The King is Coming (No Foolin')

(Scriptures:  Isaiah 50:4-9a       Philippians 2:5-11         Mark 11:1-11)

And so, our Lenten journey draws near to a close. For 40 days, we’ve walked alongside Jesus in his earthly ministry as he has traveled throughout Galilee healing and preaching, driving out demons and proclaiming the in-breaking of God’s reign. Now Jesus is preparing to enter Jerusalem, the center of political power – at least on a local level – and for devout Jews, the center of religious faith and expression. Jesus is preparing to enter Jerusalem – not as a tourist or even as a religious pilgrim, but preparing to take on the civil and religious establishment, powers that be.


In preparing to take on the power that be, Jesus knows how to make an entrance! Expectations have been swirling around Jesus – is He the Messiah? Will he take on the hated domination of Judah by the Roman Empire? Will he win independence for the Jews? The Jews have very definite ideas of what this will look like, based on the words of the prophet Zechariah quoted in your bulletin – the king, a descendent of King David, coming in triumphant, yet with humility, riding on a donkey. Jesus and his followers act out this prophecy with a demonstration of a sort of street theatre, securing a colt – we’re told this colt had never before been ridden - and starting a processional march into the city.

I suspect that the “Occupy Wall Street” and “Occupy Philadelphia” demonstrations of the past year may give us a sense of what Jesus and his followers were doing in taking on the establishment. The Occupy encampment at City Hall this fall was a sort of base camp where members of many political and religious groups gathered, hung out together, exchanged ideas. They came from many different places, came with many different grievances, but they came together out of a shared sense that change is needed. From this base camp, members of Occupy set out on many different marches and processions – to protest against the exploitation of banks and financial institutions, to protest the seemingly unending wars in the Middle East, to march in solidarity and support of labor unions and students buried in school loans. The group that’s camping out by the Betsy Ross bridge formed as a spinoff from the Occupy movement. We probably still have pictures in our minds of what these gatherings and marches looked like – large groups of people, banners, signs, chants. Likely with the coming of warm weather, we can expect more to come in the weeks and months ahead. And these memories and expectations may help us understand what Jesus and his followers were doing on that Palm Sunday so long ago. Jerusalem, the center of power, had been co-opted by Roman oppression and corrupted by a religious establishment more interested in its own self-preservation than in ministry to God or the people. Perhaps we can think of Palm Sunday as Jesus and his followers staging an “Occupy Jerusalem” event. Their march, their street demonstration included Jesus riding on a colt – like the description in Zechariah’s prophecy, but like a parody of a Roman ruler riding in triumph – with his followers spreading palm branches and cloaks before Jesus as he approached, and chanting a song of triumph over Israel’s enemies. Mark’s account of the triumphal entry ends…not very triumphally: we’re told “Then Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” Perhaps Jesus went to the temple to make plans for the next day, when he would kick off another demonstration by throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple. Having “Occupied Jerusalem”, they were preparing to “Occupy the Temple”.

Which brings us an opportunity to consider one other comparison with the Occupy demonstrations of the fall – eventually, the authorities shut them down. And for the Occupiers from this fall, none of this was unexpected; the protesters had made prior arrangements for legal representation in case they were carted off to jail – which indeed did happen to some. Our memories of the fall Occupy protests may include images of police blockading protesters, police clubbing protesters over the head, and police arrests. An Occupy protest at the University of California, Davis campus – a sit-down protest – drew national news coverage when a police officer casually walked by the group pepper-spraying them. Those in authority don’t like it when folks rock the boat, and they’ll do what’s needed, however brutal, to restore order. In Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers were very definitely rocking the boat, and the establishment in Jerusalem – Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea; Caiaphas the high priest – were not appreciative. They were willing to do what needed to be done to restore order. During Holy Week, Jesus’ throwing the moneychangers out of the temple set off an escalating series of confrontations, eventually leading up to the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, the arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

For the political and religious establishment in Jerusalem, the events of Good Friday were all in a day’s work. The Jews were always rebelling against Roman oppression – within a few decades, Rome would respond to ongoing agitation by destroying the Jerusalem Temple itself - and from Rome’s point of view, Jesus was just another protester, another loudmouth, another nobody claiming to be somebody. Rome routinely executed anyone who opposed the empire, and for Rome, the crucifixion of Jesus was just one more political execution. It is the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul and Peter and John and others that give us God’s very different perspective on the matter – that Jesus - not Caiaphas, not Pilate, but Jesus - was in charge; that in pretending to pronounce judgment on Jesus, Caiaphas and Pilate only succeeded in pronouncing judgment on themselves; that the actions they took to silence Jesus would instead spread the Gospel of Christ around the world; that the actions they took to kill Jesus, instead prepared the way for the resurrection of Jesus, and for eternal life for all who believe in him.

Some words which are said to have been found scratched on the walls of a cellar in Cologne, Germany where Jews were hiding from the Nazis – “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent.” The events of Palm Sunday, of Holy Week, of Easter, remind us that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. What looked like failure, God turned into glory. What looked like the end, was a new beginning. What was intended as death, God used to bring life – new life, abundant life in this world and eternal life in the world to come. To use language popular in the United Church of Christ, what human sin intended as a period, God turned into a comma. For God is still speaking – was still speaking even through the horrors of Good Friday, is still speaking through all the crosses and losses we experience in our lives. May we at Emanuel continue to open our ears and our hearts to God’s word for us. Even when we experience life at its worst, may we remember, in the words of an old sermon: “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.” Amen.

Toppling Tables

(Scriptures: Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25,John 2:13-22)

When I go traveling in urban areas, I often like to visit the large churches and cathedrals in the city. For example, in New York City, St Patrick’s Cathedral is a most impressive place to visit. On a trip to Quebec, I traveled to a small town a short drive from Quebec to visit St. Anne’s cathedral, reputed to be the site of many healings – as you walk in the church, around the entrance are numerous canes and crutches and leg braces left behind by those healed of their infirmities. In these and other cathedrals, the art and architecture are breathtaking, a testament to the faith and sacrifice of those whose humble offerings paid for these wonders – as well as the excellent taste of those who commissioned them to be created. Of course, at many of these houses of worship, on the way out you encounter…..the gift shop. The nature of the items for sale is variable – often, a few are truly beautiful, unique, while most are mass-produced and dreadfully tacky. It’s understandable, especially if one is awed by one’s experience in the cathedral, to want to take along a reminder of that experience. And maintaining these monuments to faith isn’t cheap – it’s not cheap just to maintain our modest house of worship - and the gift shop helps generate funds for maintenance. However, I’ve always found it a little deflating, even a little jarring, to make the transition from the hushed, sacred silence of the Cathedral sanctuary to the bustle of fellow tourists and the ring of the cash register inside the gift shop – and I suspect I’m not alone in this. I can’t help thinking of the Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the other; one of these things just doesn’t belong….”

This week’s Gospel readings begin a detour from Mark’s Gospel, which we have been studying, into John’s Gospel, where we will remain for the rest of March. John’s Gospel is very different from the other three Gospels. In the other three Gospels, Jesus is known by his teachings, healings, and other miracles, and – especially in Mark’s Gospel – orders those whom he helps to keep Jesus’ acts a secret. From these actions, the reader is invited to come to their point of belief that Jesus is the Messiah. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is endlessly talking about himself and his relationship to the Father. In a series of “I am” statements – “I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the good shepherd; I am the true vine; I am the way, the truth, and the life….”- Jesus uses a variety of metaphors to explain his identity and to invite those around him to belief. John’s Gospel also has a very noticeable “us and them” outlook on the world. John is thought to have been the latest of the four Gospels to have been written, and it appears that by the time John’s Gospel was written, the early followers of Jesus had been expelled from the synagogues. John’s Gospel reflects this mutual hostility, often referring to the religious leaders with the loaded phrase, “the Jews”. Given this highly charged language, it’s especially important to keep in mind that the disagreements between Jesus and the Temple leaders was essentially a kind of family feud within Judaism – and we all know how unattractive family feuds can become.

The account of the Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple occurs in all four Gospels. In the other three Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – it occurs near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, just after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, right after Palm Sunday, helping to set into motion the plot to have Jesus arrested. In John’s Gospel, it occurs near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, setting the tone for hostile relations between Jesus and the Temple religious establishment that carry through for the rest of the book.

Why were there moneychangers and sellers of animals in the temple in the first place? Our cathedral gift shops sell trinkets for tourists to take home, but in our Gospel reading, the coins and animals were for worshippers to bring into the Temple as they entered, not to carry home as they left. Of course, we know that at that time, the ceremonies of worship held at the Temple involved animal sacrifice. People came for long distances, often on foot, to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem – and it would have been quite an ordeal to bring their sacrificial animals along with them. And since the sacrificial animals had to be of the highest quality – God demands our best - you wouldn’t want to drag along one of your own, only to find out at the end of your long journey that it didn’t pass muster. So, as a service to worshippers traveling long distances, the Temple offered animals deemed fitting for sacrifice – for a price, of course. The moneychangers were needed because one had to pay a temple tax of half a shekel. Given that Roman and Greek coins had imagery depicting the emperor as a god, those coins were not acceptable for use in paying the Temple tax – so these were exchanged for the Jewish half-shekel coin that everyone had to pay in support of the Temple.

So there were good, defensible reasons why moneychangers and vendors of animals were part of the Temple economy. Perhaps Jesus’ objection was, in part, that they were actually within the outer courts of the Temple. Previously, they would have been outside the Temple – nearby, but still outside. According to one tradition, it was Caiaphas himself – yes, that Caiaphas – who allowed the merchants to set up shop inside the Temple. It certainly must have been deflating for pious pilgrims who had walked long distances to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem to come all that long, weary, sweaty distance, only to have to run a gauntlet of vendors on the way into the house of the Lord. One would readily sense not only crass commercialism, but more than a whiff of corruption – these folks, along with the Temple establishment, were profiting from the humble piety of peasants who wanted only to worship the God of their fathers. So Jesus toppled the tables of the vendors and drove them out, saying, stop making my Father’s house a house of commerce, a marketplace. We’re told that the disciples recalled a phrase from Psalm 69, “Zeal for your – that is, God’s - house will consume me.” As I thought about our Gospel reading, it struck me that, in a sense, both Jesus and the vendors were, in different ways, zealous for God’s house. The vendors were zealous to raise funds for the maintenance of the Temple and its hierarchy – and perhaps were a bit overzealous in profiting personally from their location within God’s house. And of course, Jesus was zealous that God’s holiness and the sanctity of God’s house be upheld.

The intersection between faith and commerce has always been problematic. In the words of the Sesame Street song, indeed, one of these things is not like the other. Faith, at its best, leads to generosity and openness of spirit, while commerce often promotes a spirit of greed. In both faith and commerce, our hands are extended – in one case, to give; in the other, perhaps to grab. Several years before composing his 95 theses, while he was still a zealous Roman Catholic, in an attempt to rekindle his faith and get relief for his guilty conscience, Luther made a pilgrimage to Rome. Far from restoring his faith, his experiences in Rome nearly destroyed it. Watching Pope Julius II behaving more like a patron of the arts than like a priest, watching priests living like princes on the offerings of the faithful, seeing the splendor of St Peter’s and knowing it was paid for by the tithes of the pious poor – all this turned Luther’s stomach. And of course, as we know, the sale of indulgences – spiritual tickets out of purgatory, sold to the faithful in order to raise money for St. Peter’s, just sent Luther right over the edge, eventually prompting his break with Rome.

Our Old Testament reading from Exodus gave us the Ten Commandments – and it strikes us as very legalistic, an oppressive list of “thou shalt nots” to be rebelled against. But in reality, the Ten Commandments were given by God to define and safeguard the kind of community his chosen people would be, over and against the surrounding nations. God was defining his chosen people as a community where God would always have first place, whose name would be held sacred and who was beyond the ability of man to capture in graven images. The chosen people, having escaped slavery in Egypt would be a community in which a day of rest was not only permitted, but commanded. The chosen people would be a community in which parents and by extension the elderly would be honored and cared for; where murder, marital infidelity, theft, dishonesty, and envy would be unknown. Of course, we know it didn’t work out quite that way – not for them, not for us – but it’s a vision of how God would have us live together.

Likewise, we are called to be, not just any community, but God’s community, a community in which we seek neither wisdom nor signs, but Christ crucified, still a scandal to the worldly wisdom of our day; in which we have systems and boundaries set in place to define how we are organized and to defend from abuse. May we at Emanuel Church continue to live into God’s vision of what our community of faith will be. Amen.

Promises, Promises!

(Scriptures: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-22, Romans 4:1-25, Mark 8:31-38)

Our readings from Genesis and Romans deal with the word covenant. A covenant is a promise from one party to another. Last week’s reading from Genesis included God’s promise to, or covenant with, Noah and his family and with every creature on earth, that God would never again destroy all life on earth in a flood. This is the first covenant mentioned in Scripture.

Covenants often involve a mutual set of promises between two parties or two persons. Some covenants are quite mundane – for example, in my rental agreement, my landlord covenants to let me live in an apartment and to take care of maintenance, and I covenant to pay my rent timely and not trash the place. If I decide to move, after giving my landlord the stipulated notice, I can find another landlord easily enough, and my landlord can find another tenant easily enough. No harm, no foul. But some covenants are defining moments in our lives. One that may quickly come to mind is the set of promises or the covenant that a couple make to one another at a wedding or ceremony of union – promises to to love, honor, and cherish one another for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as both shall live. Having made this covenant, it is understood that the couple has committed to stand by one another not just when it’s convenient, but through all the good and bad that life may throw at them, and even through the hurt and disappointment that they may inadvertently or intentionally inflict on one another. All that the couple does from that time forward is done in the context of that set of promises.

And even this level of commitment is exceeded by the commitment that God offers in God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. When God first appears to Abraham, we’re told that Abraham is 75 years old, that Abraham and Sarah had no children and indeed that Sarah could not have children. God promised Abraham and Sarah many descendents, and a land for their descendents to inhabit. By the time of today’s reading from Genesis, some 25 years have passed. At various points Abraham has despaired that his servant Eleazar of Damascus would be his heir, and at Sarah’s suggestion tried to sort of help God out by sleeping with his servant Hagar, who gave birth to his son Ishmael. And yet God repeatedly reassures Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will give birth to a son who will have many descendents. In today’s reading, God puts a timeline on his promise: the waiting is almost over. By this time next year, Sarah will have a son. In a section from Genesis that was not read, Abraham’s response to this covenant was that he and his male descendents would be circumcised, in a sense literally writing the covenant indelibly into their flesh. So, like a marriage covenant, God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and their descendents define who they will be to one another from that time forward. From this time forward they’re stuck with each other. Even though Abraham’s descendents were often unfaithful – the book of Hosea which we studied some months ago compares God’s relationship with God’s people to Hosea’s troubled relationship with a truly awful wife whose behavior he can hardly stand, and yet whom he can’t bring himself to abandon, and as one reads it one wonders “can this marriage be saved” – despite all that, and despite the consequences of the peoples’ unfaithfulness, God didn’t abandon God’s people – God was and is faithful.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, Paul wrote the early Christian movement, wrote the church – indeed, wrote us - into the covenant as being among those who share the faith of Abraham, among those whom God will not abandon. The future of the early church was at least as precarious as the future of Abraham and Sarah. There were no TV ministries in those days, no megachurches – the early Christian movement consisted of house churches scattered here and there in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea, many of the latter planted by Paul and his followers. As God called an elderly, childless couple to become mother and father of multitudes, God called a tiny number of people, ostracized by synagogue and persecuted by empire – a tiny number of people willing to live by Jesus’ words to take up their cross and follow him, a tiny number of people willing to lose their lives for the sake of Christ and the Gospel - to spread the good news of the Gospel, and in the Book of Acts, even their opponents described them as those who have been turning the world upside down.

As God called Abraham and Sarah, and as God called Paul and the early church, so God calls us, the members of Emanuel United Church of Christ. Like Abraham and Sarah and their descendents, we are defined by God’s covenant with us. Though we inhabit many different identities, wear lots of different hats – parent, child, spouse, partner, employee, customer, citizen, voter, neighbor – our deepest identification is that made at our baptism. By our baptismal covenant with God and the church as we or our sponsors on our behalf vow to renounce the powers of evil, to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and to be his disciple, through the covenant of baptism we are defined as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. In the sacrament of communion in which we will participate in a few minutes, in sharing bread and wine we share in the covenant. Our life together as members of Emanuel United Church of Christ is also defined by covenant – your covenant as members of Emanuel Church to worship and fellowship and minister and do church together, the mutual covenant between us as pastor and congregation, our congregation’s covenant with the United Church of Christ, and the covenant of the United Church of Christ with us.

Paul wrote that God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah was not for them alone, but for the early Christian churches as well. In the same way, God’s covenant with us in baptism, our life together as Emanuel Church, is not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors near and far. Like those early house churches, there aren’t a whole lot of us – we gathered here today probably have as many folks as those small gatherings did, though our house is a bit larger than theirs would have been. Like Abraham and Sarah, some of us are getting on in years, have been celebrating our 39th birthday for decades now. But God who called Abraham and Sarah to be father and mother of nations, God who called the early disciples to turn the world upside down, also calls us to spread Good News. In a world that proclaims the reign of tanks and bombs, the reign of wealth, the reign of empire; in a country which proclaims the reign of consumer goods, the reign of stuff - we are to spread the Good News of the Reign of God.

God called Abraham to go from his country and his kindred to a land that God would show him. As a congregation, we, too, are on a journey. As a congregation, we may have to leave what is familiar to go to the place God has called us. We won’t be much of a blessing if our identity as Emanuel church is just to huddle here behind closed doors on Fillmore Street. We are called to be a channel for God’s blessings, not a storage tank.

When we leave here, the good news goes with us, and as the good news goes with us, perhaps others will be attracted to join us in proclaiming good news to others. Through our support of the Bridesburg Council of Churches Food Cupboard and our commitment to Our Church’s Wider Mission, we bring good news to folks in our neighborhood and around the world that we may never meet in person.

I’ll close with an old Sunday School song
“Father Abraham had many sons (and daughters)
How many children had Father Abraham
Well, I am one of them, and so are you
And look what we can do.”

Amen.

Forty Days

(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.

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.

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.

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.