June 24, 2012
I love a good thunderstorm. We haven’t had many this summer, but I enjoy watching and listening as a storm comes through, with thunder and lightning and a good hard rain. I’m not crazy. I’m not talking about the severe ones with threats of hail and tornadoes. Continue reading
June 17, 2012
Perception is reality. What you see is what you get. We’re used to it by now. There was a news story this week that another reality TV show is staged. We expect it from politicians and celebrities, from Hollywood. In the reading from II Corinthians Paul writes, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” But we see, I’ve got to see it to believe it. There’s even something of the contradiction in today’s reading from I Samuel. Conrad Bauman pointed it out to me this morning. When Jesse’s first son is presented to Samuel, Yahweh tells Samuel, “humans look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Then when David comes before Samuel, we are told, “He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” Continue reading
June 3, 2012
Corrie and I were driving around southeastern Wisconsin yesterday, and everywhere we went, we saw signs for the upcoming election. Granted, there were many more expressing support for Governor Walker in the countryside and small towns through which we drove than one finds in Madison, but there was evidence of the deep divide throughout our state. In one small town, we saw a yard filled with signs for Walker; right next to it was a house with just as many signs showing support for Barrett. I wonder if those neighbors are on speaking terms. Continue reading
May 27, 2012
I’ve been thinking a lot about worship and the sacraments this week. I’ve been wondering about our worship—whether it’s exciting, or powerful, or meaningful enough. But I’ve also been thinking about the sacraments; the latter because of the discussion going on in our church across the country about open communion—or communion of the unbaptized. Now, if you want to know what I think about that, it’s pretty easy to find out; just ask me, or read some of what I’ve written. Continue reading
May 13, 2012
We live in a rapidly-changing culture, and sometimes it’s not clear whether any of the rules we used to live by, the cultural norms and values we used to share, sometimes it seems like none of that matters anymore, and we are cut adrift from our past as individuals, as a society, and as a church, with no clear map to guide us forward, no polestar by which to orient us in these turbulent seas. Technology brings us closer together, so we are able to connect with friends and family hundreds, even thousands of miles away. We know what’s happening in Greece, or Africa, or China, but all of that knowledge seems to deaden us to the world around us. Continue reading
May 5, 2012
Most of you know that my wife is an avid gardener. What you don’t know is that over the years, I have provided most of the sweat and muscle involved in our gardening projects. I’ve made raised beds, moved tons of rock around, planted trees in hard red clay. She’s got a whole list of things for me to do when I get time off again (hopefully, in a couple of weeks). Having done most of our gardening in the south, Corrie is having to learn new things about growing seasons, hardiness zones, what plants will work and what won’t. So azaleas, which are almost ubiquitous in the south, are very rare in Wisconsin, and we hadn’t seen or smelled a lilac in bloom for over fifteen years when we moved back north.
But vines, vines we know about. There’s our experiment with a trumpet vine that we planted in front of a fence near our house. It tripled in size in one year, and by the third year, we realized we had to get rid of it before it attacked the house, foundation and the entire neighborhood. We dug up what we could and surreptitiously put it out on a railroad bed. We continued to dig up roots and suckers from that vine for the next two years, when we moved north.
Still, when one thinks of vines in the south, one thinks of kudzu. We happened to live in the area where kudzu was first introduced after the Civil War to help with soil erosion. What a mistake that was! It grew on anything, and took over everything. We used to see along side the road small areas , test plots introduced by the kudzu eradication project, in which they tried various means of eradicating or limiting the growth of the noxious vine. Some years ago, the city of Chattanooga experimented by buying some goats to try to keep the kudzu suppressed on steep hillsides.
Now, Jesus is not talking about kudzu when he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Like the images of sheep and shepherd we heard last week, the vineyard is a theme with deep resonances in the biblical tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, the vineyard often symbolizes the people of Israel but here it is taken in a new direction. Coupled with another Johannine emphasis, “abiding,” the figure of speech used here, Jesus as the vine, his followers as the branches, stresses the relational aspect of life in Christ.
The language can seem violent, even terrifying; as anyone who has had to root out a vine knows. To cut the branches and tendrils of a vine means killing those branches, and often one needs considerable effort to extract the vine from the trees or trellises or walls on which it is growing. On the other hand, as any gardener knows, pruning is often necessary, not just to make sure the plant grows in the shape and direction desired, but in order to ensure its robust growth, and to ensure that it will bear fruit. An unpruned fruit tree, an unpruned grape vine will provide little fruit.
So too with our life in Christ. When Jesus describes himself as the vine, and the Father as the vinegrower, and speaks about the vinegrowers actions’ to prune the branches in order to ensure an abundant harvest, he is reminding us that we cannot live abundantly without him. The branches that are pruned from the vine wither and die; the vine itself thrives.
Throughout the gospel of John, the gospel writer uses imagery of “abiding” to describe the life we share in Christ. It’s an odd word, and its use in this reading obscures how common it is in the gospel as well as in John’s letter. Every time we see the words “staying” or “remaining,” it is worth remembering that the same Greek word underlies those translations as well as “abiding.”
In fact, the theme of abiding appears first in the very first chapter of John. When Philip and Andrew follow Jesus, he asks them, “what are you looking for?” They reply, “where are you staying?” Jesus tells them, “Come and see.” The gospel writer then tells us, “they stayed with him all day.” It was by staying with him, by abiding with him, that they came to know him.
Of course, it’s not just about getting to know who Jesus Christ is. Abiding means much more than that. It means living, thriving in that relationship, gaining strength and life in it. We may think that when Jesus is talking here, that he is describing a personal relationship between himself and you or I, but it’s more than that, too. The “you” in this passage is always plural. The relationships that Jesus models for us, is not a relationship between two people. It’s Trinitarian, the relationship, the community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our relationship with Christ is a relationship lived in, experienced, shared, in community. We abide in Christ, and he abides in us, when we abide together in love.
Today’s reading from I John stresses this point. Love, the author says is from God. God is love. But again, this is not some hazy, Hallmark sentimentality. It’s much deeper and stronger than that. Whoever loves, knows God. But love is perfected and fully experienced only in community. We are urged not only to love God, but to love one another, because love comes from God. Loving and abiding are related to one another. Whoever abides in God loves and is loved by God. This may seem abstract, but it’s not, for we know and experience God’s love first and foremost through the Son whom he sent to us, to love us. We know and experience God’s love above all in Christ’s gift of himself to the world on the cross. It’s that love that we know and are called to share with others.
I’ve used the image of “hanging out” to describe what Philip and Andrew did with Jesus on the day they met him. They stayed with him, hung out with him. And it’s easy for us to imagine our life in community with Christ in just those terms, as a passive experience, in which time passes unnoticed, people simply enjoying time spent together. But the image of vine and branches reminds us that it is more than that—abundant life in Christ means bearing fruit, expressing that love by sharing it with others and offering them nourishment from the same vine through which we are nourished.
The language of John’s gospel often leads us to imagine that Christian community is intensely focused internally, on the love within the community, and the community’s love for God. As Jesus says at the last Supper: “Love one another as I have loved you.” But he goes on to say something else—“by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” There’s a sense in which the commandment to love one’s neighbor, and one’s enemy, becomes in John, the commandment to love within the community.
But that’s misleading at best, for the love shared in community becomes a means for outreach. Abiding in God’s love does offer a witness to the world. Many of you know that we are about to embark on a process to think about how we might renovate and adapt our space. Although the process has begun with the Aesthetics committee, this is not primarily about how things look. Rather, it’s about mission and ministry. The question we have to ask ourselves is how can we adapt our space to the mission needs of our congregation? How can we make our space sacred space, not just for ourselves, for the community that worships here, but for our neighborhood, even the city? How can we make it a place where all can experience the love of Christ, where all might find it a place to abide in God?
On Sundays, we open our doors, inviting people in, but our building, our community must also be a place where God’s abiding love breaks out of these walls and enters the world, a place where our abiding love in God is experienced on the sidewalks and street corners, as well as in our worship and fellowship. If we abide in God’s love, if we are branches of the vine, we will bear fruit that will nourish the world.
April 29, 2012
I hate preaching on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, It’s Good Shepherd Sunday and each year we hear texts from John 10. Each year, we say or hear read, or sing, Psalm 23. I dislike the saccharine piety of the good shepherd; you know that painting your parents or grandparents had hanging in the living room, with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, in a long flowing robe, holding a cute little lamb in his arms. Or if not a painting on a living room wall, perhaps an image from Sunday School or a Bible story book. Then there are the hymns, and of course, Psalm 23. Continue reading
April 15, 2012
If you would like to read my sermon on Thomas from last year, go here.
I sometimes joke with people as I’m bringing them upstairs to my office at Grace that getting into our offices is like entering a prison. There are at least three sets of locked doors; two of those sets have no glass to allow a visitor to see what’s inside. We are well protected from the outside world and whatever dangers might lurk there. The church too is locked up tightly during the week. It’s only on Sundays that we open our doors and invite people in. Continue reading
April 8, 2012
Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb. They couldn’t believe the news? Who would take Jesus’ body? They ran. The beloved disciple got there first, but he waited, allowing Peter to enter. Only then did he go in and saw what Peter saw. An empty tomb. Mary Magdalene was right. But there was more. There were the linens. On one side, a pile, and off in a corner, by itself, neatly wrapped the piece of cloth that had covered Jesus’ face. The beloved disciple, it is said, saw and believed.
What did he believe? That Jesus was risen from the dead? But, no that can’t be it, because the very next sentence says they didn’t know the scriptures that he would be raised from the dead? So what did he see and believe? That Jesus’ body was gone? Certainly. That it had been taken by someone? Perhaps.
Throughout John’s gospel, there is something of a progression of faith. Come and see, Jesus said. He performs miracles, called signs, and many believe in his name. But it’s not clear they understand who he is or have true faith in him. They know he can work miracles, but is he the Son of God?
Here in the tomb is a wrapped up ball of linen. It signifies something, but what? Earlier, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. When he came out of the tomb, he was still bound in the burial garments, and Jesus told the bystanders to loose him. What does it all mean?
Peter and the Beloved Disciple had heard the news from Mary Magdalene who had come to the tomb by herself when it was still night. They were excited enough to run with her to the tomb to see if she was right. But there the investigations ended. An empty tomb, a rolled up ball of linen, and they went back home, their curiosity satisfied.
But not Mary Magdalene. When the other two went back, she stayed behind. She lingered in the garden, and someone she thought to be the gardener asked her, “Who are you looking for?” It is a question that comes up repeatedly in John’s gospel, beginning in the first chapter. When he sees two men following him, Philip and Andrew, he asks them, “What are you looking for.” When they answer that they want to know where he was staying, he says, “Come and see.”
Nicodemus came to Jesus. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go chapter by chapter through the Gospel of John, however much I would like to). Like Mary Magdalene, he came in the darkness. He came to ask questions, and left, his questions unanswered. The Samaritan woman comes to the well to fetch water. How many times had she come before? Every day, for years? She had come for water to do her daily chores of washing and cleaning. Instead of water, she encountered Christ, She left the well to tell everyone about who she had met, and she left her empty water jar behind. The Greeks come to Philip and tell him, “we want to see Jesus;” but we don’t know if they actually did. The Gospel doesn’t tell us.
Like those others in the gospel before her, Mary Magdalene has come. She has come to the tomb, in search of what? Solace, hope? And when Peter and the Beloved Disciple, came, saw, and went back home, she stayed behind, not satisfied, still waiting. For what? Did she know? Could she say? She stayed in the garden and she met someone who she thought was the gardener. Perhaps he could answer her questions. Perhaps he could tell her who had taken Jesus’ body, and where they had taken it.
But she was asking the wrong questions, looking for the wrong thing, seeing something she couldn’t understand. The angels told her she was looking in the wrong place, looking for the wrong thing, but their words didn’t make sense. She looked around saw a gardener, and asked him.
And then, the unimaginable, the unthinkable happened. He knew her. He called her by name, and her world, her sight, her understanding were transformed.
“Mary,” he said; and she replied, “Teacher.”
After that joyous encounter, she returned to the other disciples and told them the really good news, “I have seen the Lord!”
What are you looking for? What, who, do you hope to see? There is so much that clouds our visions—our worries for the future and for ourselves; concerns about jobs, the economy, our health, our families. But many of those are things over which we have little control. What about our hopes and fears—and all that we do to hide our deep needs from ourselves: our addictions, and not just to unhealthy habits, but our participation in a consumer lifestyle that deludes us into thinking if we only had a nicer house, or car, or an ipad 3, then things would be great, we would be satisfied. We would be happy.
What are we looking for? What, who do we hope to see? We come to church in something of the same mindset, hoping that the right word, the right experience will set everything right, make it all OK, satisfy the spiritual longings we have, longings that we often can’t articulate and express, longings for meaning and connection that we try to quench in all sorts of ways, except the way that will finally satisfy.
What are we looking for, whom do we seek? We have come to hear again the good and joyous news of resurrection, to celebrate the new life in Christ. We have come, some of us, to get a spiritual high, and some of us, in hope that what we get here today will suffice for another year.
We come, and see a rolled up ball of linen, or someone we think is a gardener, and we wonder and hope. We see what’s in front of our faces, and don’t understand the meaning, or misinterpret it. A rolled up ball of linen. What could it signify? A gardener—might he tell me what I want to know?
“Mary,” Jesus said and in that instant, her world changed. He knew her, and in that instant, she knew him. We come to this place, we come to God, with all sorts of expectations, requests, demands. We come wanting answers and help and solace. We come on our own terms. We want to encounter God on our terms, not God’s.
Mary was like us. We are Mary. She came to the tomb. She encountered a gardener. When Jesus called her by name, she replied, “Teacher.” But Jesus was much more than a teacher, and in the brief exchange that follows, Mary comes to realize what it all means, what everything means. She comes to know and believe what Jesus has been telling her, his other disciples, and us, throughout the gospel. She comes to know and understand who he is, what the crucifixion and this experience, resurrection mean. When she returns to the other disciples to tell them what happened, she makes it all clear, “I have seen the Lord.”
Here we are, all of us. We have come with our hopes and desires, with our cynicism and doubts, with our faith and with our uncertainty. We have come to this place to hear again the good news of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. We have come to experience the joy of that good news. We want it tied up in a neat package, like a rolled up ball of linen. We want it on our terms, in our categories, we want it to fill our needs.
But Jesus Christ comes to us in unexpected ways. Jesus Christ comes to us in ways we can’t imagine, in encounters we can’t control. The risen Christ comes to us in bread and wine, in the community of the faithful, and in ways we can’t express. The risen Christ comes to us, to shatter our expectations, break down the barriers that prevent us from seeing and experiencing him. The risen Christ comes to us, to remake us, to fashion us in his image and likeness. The risen Christ comes to us. Dare we say, with Mary, “We have seen the Lord?”
April 7, 2012
A few days ago, I was walking on Capitol Square. It was a beautiful day, warm, sunny, the crabapples almost in bloom. I looked up and across the square and saw in front of me two familiar buildings—the State Capitol and next to it, the steeple of Grace Church. As I looked, I was reminded of the history of those two buildings, of their long presence next to each other, of the visions of their builders to create and shape a vision of a certain kind of society and polity. I thought, too, of their intertwined history, the men who in the nineteenth century wielded power in both places—Fairchilds, Vilases, et al. From a distance, both church and capitol look solid, secure, built for the ages. Continue reading
Preaching Grace on the Square 