(Scriptures: Genesis 9:1-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15)
We are now in the season of Lent, that season of forty days during which we are invited to renew our walk with God and deepen our commitment to following in the way of Christ. The designation of forty days reminds us of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, wrestling with his identity and his call, and being tempted by Satan. In the same way, we are called to focus on, and perhaps wrestle with, our identity as Christians and our faith in God through Jesus Christ. Christians do this in many ways. Giving up something for Lent – meat, or desserts, or some addictive substance such as cigarettes or alcohol – is one way that Christians remind themselves of the privation Jesus experienced in the wilderness. (Of course, I guess I should caution against giving up church for Lent.) Some Christians seeks relationship with God via the inward journey of prayer and meditation. Others seek relationship with God through the outward journey of doing works of justice and mercy. So while some Christians give something up for Lent, others take something new on for Lent. In many ways, Christians seek to remember and even emulate the practice of Jesus by resisting temptation and drawing close to God.
Characteristically, Mark’s version of this formative period in Jesus’ life is very brief, very compressed – in the words of Sgt Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am”. Mark talks about Jesus being in the wilderness for 40 days, but it takes Mark about 40 seconds to tell us about it. Within a few lines of print we move from the baptism of Jesus to the temptation of Jesus to the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel by Jesus.
The Revised Common Lectionary associates this brief text from Mark’s gospel with two texts that refer to the story of Noah. The Genesis reading is taken from the end of the Flood account, when Noah and his family and all the animals and birds are out of the Ark, and God promise them never again to destroy all life on earth by flood. And then there’s the text from I Peter which links all of this to the sacrament of baptism.
I have to confess – and part of this is likely due to my being a fairly new pastor, only partway through seminary – that as I prepared this sermon, I really struggled to understand why the creators of the lectionary chose to set the Mark text side by side with these two texts. OK, the Mark text talks about the baptism of Jesus, and the I Peter text explains Christian baptism in terms of the flood account. In the flood account it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights being tempted.
I suppose what finally brought the three texts together for me was the message of Jesus as contained in the last line of our reading from Mark: “The time has come. The reign of God has come near. Repent, and believe the Good News.”
What is the Good News? Namely, God’s passionate love for humankind and for all creation – although from the Genesis account, this may not be the most intuitive conclusion. Genesis tells us that within a few generations from the creation, God despaired of humankind, observing that “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” and that even the very earth itself was corrupt. Gee, Mr. Writer of Genesis, don’t hold back – tell us what you really think. We’re told that God was sorry he ever created human beings, as the interactions of humans with one another and with other life on earth had begun to spin out of control like a science experiment gone horribly awry. Despite this, we’re told that God resolves to save the best of humanity – as represented by Noah and his family – along with representative samples from all forms of plant and animal life, erase everything and everyone else, and begin afresh. It’s sort of a divine do-over, or what golfers call a mulligan. In today’s reading the floodwaters have receded, Noah, his family, and all the animals and birds are out of the ark, and God gives Noah and his family the same command he gave Adam and Eve – “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth….” Perhaps with the Cain and Abel history in mind, God also very explicitly commands them this time not to kill one other. And then God for his part promises that he won’t kill them all either, that he will never again wipe out all life by flood. All this God did to maintain relationship with the human beings God created in the Divine image.
Our reading from I Peter uses the Noah story as a metaphor to explain the meaning of baptism. Just as God had through the raging floodwaters washed the corruption from the earth and saved those whom God favored, our sinful nature is drowned in the waters of baptism. Just as the blessing of Noah after the flood represented a sort of second creation, so in baptism we emerge from the water as new creations in Christ. And in a few truly strange verses, the writer of I Peter tells us that not even death ends God’s passionate love affair with humanity, that as Jesus proclaimed the Good News at the beginning of his ministry, after the crucifixion Jesus made proclamation to the Spirits in prison, who in the time of Noah did not obey. So our Good News is that God’s love for humans created in God’s image transcends humanity’s self-destructive impulses, transcends the raging floodwaters, transcends death itself. In Jesus Christ, God quite literally went through hell and high water in order to rescue and save us. Truly, this is good news.
What is our response? For much of the world, their relationship to God, to the Holy, can be characterized by the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” – that is to say, it’s not a priority. And for us in the church, while our relationship with God through Jesus Christ is our reason for coming together, we may be too quick to say “out of sight, out of mind” to those on the outside. A very old fashioned theological tradition compares the church – “big C” church - to the ark, providing a place of refuge and sanctuary from the rising floodwaters of sin and death outside our doors. Not to say that the church is perfect – it has been said, half-jokingly, that if it weren’t for the flood outside, we’d never put up with the stench inside.
One problem with the tradition of the church as “ark” – or, to use the phrase from Luther’s hymn, “a mighty fortress” – is that it doesn’t say much about those outside the ark, outside the fortress. Jesus gives us different images of the Reign of God which he preached – a banquet, a wedding feast, to which we are asked to go into the highways and byways to compel people to come in. Perhaps this is where that strange passage from I Peter comes in, about Jesus in the Spirit making proclamation to the spirits in prison. If Jesus, in the words of the Apostles Creed, “descended into hell” to proclaim Good News - would it be too much trouble for us to venture outside our doors to proclaim good news to our neighbors?
Just as Jesus struggled for forty days in the wilderness with his identity and vocation, so during these 40 days of Lent, we are called to wrestle with our call, as individuals and as the gathered church, with our vocation. Just as Jesus had to reject various temptations to claim glory for himself in ways that bypassed the cross, we in the church face similar temptations to bypass our call to discipleship.
“Lord, who throughout these forty days for us did fast and pray.
Teach us with Thee to mourn our sins and close by thee to stay.” Amen.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time*
(Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9:2-9)
*The title is from a book by theologian Marcus Borg
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone you know in a particular role, and seeing them in a different context outside that role? Such moments can be revealing. When I was in my teens I washed dishes at a bar and grill in my hometown, at which many of my high school teachers stopped by now and then for a drink at the end of the day – and it was quite different seeing them outside their classroom role, as they let their hair down a bit. For me, a more powerful example was seeing a woman I once tutored in literacy, who I normally experienced as tired and downtrodden, in another setting with her family, dancing with exuberance.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent. In the Transfiguration, the inner circle of the disciples – Peter, James, and John – are given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week. Accounts of the Transfiguration appear in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and some scholars believe that the phrase in the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel – “And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – is John’s reference to the transfiguration. So for at least three of the Gospel writer, and perhaps all four, the account of the Transfiguration was necessary in order to understand who Jesus is.
The Transfiguration comes at a time when the disciples, and especially the inner circle, aren’t quite sure who Jesus is. Not long before, Jesus had asked his disciples “who do you say that I am,” and Peter blurted you, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus than began to speak of the suffering he must undergo. When Peter questioned Jesus’ words, Jesus rebuked him, and began to say that as his followers, they, too, must take up the cross and follow him. Jesus told them, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it. He concluded this teaching by saying, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”
That’s the background. Today’s reading begins by telling us that “six days later” – six days after all this grappling with Jesus’ identity – Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and went up to a high mountain, where they went off by themselves. The setting is intended to remind us of the Exodus 24 account of Moses and the elders in God’s presence at Mt. Sinai. As Moses and the elders had been on Mt Sinai with God, so Peter, James and John were on the mountain with Jesus. Suddenly Jesus’ clothing becomes dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets – and they dialogue with Jesus. Mark and Matthew don’t tell us what they talk about, but Luke tells us they are talking about what will happen to him in Jerusalem, about the suffering he would undergo. Peter wants to savor the moment, and so he starts babbling about building three huts for Jesus, Moses and Elijah to stay in. A cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud comes a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” Jesus heard these words from heaven at his baptism, and now the inner circle of the disciples are given a chance to hear them as well. And then the vision ends, and they are alone with Jesus once again.
Three of the Gospel writers felt their readers needed to know this information in order to understand who Jesus is. Perhaps there was concern that, like Peter, they would think that being Messiah meant that Jesus would not suffer. Or, perhaps, that because Jesus suffered, he couldn’t be the Messiah. But the Gospels want to underscore that Jesus is the Messiah who suffers. He is the suffering Messiah. It’s not one or the other – both are true. Both suffering and glory are part of the package. Both suffering and glory are what Jesus is about. After telling us about Jesus teaching and healing, casting out demons and cleansing lepers, we could come to think that was the entirety of what Jesus had to offer – similar to the way that I thought my boss’s work personality was all there was. But Jesus wants Peter,. James, and John, the closest of his disciples, to know that there was more to Jesus, to get at least a glimpse of Jesus in his fullness.
It can be like that with us. It’s so easy to live on the surface, to live as though what we see is all there is. We see people in their accustomed roles – family member, neighbor, coworker, teller at the bank, barber, hairdresser, owner of the shop where we drop off our dry cleaning – person who sits near us at church - and we think that who these people are to us is who they are in their entirety. We don’t experience people in their full humanity. But because God is at work in our neighbors, as God is at work in us, we and they are not defined by jobs or social roles, but as human beings created in God’s image, and – for Christians – by their baptismal vows as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. Similarly, if we’ve been hanging around the church for a while, we define the church by our childhood memories, by those we know at church and by those holy moments over our lives that took place in the church. That’s what the church is for us - but that’s not all the church is. In our comfort and coziness we may miss the holiness, the transcendence, the sheer “otherness” of God. God, the Holy One, is present here – to use the Lutheran phrase regarding communion, God is present in, with, and under, not only the elements of communion, but the people who worship here and all that takes place here. Behind all of it – the people, the hymns, the coffee hour, the fellowship – is God, the Holy One, the creator of all things. Like Isaiah, we may go to the Temple expecting the same old same old, only to find ourselves transformed by an encounter with the holy. I’m reminded of these words from writer Annie Dillard:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)
At the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John got a glimpse of the power and sheer awesomeness of the One they had called their Master. And they were drawn out to where they could no longer return to the lives they had led before meeting Jesus. Jesus was transfigured, and those who walked with Jesus were transformed. As Jesus became so filled with light that his very clothing became dazzling white, as we draw closer to Christ, the light and love of God shines through us to warm and lighten the way for our neighbors.
Though Peter, James and John had walked many long roads with Jesus, on the mount of Transfiguration it was as though they met Jesus again for the first time. As God’s love works in our lives, may we likewise meet Jesus again for the first time – and in meeting Jesus, may we be reintroduced to our families, our coworkers, our neighbors, perhaps getting a glimpse of them and of ourselves as God sees us, as God’s beloved. May it be so with us. Amen.
*The title is from a book by theologian Marcus Borg
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone you know in a particular role, and seeing them in a different context outside that role? Such moments can be revealing. When I was in my teens I washed dishes at a bar and grill in my hometown, at which many of my high school teachers stopped by now and then for a drink at the end of the day – and it was quite different seeing them outside their classroom role, as they let their hair down a bit. For me, a more powerful example was seeing a woman I once tutored in literacy, who I normally experienced as tired and downtrodden, in another setting with her family, dancing with exuberance.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent. In the Transfiguration, the inner circle of the disciples – Peter, James, and John – are given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week. Accounts of the Transfiguration appear in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and some scholars believe that the phrase in the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel – “And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – is John’s reference to the transfiguration. So for at least three of the Gospel writer, and perhaps all four, the account of the Transfiguration was necessary in order to understand who Jesus is.
The Transfiguration comes at a time when the disciples, and especially the inner circle, aren’t quite sure who Jesus is. Not long before, Jesus had asked his disciples “who do you say that I am,” and Peter blurted you, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus than began to speak of the suffering he must undergo. When Peter questioned Jesus’ words, Jesus rebuked him, and began to say that as his followers, they, too, must take up the cross and follow him. Jesus told them, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it. He concluded this teaching by saying, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”
That’s the background. Today’s reading begins by telling us that “six days later” – six days after all this grappling with Jesus’ identity – Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and went up to a high mountain, where they went off by themselves. The setting is intended to remind us of the Exodus 24 account of Moses and the elders in God’s presence at Mt. Sinai. As Moses and the elders had been on Mt Sinai with God, so Peter, James and John were on the mountain with Jesus. Suddenly Jesus’ clothing becomes dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets – and they dialogue with Jesus. Mark and Matthew don’t tell us what they talk about, but Luke tells us they are talking about what will happen to him in Jerusalem, about the suffering he would undergo. Peter wants to savor the moment, and so he starts babbling about building three huts for Jesus, Moses and Elijah to stay in. A cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud comes a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” Jesus heard these words from heaven at his baptism, and now the inner circle of the disciples are given a chance to hear them as well. And then the vision ends, and they are alone with Jesus once again.
Three of the Gospel writers felt their readers needed to know this information in order to understand who Jesus is. Perhaps there was concern that, like Peter, they would think that being Messiah meant that Jesus would not suffer. Or, perhaps, that because Jesus suffered, he couldn’t be the Messiah. But the Gospels want to underscore that Jesus is the Messiah who suffers. He is the suffering Messiah. It’s not one or the other – both are true. Both suffering and glory are part of the package. Both suffering and glory are what Jesus is about. After telling us about Jesus teaching and healing, casting out demons and cleansing lepers, we could come to think that was the entirety of what Jesus had to offer – similar to the way that I thought my boss’s work personality was all there was. But Jesus wants Peter,. James, and John, the closest of his disciples, to know that there was more to Jesus, to get at least a glimpse of Jesus in his fullness.
It can be like that with us. It’s so easy to live on the surface, to live as though what we see is all there is. We see people in their accustomed roles – family member, neighbor, coworker, teller at the bank, barber, hairdresser, owner of the shop where we drop off our dry cleaning – person who sits near us at church - and we think that who these people are to us is who they are in their entirety. We don’t experience people in their full humanity. But because God is at work in our neighbors, as God is at work in us, we and they are not defined by jobs or social roles, but as human beings created in God’s image, and – for Christians – by their baptismal vows as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. Similarly, if we’ve been hanging around the church for a while, we define the church by our childhood memories, by those we know at church and by those holy moments over our lives that took place in the church. That’s what the church is for us - but that’s not all the church is. In our comfort and coziness we may miss the holiness, the transcendence, the sheer “otherness” of God. God, the Holy One, is present here – to use the Lutheran phrase regarding communion, God is present in, with, and under, not only the elements of communion, but the people who worship here and all that takes place here. Behind all of it – the people, the hymns, the coffee hour, the fellowship – is God, the Holy One, the creator of all things. Like Isaiah, we may go to the Temple expecting the same old same old, only to find ourselves transformed by an encounter with the holy. I’m reminded of these words from writer Annie Dillard:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)
At the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John got a glimpse of the power and sheer awesomeness of the One they had called their Master. And they were drawn out to where they could no longer return to the lives they had led before meeting Jesus. Jesus was transfigured, and those who walked with Jesus were transformed. As Jesus became so filled with light that his very clothing became dazzling white, as we draw closer to Christ, the light and love of God shines through us to warm and lighten the way for our neighbors.
Though Peter, James and John had walked many long roads with Jesus, on the mount of Transfiguration it was as though they met Jesus again for the first time. As God’s love works in our lives, may we likewise meet Jesus again for the first time – and in meeting Jesus, may we be reintroduced to our families, our coworkers, our neighbors, perhaps getting a glimpse of them and of ourselves as God sees us, as God’s beloved. May it be so with us. Amen.
Reunited
(Scriptures: 2 Kings 5:1-14, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Mark 1:40-45)
You may recall the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Or maybe you saw the 1962 movie version, which start Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, an attorney of great moral integrity raising two young children, Scout and Jem, as a widower in small town Alabama, amid the privations of the Depression and rising racial tension. The early chapters tell of everyday events and learning moments in the lives of the young children. Next door to the Finch family is the home of the mysterious, reclusive Boo Radley, who never leaves the house and whom they’ve never actually seen. All sorts of horrible, grotesque rumors circulate about Boo Radley – rumors that he killed his father, that he’s horribly disfigured - and Scout and Jem and their playmates act out these rumors in weird little skits, in view of Boo Radley’s window, in attempts to get Boo Radley to come out of the house. Boo Radley responds, in his way – at night, when they’re asleep, he leaves small presents – a marble, a wood carving - for Scout and Jem in the knothole of a tree. Atticus Finch defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, earning the wrath of the prejudiced white townspeople. Near the end of the book, the Finch children are attacked and saved from harm by – Boo Radley, who finally came out of the house in order to defend them. Boo asks Scout to walk him back to his home, and before she leaves to go back home, she stands on Boo’s porch for a moment and imagines what it’s like to see the world from Boo Radley’s perspective, has compassion for what it’s like to walk around in Boo Radley’s skin.
We’re continuing in Mark’s Gospel – we’re still not yet through the first chapter – and Jesus has begun to expand his ministry. Having left the town in which he healed the demoniac and cured Simon’s mother in law, he is walking in a deserted area where he meets Boo Radley. Well, not Boo Radley, really, but someone just as isolated and reclusive – a person with leprosy, a leper.
Leprosy was a dreaded disease in ancient times – disfiguring and contagious. Along with skin lesions, it caused nerve and eye damage. There was no known cure, and so the only available way to stop the spread of the disease was to isolate those with leprosy from the general population. Leviticus 13:45-46 offers the following instructions:
“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Considering the instructions of Leviticus 13, the leper in our Gospel reading was quite bold in approaching Jesus. How he knew Jesus could heal him, we do not know, but his desperation overcame any qualms about adhering to the instructions of Leviticus. He offered Jesus a choice – to heal the man and restore him to community, or to leave him in isolation. Jesus was moved – the translation above says “moved with pity”, other translations say “moved with anger” (perhaps at the isolation the man was forced to endure). The Greek word variously translated as pity or anger is connected to the Greek word for stomach or bowels – perhaps the man’s situation simply turned Jesus’ stomach. No matter – whatever emotion it was that moved Jesus, Jesus was moved to action. He chose to heal the man. Warning the man not to tell anyone what had happened, he sent the man off to the priest to go through the Temple ritual of restoration to community. Instead, freed from isolation and overwhelmed by gratitude, the man, who for so long was forced to live alone, went everywhere and ran up to everyone he met, proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.
Today leprosy is quite rare, at least in the United States. However, we can readily think of other circumstances in which disease or other social factors lead to isolation, lead to people being treated as lepers, sometimes to prevent the spread of disease, sometimes due to the irrational fears of society. We may think of India with its caste system, in which those on the very lowest rungs of society – the Dalits – are considered untouchables. Traditionally the Dalits – the untouchables – did manual labor considered beneath those of higher castes, such as removing garbage and dead animals and cleaning streets, sewers, and latrines. Traditionally they were thought to be less than human. In India, where Christianity is very much a minority religion, Christianity’s emphasis on equality and critique of the caste system has attracted many converts among the Dalit population, more so than those from higher castes.
We don’t have to travel the globe to encounter those treated as lepers - there are situations closer to home. In the town in which I grew up, in the early 1900’s, in order to prevent the spread of disease, tuberculosis patients were quarantined in a large, forbidding sanitarium outside the town limits. Later, as TB infections became increasingly rare, the facility was used to house the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, shutting them away from society. (My mother spent most of her career working there as a secretary, and as a child I often visited the facility.) Mental illness, to this day, carries a considerable stigma. Employers who would grant medical leave to employees recovering from a heart attack or stroke may not be so generous with someone recovering from severe depression or a psychotic episode. People who wouldn’t think of making jokes about someone with an artificial limb think nothing of making jokes about someone acting as if they’ve gone off their meds. The punch line may be funny – except to those who are on medication for mental illness, for whom the punch line is a verbal punch in the gut.
The homeless are also treated as lepers. A small proportion are mentally ill - during the 1980’s and 1990’s, many institutions for the mentally ill were closed down, and the former residents left to fend for themselves on the streets. Some are returning veterans, missing limbs or suffering from combat-related mental problems, whose reward for putting their lives on the line for their country is a spot on a heating grate and a hand lettered cardboard sign asking for help. And many homeless are folks down on their luck, unemployed in a difficult economy and without a supportive family, and perhaps having turned to drugs or alcohol to make the pain go away, at least for a little while. Our society’s safety net has been shredded in recent decades, and many of us are ourselves only a few paychecks away from that place on a heating grate. Even though the homeless are very much out in public, they are still treated as lepers, as people avoid making eye contact and even cross the street in order to avoid looking at them, let alone talking to them.
And then there was our society’s response to HIV/AIDS. Many of the first victims of AIDS were from groups that our society has often shunned. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, before there were effective treatments, those who contracted HIV/AIDS dealt not only with the lesions, weight loss, and secondary infections brought on by the disease, but all too often with the stigma of being terminated by employers, disowned by families, cut off by friends, shunned by churches. No less a personage than Philadelphia’s very own Cardinal Krol spoke of AIDS as God’s judgment on especially egregious sinners. Many doctors refused to treat AIDS patients. Many funeral homes refused to handle their remains. In life and in death, they were lepers, untouchables.
There are many whom our society continues to treat as lepers, due to disease, poverty, and other social factors. Like the leper in our Gospel passage, these social lepers offer us a choice: if we choose, we can exile them from our presence , or we can embrace them as beloved children of God. Jesus told the healed leper, “Go, and show yourself to the priest.” In Jesus’ day, the priest had the role of reintroducing the healed leper to the wider society. And today, the church still has a role in helping outcasts to be reconciled to their society. We here at Emanuel have no magic cure for illness, but we do have a cure for the isolation of being shunned by society. The love of Christ enables us – indeed, compels us - to include where others exclude, to embrace those whom others shun. Granted, for the safety of our members and our children, there are some we’re just not equipped to welcome – but there are many whom we can embrace, if we’re willing to extend ourselves, to go outside our comfort zones, as Jesus did in healing the leper, even while his guts were churning.
For in the end, we’re every one of us broken in some way or another. All of us struggle with sin, struggle with frailties of body and spirit. Older versions of our prayer of confession included the phrase, “and there is no health in us.” While we try to distance ourselves from those who are different, using phrases like “the homeless” or “the mentally ill” or “the illegal aliens” or “the Muslims” or "the gays", ultimately there’s no “the”, no them, only us, all of us. Ultimately the welcome we offer our society’s untouchables is the welcome God offers us.
It won’t be easy. The path of discipleship is really, really hard sometimes. Sometimes we’ll be moved by pity and compassion, sometimes by anger – sometimes we may have to fight feelings that turn our stomachs. In so doing, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fact that we can’t solve all the world’s problems, that we can’t do everything. We can do something. The fact is that we here at Emanuel already do something. We collect money to feed the hungry. Not a whole lot of strangers find their way here, but we welcome those who do, and they don’t stay strangers for long. We with our small numbers aren’t called to solve all the world’s problems – but we are called to respond faithfully as best we’re able.
Asked by a leper for healing, Jesus said, “I do choose. Be clean.” My prayer is that Emanuel Church will continue to choose to offer healing words and helping acts to those whom God sends our way. Through our choices, may those on society’s margins be restored to community, and moved to proclaim to their neighbors the great things God has done for them. Amen.
You may recall the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Or maybe you saw the 1962 movie version, which start Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, an attorney of great moral integrity raising two young children, Scout and Jem, as a widower in small town Alabama, amid the privations of the Depression and rising racial tension. The early chapters tell of everyday events and learning moments in the lives of the young children. Next door to the Finch family is the home of the mysterious, reclusive Boo Radley, who never leaves the house and whom they’ve never actually seen. All sorts of horrible, grotesque rumors circulate about Boo Radley – rumors that he killed his father, that he’s horribly disfigured - and Scout and Jem and their playmates act out these rumors in weird little skits, in view of Boo Radley’s window, in attempts to get Boo Radley to come out of the house. Boo Radley responds, in his way – at night, when they’re asleep, he leaves small presents – a marble, a wood carving - for Scout and Jem in the knothole of a tree. Atticus Finch defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, earning the wrath of the prejudiced white townspeople. Near the end of the book, the Finch children are attacked and saved from harm by – Boo Radley, who finally came out of the house in order to defend them. Boo asks Scout to walk him back to his home, and before she leaves to go back home, she stands on Boo’s porch for a moment and imagines what it’s like to see the world from Boo Radley’s perspective, has compassion for what it’s like to walk around in Boo Radley’s skin.
We’re continuing in Mark’s Gospel – we’re still not yet through the first chapter – and Jesus has begun to expand his ministry. Having left the town in which he healed the demoniac and cured Simon’s mother in law, he is walking in a deserted area where he meets Boo Radley. Well, not Boo Radley, really, but someone just as isolated and reclusive – a person with leprosy, a leper.
Leprosy was a dreaded disease in ancient times – disfiguring and contagious. Along with skin lesions, it caused nerve and eye damage. There was no known cure, and so the only available way to stop the spread of the disease was to isolate those with leprosy from the general population. Leviticus 13:45-46 offers the following instructions:
“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Considering the instructions of Leviticus 13, the leper in our Gospel reading was quite bold in approaching Jesus. How he knew Jesus could heal him, we do not know, but his desperation overcame any qualms about adhering to the instructions of Leviticus. He offered Jesus a choice – to heal the man and restore him to community, or to leave him in isolation. Jesus was moved – the translation above says “moved with pity”, other translations say “moved with anger” (perhaps at the isolation the man was forced to endure). The Greek word variously translated as pity or anger is connected to the Greek word for stomach or bowels – perhaps the man’s situation simply turned Jesus’ stomach. No matter – whatever emotion it was that moved Jesus, Jesus was moved to action. He chose to heal the man. Warning the man not to tell anyone what had happened, he sent the man off to the priest to go through the Temple ritual of restoration to community. Instead, freed from isolation and overwhelmed by gratitude, the man, who for so long was forced to live alone, went everywhere and ran up to everyone he met, proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.
Today leprosy is quite rare, at least in the United States. However, we can readily think of other circumstances in which disease or other social factors lead to isolation, lead to people being treated as lepers, sometimes to prevent the spread of disease, sometimes due to the irrational fears of society. We may think of India with its caste system, in which those on the very lowest rungs of society – the Dalits – are considered untouchables. Traditionally the Dalits – the untouchables – did manual labor considered beneath those of higher castes, such as removing garbage and dead animals and cleaning streets, sewers, and latrines. Traditionally they were thought to be less than human. In India, where Christianity is very much a minority religion, Christianity’s emphasis on equality and critique of the caste system has attracted many converts among the Dalit population, more so than those from higher castes.
We don’t have to travel the globe to encounter those treated as lepers - there are situations closer to home. In the town in which I grew up, in the early 1900’s, in order to prevent the spread of disease, tuberculosis patients were quarantined in a large, forbidding sanitarium outside the town limits. Later, as TB infections became increasingly rare, the facility was used to house the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, shutting them away from society. (My mother spent most of her career working there as a secretary, and as a child I often visited the facility.) Mental illness, to this day, carries a considerable stigma. Employers who would grant medical leave to employees recovering from a heart attack or stroke may not be so generous with someone recovering from severe depression or a psychotic episode. People who wouldn’t think of making jokes about someone with an artificial limb think nothing of making jokes about someone acting as if they’ve gone off their meds. The punch line may be funny – except to those who are on medication for mental illness, for whom the punch line is a verbal punch in the gut.
The homeless are also treated as lepers. A small proportion are mentally ill - during the 1980’s and 1990’s, many institutions for the mentally ill were closed down, and the former residents left to fend for themselves on the streets. Some are returning veterans, missing limbs or suffering from combat-related mental problems, whose reward for putting their lives on the line for their country is a spot on a heating grate and a hand lettered cardboard sign asking for help. And many homeless are folks down on their luck, unemployed in a difficult economy and without a supportive family, and perhaps having turned to drugs or alcohol to make the pain go away, at least for a little while. Our society’s safety net has been shredded in recent decades, and many of us are ourselves only a few paychecks away from that place on a heating grate. Even though the homeless are very much out in public, they are still treated as lepers, as people avoid making eye contact and even cross the street in order to avoid looking at them, let alone talking to them.
And then there was our society’s response to HIV/AIDS. Many of the first victims of AIDS were from groups that our society has often shunned. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, before there were effective treatments, those who contracted HIV/AIDS dealt not only with the lesions, weight loss, and secondary infections brought on by the disease, but all too often with the stigma of being terminated by employers, disowned by families, cut off by friends, shunned by churches. No less a personage than Philadelphia’s very own Cardinal Krol spoke of AIDS as God’s judgment on especially egregious sinners. Many doctors refused to treat AIDS patients. Many funeral homes refused to handle their remains. In life and in death, they were lepers, untouchables.
There are many whom our society continues to treat as lepers, due to disease, poverty, and other social factors. Like the leper in our Gospel passage, these social lepers offer us a choice: if we choose, we can exile them from our presence , or we can embrace them as beloved children of God. Jesus told the healed leper, “Go, and show yourself to the priest.” In Jesus’ day, the priest had the role of reintroducing the healed leper to the wider society. And today, the church still has a role in helping outcasts to be reconciled to their society. We here at Emanuel have no magic cure for illness, but we do have a cure for the isolation of being shunned by society. The love of Christ enables us – indeed, compels us - to include where others exclude, to embrace those whom others shun. Granted, for the safety of our members and our children, there are some we’re just not equipped to welcome – but there are many whom we can embrace, if we’re willing to extend ourselves, to go outside our comfort zones, as Jesus did in healing the leper, even while his guts were churning.
For in the end, we’re every one of us broken in some way or another. All of us struggle with sin, struggle with frailties of body and spirit. Older versions of our prayer of confession included the phrase, “and there is no health in us.” While we try to distance ourselves from those who are different, using phrases like “the homeless” or “the mentally ill” or “the illegal aliens” or “the Muslims” or "the gays", ultimately there’s no “the”, no them, only us, all of us. Ultimately the welcome we offer our society’s untouchables is the welcome God offers us.
It won’t be easy. The path of discipleship is really, really hard sometimes. Sometimes we’ll be moved by pity and compassion, sometimes by anger – sometimes we may have to fight feelings that turn our stomachs. In so doing, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fact that we can’t solve all the world’s problems, that we can’t do everything. We can do something. The fact is that we here at Emanuel already do something. We collect money to feed the hungry. Not a whole lot of strangers find their way here, but we welcome those who do, and they don’t stay strangers for long. We with our small numbers aren’t called to solve all the world’s problems – but we are called to respond faithfully as best we’re able.
Asked by a leper for healing, Jesus said, “I do choose. Be clean.” My prayer is that Emanuel Church will continue to choose to offer healing words and helping acts to those whom God sends our way. Through our choices, may those on society’s margins be restored to community, and moved to proclaim to their neighbors the great things God has done for them. Amen.
Served and Serving
(Scriptures: Isaiah 40:21-31, I Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39)
We’re continuing along in Mark’s fast moving Gospel – it’s something to realize that already we’ve watched Jesus come to John to be baptized, go out into the wilderness to be tested, begin calling disciples, preach and perform an exorcism – and we’re still only partway through the first chapter! Sometimes I think it must have been exhausting to have been a follower of Jesus, trying to keep up with his fast-moving ministry. Jesus’ actions in the synagogue were very public, but now Jesus spends some time in a more private setting. Apparently the house in which the brothers Simon and Andrew lived was right next door to the synagogue. Having wowed the crowd at the synagogue, Jesus and his (at that time) handful of disciples slip into Simon and Andrew’s house for some down time, some rest and refreshment.
We’re reminded quickly that families in those days were not like the tidy families to which we aspire today – husband, wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, a minivan, all situated in a McMansion way out in the ‘burbs – but rather were large, extended families where three or more generations lived under the same roof. You had lots of people living in relatively close quarters, and privacy was limited. We learn that Simon’s mother-in-law lived with the family – and that this particular day, she’s under the weather – in fact, more than under the weather, she’s deathly sick. You who are parents can probably relate to this story: you’re feeling just plain rotten – maybe you have a migraine or a stomach bug or the flu or such – and all you want to do is lie down, turn off the lights, pull up the covers, and have some peace and quiet as you wait for the fever or migraine to run its course. But your kid brings over some friends from school, and they want run around the house playing cops and robbers, or maybe they try to play Suzy Homemaker and you hear an alarming clanging and clattering and dishes breaking in the kitchen. You shudder….why can’t I have some peace and quiet, just this once. But you haul yourself out of bed and force a smile, because your kids and their friends need you, and that’s what parents do. Obviously in our Gospel reading Simon and Peter and company are adults, not noisy kids – but on hearing she had company downstairs, Simon’s mother-in-law likely shuddered just the same. If she were feeling better, she’d probably be bustling around providing hospitality – but today she’s sick as a dog, and can’t even get out of bed.
For Simon’s mother-in-law, what started out feeling like an intrusion turned into a blessing. Simon and Andrew and Jesus appear in her doorway, and she starts apologizing for being bedfast. But Mark tells us that Jesus steps over to the bed, takes her by the hand, and lifts her out of bed. After all the high drama that had taken place at the synagogue earlier that morning, this is a tender, intimate moment – Jesus reaching down to take the hand of this sick woman, as her sons stand in the doorway watching. And in doing so, Jesus is breaking all sorts of religious and cultural boundaries – healing on the Sabbath – his second such healing that Sabbath day, touching a sick person who would have been considered ritually unclean, not to mention the social boundaries between men and women. But for Jesus, restoration, not respectability, is what matters. The mother-in-law is healed, made whole, restored to health, so much so in fact that she starts waiting on the gathering. And at this point, the women among us are probably rolling their eyes – she’s just gotten out of bed, and already the men stand around expecting her to wait on them. Man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done…..
Perhaps some of us have our own stories of situations that started out feeling like a burden but turned into a blessing, started out feeling like an imposition, but wound up being an invitation to healing and wholeness. We have tickets to a game or concert that we’d paid for in advance some time ago, but the day of the game has come and we’re not feeling up for it – but we push ourselves, and the game or concert turns out to be just what we needed. We’ve had a long day at work, but a friend calls, needing to talk – and the conversation turns out to be a time of healing not only for the friend, but for us. Granted, none of us can be on call 24/7, but if we’re too quick to shut others out, we may miss blessings God intended for us in our encounters with others.
All that said, even Jesus – even Mark’s fast-moving, supercaffeinated Jesus - needed some downtime. By the time Jesus had finished his lunch at Simon’s house, the crowds were making their way to see him. At sundown – after the Sabbath was over – those who were sick pressed in on Jesus, and he healed many of them. Having ministered to the crowds, Jesus, who had healed and restored so many, needed some R&R himself, and so he went off to a deserted place to pray. And as Jesus is spending some badly needed quiet time with his Heavenly Father, Simon bumbled onto the scene, reminding Jesus that everyone’s looking for him. But Jesus is not the property of those who gathered at Simon’s house – there are people in other towns who need to hear the Gospel, and so Jesus sets off to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in the surrounding region.
We are invited to bring our brokenness to Jesus to be healed. But our healing is not something for ourselves alone, but rather is given to us so that we can serve and bless others. Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and she responded by serving Jesus. In turn, as Jesus prayed, God restored Jesus’ spirit, so that he could continue to proclaim good news to others, in words of mercy and deeds of compassion.
There may be times when God can use even our brokenness to bring good news to others. Roman Catholic writer Henri Nouwen some years ago wrote a book called 'The Wounded Healer', about pastors and other healers whose wounds and weaknesses become opportunities to heal others. We see wounded healers in many places –the person emerging from a difficult time of bereavement who becomes a grief counselor, the battered spouse who gains independence and goes back to volunteer at a women’s crisis hotline or shelter, the recovering alcoholic who starts an AA meeting so that others can embrace sobriety. Some years ago I was at the funeral of a recovering alcoholic – I’ll refer to him as Jack - who had started several AA meetings in the Philadelphia area. Having at one time nearly drank himself to death, he started AA meetings at which the lives of many others were saved. In the eulogy, the pastor reflected that Jack had taken the raging torrents in his own life, and poured them out as cups of cool, life-giving water for those dying of thirst around him.
From our Isaiah reading: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” As we gather in worship and especially as we gather at the table in a few moments, may our weary spirits be renewed and our broken places healed and restored, and may we be channels of renewal, healing and restoration for our friends, our neighbors, for all with whom we come into contact. Amen.
We’re continuing along in Mark’s fast moving Gospel – it’s something to realize that already we’ve watched Jesus come to John to be baptized, go out into the wilderness to be tested, begin calling disciples, preach and perform an exorcism – and we’re still only partway through the first chapter! Sometimes I think it must have been exhausting to have been a follower of Jesus, trying to keep up with his fast-moving ministry. Jesus’ actions in the synagogue were very public, but now Jesus spends some time in a more private setting. Apparently the house in which the brothers Simon and Andrew lived was right next door to the synagogue. Having wowed the crowd at the synagogue, Jesus and his (at that time) handful of disciples slip into Simon and Andrew’s house for some down time, some rest and refreshment.
We’re reminded quickly that families in those days were not like the tidy families to which we aspire today – husband, wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, a minivan, all situated in a McMansion way out in the ‘burbs – but rather were large, extended families where three or more generations lived under the same roof. You had lots of people living in relatively close quarters, and privacy was limited. We learn that Simon’s mother-in-law lived with the family – and that this particular day, she’s under the weather – in fact, more than under the weather, she’s deathly sick. You who are parents can probably relate to this story: you’re feeling just plain rotten – maybe you have a migraine or a stomach bug or the flu or such – and all you want to do is lie down, turn off the lights, pull up the covers, and have some peace and quiet as you wait for the fever or migraine to run its course. But your kid brings over some friends from school, and they want run around the house playing cops and robbers, or maybe they try to play Suzy Homemaker and you hear an alarming clanging and clattering and dishes breaking in the kitchen. You shudder….why can’t I have some peace and quiet, just this once. But you haul yourself out of bed and force a smile, because your kids and their friends need you, and that’s what parents do. Obviously in our Gospel reading Simon and Peter and company are adults, not noisy kids – but on hearing she had company downstairs, Simon’s mother-in-law likely shuddered just the same. If she were feeling better, she’d probably be bustling around providing hospitality – but today she’s sick as a dog, and can’t even get out of bed.
For Simon’s mother-in-law, what started out feeling like an intrusion turned into a blessing. Simon and Andrew and Jesus appear in her doorway, and she starts apologizing for being bedfast. But Mark tells us that Jesus steps over to the bed, takes her by the hand, and lifts her out of bed. After all the high drama that had taken place at the synagogue earlier that morning, this is a tender, intimate moment – Jesus reaching down to take the hand of this sick woman, as her sons stand in the doorway watching. And in doing so, Jesus is breaking all sorts of religious and cultural boundaries – healing on the Sabbath – his second such healing that Sabbath day, touching a sick person who would have been considered ritually unclean, not to mention the social boundaries between men and women. But for Jesus, restoration, not respectability, is what matters. The mother-in-law is healed, made whole, restored to health, so much so in fact that she starts waiting on the gathering. And at this point, the women among us are probably rolling their eyes – she’s just gotten out of bed, and already the men stand around expecting her to wait on them. Man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done…..
Perhaps some of us have our own stories of situations that started out feeling like a burden but turned into a blessing, started out feeling like an imposition, but wound up being an invitation to healing and wholeness. We have tickets to a game or concert that we’d paid for in advance some time ago, but the day of the game has come and we’re not feeling up for it – but we push ourselves, and the game or concert turns out to be just what we needed. We’ve had a long day at work, but a friend calls, needing to talk – and the conversation turns out to be a time of healing not only for the friend, but for us. Granted, none of us can be on call 24/7, but if we’re too quick to shut others out, we may miss blessings God intended for us in our encounters with others.
All that said, even Jesus – even Mark’s fast-moving, supercaffeinated Jesus - needed some downtime. By the time Jesus had finished his lunch at Simon’s house, the crowds were making their way to see him. At sundown – after the Sabbath was over – those who were sick pressed in on Jesus, and he healed many of them. Having ministered to the crowds, Jesus, who had healed and restored so many, needed some R&R himself, and so he went off to a deserted place to pray. And as Jesus is spending some badly needed quiet time with his Heavenly Father, Simon bumbled onto the scene, reminding Jesus that everyone’s looking for him. But Jesus is not the property of those who gathered at Simon’s house – there are people in other towns who need to hear the Gospel, and so Jesus sets off to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in the surrounding region.
We are invited to bring our brokenness to Jesus to be healed. But our healing is not something for ourselves alone, but rather is given to us so that we can serve and bless others. Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and she responded by serving Jesus. In turn, as Jesus prayed, God restored Jesus’ spirit, so that he could continue to proclaim good news to others, in words of mercy and deeds of compassion.
There may be times when God can use even our brokenness to bring good news to others. Roman Catholic writer Henri Nouwen some years ago wrote a book called 'The Wounded Healer', about pastors and other healers whose wounds and weaknesses become opportunities to heal others. We see wounded healers in many places –the person emerging from a difficult time of bereavement who becomes a grief counselor, the battered spouse who gains independence and goes back to volunteer at a women’s crisis hotline or shelter, the recovering alcoholic who starts an AA meeting so that others can embrace sobriety. Some years ago I was at the funeral of a recovering alcoholic – I’ll refer to him as Jack - who had started several AA meetings in the Philadelphia area. Having at one time nearly drank himself to death, he started AA meetings at which the lives of many others were saved. In the eulogy, the pastor reflected that Jack had taken the raging torrents in his own life, and poured them out as cups of cool, life-giving water for those dying of thirst around him.
From our Isaiah reading: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” As we gather in worship and especially as we gather at the table in a few moments, may our weary spirits be renewed and our broken places healed and restored, and may we be channels of renewal, healing and restoration for our friends, our neighbors, for all with whom we come into contact. Amen.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Gone Fishing
(Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11)
I preached for the first time about 6 years ago. I was meeting with a small Liberian congregation in Southwest Philadelphia who were considering joining the United Church of Christ. In fact, this congregation is where I first met Isaac, who was assistant to the pastor. So I was making arrangements on behalf of the Phila Association of the UCC to visit the congregation, and Isaac said to me, “You will preach.” And I responded, “I don’t preach…..I’ll just bring greetings from the denomination.” And Isaac said, “You will preach.” And I said, “I’ve never preached in my life…..please, I’ll just bring some brief greetings and then sit down.” And Isaac said, “You will preach.” And we went back and forth a few more times, but Isaac said “You will preach” more times than I said “no”….so…oh, all right….I wound up preaching at the Liberian congregation. It was Trinity Sunday, and so I preached on the Trinity, which has been known to send parishioners into a coma, but also about the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, which is more energizing. I wound up my sermon and quickly got ready to take a seat…thank goodness that’s over....but then the pastor gave an altar call. Oh, no. The churches to which I had belonged didn’t do altar calls – ever - and while I’d seen altar calls at other churches, I’d never been up front with the clergy for one. And so I was muttering to myself, ‘Oh, please, nobody come up, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at an altar call; nobody come up please please please.’ And so a whole big family came up, a mom, some kids, and some men from the congregation with her to support her. And the pastor told me to pray with them, and I said, “Oh no, this is your church; we’re doing this together.” And so the Liberian pastor and I prayed over the family and laid hands on them as they poured out their hearts to Jesus.
Our readings from Jonah and from Mark’s Gospel show enthusiastic reactions to two preachers, Jonah and Jesus. Jonah was a most reluctant preacher – today’s reading gives us only a snippet from the story, but we remember that earlier in the story, the first time when God told Jonah to preach in Nineveh, Jonah went off in exactly the opposite direction and got on a boat to sail even further away. After all, Jonah didn’t even like the folks in Nineveh; he wanted God to smite them, not save them. But, by means of a convenient whale that happened by, Jonah is brought back to his starting point, and God tells Jonah, “Ok, let’s try this once again.” And so Jonah says, “oh, all right” and slogs his way part way into Nineveh, bringing God’s message, “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Like me at the Liberian church, Jonah was probably muttering to himself, “Hey Nineveh people, please don’t listen to a word I say”, but instead the people drop everything and respond with fervent repentance. And so God spared Nineveh, and Jonah was angry at God again….but we’ll save that for some other Sunday.
And then our Gospel reading shows Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry. As we found last week, Mark tells his story in a very condensed, right-to-the-point, fast-moving way. The Greek words “kai euthus” – “and immediately” occur over and over in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is not reluctant, as Jonah was, but our reading begins with an ominous note: “Now after John was arrested…..” Whoa! Where’d that come from? Mark will tell us more about John’s arrest later….but with just that brief transition, we see Jesus begin his public ministry. John is baptizing, then John is arrested, then Jesus begins preaching. Did the disruption among the crowds by the Jordan caused by John’s arrest impel Jesus to step in and continue what John had begun?
Jesus begins to preach that God’s reign has come near, to repent and believe. And then he begins to call his disciples. And, as Mark tells it, they respond immediately: “And immediately Simon and Andrew left their nets and followed him…..Immediately Jesus called James and John, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
What these readings share with the snippet from I Corinthians is a sense of urgency. Now, Jonah doesn’t feel any urgency at all about preaching to Nineveh, but God does, and won’t let Jonah off the hook until he accomplishes his mission. Paul preaches, “the appointed time has grown short.” Jesus preaches “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe.” In all three readings, those proclaiming the Good News are going outside their comfort zones: Jonah preaching to an enemy city, Paul trying to motivate an early church, Jesus rebounding from the arrest of John, who had baptized him. All three followed God into unfamiliar territory, and God used all three to accomplish mighty deeds.
Two thousand years later, God is still urgently working for our salvation, and for that of our neighbors. And God can use us, as God used Simon and Andrew, to fish for people, to draw people into the reign of God. God can use us – if we’re willing. And maybe even if we’re not – remember God sending a whale to bring Jonah from where Jonah had fled, back to where God could use him.
Are we where God can use us? Like Simon and Andrew, James and John, God calls us to fish for people. To do that, we need to go where the people are. A fisherman who sits back, arms folded, expecting the fish to spontaneously jump out of the water and land in his boat will likely go home emptyhanded and hungry. And yet, we in the church behave as if we expect our neighbors to spontaneously jump out of their Sunday morning routines – soccer, Sunday newspaper, Sunday brunch, whatever - and land in the front pew of the church. And, you know, occasionally it happens – but not often enough to count on. We need to invite our neighbors to come in. Or, if we really want our neighbors to hear good news, we may need to go to them. We may need to bring church to them.
That’s the challenging news. The good news is that God can use all of us to spread the Good News. Simon and Andrew, James and John had no particular qualifications, and God used them to turn the world upside down. And God can use our little church to turn Bridesburg upside down, if we let him. If we let him. We can’t follow Jesus and follow the status quo at the same time – Jesus just isn’t a status quo guy. Status quo, same old same old, is Zebedee left behind in the boat while his sons leave him to follow Jesus.
There’s one thing that always bothered me about the metaphor of fishing for people. If a fish gets caught, it’s good news for the fisherman, but bad news for the fish. A fish that’s caught is going to get skinned and cleaned and eaten. And given all the news stories about misconduct in the church, a lot of our neighbors expect that if they set foot in a church, they’ll get skinned alive and their bank accounts cleaned out as well. It’s up to us not only to tell our neighbors, but to show our neighbors, that what we have to offer truly is good news. Perhaps the fishing we’re asked to do is like some sort of catch and release program, where we catch fish in a net in order to rescue them from the cramped, polluted aquarium of our world’s way of doing things, and release them into the wide, blue ocean of God’s grace, to live with the freedom that God intended.
From Mark’s Gospel: “As [Jesus] went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.” May our lives reflect the words of the old Gospel song:
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, no turning back.
Amen.
I preached for the first time about 6 years ago. I was meeting with a small Liberian congregation in Southwest Philadelphia who were considering joining the United Church of Christ. In fact, this congregation is where I first met Isaac, who was assistant to the pastor. So I was making arrangements on behalf of the Phila Association of the UCC to visit the congregation, and Isaac said to me, “You will preach.” And I responded, “I don’t preach…..I’ll just bring greetings from the denomination.” And Isaac said, “You will preach.” And I said, “I’ve never preached in my life…..please, I’ll just bring some brief greetings and then sit down.” And Isaac said, “You will preach.” And we went back and forth a few more times, but Isaac said “You will preach” more times than I said “no”….so…oh, all right….I wound up preaching at the Liberian congregation. It was Trinity Sunday, and so I preached on the Trinity, which has been known to send parishioners into a coma, but also about the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, which is more energizing. I wound up my sermon and quickly got ready to take a seat…thank goodness that’s over....but then the pastor gave an altar call. Oh, no. The churches to which I had belonged didn’t do altar calls – ever - and while I’d seen altar calls at other churches, I’d never been up front with the clergy for one. And so I was muttering to myself, ‘Oh, please, nobody come up, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at an altar call; nobody come up please please please.’ And so a whole big family came up, a mom, some kids, and some men from the congregation with her to support her. And the pastor told me to pray with them, and I said, “Oh no, this is your church; we’re doing this together.” And so the Liberian pastor and I prayed over the family and laid hands on them as they poured out their hearts to Jesus.
Our readings from Jonah and from Mark’s Gospel show enthusiastic reactions to two preachers, Jonah and Jesus. Jonah was a most reluctant preacher – today’s reading gives us only a snippet from the story, but we remember that earlier in the story, the first time when God told Jonah to preach in Nineveh, Jonah went off in exactly the opposite direction and got on a boat to sail even further away. After all, Jonah didn’t even like the folks in Nineveh; he wanted God to smite them, not save them. But, by means of a convenient whale that happened by, Jonah is brought back to his starting point, and God tells Jonah, “Ok, let’s try this once again.” And so Jonah says, “oh, all right” and slogs his way part way into Nineveh, bringing God’s message, “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Like me at the Liberian church, Jonah was probably muttering to himself, “Hey Nineveh people, please don’t listen to a word I say”, but instead the people drop everything and respond with fervent repentance. And so God spared Nineveh, and Jonah was angry at God again….but we’ll save that for some other Sunday.
And then our Gospel reading shows Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry. As we found last week, Mark tells his story in a very condensed, right-to-the-point, fast-moving way. The Greek words “kai euthus” – “and immediately” occur over and over in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is not reluctant, as Jonah was, but our reading begins with an ominous note: “Now after John was arrested…..” Whoa! Where’d that come from? Mark will tell us more about John’s arrest later….but with just that brief transition, we see Jesus begin his public ministry. John is baptizing, then John is arrested, then Jesus begins preaching. Did the disruption among the crowds by the Jordan caused by John’s arrest impel Jesus to step in and continue what John had begun?
Jesus begins to preach that God’s reign has come near, to repent and believe. And then he begins to call his disciples. And, as Mark tells it, they respond immediately: “And immediately Simon and Andrew left their nets and followed him…..Immediately Jesus called James and John, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
What these readings share with the snippet from I Corinthians is a sense of urgency. Now, Jonah doesn’t feel any urgency at all about preaching to Nineveh, but God does, and won’t let Jonah off the hook until he accomplishes his mission. Paul preaches, “the appointed time has grown short.” Jesus preaches “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe.” In all three readings, those proclaiming the Good News are going outside their comfort zones: Jonah preaching to an enemy city, Paul trying to motivate an early church, Jesus rebounding from the arrest of John, who had baptized him. All three followed God into unfamiliar territory, and God used all three to accomplish mighty deeds.
Two thousand years later, God is still urgently working for our salvation, and for that of our neighbors. And God can use us, as God used Simon and Andrew, to fish for people, to draw people into the reign of God. God can use us – if we’re willing. And maybe even if we’re not – remember God sending a whale to bring Jonah from where Jonah had fled, back to where God could use him.
Are we where God can use us? Like Simon and Andrew, James and John, God calls us to fish for people. To do that, we need to go where the people are. A fisherman who sits back, arms folded, expecting the fish to spontaneously jump out of the water and land in his boat will likely go home emptyhanded and hungry. And yet, we in the church behave as if we expect our neighbors to spontaneously jump out of their Sunday morning routines – soccer, Sunday newspaper, Sunday brunch, whatever - and land in the front pew of the church. And, you know, occasionally it happens – but not often enough to count on. We need to invite our neighbors to come in. Or, if we really want our neighbors to hear good news, we may need to go to them. We may need to bring church to them.
That’s the challenging news. The good news is that God can use all of us to spread the Good News. Simon and Andrew, James and John had no particular qualifications, and God used them to turn the world upside down. And God can use our little church to turn Bridesburg upside down, if we let him. If we let him. We can’t follow Jesus and follow the status quo at the same time – Jesus just isn’t a status quo guy. Status quo, same old same old, is Zebedee left behind in the boat while his sons leave him to follow Jesus.
There’s one thing that always bothered me about the metaphor of fishing for people. If a fish gets caught, it’s good news for the fisherman, but bad news for the fish. A fish that’s caught is going to get skinned and cleaned and eaten. And given all the news stories about misconduct in the church, a lot of our neighbors expect that if they set foot in a church, they’ll get skinned alive and their bank accounts cleaned out as well. It’s up to us not only to tell our neighbors, but to show our neighbors, that what we have to offer truly is good news. Perhaps the fishing we’re asked to do is like some sort of catch and release program, where we catch fish in a net in order to rescue them from the cramped, polluted aquarium of our world’s way of doing things, and release them into the wide, blue ocean of God’s grace, to live with the freedom that God intended.
From Mark’s Gospel: “As [Jesus] went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.” May our lives reflect the words of the old Gospel song:
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, no turning back.
Amen.
Water and Spirit
(Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11)
This Sunday, after detours into the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, we return to Mark’s Gospel, where we will spend much of the coming year. Mark’s Gospel is thought to have been the first of the four Gospels to have been written, from which Matthew and Luke drew much of their material. Mark’s is a fast-moving Gospel, portraying Jesus as a man of action. English translations smooth out the language, but the original Greek reads like a story told by an excited child: Jesus did this, and right away Jesus did that, and then right away Jesus said this, and then right away Jesus said that. The Greek phrase “kai euthus” – “and immediately” or “and right away” – occurs over and over. Mark’s Gospel catches the spirit of what it must have felt like to have been a disciple of Jesus, to be have been caught up among those who followed Jesus during his earthly ministry – Jesus does and says one amazing thing after another, and as the readers of Mark’s Gospel, we stand by watching, with our mouths hanging open in amazement.
Today’s reading is no exception. For one thing, we’ve fast-forwarded from the time of Jesus’ birth until Jesus was about 30 years old. We begin by meeting John the Baptist in the wilderness, that strange character who dressed in camel’s hair with a leather belt and eating locusts – bugs – and wild honey. His appearance brings up historic memories for his listeners. If we were to see someone at Independence Hall dressed in a colonial costume reading from parchment, we would be reminded of the American revolution – and in the same way, John’s dress reminds the crowds of Elijah. Luke’s Gospel tells us that John’s father was a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem, but John is out in the wilderness, far away from the religious establishment of the day, indeed, offering an alternative to the religious establishment – and at the Jordan River, where Joshua long ago had led the Hebrews from the wilderness through the Jordan and into the promised land, into the land of freedom. Mark’s Gospel tells us that crowds of people from the countryside and even from Jerusalem were coming out to see John, to confess their sins and be baptized by John. Mark gives us a picture of a people who are spiritually hungry, who are not being fed spiritually by the rituals of the Temple and the teaching of the established religious leaders, who are willing to travel long distances on foot and far out of their comfort zone in the chance that John will give them something, anything to hold on to.
We think of baptism primarily as a Christian ritual, but Christian baptism had its origin in the Jewish mikveh, a ritual bath. Jews took such a ritual bath as a rite of purification after some event had occurred to make them ritually impure. Orthodox and Conservative Jews continue the practice to this day, the Orthodox Jews so much so that a newly-gathered community is instructed to build a mikveh for the ritual bath before building the synagogue. So John’s baptism would have been like a washing from sin, a fresh start. The mikveh or ritual bath was also a rite of conversion, by which Gentiles were purified before joining the Jewish community. What is striking is that those coming to be baptized by John were already Jews – but the unsatisfying practices of the religious establishment left them feeling defiled and alienated from God. John’s baptism offered a radical way to re-connect to their faith.
So Mark sets the stage – John out in the wilderness leading a renewal movement which attracted Jews from all over. And John says that he is only preparing the way for the coming of one who will be greater than John. John says that he is not worthy to tie this person’s shoelaces. In other words, John tells his followers, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
And then along comes Jesus. John baptizes him – this would have been full immersion baptism, Jesus down in the muddy water of the Jordan - and Jesus sees the heavens torn open – the sense of this is that the heavens were in some way ripped apart - and the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove. He hears a voice from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
This is a turning point in Jesus’ life. The other Gospels tell us that up until this point, he was the carpenter’s son, not seen by most people as anyone special. Those in Jesus’ hometown assumed he would grow up and take over his father’s business and that would be that. But Jesus, following the leading of the Spirit, makes the long journey on foot out into the wilderness to see John the Baptist. With his baptism, Jesus’ life goes off in a radically new direction. Although we won’t read about it until we begin Lent, we know that after Jesus baptism he was tested in the wilderness, and after John was arrested, began to proclaim the coming of the Reign of God. At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were ripped apart, and God broke into the moment. Jesus’ miracles, healings, teaching were all ways in which Jesus not only proclaimed the Reign of God, but demonstrated God breaking in to take on the powers of evil.
What sustained Jesus through all that he faced throughout his life – testing in the wilderness, the exhaustion that came with ministering to the crowds, the frustration of dealing with his disciples, the emotional stress of confrontation and opposition from the religious establishment? What kept him from crashing and burning? We know that he spent frequent time in prayer, often going off alone to pray. But perhaps part of what kept him going was this moment of baptism, this moment of seeing the heavens ripped apart, of being equipped with the gift of the Holy Spirit, of hearing the voice of God name him as God’s beloved Son. While many of us were baptized as infants and may not remember our baptism, we too can be sustained by the knowledge that, in baptism, God has claimed each of us and called each of us beloved daughters and sons. In words from the funeral service, we remember that we are baptized into Christ’s death so that just as we share a death like Christ’s, we will also share a resurrection like Christ’s. Just as Jesus was equipped at his baptism with the Holy Spirit, so those being baptized are told, “receive the Holy Spirit, child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.”
Like Jesus, we may experience grief, anger, frustration, loneliness. Like Jesus on the cross, there are those moments when we feel so overwhelmed that we say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” In those moments, our baptism reminds us that God will never abandon us. The words of the old Heidelberg Catechism that our older members grew up with, we’re told that our only comfort, in life and in death, is that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to ourselves, but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ - who through the waters of baptism has claimed us for his very own.
This Sunday, after detours into the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, we return to Mark’s Gospel, where we will spend much of the coming year. Mark’s Gospel is thought to have been the first of the four Gospels to have been written, from which Matthew and Luke drew much of their material. Mark’s is a fast-moving Gospel, portraying Jesus as a man of action. English translations smooth out the language, but the original Greek reads like a story told by an excited child: Jesus did this, and right away Jesus did that, and then right away Jesus said this, and then right away Jesus said that. The Greek phrase “kai euthus” – “and immediately” or “and right away” – occurs over and over. Mark’s Gospel catches the spirit of what it must have felt like to have been a disciple of Jesus, to be have been caught up among those who followed Jesus during his earthly ministry – Jesus does and says one amazing thing after another, and as the readers of Mark’s Gospel, we stand by watching, with our mouths hanging open in amazement.
Today’s reading is no exception. For one thing, we’ve fast-forwarded from the time of Jesus’ birth until Jesus was about 30 years old. We begin by meeting John the Baptist in the wilderness, that strange character who dressed in camel’s hair with a leather belt and eating locusts – bugs – and wild honey. His appearance brings up historic memories for his listeners. If we were to see someone at Independence Hall dressed in a colonial costume reading from parchment, we would be reminded of the American revolution – and in the same way, John’s dress reminds the crowds of Elijah. Luke’s Gospel tells us that John’s father was a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem, but John is out in the wilderness, far away from the religious establishment of the day, indeed, offering an alternative to the religious establishment – and at the Jordan River, where Joshua long ago had led the Hebrews from the wilderness through the Jordan and into the promised land, into the land of freedom. Mark’s Gospel tells us that crowds of people from the countryside and even from Jerusalem were coming out to see John, to confess their sins and be baptized by John. Mark gives us a picture of a people who are spiritually hungry, who are not being fed spiritually by the rituals of the Temple and the teaching of the established religious leaders, who are willing to travel long distances on foot and far out of their comfort zone in the chance that John will give them something, anything to hold on to.
We think of baptism primarily as a Christian ritual, but Christian baptism had its origin in the Jewish mikveh, a ritual bath. Jews took such a ritual bath as a rite of purification after some event had occurred to make them ritually impure. Orthodox and Conservative Jews continue the practice to this day, the Orthodox Jews so much so that a newly-gathered community is instructed to build a mikveh for the ritual bath before building the synagogue. So John’s baptism would have been like a washing from sin, a fresh start. The mikveh or ritual bath was also a rite of conversion, by which Gentiles were purified before joining the Jewish community. What is striking is that those coming to be baptized by John were already Jews – but the unsatisfying practices of the religious establishment left them feeling defiled and alienated from God. John’s baptism offered a radical way to re-connect to their faith.
So Mark sets the stage – John out in the wilderness leading a renewal movement which attracted Jews from all over. And John says that he is only preparing the way for the coming of one who will be greater than John. John says that he is not worthy to tie this person’s shoelaces. In other words, John tells his followers, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
And then along comes Jesus. John baptizes him – this would have been full immersion baptism, Jesus down in the muddy water of the Jordan - and Jesus sees the heavens torn open – the sense of this is that the heavens were in some way ripped apart - and the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove. He hears a voice from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
This is a turning point in Jesus’ life. The other Gospels tell us that up until this point, he was the carpenter’s son, not seen by most people as anyone special. Those in Jesus’ hometown assumed he would grow up and take over his father’s business and that would be that. But Jesus, following the leading of the Spirit, makes the long journey on foot out into the wilderness to see John the Baptist. With his baptism, Jesus’ life goes off in a radically new direction. Although we won’t read about it until we begin Lent, we know that after Jesus baptism he was tested in the wilderness, and after John was arrested, began to proclaim the coming of the Reign of God. At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were ripped apart, and God broke into the moment. Jesus’ miracles, healings, teaching were all ways in which Jesus not only proclaimed the Reign of God, but demonstrated God breaking in to take on the powers of evil.
What sustained Jesus through all that he faced throughout his life – testing in the wilderness, the exhaustion that came with ministering to the crowds, the frustration of dealing with his disciples, the emotional stress of confrontation and opposition from the religious establishment? What kept him from crashing and burning? We know that he spent frequent time in prayer, often going off alone to pray. But perhaps part of what kept him going was this moment of baptism, this moment of seeing the heavens ripped apart, of being equipped with the gift of the Holy Spirit, of hearing the voice of God name him as God’s beloved Son. While many of us were baptized as infants and may not remember our baptism, we too can be sustained by the knowledge that, in baptism, God has claimed each of us and called each of us beloved daughters and sons. In words from the funeral service, we remember that we are baptized into Christ’s death so that just as we share a death like Christ’s, we will also share a resurrection like Christ’s. Just as Jesus was equipped at his baptism with the Holy Spirit, so those being baptized are told, “receive the Holy Spirit, child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.”
Like Jesus, we may experience grief, anger, frustration, loneliness. Like Jesus on the cross, there are those moments when we feel so overwhelmed that we say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” In those moments, our baptism reminds us that God will never abandon us. The words of the old Heidelberg Catechism that our older members grew up with, we’re told that our only comfort, in life and in death, is that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to ourselves, but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ - who through the waters of baptism has claimed us for his very own.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Empire Strikes Back
(Scripture: Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-23)
Today we celebrate Epiphany – the actual feast of Epiphany was on Friday, January 6, marking the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Epiphany celebrates the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles, as personified by the Magi, those strange visitors from the East who came to worship Jesus – and who, in the process of seeking Jesus tipped Herod off to the existence of a rival to his power. It’s a story of wonder, the coming of these foreigners to worship the newborn king – a story of horror, as we read of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents – a story of dislocation and exile, as Mary and Joseph and the babe live for a time in Egypt to escape Herod’s fury, basically as political refugees. During my first Christmas Eve here, back in December 2007 – and I used the same readings that had been used before I got here, and have continued with them almost unchanged in the years since - I was struck that the reading from Matthew 2 didn’t stop with the departure of the wise men, but continued all the way to the end of the chapter, with all that we heard Stella read today. Most churches stop short of reading the whole chapter – not wanting to frighten the children on Christmas Eve with words about a murderous psychopath of a king leaving a trail of slaughtered children in his wake – but your Christmas Eve service included everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And on that first Christmas Eve here, I thought that said something about this congregation I was just starting to get to know, that you didn’t want an edited, prettied up, Hallmark greeting card Christmas story, but wanted to hear the whole thing, warts and jagged edges and all – and I thought that said something about the faith of this congregation that was mature enough, durable enough to withstand all that life deals out. I was impressed – and I still am.
Matthew’s Gospel circulated within an early Christian community that was primarily but not exclusively Jewish, and so Matthew at every turn ties his birth narrative to the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, there’s a tension, a tug of war, between readings that admonish the Jews to keep separate from the Gentiles, to avoid any contact with them, to maintain ritual purity, and other readings that speak of the Jews being a light to the nations, instructing the Gentiles – which obviously involves being in contact with the Gentiles. This is especially true for those Scriptures written after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. So on one hand we have the books of Ezra and Nehemiah admonishing the Jews returning from exile to divorce and send away their foreign wives and any children they may have had with them, while on the other hand we have readings such as this morning’s reading from Isaiah, which tells the Jews rebuilding Jerusalem that “nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”, picturing camels coming from the surrounding nations, laden with gifts for the Jews rebuilding the temple, bringing gold and frankincense, proclaiming the praise of the Lord. And this is the image Matthew has in mind when he tells us of the coming of the wise men, with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. In the coming of the wise men, our reading from Isaiah is being played out. Matthew is telling us that while Jesus the Messiah was born a Jew, he was to be a light to the nations, his coming was for all, Jew and Gentile alike – for you, for me, for all of us, and for our neighbors as well.
And then Matthew goes on to tell us that while the wise men from the east were delighted at the birth of child Jesus, the powers of the Roman empire, in the person of Herod, were distraught. For the powers of the Roman empire, the coming of Jesus was not a gift, but a threat. Rome wasn’t looking for a new king of the Jews – they had already appointed a king for the Jews, and his name was Herod. No others need apply. And so Matthew sketches out an account which would have reminded his Jewish readers of the Old Testament stories of Joseph and of Moses – just as Pharaoh had ordered the slaughter of all male Hebrew babies, Herod ordered the slaughter of the boys of Jesus age. Just as the dreams of Joseph in the Old Testament led him to Egypt, so the dreams of Joseph in Matthew’s gospel led him into Egypt. Just as Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, so Mary and Joseph brought Jesus out of Egypt. For Matthew and his community, Jesus was the new Moses, come to lead everyone out of bondage to sin into the freedom of God’s reign.
And so the birth of Jesus provoked wildly divergent reactions – joy, worship, fear, rage, even murder. To the powerless and those on the margins – the shepherds, the wise men traveling from afar – Jesus’ coming brought great joy. To the powers and principalities of the world, Jesus’ coming provoked great opposition – truly for them, Jesus was, as we read last week, a sign to be opposed, so that their inner thoughts would be revealed. And so throughout today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew repeats over and over and over, like a mantra: “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the wise men departed to their own country by another road. Joseph is told to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him….and they went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. Even after Herod’s death, with Herod’s son Archelaus ruling, Joseph is warned in a dream to go to Galilee and keep his distance from Jerusalem.” Don’t return to Herod. Flee Herod, for Herod means harm. Stay away from Herod and his family.
Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the wise men departed to their own country by another road. Herod was the local puppet ruler propped up by the Roman empire – and having been threatened by the birth of Jesus, in today’s Gospel reading, the empire strikes back, to borrow a title from the Star Wars series. Having made our annual pilgrimage to worship the newborn king, which road will we take? Will we return to Herod, or will we depart by another path?
For us, Herod represents the worldly powers that be, the powers of empire – the powers of militarism, consumerism, the imposition of the values of the empire on other cultures. As Americans we’re trained from childhood on to see our military power, our wealth, our way of life as gifts from God. But one definition of idolatry is to worship God’s gifts, rather than worshipping God as the giver. And we can – and we do – misuse God’s gifts. World renowned theologian and UCC member Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia prior to his retirement, has compared the situation of Christians living in America to that of the Jews living in the Babylonian empire, or that of the early Christians living in the Roman empire – and the Jews and Christians faced a constant struggle not to get sucked into the values of Babylon and Rome. As Christians, if we are not to return to Herod, departing by another way means being not buying into everything our culture wants to sell us, but rather being self-reflective, even self-critical, seeing ourselves as we are, warts and all.
For in Ramah – located north of Jerusalem, and according to some traditions where Rachel was buried – and in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other lands, Rachel still weeps and refuses to be consoled. I recently attended a talk by Celeste Zappala, a member of First United Methodist Church of Germantown and a Gold Star Mother for Peace. Her oldest son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed in Iraq on April 26, 2004 as he provided security for the inspectors who were searching for the fictitious weapons of mass destruction. She holds no grudge against the Iraqi people, and indeed feels solidarity with the millions of mothers there whose children have been killed over the past 10 years. Her words of rebuke are reserved for the government who sent her son into harm’s way on false premises. Her talk began with the words of Matthew 2:18: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” As Herod was on the rampage in our Gospel reading, Herod is still on the rampage to this day, killing innocents the world over. War is a human tragedy, often provoking crimes against humanity, but for military contractors, war is big business. They make a killing, in more ways than one.
We read this passage at our Bible study last Sunday, and many of us asked the question: “Why did God allow all those poor innocent babies to be killed?” At other times we’ve asked about the Holocaust, how God could allow the genocide of millions of Jews. But God did not create human beings as robots, nor is God willing to step in minute by minute to override every stupid, sinful decision human beings make - but instead God allows humans freedom of choice – and real choices have real consequences, intended and unintended – so in one sense, to blame God is to pass the buck. Perhaps a more appropriate - and more challenging – question is, “Why do we allow it?” We need to be aware of the road that leads back to Herod, and of the other road that leads to freedom in Christ.
I’ll close with these words from a song most of us learned as children: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” As the sign on our social hall door says, “Let peace begin with me” – and with you, and with all of us here at Emanuel. After all, it has to start somewhere. Amen.
Today we celebrate Epiphany – the actual feast of Epiphany was on Friday, January 6, marking the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Epiphany celebrates the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles, as personified by the Magi, those strange visitors from the East who came to worship Jesus – and who, in the process of seeking Jesus tipped Herod off to the existence of a rival to his power. It’s a story of wonder, the coming of these foreigners to worship the newborn king – a story of horror, as we read of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents – a story of dislocation and exile, as Mary and Joseph and the babe live for a time in Egypt to escape Herod’s fury, basically as political refugees. During my first Christmas Eve here, back in December 2007 – and I used the same readings that had been used before I got here, and have continued with them almost unchanged in the years since - I was struck that the reading from Matthew 2 didn’t stop with the departure of the wise men, but continued all the way to the end of the chapter, with all that we heard Stella read today. Most churches stop short of reading the whole chapter – not wanting to frighten the children on Christmas Eve with words about a murderous psychopath of a king leaving a trail of slaughtered children in his wake – but your Christmas Eve service included everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And on that first Christmas Eve here, I thought that said something about this congregation I was just starting to get to know, that you didn’t want an edited, prettied up, Hallmark greeting card Christmas story, but wanted to hear the whole thing, warts and jagged edges and all – and I thought that said something about the faith of this congregation that was mature enough, durable enough to withstand all that life deals out. I was impressed – and I still am.
Matthew’s Gospel circulated within an early Christian community that was primarily but not exclusively Jewish, and so Matthew at every turn ties his birth narrative to the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, there’s a tension, a tug of war, between readings that admonish the Jews to keep separate from the Gentiles, to avoid any contact with them, to maintain ritual purity, and other readings that speak of the Jews being a light to the nations, instructing the Gentiles – which obviously involves being in contact with the Gentiles. This is especially true for those Scriptures written after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. So on one hand we have the books of Ezra and Nehemiah admonishing the Jews returning from exile to divorce and send away their foreign wives and any children they may have had with them, while on the other hand we have readings such as this morning’s reading from Isaiah, which tells the Jews rebuilding Jerusalem that “nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”, picturing camels coming from the surrounding nations, laden with gifts for the Jews rebuilding the temple, bringing gold and frankincense, proclaiming the praise of the Lord. And this is the image Matthew has in mind when he tells us of the coming of the wise men, with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. In the coming of the wise men, our reading from Isaiah is being played out. Matthew is telling us that while Jesus the Messiah was born a Jew, he was to be a light to the nations, his coming was for all, Jew and Gentile alike – for you, for me, for all of us, and for our neighbors as well.
And then Matthew goes on to tell us that while the wise men from the east were delighted at the birth of child Jesus, the powers of the Roman empire, in the person of Herod, were distraught. For the powers of the Roman empire, the coming of Jesus was not a gift, but a threat. Rome wasn’t looking for a new king of the Jews – they had already appointed a king for the Jews, and his name was Herod. No others need apply. And so Matthew sketches out an account which would have reminded his Jewish readers of the Old Testament stories of Joseph and of Moses – just as Pharaoh had ordered the slaughter of all male Hebrew babies, Herod ordered the slaughter of the boys of Jesus age. Just as the dreams of Joseph in the Old Testament led him to Egypt, so the dreams of Joseph in Matthew’s gospel led him into Egypt. Just as Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, so Mary and Joseph brought Jesus out of Egypt. For Matthew and his community, Jesus was the new Moses, come to lead everyone out of bondage to sin into the freedom of God’s reign.
And so the birth of Jesus provoked wildly divergent reactions – joy, worship, fear, rage, even murder. To the powerless and those on the margins – the shepherds, the wise men traveling from afar – Jesus’ coming brought great joy. To the powers and principalities of the world, Jesus’ coming provoked great opposition – truly for them, Jesus was, as we read last week, a sign to be opposed, so that their inner thoughts would be revealed. And so throughout today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew repeats over and over and over, like a mantra: “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the wise men departed to their own country by another road. Joseph is told to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him….and they went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. Even after Herod’s death, with Herod’s son Archelaus ruling, Joseph is warned in a dream to go to Galilee and keep his distance from Jerusalem.” Don’t return to Herod. Flee Herod, for Herod means harm. Stay away from Herod and his family.
Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the wise men departed to their own country by another road. Herod was the local puppet ruler propped up by the Roman empire – and having been threatened by the birth of Jesus, in today’s Gospel reading, the empire strikes back, to borrow a title from the Star Wars series. Having made our annual pilgrimage to worship the newborn king, which road will we take? Will we return to Herod, or will we depart by another path?
For us, Herod represents the worldly powers that be, the powers of empire – the powers of militarism, consumerism, the imposition of the values of the empire on other cultures. As Americans we’re trained from childhood on to see our military power, our wealth, our way of life as gifts from God. But one definition of idolatry is to worship God’s gifts, rather than worshipping God as the giver. And we can – and we do – misuse God’s gifts. World renowned theologian and UCC member Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia prior to his retirement, has compared the situation of Christians living in America to that of the Jews living in the Babylonian empire, or that of the early Christians living in the Roman empire – and the Jews and Christians faced a constant struggle not to get sucked into the values of Babylon and Rome. As Christians, if we are not to return to Herod, departing by another way means being not buying into everything our culture wants to sell us, but rather being self-reflective, even self-critical, seeing ourselves as we are, warts and all.
For in Ramah – located north of Jerusalem, and according to some traditions where Rachel was buried – and in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other lands, Rachel still weeps and refuses to be consoled. I recently attended a talk by Celeste Zappala, a member of First United Methodist Church of Germantown and a Gold Star Mother for Peace. Her oldest son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed in Iraq on April 26, 2004 as he provided security for the inspectors who were searching for the fictitious weapons of mass destruction. She holds no grudge against the Iraqi people, and indeed feels solidarity with the millions of mothers there whose children have been killed over the past 10 years. Her words of rebuke are reserved for the government who sent her son into harm’s way on false premises. Her talk began with the words of Matthew 2:18: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” As Herod was on the rampage in our Gospel reading, Herod is still on the rampage to this day, killing innocents the world over. War is a human tragedy, often provoking crimes against humanity, but for military contractors, war is big business. They make a killing, in more ways than one.
We read this passage at our Bible study last Sunday, and many of us asked the question: “Why did God allow all those poor innocent babies to be killed?” At other times we’ve asked about the Holocaust, how God could allow the genocide of millions of Jews. But God did not create human beings as robots, nor is God willing to step in minute by minute to override every stupid, sinful decision human beings make - but instead God allows humans freedom of choice – and real choices have real consequences, intended and unintended – so in one sense, to blame God is to pass the buck. Perhaps a more appropriate - and more challenging – question is, “Why do we allow it?” We need to be aware of the road that leads back to Herod, and of the other road that leads to freedom in Christ.
I’ll close with these words from a song most of us learned as children: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” As the sign on our social hall door says, “Let peace begin with me” – and with you, and with all of us here at Emanuel. After all, it has to start somewhere. Amen.
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