin, lost to all that is worth calling “life.”
When we live selfishly, as if we are dead to the needs of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with insensitivity, as if we are dead to the feelings of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with hopelessness, spiritually dead, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
Jesus calls us to come out and be loosed from our own graveclothes of selfishness and insensitivity and greed and despair, to be set free to live true lives here and now.
Will we hear?
Jesus, who is the resurrection, and who is the life, calls on us today: “come out!”
Will we hear?
Will we live?
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