Category Archives: sermons

Transgressing Boundaries: A Sermon for Proper 8, Year B, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

As we work through the Gospel of Mark this year, two key structural themes worth attending to are geography and boundaries. One of the challenges presented to us when we read the gospel primarily, perhaps only by means of the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary, is that it’s often difficult to grasp the significance of these larger themes.

So, for example, geography. Today’s gospel provides us with precious little geographical orientation, only the phrase “When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side.” Continue reading →

Job’s accusations and God’s response: A sermon for Proper 7, Year B,2018

Posted on by
Reply

As the horrific tragedy continues to unfold before our disbelieving eyes, perpetrated by men and women claiming to act on behalf of the nation of which we are citizens, my grief and anger continue to mount. We are learning a great deal about the values of our fellow citizens and the commitments of fellow Christians. In shock and disbelief, and growing fear of the future of our nation, indeed our planet, I feel my faith in God begin to waver, certainly my faith that “justice will roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever-rolling stream,” is shaken by the growing tide of hatred, injustice, and oppression.

In times like this, the book of Job offers not a comforting, but a challenging read. It’s not a book that comes up often in the lectionary—I went back through my files and discovered that it’s been more than five years since I’ve preached on it, so it’s worth taking the time to take a closer look at it. In the first place, if your only encounter with Job is through a Sunday School class decades ago, or through the still fairly common phrase, “the patience of Job” try to erase from your mind anything you might think you know about the story or the book.

Let me offer a brief overview of the text as a whole as background to the verses that we read today. Job is a complicated text that in its in present form reflects a good bit of editing. It begins and ends with narrative; in between are many chapters of dialogue and poetry. The basic story is quite simple. It begins in heaven, with a member of the divine court, the Satan, the adversary or prosecuting attorney, discussing with God the righteousness of God’s servant Job. The adversary asserts that Job is righteous only because he’s had it easy and is wealthy. God invites the adversary to test Job. Job’s daughters and their husbands are killed, his herds and flocks destroyed. But Job continues to assert his faith in God. Finally, Job himself is beset with boils on his skin. He sits in the middle of the street, scratching the boils with  a potsherd, a fragment of pottery.

His wife tells him to curse God and die, but Job refuses. In his terrible distress, three friends come to comfort him, or perhaps gloat over his reduced circumstances. They tell him repeatedly, over several chapters, that Job is punished for some sin he has committed, that he should repent of that sin, and ask God’s forgiveness. But Job persists in claiming his righteousness, refuses to accept his friends’ assessment of his situation.

Finally, in his despair and frustration, Job changes tack and the book becomes something of a trial. Now God is in the dock and Job is the prosecuting attorney. Again, over a series of lengthy speeches, Job demands to know of God why all this has happened to him. Throughout all this, God has been silent since first allowing the Satan, the Adversary, to test Job. As Job presses his case, leveling the charges against God, God remains silent, absent even. This brings us to the end of chapter 37.

After all of that, after all of Job’s suffering and anguish, after chapters of Job’s charges against God, finally God replies:

The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.”

And that’s that.

After all of that suffering, after all of the insufferable comments from his wife and so-called friends, after his anguished speeches appealing to God to explain why all of this was happening, now finally God speaks. And what is God’s answer?

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?”

What kind of an answer is that?

Well, I would like to go back and lay another level of interpretation on this drama. The book of Job is a challenge to our assumptions that our lives and the world make sense. In the biblical tradition, there’s a strong tendency to equate faithfulness to God with material prosperity. You see it in the stories of the matriarchs and patriarchs especially. They are faithful, and they are rewarded with land, flocks and herds, abundant wealth, even offspring. The book of Job, although it was written rather late, seems to be set in the patriarchal period, and in the beginning of the story, Job as a righteous man is also wealthy.

In so many ways the worldview, the theology of Job and his friends is not that different from our own. We believe that if we work hard we will be rewarded, that our success is a sign, not only of who we are but is also a sign that God has blessed us. And when we see people less fortunate than ourselves, we often attribute their fates to the decisions they made. We look for rational reasons for personal success and failure, and even something like illness, cancer, can be viewed as punishment—what did I do wrong that caused this? What behavior led to this?  What is God punishing me for?

 

It’s a seductive theology, pervasive not only in the recesses of our minds, but perhaps, like Job’s friends, when we judge the situation of others. It’s a theology, a worldview, as I said, that assumes the universe operates according to laws, that things happen for a reason, that we can make sense of it.

But then something comes along that calls such a rational, well-ordered universe into question. It could be a natural disaster, a profound injustice, or a personal setback. And suddenly none of it makes sense, and we’re with Job, calling God into the dock, trying to bring God to explain why things have gone so wrong for us or the world, or perhaps, our faith is so utterly shaken that we begin to doubt God’s very existence.

We want the world to make sense. We want evil to be punished, good to be rewarded. We want the arc of the universe to bend toward justice. But it may be that all of that is only our fondest hopes, grasping at straws as we’re fleeing a sinking ship. Maybe the universe is chaotic, arbitrary.

But there is a certain faithfulness in questioning God. Job might have taken his wife’s advice early on his ordeal. He could have “cursed God and died.” He might have accepted his friends’ assessment of his situation, sought in his past behavior some key to explaining his plight. But he did neither of those things. He questioned God; he challenged God.

And in response, God came to him in a whirlwind and spoke. Job had a profound, moving, life-changing encounter with God. Later on, Job will say, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5)

The answers that the book of Job offers to the perennial questions of human existence: Why do bad things happen? Why is there injustice and suffering in the world? Does any of it mean anything? May not be particularly satisfying or reassuring, but they also don’t try to candy coat or evade the difficult issues.

God responds to Job in two ways: first by reminding Job of the vast gap between Job and God: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?” God tells again the story of the creation of the universe, and of God’s power in creating it. God is omnipotent, and far beyond our comprehension.

But there’s another response in God’s words. As God describes the act of creation, God uses language and imagery that emphasize its plan and orderliness: “Who determined its measurements, or who stretched the line upon it? … who laid its cornerstone…”

It’s not only that God created the universe in its beauty and mystery, and human beings in it; it is also that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, God is in charge, God is working God’s purposes out. Those purposes may be opaque, hidden to us; they may confuse and confound us; they may leave us in despair and doubt.

But they do not leave us alone. God answered Job, and God speaks to us. God is present with us in the midst of suffering and chaos. Job learned that God comes to us in our suffering, doubt, and need. Nothing need shake our faith in that. Thanks be to God!

Are we as crazy as Jesus? A Sermon for Proper 5 Year B, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

I was walking around the square a few days ago, on my daily round that ends up at a food cart, when I passed the Solidarity Singers. It was a nice day and they had gathered as they have almost every day since 2011, to sing their songs of protest against the policies of Governor Walker and the republican led state legislature. As is typical on days like this one, tourists, business people and state workers were out as well, and their were large groups of school children gathered at the Capitol or at the top of State St, enjoying field trips in the last days of school before summer break. As I passed the singers, I thought to myself, what do all these people think of this little group of singers? I know what I was thinking, “They’re crazy! How can they keep it up for all these years?”

A couple of weeks ago, I was here at Grace to welcome and host participants in the Poor People’s Campaign Wisconsin. They’ve been gathering at Grace each week since May before rallying at the State Capitol, some of them risking arrest by performing acts of civil disobedience. This group is part of a nationwide movement led by the Rev. William Barber, drawing on a movement MLK jr began in the last year of his life. In this political and cultural climate, with little chance of effecting policy changes, this movement seems futile, unlikely to change the opinions of policy makers who seem to be focused on finding new ways to punish poor people, people of color, and other marginalized people. They’re crazy, what’s the point? I was tempted to think.

Then, I thought about us, about this congregation. Here we are on a beautiful Sunday morning, when there are so many other things we might doing—watching the triathlon, eating brunch with friends, reading the Sunday NY Times. Those of us who attend church are in the minority, increasingly so. We’re out of step with culture, with the zeitgeist. So why do we still do it? Are we crazy?

Well, hold that thought. I’ll get back to that later in the sermon, and if all goes well, at our congregational conversation at coffee hour, we’ll have a chance to talk about that question.

But first, let’s take a look at this gospel story, or stories, in which Jesus is called crazy, or out of his mind.

Let’s back up a bit, because this is really the first time I am talking about the gospel of Mark since Palm Sunday and Easter. It’s important to remember that Mark was very likely the first of the gospels to be written. It’s the shortest and in many ways, it’s the most puzzling. The portrait of Jesus that emerges from Mark’s gospel is quite unlike that of the Gospel of John, for example, but this portrait is even strikingly different from Matthew and Luke, who were written a decade or two after Mark, and probably used Mark as a source for their own work.

The Gospel of Mark is written with an extreme sense of urgency. One of the words that appears most often is the word “immediately.” The urgency is eschatological. Jesus preaches the nearness, the arrival of the reign or kingdom of God, and by that very preaching the forces, cosmic and human that are opposed to the coming of God’s reign, take action to silence him. So, here, we are very early in the gospel. Jesus has just called his first disciples. After his baptism, and the arrest of John the Baptizer, Jesus himself begins public ministry of preaching, healing, and casting out demons. In last week’s gospel reading, from a bit earlier in chapter 2, we see the Pharisees criticizing Jesus, and then beginning to conspire with the Herodians, a group they would have generally opposed, to take Jesus down.

In today’s story, we see more conflict, more opposition. I want to draw your attention to the importance of location and family here. First off, our reading picks up in the middle of a sentence that begins “Then he (Jesus) went home;” literally, into his house; where the crowds gather and press in so much that he and his disciples aren’t able to eat. Then, his family shows up and the text probably should read here: “they (his family) were saying “he has gone out of his mind” literally, “he has stood outside”—we might say he is really out of it. Note the importance here, of who is inside and who is outside.

As if to emphasize the importance of the imagery of house here, in the next little episode, Jesus tells a story about how a house divided against itself cannot stand. And then, the story ends with Jesus’ family outside, calling to him, asking Jesus to come out. Here, Jesus underscores the point—it’s not those people, standing outside, claiming he is crazy, or outside of himself, who are his family, but rather, it is those people gathered around him, listening to him, whoever does the will of God, who are Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

The response of Jesus’ family is only one part of the opposition Jesus faces here. The scribes, the consummate religious insiders, the pundits, if you will, the gatekeepers, the monitors of acceptable teaching, are on his case as well, charging him with satanic influence, even satanic powers. Such language can be off-putting to those of us with modern sensibilities but it’s important for us to be able to name evil, to recognize its power, and to confess all the ways that we are in bondage to it. In our day, such clarity is a moral necessity, key to our being faithful Christians.

Who is inside, who is outside? Who belongs, who doesn’t? Who is family? These are questions we should be asking of ourselves, our community, our nation. When families are being torn apart, people marginalized and attacked for the color of their skin, their national origin, their sexual orientation, it is incumbent on us to ask these questions.

As a congregation seeking to be faithful to the call of Jesus Christ, seeking to share the good news of the love of Jesus Christ in our neighborhood and the world, these questions should be at the center of our reflection. Are we among those seated around Jesus, listening to his words, seeking to do the will of God? Are we so on fire for Jesus Christ, so ready to take risks, experiment, name and combat the evils that beset us, so committed, that others looking at us claim we’re crazy, or demon-possessed? Or are we those people looking in from the outside, offended by the risky, risk-taking behavior of the true followers of Jesus, rejecting them, worried about our status or popularity, or standing in the community?

We are having conversations about risk-taking, experimenting, developing new programs or ministries that will reach out and connect with our neighbors. We are blessed with so many good things here at Grace, stable finances, a beautiful building in the best location in the city, amazing people with incredible gifts, skills, and commitment. May we have the courage and creativity to imagine new possibilities for ourselves, our congregation, our city.

In a season when Christianity is on the decline in our culture, when our nation is so deeply divided and for so many of us going in a dangerous direction, Jesus calls us to follow him into that uncertain future, to recognize and name the evil that opposes him, to embrace all those of whatever nationality, or color, or sexual orientation, who would join us, as we build a community of inclusion, welcome, committed to do God’s will.

 

 

 

Sabbath as Rest, Liberation, and Resistance: A Sermon for Proper 4, Year B

Posted on by
Reply

When I was a child, Sunday was a day of rest or play. I don’t remember my parents ever doing any activity that could have been construed as work, and they didn’t allow us children to do anything of the sort, either. Meals were prepared and the kitchen was cleaned up but no other household chores were done—no laundry or cleaning. And certainly, there was no outdoor activity permitted that could be seen as manual labor, no gardening or lawn mowing, for example. Continue reading →

Experiencing the Trinity: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

Trinity Sunday, Year B

May 27, 2018

Today is Trinity Sunday. Although it’s Memorial Day weekend which traditionally marks the beginning of Summer, and our thoughts may be wandering to the plans we have for the weekend, barbecues, or the Bratfest, or more distantly on promised vacations and trips to places old and familiar or new and exotic, the church’s year challenges us to focus instead on one of the central and most perplexing doctrines of our faith—the Trinity.

In my experience, both as an academic and teacher and as a pastor, the doctrine of the Trinity is more stumbling block than crutch, more alienating than inviting. Just as it emerged out of centuries of conflict during which Christians sought to define, or at least set limits around what we might say and believe concerning the relationships among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even now the doctrine of the Trinity seems to perplex, confuse, and raise doubts for many Christians and seekers. Most of us, I would suspect, if we are comfortable in our faith, have let such concerns and queries lie undisturbed in the further reaches of our consciousness. The same is true of our spiritual lives—we may have deep connections with Jesus Christ, or with the Holy Spirit, and perhaps, some of us, even with God the Father, but to experience the Trinity is likely somewhat foreign to us.

Indeed, when we think of the Trinity at all, it’s likely we think of it, or they, as divorced from our experience and existence as human beings, so abstract and beyond knowing that we cannot experience it at all, but rather only approach it, attempt to grasp the Trinity intellectually. And when our efforts to grasp the Trinity intellectually fail, we either abandon it, and Christianity altogether, or decide that we will not attempt to understand or contemplate on it.

But to do that, I think, is to miss something profoundly important about the Trinity and about us as human beings. We are created in God’s image. I wonder whether you’ve ever thought about the implications of that. Certainly, that suggests that there is a certain goodness, in us, no matter how stained that goodness might be by our sins. But more than that, as Christians we believe that God is three-in-one, God by God’s nature in relationship, reaching out beyond Godself, loving in Godself. All that implies that being created in God’s image, we are created to be in relationship as well. The creativity and love that God experiences in Godself, in the dance, as it is often called, of the trinity, leaps out and over into all of creation, and into us.

So, the Trinity is not just abstract doctrine, it involves relationship—in Godself, with humanity, and all of creation, and God as Trinity pulls us into relationship with God and with our fellow humans and all of creation.

So there is, or could be, a profound, deeply powerful, spiritual experience that opens to us when we reflect on the Trinity. We see aspects of that spiritual experience in all three lessons today.

The prophet Isaiah has a vision, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lofty.” It is so important to the biblical tradition that the song the seraphim sing has become our song in the Eucharistic liturgy. For many scholars of religion, the vision described by Isaiah and his response to that vision, have become something of a paradigm for understanding religious experience in general, not just Jewish or Christian.

Isaiah describes a vision in such vivid detail that it may seem to us as if we are with him in the temple. He claims to see God, but the vision itself is of God’s throne and a being so vast that the hem of God’s robe filled the temple. Seraphim were in attendance, flying and singing. As Isaiah looked on, he felt the temple shake as if it were in an earthquake and the temple itself filled with smoke. It’s more than a vision, however. It is an experience that engages all of Isaiah’s senses: sight, sound, touch, even taste—for it includes that marvelous and rather frightening image of one of the seraphim bringing a coal to Isaiah’s lips.

Isaiah’s response to that awesome vision was to recognize the vast gulf that divided him from God. He described himself as lost, a man of unclean lips, unable to perform the tasks to which God might be calling him. But nonetheless, Isaiah responds to God’s call like other prophets responded. In spite of their sense of unworthiness, when God asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah responds without hesitation, “Here I am, send me.”

There’s a rather different image and experience of God described by Paul in today’s lesson from the profound 8th chapter of the letter to the Romans. Last week we heard verses from the same chapter, verses which I’ve always found of great consolation when I’m struggling to pray or express myself to God: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

In today’s reading, Paul is exploring our relationship as followers of Christ with God. He uses two powerful images in these verses. First, the notion of adoption. In Roman society, unwanted children were often abandoned but because such a priority was placed on producing offspring and heirs, children who were legally adopted had the same status and inheritance rights as biological children—just as is the case today. And we all know stories of couples who have gone through extensive struggles to adopt a child. So for Paul to use this image of our relationship to God is to suggest that we are truly God’s children—joint heirs, as he says. It’s a potent image of the intimacy of our relationship with God.

There is perhaps an even more potent image of that relationship when Paul uses the Aramaic word, “Abba” suggesting that Christians in his day prayed to God using this term. It’s in the language Jesus spoke and it’s a word for father that could be compared to our word, “Daddy,” used by children to address their fathers in the home. We know Jesus used it to refer to God—it likely underlies the Greek in the Lord’s Prayer, and Mark has Jesus pray “Abba” in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think the important point here is the intimacy of the relationship implied, not the gender. Scripture uses both male and female imagery for God, both maternal and paternal images. Our focus should be on the intimacy, not the gender. And it may be, that because of our own experiences of those relationships using either paternal or maternal is not intimate or life-giving, but alienating and painful.

Still, it’s worth pointing out that in these two passages, from Isaiah and from Romans, we have two different modes of experiencing God—the transcendent, awe-inspiring, terrifying, humbling of the scene in Isaiah, and the intimate, immanent, connected imagery of Paul.

These two modes are connected in the being of God—through the Trinity. We encounter God both as transcendent and as immanent, sometimes those experiences come at us in both ways, sometimes one is more common or transforming than the other.

It’s also important to recognize that for some of us, any such experiences are rather uncommon. We seek God, or desire God, and God seems to remain distant, or silent. We want the certainty of an experience like Isaiah’s, the certainty of knowing God is there, the certainty of call. Or we desire the certainty of intimacy, the immediate sense of God’s presence in our lives, and our connection with God. We desire these experiences, and they remain elusive, distant. God seems to remain silent.

There is mystery in all this, mystery in the Trinity, mystery in the heart of God. It is a mystery that I cannot solve for you, provide any easy answers. I can only assure that I find consolation, hope, and strength in knowing that whether or not I feel connected with God, God’s love draws me toward Godself, and in the love of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I can rest as God’s beloved adopted child. My prayer is that you are able to experience that love and consolation as well.

Pentecost and the power of love: A Sermon for Pentecost, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

“Come, Holy Spirit, descend upon this place and upon us, and fill us with the fire of your love.” Amen.

Today we celebrate Pentecost—the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and the spread of the Spirit’s power and love throughout the world. We are also marking the end of our program year, and our young people are participating in the service, reading lessons and prayers, among other things. And then there are two baptisms as well. Such a celebratory feeling seems like a respite from our world. To rejoice, to come together as the body of Christ across all of the generations takes away from the distress and despair in the world around us. Continue reading →

Prayers Ascending: A Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

 

 Today is the 7thSunday of Easter, the season of Eastertide is drawing to a close. It will end next Sunday on the Feast of Pentecost. Today is also known as the Sunday after the Ascension because this past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension. Although it’s a major feast day in the Church, we didn’t have a service here at Grace—if we had, almost no one would have attended. I know, because we tried it a couple of times. Continue reading →

No longer servants but friends–A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been feeling a bit reflective, perhaps even nostalgic over the last few weeks. That might not be at all surprising given that I observed my 60thbirthday two weeks ago. But it’s also likely due to the fact that I attended a memorial service for one of my aunts last month and reconnected with my cousins, and this past week, saw the death of another aunt, the last of my dad’s 10 siblings. It’s not just or primarily the grief, it’s the sense of time passing, the lives and the world in which those lives played out, receding into the past.

That sort of nostalgia is common—many of us look back on the world of our childhood as a magical, safe place and feel acutely how different the world is today than it was in the fifties or sixties. But of course, those of us who remember a safe, loving, nurturing past, are overlooking other aspects of those times—the racism and sexism, the overwhelming fear of nuclear war, and so many other things.

It’s also true that nostalgia of this sort is part of what brings many of us to church. We want the reassurance of tradition to sustain in uncertain and anxious times. We want familiar faces, familiar hymns, liturgy that we have memorized. As the world spins ever more quickly out of control, the stone walls of this church that have stood firmly for over 150 years, seem to provide a haven, an ark to protect us from the coming flood.

But of course, it’s not quite that simple. Changing demographics, changing culture, the rapid decline of Christianity in America present grave challenges to the future stability of even the congregation that meets within the solid walls of this building. None of this is new. We’ve been talking about it for years. And in recent months, many individuals and groups at Grace have been reading The Agile Church, by Dwight Zscheile, in which he talks about these changes and how the church might adapt and innovate to become more effective in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and connecting with our neighbors and larger community.

Still, there’s no little irony that we are reading a book called The Agile Churchhere at Grace. There’s really nothing agile about us. We’ve been here on this corner for over 175 yrs; this building has been here since 1858, the oldest building on Capitol Square, the oldest church in Madison, perhaps in Dane County. But I think Zscheile’s underlying point is absolutely correct. We have to change, we have to experiment and innovate as we seek to connect in new ways to our neighbors, and we have to be willing to fail in the process.

For all of this, we have significant precedent in scripture, nowhere more so than in the Book of Acts, a text that offers us insight into the development of the followers of the Way, as they called themselves, in the first years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Last week, we looked at the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, one of the most important early examples of the expansion of the good news of Jesus Christ outside of the Jewish and Jerusalem context in which it began.

This week we have part of another story that makes the same point. For whatever reason, we only get a small part of the story—the climax, with its conversion experience, the coming of the Holy Spirit on Gentiles, and Peter’s question, echoing the Eunuch’s words last week, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?”

But just who were these people? Our reading is the conclusion of the story of Cornelius the Centurion. Cornelius, we are told, was a god-fearer, someone attracted to the ethical standards and monotheism of Judaism. He had a vision one day that instructed him to send for Peter. As his emissaries were approaching the place where Peter was staying, it was about noon, and Peter was praying on the roof of the house. He had a vision in which a large sheet came down from heaven, and on the sheet were all manner of animals, all of them unclean. But a voice told him, “Take and eat.” Peter refused, and the scene was repeated two more times. Just as he was trying to figure out what the vision might mean, Cornelius’ messengers arrived. Peter and his companions went with them and he preached to Cornelius and his household. As he preached, the Holy Spirit came upon the gathering, including on the unbaptized Gentiles. And Peter asked the question, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

Like the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, the story of Cornelius is a story of the gospel moving beyond its beginning among a small group of Jesus’ followers centered in Jerusalem, out into the world, and out among people quite unlike these Galileans. Acts will tell the story of the gospel reaching Rome, but it is a story not without conflict and dissent. The New Testament, both in Acts and in Paul’s letters show the tension that arose as the gospel was proclaimed among Gentiles. Many Jews and Jewish Christians were troubled by the expansion of the gospel to Gentiles, and the decision not to require converts to keep the commandments of Torah.

It’s easy for us, 1900 years on the other side of this development, all of us descendants of those who were once outsiders and welcomed in, to see all this as a natural, easy development. But the challenge for us is to discern where the Holy Spirit is calling us now—what sort of barriers and assumptions do we maintain that prevent the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ?

When we ask the question that way, we immediately jump to issues of diversity and inclusion, which are so very important, and have focused our energies as Christians for many years. But in some ways, the obvious issues may not always be the most pressing, or the most challenging.

Having preached on such matters repeatedly over the years, and for some of you, it may have become a bit tiresome, I would like to shift our perspective and think about other internal barriers that prevent us from allowing the spirit’s free movement. And it’s here that today’s gospel reading offers insight.

Jesus is speaking to his disciples at the Last Supper.  He says some pretty remarkable things in this brief passage: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” Think about it, think about the eternity, the intimacy of that love of God the Father and God the Son—that’s the sort of love Jesus is talking about here, the love he has for his disciples, for us.

But then he goes on. , “I do not call you servants any longer, … but I have called you friends.” While we get the contrast between friend and servant—the change in status, the change in power dynamic, we probably don’t fully grasp the intimacy implied. For us, “friend” has become something casual—especially in the age of Facebook.

But friendship takes on even deeper meaning as Jesus says, “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” If we haven’t gotten the point earlier, by now it’s clear. The sort of friendship Jesus is talking about is nothing like contemporary notions of friendship. It’s all-encompassing. Of course, we’re meant to think of Jesus’ own love, love expressed on the cross. But we’re also meant to think back to the beginning of this section of John’s gospel, chapter 13, where the gospel begins his account of the Last Supper with the words, “And having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” And here, end means both the end of Jesus’ life as well as “to the fullest extent possible.”

That sort of love, the sort of love Jesus showed in his death as well as his life, is incomprehensible to us, even as we experience it. That he might be calling us to the same love is mind-boggling. But we shouldn’t regard it as yet another burden or demand. It is a logical extension of Jesus’ calling us his “friends.”

John’s gospel begins with that marvelous hymn, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” It goes on to proclaim, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That Word made flesh now calls us “friend.” We are no longer servants or slaves, but friends.” It is a declaration of our shared identity with Christ, not just a relationship, but identity. That identity reaches beyond Jesus Christ to God. The love we share with Christ, that we abide in him and he in us, are reflections, extensions, of the love Jesus and the Father share. We abide in Christ as Christ abides in God.

Among other things, what this means is that we share in God’s mission in the world. We project God’s presence and love in the world. That’s why this commandment to love is so important. It’s not just our obligation; it’s evidence of who we are, of our identity as disciples of Jesus Christ.

So to come back to my earlier question, what sort of barriers do we set up preventing the good news from reaching the world—well, perhaps the first barrier is within ourselves, a barrier that limits us from experiencing that intimacy, the fullness of God’s love, and because we can’t experience it, or don’t want to, we are unable to share it fully with others.

May we open ourselves to the depths and riches of God’s love, may we abide in that love, may we become friends with Jesus, and through his love and friendship, begin to share that same love and friendship with the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snatched up by the Spirit: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

This is one of the weeks of the Eucharistic lectionary when I have had to struggle extensively as I prepared this sermon. My struggle wasn’t with the dearth of material—over the years I’ve preached on both today’s gospel reading and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. And as you know, I have a particular fondness for the Gospel of John, for vineyards, and for that good old word “abiding, so I began working on the gospel reading, and was thinking about including a hefty dose of material from the epistle reading as well.” But I was struggling because I was trying to discern which direction to go, what the Spirit is saying to our church, Grace Church today. In fact, as I prepared for the Wednesday eucharist at Capital Lakes, I decided to focus on the gospel and epistle reading. A member who attended that service, joked that he enjoys seeing how my thoughts develop from Wednesday to Sunday. Well, he’s I for a surprise today. Continue reading →

Called to be a community of Good Shepherds: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

We are in Eastertide, the season of Easter that extends until the Feast of Pentecost, this year on May 20. Our lectionary readings over this season have a certain trajectory. The past three Sundays, we have heard stories of encounters with the Risen Christ. With today’s gospel, we are moving in a different direction as our readings seem to explore what it means to be  beloved community living in the presence of the Risen Christ.

This Sunday is informally known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Each year in the lectionary cycle, the gospel reading is taken from John 10, which contains Jesus’ discourse or sermon on the image of the good shepherd, sheep, and the gate of the sheepfold. Each year, the psalm appointed for the day is Psalm 23—The Lord is my Shepherd.

Each year, as I prepare to preach on this Sunday, I confront the same fundamental conflict or problem. On the one hand, there is the power and appeal of imagery that has persisted in the Christian imagination for two thousand years: the Good Shepherd. There is the familiarity of Psalm 23, one of the first portions of scripture I ever memorized, and I can probably still recite it using the language of the authorized, King James version.

On the other hand, I always find myself fighting against that imagery. There’s the individualistic, sugar-coated piety of the ubiquitous, kitschy paintings of Jesus in a white robe, surrounded by white lambs, and blond-haired blue-eyed, smiling children. There’s the paternalism and infantilization of laypeople as sheep, and clergy as shepherds or pastors. There’s the not-so-subtle seduction of a simpler, less-complicated, pre-industrial world, where we can escape the complexities, ambiguities, and challenges of contemporary life and rest in the comfort of green pastures and still waters.

As appealing and comforting this imagery is, I also find it deeply problematic, and its very familiarity can make finding a preaching word difficult.

Our reading comes half-way through the chapter, so Jesus has been using the imagery of the good shepherd, sheep, the sheepfold and gate at great length already. It’s also helpful to remember that the whole of this discourse comes immediately after the long story of Jesus healing the man born blind, a story in which there is conflict between Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees, a story also in which the blind man comes to know Jesus through the sound of his voice.

In our passage, Jesus begins with the statement, “I am the Good Shepherd.” He contrasts the behavior and character of the shepherd with the hired hand and we are likely to think of the adjective “good” in light of that, contrasting the “good shepherd” with the “bad” hired hand. But in this instance, the underlying Greek word has a slightly different connotation. We could translate it as noble, or ideal or model shepherd—in fact the contrast might better be understood as being between honor and shame, than between good and bad, or good and evil.

Does that matter? Well, it might, if we think about what Jesus is saying as a description of the ideal shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep—and immediately we’re put in mind of the cross, and of Jesus’ words to his disciples at the last supper: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (jn 15:13), a theme repeated in the lesson from I John that we heard this morning.

In fact, both this aspect of the ideal shepherd, that he lays down his life for his sheep, and the second aspect emphasized in today’s gospel, that the shepherd knows his sheep by name—are obvious to us readers of John’ gospel, approaching this passage after cross and resurrection. For we have seen the true, the model shepherd in action, laying down his life for his friends, for us, on the cross, and calling his own by their name, as he called Mary Magdalene in the garden and in that moment, she knew her Lord.

In other words, in the Gospel of John, we are not only given Jesus’ words about the character and behavior of the good shepherd, John also provides us with the paradigmatic example of the Good Shepherd, Jesus himself, the one who laid down his life for his friends; the one who knew his friends by name.

But there is also a challenge here. While the image of the Good Shepherd seems to invite us into a place of comfort, peace, and security, sheep under the protective care of the shepherd, within the walls of an enclosure, the image itself, as well as Jesus’ words, encourage us to think differently. The reading from I John seems almost to be a commentary on Jesus’ words here. The writer seems to say to us, yes, Jesus did lay down his life for us, but in response we are to lay down our lives for others. There’s no security blanket here, no protective wall, only the example of Jesus calling us out into the world, calling us to love others in the same way, and with the same consequences as he did.

On top of that, continuing the imagery, the walls within which the Good Shepherd gathers the flock are not closed off from the world. Though he may know us, and his own, by name, Jesus is also calling others into relationship. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”

This statement offers an important corrective to other tendencies in scripture, and our own proclivities to remain within the familiar and the comfortable. We like the security and comfort of the Good Shepherd. We want to be nurtured and protected, but Jesus is also prodding us outward, into those difficult encounters with the strange, the other, the uncomfortable.

Think about all those places we go where we want safety, security, comfort. Church, yes, where we don’t want to deal with hard issues, or difficult people, or strangers. But apparently also, for many of us, encountering people unlike ourselves creates fear. Think about walking up State Street and dealing with panhandlers; or the horrific story that went viral this week about the African-American men who were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks, simply because they were waiting for someone and didn’t purchase anything. We want all of the spaces in which we work, and play, and live safe—and we bring down the full power of a militarized police to make sure that all of those spaces are comfortable for us.

But what would it be like if we opened up our hearts, our selves, our communities, our congregation, to the challenging and unsettling encounter with the stranger, the outcast, the other? What if we allowed those encounters to take place, not on our terms, but on their terms. I was deeply moved by another story I read this week, one that came across the Episcopal News Service, about churches that had made the commitment not to call the police when confronted with difficult or challenging people or situations. The reasoning goes that too often such incidents escalate quickly, that mental illness, homelessness, and other behaviors or conditions are criminalized, that an encounter of the police with people, especially people of color, too often end in violence and arrest, as we saw in Philadelphia, and as we indeed see on the streets of Madison as well.

That’s one way that the words of this gospel reading take us out of still waters and green pastures, out of the protective enclosure, and into the world, the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus reminds us that his call goes out into the world, to others, that he offers relationship,  abundant life to people who make us uncomfortable and unsettle our assumptions. He laid down his life for them as well.

He calls us, too, not only to be sheep, but also to be shepherds, to lay down our lives for others, to invite others into relationship with him. As a congregation, we are having conversations in a number of venues, among a number of groups, about our outreach into the community, about building relationships with our neighbors. As those conversations take place, and as we strategize next steps, I hope that we will take seriously Jesus’ example. As he laid down his life for his friends, may we be challenged to offer ourselves in similar ways, sharing our love and our faith. May we invite others into relationship with Jesus. May our community increasingly reflect and embody the diversity in our city and may our invitation to others be an invitation to us as well, an invitation to grow, and to change, and to experience more fully the abundant life that is relationship in and with Jesus Christ.