Armor for the struggle (14th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/25/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

Last week’s sermon was on the long side; this week’s on the short side, focusing on the Epistle and Gospel.

Paul writes “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” In our generation perhaps no one has unpacked this better than Martin Luther King Jr. The following is from something he wrote in 1957 for the Christian Century, talking about non-violence.

“A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, Alabama: ‘The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may happen to be unjust.’”

Good words to remember during an election year. Good words to remember any year, a clear example of what Paul’s list (“the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”) is about. In King’s case, the cultural assumption that the blacks were less than the whites, an assumption reflected in customs and laws. But oppression takes many forms, and the spiritual forces of evil are happy to help us understand why it’s best left unchallenged.

But when Paul describes the armor for that struggle, it can begin to sound dicey. Weaponize truth, righteousness, the Word of God? We have the scars to remind us of how that often ends up. Recall Lincoln’s response to someone’s confident affirmation of God being on the Union’s side: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on my side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

And if we wonder what being on God’s side looks like, we have today’s Gospel. In response to Jesus’ teaching regarding his flesh and blood, the narrator records the reaction of many of the disciples: “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” So Jesus asks the Twelve: “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” It’s not that the Twelve find the teaching any less difficult, but they understand that they need to keep listening to Jesus.

This gives us, I think, a useful way of talking about belief and unbelief. Neither the believers nor the unbelievers understand Jesus; the believers are still trying to learn from him, still trying to follow him.

And this stance, this spirituality if you will, is what keeps the armor in our Epistle from becoming destructive. The truth, righteousness, faith, word of God: that’s what we need for our continuing learning, what—if we let it—gets us, as the text puts it, “ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” Put another way, as Paul says, this armor isn’t for enemies of flesh and blood. If we find ourselves assuming that these enemies of flesh and blood are  the ones who really need the truth, righteousness, etc. we should be prepared to discover that the spiritual forces of evil are happy to welcome us as fellow travelers, useful idiots. And that we do want to avoid.

Eucharist and Liberation (13th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/18/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

One thing good movies and stories have in common is that they don’t waste our time. If they show or tell us something, sooner or later it’s going to be important. For instance, at the beginning of John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000, he says “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” That’s going to be important later, and he’s invited us to keep it in the back of our minds.

Meanwhile, on center stage Jesus feeds the 5,000 and the next day gets into a long conversation with the crowd. Today’s reading is the last part of it. If we had a bit further in the Gospel we’d have heard Jesus’ disciples saying “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

The teaching is certainly unexpected. When the conversation started with the crowd still full of bread, Jesus told them: don’t focus on the bread; “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” No one else could or can say this, but it’s not that different from much of what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels. (“I am the light of the world”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”) Like the crowds, we hear it and think: right, we follow Jesus’ teaching and we have life. Our link to Jesus is through Jesus’ words, or, if you like, through our belief in Jesus words or our obedience to Jesus’ words. We think: OK, it’s not such a barrier that Jesus was in the 1st Century and we’re in the 21st Century. We relate to Jesus like a Buddhist relates to the Buddha or a Muslim relates to Mohammad.

And then we hit the verses we heard today: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” That was as scandalous in the first century as it is today, and Jesus makes no attempt to soften it. The next verse, translated literally: “The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood…”

In the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, and in the middle of the celebration reinterprets it: “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” There’s nothing like it in John’s story of Holy Week; rather, John gives us Jesus’ words “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” here after the feeding of the 5,000 near the feast of the Passover.

Since the time of Moses, Passover has been the Jewish festival. To get something close to it we American Gentiles would have to combine Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. At Passover every generation of Jews is cotemporaneous with those who first experienced the Passover: God liberating them from slavery in Egypt and setting them on a journey to the Promised Land. At Passover every generation says “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.”

You don’t mess with Passover. To return to our analogy, imagine the outcry and derision if a president said: “You see, Thanksgiving (or the Fourth of July) is really about me.” But that’s what Jesus is doing. He’s saying to the disciples: you need a more profound, a more complete liberation than the liberation you’ve been celebrating in the Passover. So, taking the bread and wine which already had their own meanings within the celebration of the Passover, he gave them new meanings— this is my Body; this is my blood—so that the same meal could hereafter celebrate that more profound, more complete liberation.

As long as the Church was working from a Jewish center of gravity, the Eucharist as transformation of Passover was obvious. Because that was obvious, it went without saying that Eucharist was about the gathering and sanctification of a people, and their liberation from every form of oppression, the breaking in of the world to come into this world.

That gathering, sanctification, liberation is not simply a matter of adopting a particular program, even Jesus’ teaching. It’s a matter of being grafted onto Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” It’s not simply a matter of ideas, values, goals or decisions. “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

This role for the Holy Eucharist can seem counterintuitive. We often think of our self as other than our body. But the big moments in our lives, birth and death, are body moments, to which we could easily add embracing, making love, sharing food, celebrating a touchdown, etc. So when God sets out to transform us, the body stays centerstage. Circumcision, baptism, Eucharist.

And I wonder if the element of vulnerability in eating and drinking isn’t relevant here. Eating and drinking is letting down our guard, opening ourselves –quite literally—to what we are about to receive. In the case of Holy Eucharist: Jesus’ Body and Blood. “Yes –we say—may Jesus’ life merge with ours so that his life flows through ours.”

“Abide in me as I abide in you.” So it’s just a matter of showing up at Eucharist? No. Consider what Jesus said about this abiding as recorded in John.

  • Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
  • If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love…
  • If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples…

We can all think of Christians, churches, denominations in different times and places that have latched onto one of these to the virtual exclusion of the others:

  • Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. The Eucharist as magic.
  • If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love… Jesus as Ethical Teacher, or New Moses.
  • If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples… Belief and/or reading the Bible are what’s important.

It’s the same Jesus in the same Gospel who says all three! It only makes sense to show up for Eucharist if there is a real –but always imperfect—desire to keep Jesus’ commandments and to continue in Jesus’ word. That is why from the start the Eucharist has been something shared by the baptized.

The universe, scientists tell us, is held together by forces that pull in opposite directions. The reality I’ve been trying to describe here is like that. On the one hand, our Eucharist is Passover Remixed, celebrating a liberation more profound and complete than Moses could have dreamed. Its constant reduction to an act of individual piety would be absurd were it not so common. The Chinese Government has got it right: the status quo is in danger when Christians come together to celebrate Eucharist. From this perspective the Eucharist is a symbol.

On the other hand, in Eucharist heaven and earth meet, as “Abide in me as I abide in you” gets very personal, very physical, very intimate. How God does this is a mystery, though we Anglicans are pretty sure that neither Roman transubstantiation nor Baptist symbol are adequate explanations. Elizabeth I, as responsible as any one person for the enduring shape of Anglicanism, put it this way: “Twas God the Word that spake it, / He took the bread and brake it; / And what the Word did make it; / That I believe and take it.”[1]

On the other hand –yes, there’s a third hand here; it takes a community to do theology—Jesus tells us “abide in me” because only by staying connected to the vine does the branch bear fruit, and Jesus wants fruit. This brings us back to the feeding of the 5,000. What John has done in sticking the Eucharist in the middle of the feeding of the 5,000 is put us on notice that the world and the sanctuary are part of the same conversation. The multitudes who are like sheep without a shepherd and often needy are not one conversation and Eucharistic theology another conversation.

The UN estimates that about 25,000 people die of hunger every day. So God has us and Christians around the globe coming together to celebrate Eucharist because God doesn’t care? Precisely because God cares God gathers us together, because what happens here is God’s primary strategy for something better happening out there. This is the front line, and that’s why we show up here week after week –for our good and the world’s good.

We come to this table—and then hold the world’s needy before God in prayer, open our checkbooks, participate in the coming elections. We could say that where the Body and Blood are distributed at this table other tables with other distributions start popping up. We could say that it’s part of the same Eucharist, the same outpouring of thanks to God that can transform our world.

The Eucharist: New Passover, Feeding on God, Life for the World. Alleluia.

[1] Source: Clark’s “Ecclesiastical History–Life of Queen Elizabeth”, p. 94 (edition 1675). http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Elizabeth-I/1/index.html

“Be angry, but do not sin.” And we do that how? (12th after Pentecost, 8/11/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

Let’s start with today’s Gospel, the middle section of John’s long exploration of the feeding of the five thousand. There are many things we could focus on; today let’s look at Jesus’ citation of the biblical (Old Testament) text “And they shall all be taught by God.” In Jesus’ mind it’s not simply a matter of the people and Jesus. The Father has been teaching the people, and those who’ve listened, who’ve learned, come to Jesus. (The text, in other words, has nothing to do with John Calvin’s nightmare, that God saves or damns us quite apart from anything we’ve thought or done.) Jesus comes at the end of a process: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”

We can take this further in two directions. First, since the way we tell our own stories is always subject to revision, Jesus’ arrival can be the occasion to revisit our own stories: “Oh, so that’s what God was trying to teach me.” If we’re paying attention, Jesus’ arrival brings both the question “What do I make of Jesus?” and “What do I make of myself?”

A second direction: what has the Father been teaching? The answer to that is, of course, not simple. The Old Testament is not a small book. But it’s a question we can use to unpack our reading from 2nd Samuel.

Our 2nd Samuel reading: the lectionary has hit the fast forward button—hard. Last Sunday he prophet Nathan had said “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword…Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.” And that’s been playing out ever. Amnon, David’s firstborn, desires his sister Tamar, and, in a parody of David and Bathsheba, rapes her and then discards her. David hears of it, gets angry, but “he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn” (13:21). Absalom, Tamar’s brother, gets angry, bides his time for two years, and kills Amnon. David and Absalom eventually reconcile—sort of—but Absalom is soon plotting a rebellion whose ending we heard this morning.

Now, probably coincidentally, anger is one of the main themes in our Ephesians reading. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” The main point, I’d guess, is not to let the anger fester: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” How do we do that? Paul talks about speaking truth, forgiving, imitating God.

What happens if we set Paul’s words next to the story of David and his children? Speaking truth: that’s always risky, also because the truth is rarely as flattering to us as we would like. David tended to run on the principle “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is…not yet mine,” and truth-telling would have involved explaining why Amnon shouldn’t have done likewise. Absalom doesn’t even try truth-telling. We’re told that he “spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad” (13:22).

Forgiving. The prophet Nathan to David: “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless…the child that is born to you shall die” (13:14). Recalling the question prompted by the Gospel reading (what are we supposed to learn from God), David in dealing with Amnon has maybe learned forgiveness, but not the need for truth-telling or (since Amnon is his son) some sort of accountability. David may have thought he was doing Amnon a favor; as it turns out, his inaction signed Amnon’s death warrant.

Imitating God. Recall Paul’s words: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” I suspect that that’s one idea not two: living in love is precisely how we imitate God, and the love involved is a love that increases, not decreases, our vulnerability. Neither David nor Amnon nor Absalom had any interest in increased vulnerability; that was reserved for Tamar.

Back to the question raised by today’s Gospel, whatever else God has been trying to teach, it is that badly managed anger is toxic. If we haven’t learned that, Jesus will probably make little sense to us.

Let’s return to Nathan’s words: “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword…Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.” As the story unfolds, it’s clearly not a Greek tragedy, in which the implacable Furies wreak havoc on the powerless humans. Rather, David continues to make bad choices—perhaps the best he’s capable of making—and his sons follow what he does, rather than whatever he might be saying. So the sword appears so frequently that we might as well count it as another member of David’s family. (And we haven’t even gotten to Solomon’s use of the sword to make his accession to the throne feel more secure.)

We live in a world in which anger is often the right response. The question—as we’re regularly reminded, also by today’s 2nd Samuel text—is what to do with that anger. I cannot—alas—channel Madison Avenue: here’s this pill, and for the next 10 minutes it’s on sale! What Paul offers: tell the truth, forgive, love like God loves, increasing our vulnerability. That can be messy: we do these things imperfectly, and rarely escape the illusion that we’re the ones wearing the white hats. That’s OK, for our God can do messy, as we’re reminded—as we celebrate—at every Eucharist. “He stretched out his arms upon the cross…” For David, Amnon, and Absalom Jesus chooses to stand with Tamar—and invites us to stand with the two of them.

Beginners at believing (11th after Pentecost, 8/4/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

What a combination of readings! We might title two of them “The Morning after the Night Before,” so let’s start there.

Last week we heard the story of Jesus feeding the large crowd. The starting point there as in the David story is divine generosity. Recall how Nathan’s oracle begins: “I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house…” Now the crowd has followed Jesus, and Jesus tries for a debrief: what was yesterday all about?

Jesus leads with this: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Nothing wrong with eating one’s fill, but if the conversation—if the relationship—stays at that level, it doesn’t have much of a future. It’s where many of Jesus’ interactions with folk—then and now—start, with our needs as we define them. And Jesus, being generous, will start there. But if that’s where things stay—my needs as I define them—then there’s about as much future there as in any relationship. Within that framework Jesus is at most one of many possible means to fulfill my ends.

Jesus’ statement gives us a way of wondering about how David got so badly off track. “I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house…” David more than got his fill, but did he wonder about what the Lord wanted out of the relationship? Perhaps not often enough. Not often enough for Uriah the Hittite. But David chose not to disappear Nathan for his unwelcome words. David chose to repent—recall our psalm. So David ends as a figure of hope, and as a model for the serious acts of repentance most of us need from time to time.

A bit later in the conversation with the crowd: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” ‘Believe’: that’s one of this Gospel’s favorite words (32 times in the first three Gospels combined, 85 times in John). Oddly, John never bothers to define it, which may be one source of the arguments regarding how faith and works relate in the rest of the New Testament. Perhaps he thought he didn’t need to. Consider the word’s first occurrence in the Old Testament. Abram’s been in the Promised Land for a good stretch, but no children and he asks what’s going on. At the end of the dialogue: “And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). It’s more than a mental act; it’s deciding whether to keep trusting or head back to civilization. Later it shows up in the wilderness after the spies’ pessimistic report regarding the land. “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me…’” (Num. 14:11). Again, more than a mental act: the people are ready to stone Moses and Aaron and to choose someone to lead them back to Egypt! So, back to John: believing in Jesus means trusting Jesus, particularly when that trust looks like a really bad idea.

So, in our context: believing is more than a hoop I’m supposed to jump through. How easy it is for baptism or confirmation to become hoops! That works about as well as treating marriage as a hoop, rather than as setting the agenda for the rest of one’s life. “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” Believing in Jesus, trusting Jesus: paying attention to what Jesus is up to, letting him turn our world upside down and inside out multiple times so that at last we become, well, human.

Become human, or, in Paul’s language, “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” And because God is generous, because, as Paul spells out, God has showered all of us with gifts, this is doable. We’re on a trajectory toward life. Hallelujah? Hallelujah!

Now, in closing, two things to notice about Paul’s vision. First, this life “worthy of the calling” is inescapably corporate. This contrasts with the scripts that reduce the faith to me and Jesus, which in Episcopal circles can translate into “my spirituality is my affair and all I ask of others is that they not make noise.” This life is corporate. The gifts I receive are gifts my neighbor needs and vice versa. Aristotle got it right: the human being is a political animal, an animal of the polis, and God builds on that. Besides, the endgame is a banquet, a celebration, and who wants to party alone?

Second, the older we get (sorry!) the stronger the temptation to set everything on cruise control. So notice Paul’s language: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up.” Here Paul is at his most diplomatic, so diplomatic that we can miss the point. Shorn of the diplomatic padding: “Grow up!” And when I find that discouraging or off-putting, I’m reminded of Thomas Merton’s observation in talking about prayer: “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!” (Contemplative prayer p.37)

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” In the coming week we’ll have multiple opportunities to do that work; may we stay awake enough to recognize them.

Jesus makes a way where there is no way (10th after Pentecost, 7/28/24)

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Readings (Track 2)

Over in Paris, the world’s foodie capital, the Olympics have just started. By happy coincidence today’s readings focus on… food.

Our first reading: Elisha’s multiplication of the loaves. Recall the context: the Lord had delivered Israel from Egypt, but when Israel arrived in Canaan the advice from the locals was to turn to Baal, the god of rain and fertility, for their daily needs. When in Rome… Elijah and Elisha’s task: to convince the people that it’s either Yahweh or Baal, and that if they want rain and fertility, Yahweh’s the better bet.

Today’s psalm picks up on that theme:

16 The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, *
and you give them their food in due season.
17 You open wide your hand *
and satisfy the needs of every living creature.

Yahweh or Baal: that’s still the choice. There’s enough food for everyone. But under Baal food is a commodity to be bought and sold, so that the World Food Programme estimates that some 309 million people face chronic hunger in 72 countries. In this country in 2022 about 44 million experienced food insecurity. Dives and Lazarus (the two protagonists in Jesus’ parable) on a global scale!

Today’s Gospel: two weeks ago we heard about Herod’s birthday party. Herodias dances and the last course turns out to be John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Mark juxtaposes that banquet with Jesus’ banquet at which five thousand are fed. Mark thinks we all end up at one of these banquets, so wants us to pay attention to the choices that lead us to one or the other.

Our Lectionary, meanwhile, has swapped out Mark’s account for John’s, in which the conversation about the feeding morphs into a conversation about the Holy Eucharist. But I’m jumping ahead.

When John the Evangelist takes up the feeding story he notes “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” That’s more than a chronological note: Passover: the deliverance from Egypt, and with it the crossing of the Red Sea and the miraculous manna in the wilderness. Is all that stuck in the past, with us—along with John the Baptist—stuck in Baal’s world? And in response to this question John the Evangelist shows us Jesus, the one who makes a way where there is no way.

Five thousand hungry people, five barley loaves, two fish. No way that math’s going to work. With Jesus, way.

That night, the disciples in a small boat in the middle of a large storm. No way we’d sell them life insurance. But here comes Jesus, and there’s a way to their destination.

A couple details in that account are worth noticing.

First, Jesus walking on the sea in the middle of the storm. The thing about that is that within the Old Testament God is the one pictured treading on the sea:

With your horses you trampled through the sea, through the surging abyss! (Habakkuk 3:15 NJB)

Your way led over the sea, your path over the countless waters, and none could trace your footsteps. (Psalm 77:19 NJB)

He and no other has stretched out the heavens and trampled on the back of the Sea. (Job 9:8 NJB)

In light of this tradition, Jesus’ walking across the sea is, like the Transfiguration, an unveiling. And in case we’ve missed the point, notice Jesus’ response to the disciples. It’s a lovely double entendre. The NRSV translates “It is I,” which is certainly a possible translation. It would be equally possible to translate it “I AM” (all caps); a repetition of God’s self-identification to Moses.

I’ve spent some time on this because in popular culture the idea circulates that Jesus was a just a great teacher whom the imperial church centuries later gussied up into some sort of god. We can believe that only if we first toss the New Testament. Our creeds are the product of simply trying to understand the stories the apostles left us.

Which banquet do we end up at? Better Jesus’ than Herod’s. Jesus is the one at whose banquets the poor are fed. Jesus is the one who by nature deserves our worship.

Our reading from John: the good news that Moses’ God isn’t AWOL. Quite the opposite. But… what about that gap between Jesus’ earthly ministry and us? That’s one of the core questions our readings from Ephesians have been addressing.

Recall what we heard last week, Paul addressing us non-Jewish believers:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. (Eph. 2:19-22)

It’s an outrageously mixed metaphor: a temple that’s growing—and Jesus is at the center: with us, among us. That’s the corporate dimension.

This week, the individual: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Earlier, writing to the Galatians and indulging in a little hyperbole: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (2:20). Through the Spirit, Jesus takes up residence in each one of us. This isn’t something any of our senses are set up to process; it is something whose effects—Paul argues—are clear. Recall Paul, again in Galatians: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22-23).

For Paul, as for the rest of the New Testament, talking to Jesus now is not a long distance call. No question of roaming charges or being out of network.

That’s good news, for Baal still claims our world. But the One who fed the multitude and who trod on the sea remains among us and within each one of us, always able to make a way where there is no way. Returning to the food theme, that’s one of the things we celebrate at every Eucharist. There’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone, everyone is welcome. We’re remembering what Jesus did. We’re celebrating that this is the future Jesus secured. There’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone, everyone is welcome.

What’s the temple that God wants? (9th after Pentecost, 7/21/2024)

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The Readings (Track 1)

We’re going to give the lion’s share of attention to the Ephesians reading, but, first, a bit of muddling around in the other readings.

Tour guides often have pages like “If you have only one day in New York…” Any equivalent guide to the Old Testament would include our first reading. God’s promise to David of an eternal house (dynasty) is the basis for all the hopes for a coming son of David. It’s the reason ‘Messiah’/’Christ’ (the anointed one) is such a key title. It starts here with Nathan’s words to David.

One element worth noticing in Nathan’s words is the repeated reference to houses of cedar (houses at the high end of the market): “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” “…did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” There is probably some exasperation in God’s response: I don’t need a house of cedar; why do you think you need a house of cedar? Why this question? Consider, a few centuries later, Jeremiah’s words (22:15) to the current Davidic king: “Are you a king because you compete in cedar?” This is the sort of question God directs to many of us from time to time: “Tom, why do you think you need…?” The Book of Proverbs nails it:

7 Two things I ask of you;
do not deny them to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that I need,
9 or I shall be full, and deny you,
and say, “Who is the LORD?”
or I shall be poor, and steal,
and profane the name of my God. (30:7-9)

So Paul, in the other Testament: “for I have learned to be content with whatever I have” (Phil 4:11). That’s a hard sell in this culture, but probably necessary for our sanity and sanctity.

The Gospel. The omitted verses (vv.35-52) mostly narrate the feeding of the five thousand. The lectionary omits these because in the next five weeks we’ll be hearing John’s narrative. That’s fair, but misses Mark’s mischievous juxtaposition of the two feasts: Herod’s, in which John the Baptist loses his head, and Jesus’, in which five thousand are fed. Mark’s suggesting, I think, that we need to choose which feast we end up at, a choice not unrelated to our ability to say “enough.”

In our first reading house as temple and house as dynasty contrast: David won’t build God a house (temple); God will build David a house (dynasty). But as Ephesians makes clear, God’s option for the dynasty gets God the temple God really wanted: “In him [David’s son, the Messiah] the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

“You also.” Throughout the chapter Paul’s focused on the Jew/Gentile division, now abolished through the generous and costly work of the Messiah. In this vision the Jews don’t stop being Jews; the Gentiles don’t stop being Gentiles. But in Jesus these differences no longer divide, no longer fuel enmity. And Jew/Gentile is paradigmatic for the many divisions in our world.

“Built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Our building projects usually seek homogeneity. It’s simpler that way. “Birds of a feather…” But that’s not Paul’s vision: Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free. One commentator, Marcus Barth, puts it this way: “There is no ideal of a Christian personality applicable to all church members alike, but there are men, women, children who because of their diverse origins, pasts, privileges, hopes, or despairs are by nature inclined to hate one another and God (Rom 5:6-10). Now they are enabled by the work and rule of Christ to contribute in common repentance and common faith their various idiosyncrasies, histories, experiences, and gifts to the peaceful common life of God’s people” (Ephesians 1-3, 311).

“Built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” That word ‘spiritually’ can trip us up. It’s not a synonym for ‘immaterial’. Barth again: “The people of God who are built together and become God’s house—the church—are as material, temporal, spatial, and concrete as sticks and stones” (Ephesians 1-3, 320).

“Spiritually,” because only the transformative power of the Holy Spirit can give this mad project any chance of success. At the beginning when all was waste and void, darkness on the face of the deep, God sent the Spirit. And today the Spirit continues to assist in the heavy lifting.

“Assist.” I use that word cautiously. It’s not as though the Spirit does 50% and we do 50%. It’s that we really need to want this project to succeed, to put our backs into it. Building cross-culturally is hard work. But, recalling the original cross-cultural challenge, men being from Mars and women from Venus, oh the pay-off!

The temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth. God is happy for that to be at the corner of Nelson Drive & Highway 83; God has no interest in it being only there. The vision is that the temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth, be everywhere we are 24/7, so that there is no place that the glory, mercy, love of God is not visible and tangible. So that we—to pick up Paul’s language from last week’s reading—“might live for the praise of his glory.”

Jerusalem, David, and the stories we tell (8th after Pentecost, 7/14/2024)

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Lessons (but reading all of 2 Samuel 6)

These last two weeks David and Jerusalem have been centerstage as David captures Jerusalem (last Sunday’s reading) and brings the Ark into it (today’s reading). In our days is there a city more contested? So what might these stories of its early history suggest to us?

And in our first reading the Revised Common Lectionary has—probably inadvertently—raised a second question: how do we recount our histories? The difference between the full chapter and the parts selected by the RCL is dramatic. In our days, renewed energy around the questions of what’s in our high school history books, what monuments we keep or tear down, what names we keep on military bases, schools, etc. or not. And again, what might the 2nd Samel texts suggest to us?

David and Jerusalem. Last week narrated David’s taking of Jerusalem. What was that about? Well, why is our capital in Washington D.C.? In our new nation, trust between the states was low enough that the only feasible site for a national capital was a new city unclaimed by any of the states. So Washington was founded in 1791. Tribe is pretty much everything in David’s time; from where will he rule? Jerusalem, centuries after Joshua, was still controlled by the Jebusites. David takes it; it becomes the City of David. That solves that political problem. But it creates a new political problem: what does Jerusalem have to do with Moses, with Israel’s faith? Outside of that strange story about Abram and Melchizedek (Genesis 14), nothing! So now the Ark, a central symbol of that faith, becomes Really Important.

So David organizes an impressive procession, cut brutally short by Uzzah’s death. It’s a divine shot across David’s bow: is David the Lord’s patron or the Lord David’s? It’s hard on Uzzah; subjects often suffer for the sins of their sovereigns. We trust that the Lord has or will make things right with Uzzah. David, the narrator tells us, was afraid of the Lord, and asks the right question: “How can the ark of God come into my care?” We wish that David had asked that question more often.

Anyhow, the procession is put on hold—until David hears that “the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.” David responds, leaving us wondering whether greed has trumped fear. He organizes an even more elaborate procession. Multiple sacrifices, with David in an ephod (typically a priestly garment) dancing before the Lord “with all his might,” more sacrifices, a blessing on the people, and a meal for all. The narrator has given us a thoroughly ambiguous picture. It’s clearly a high point for David. Equally clearly, that nagging question of whether the Lord is David’s patron or vice versa remains open.

The narrator’s chosen to give us an account that raises as many questions as it answers. And were that not enough, the narrator choses to include Michal’s reaction. Michal, Saul’s daughter, David’s first wife. She’d saved David’s life when Saul sent to have him killed. Saul had later given her to another man. David, now with various additional wives, had demanded her return as the price of peace with Saul’s house. Michal’s response to David may have been fully justified, but it was not smart. Kings are not hard to manipulate—just ask Herodias (today’s Gospel reading)—but you have to be smart about it. In any case, the account ends “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.” Personal tragedy, but also national tragedy. A child of David and Michal might have held the tribes together. Instead, on David’s son Solomon’s death they split into North and South and spend as much time fighting each other as anyone else until they’re swallowed up by the Assyrians and Babylonians. For that matter, had David reciprocated Michal’s love, perhaps the sordid incident with Bathsheba could have been avoided.

So, Jerusalem: chosen by David as a neutral city from which to rule the tribes, new home of the Ark through the convoluted process our text has narrated. And in the middle that haunting question after David collides with the Lord’s holiness: “How can the ark of God come into my care?” Jerusalem, often called the Holy City. Oh that the Jews and Muslims (and we Christians, for that matter) could so recapture a sense of God’s holiness that the arguments about Jerusalem would be: “You take it!” “No, you take it!”

As for David, what the narrator has done with David in this chapter the narrator does throughout Samuel and into the first chapters of Kings. There’s more than enough to celebrate in David, more than enough to mourn, more than enough to wonder about. So that’s one way to tell David’s story—the national story—not highlighting the messiness, but not leaving it out.

In the Gospels—particularly in Matthew—Jesus is addressed as “Son of David.” Thank God for the Books of Samuel that pretty much force Jesus to ask “Son of which David?” The David who faced down Goliath and danced in ecstatic abandon before the Ark or the David who arranged for the death of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, in battle? How we tell our stories can alert us or blind us to the choices facing us.

And when I look at my own life—thank God for the Books of Samuel. Not that I’ve generated the same quantity of headlines, but the messiness is certainly there, and the fact that God didn’t run away screaming from the unedited David gives me hope. In our second reading Paul speaks repeatedly of redemption: our lives are lives that need redemption, and Paul’s talking about more than the occasional failure to make a full stop before turning on a red light.

How shall we summarize? Early in our second reading we heard “just as he chose us in Christ…to be holy and blameless before him in love.” Not “because we were holy and blameless before him.” If we take that love seriously we can risk telling our stories not to vindicate ourselves, but to celebrate that love, and position ourselves to face life’s recurrent challenges. “Holy and blameless” is the goal. We’re not in 10th century b.c. Jerusalem or 1st century a.d. Ephesus, but the challenges then and now are often the same.

When weak, then strong??? (7th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/7/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1)

In our second reading Paul ends with “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” Since “weak” is not our preferred operating mode, that gives us more than enough to chew on.

First, what’s Paul talking about? If we’d asked Paul about the strength part, that is, the power of Christ dwelling in him, I would guess that he would have talked about two things: the apostolic work we heard described in today’s Gospel (preaching, healing, exorcising), and the endurance in the face of rejection and opposition (the theme of our reading two weeks ago). This power of Christ is equally available to the Church today: power in preaching, healing, exorcising, and endurance in the face of rejection and opposition. In what we call the “developed” world, we often work with a shorter list: preaching—preferably of the sort that invites neither rejection nor opposition. And so when we hear the phrase “the power of Christ” we may have trouble connecting it to our experience. In much of the rest of the world Christians do not have that problem. In this country I was able to prepare for ordination without a single hour devoted to how we do healing and exorcisms. Had I been preparing for ordination in, say, sub-Saharan Africa, that would have been as unthinkable as omitting preaching or celebrating the Eucharist from the preparation. So when we hear “preaching, healing, exorcising” and scratch our heads, the difficulty’s more with us than with the text.

Endurance. When we are able to endure, to continue to bear witness to our Lord in the face of rejection and opposition, that is God’s power working within us. It’s not something we’re expected to come up with on our own, much less something we’re expected to be able to imagine doing on our own.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” –because the power of Christ in preaching, healing, exorcising, and endurance shines forth.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” A second dimension of this is the sort of weakness involved in Jesus’ instructions to the apostles. They are sent out to proclaim the Kingdom, to cast out demons and heal. Sounds like strength. But Jesus also tells them how to travel: “to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” That, together with being a guest in someone’s house, implies vulnerability, and we recall the ways in which Paul describes his vulnerability. Now the funny thing about that is that something of this sort of vulnerability or weakness is necessary for useful communication and learning to take place.

We wrestled with this in World Vision, the Christian relief and development organization with which I worked for 18 years. World Vision typically seeks to work with very poor communities to help them improve all dimensions of their life. In the early days we did this pretty naively, with all the trappings of power, usually starting with arriving in the village in a vehicle more expensive than any of the villagers could hope to own. And villagers, while poor, are smart. They know that when someone more powerful comes, rule number one is that you tell that person what you think they want to hear. And so we’d come with our ideas, be very pleased that the villagers thought they were all very good ideas, and then wonder why the ideas didn’t work out as we’d planned. Over time we learned that differences in power were one of the chief obstacles to communication, that, in other words, Jesus’ instructions (“no bread, no bag, no money in their belts”) made excellent practical sense.

And the same logic applies here in Wisconsin. Our texts tell us—we heard it from Paul two weeks ago—that we are ambassadors of God Almighty. And we may say: sure doesn’t look like it: very few BMWs, we get sick as often as our pagan neighbors do, no heavenly trumpets herald our arrival. Well, and if it did look like it, how many honest conversations would we succeed in having?

The learning part is equally important. Circling back to the World Vision example, as long as we were comfortable operating from strength, we thought we knew enough. Failure forced new choices: do we whitewash it (we’re still strong, we still have nothing to learn) or acknowledge it and actually learn something.

I’m reminded of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Louise Penny’s mystery novels. He invites new recruits to learn to use (and mean) these four statements: “I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Weakness is no fun, but without acknowledgement of weakness, no learning.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” Also because when I acknowledge weakness, useful conversations and learning can take place.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s a third dimension, and for that we go back to Jesus’ instructions: “to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” Why that particular list? Perhaps Jesus is recalling Israel’s time in the wilderness. The Gospel of Mark begins, recall, with the announcement of a new exodus: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” As Moses had lead Israel out of Egypt, so a new Moses will lead Israel and all peoples out of bondage into freedom. And in the march through the desert –testified Deuteronomy—the clothing and shoes lasted, and Israel was fed by manna from heaven. So in this New Exodus, one tunic and one pair of sandals is all the disciples need.

If that’s the script, then it would be simply superfluous to bring bread, money, extra clothing! Travel light, because God is handling the logistics. And that in itself brings its own sort of power and liberty.

“Whenever I am weak, I am strong.” When I acknowledge my weakness, that my resources are simply incommensurate with the road that lies ahead, then I am free to acknowledge God as the Quartermaster of the whole project and to focus on the particular tasks to which I am called.

I’ve not yet said anything about David. The story of his rise contains one of the dramatic examples of “Whenever I am weak”: the young shepherd and his slingshot vs. Goliath. Closer to the heart of our reflection, there’s David Gunn’s observation that gift vs. grasp is a central tension in David’s story: will he receive God’s gifts as gifts, or grasp them? David certainly succeeds in grasping Jerusalem, and the narrator intones “And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.” In light of the following chapters we may suspect the narrator of irony, for Jerusalem will be the site of David’s greatest failings. We hope for a New Jerusalem not so that Jerusalem can be vindicated, but so that Jerusalem can be redeemed.

“Whenever I am weak, I am strong.” The universe is not arranged so that we get to choose whether to be strong or weak. When we are strong, let us do what we can with our strength. But we often have the choice between acknowledging our weakness and denying it. In those moments both for our own sake and for the sake of those around us, let us acknowledge it. Let us discover what God’s power within us might want to do. Let us discover what conversations and learning acknowledging our weakness might permit. And let us learn that, since our strength does not suffice the journey on which we’ve embarked, one tunic is quite enough, and bread is found in the most unexpected places.

Waiting (6th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/30/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

So, what might the Spirit be saying to God’s people in these readings? This time around that repeated exhortation “wait” in our psalm got my attention. The Gospel stories illustrate the obvious payoff, whether for the woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, or the parents with their gravely-ill twelve-year-old. Both are stories of waiting longer than we might think reasonable (“Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”). In both Jesus talks about faith, a faith that’s expressed by waiting.

This morning we’ll take this theme of waiting in three directions. First, acknowledge that waiting is unwelcome, unwelcome enough that we have various strategies for avoiding it. Second, noticing that waiting is not disengaging, and not only the Gospel stories, but also the Joseph stories, help us see that. Third, wondering: we certainly wait; does God ever have to wait?

Wait! Outside of “love your enemies,” hard to think of a more unwelcome exhortation. Recall the “Please wait” on an otherwise blank computer screen or the automated voice on the phone assuring us that the wait time is only x minutes. When waiting on someone currently or always more powerful, most of the possible reasons why we’re waiting are not encouraging. We like to be in control; waiting’s the antithesis of that.

So it can be a bit unnerving to notice how often waiting shows up in the Bible’s stories: Abraham and Sarah waiting for that promised son, the Judean captives in Babylon waiting for something—anything—to happen, the multiple psalms exhorting us to wait.

So, waiting is unpleasant enough that we come up with various strategies for avoidance. The complaint of the Judean exiles in Babylon as recorded in Isaiah is typical: “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God” (I40:27). Why wait? So it’s easy to question God’s power, knowledge, goodness. “If I’m waiting this long, I obviously don’t matter to God.”

Another strategy that I catch myself using: shrink the circle of concern so there’s less that requires waiting. I can’t even begin to imagine how God might sort out Ukraine, the Holy Land, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Southern Border, etc. Oh so tempting to shrink the circle!

So, first point, waiting on the Lord is one of the harder things our tradition asks of us, and it’s absolutely necessary. So let’s not beat ourselves up if we find it hard, even as we check our attempts to throw in the towel.

Second, waiting on the Lord: the antithesis of disengaging. The woman with the hemorrhages, the synagogue leader: they seek Jesus out. They risk being disappointed.

Pulling back the camera, I’m struck by the Joseph stories. Early in the story Egypt is not where Joseph wants to be, and there’s no chance of getting to passport control. So he’s waiting. At the same time he’s repeatedly engaging, and making choices about that engagement. One of those choices: the refusal of the advances from Potiphar’s wife, whose advances would have offered one solution to a bad situation. Another of those choices: how to respond to two oily high-level bureaucrats who’d gotten on the wrong side of Pharaoh and who had dreams that needed interpretation. It would have been so satisfying to keep them waiting. But Joseph keeps engaging, even while having no control over the results of his choices. Joseph in Egypt, Tobit in Nineveh, Esther in the Persian capital, Paul’s collection mentioned in our second reading, for that matter: all folk from whom we can learn about waiting and staying productively engaged.

Third, with all this talk of our waiting on the Lord, it sounds like we’re doing the heavy lifting. Does the Lord ever have to wait? It turns out that there’s this intriguing verse in Isaiah: “Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him” (30:18). “The Lord waits…blessed are all those who wait for the Lord.” There are a good number of texts in the prophets we could use to flesh that out, but since those would need some setup, we’ll move to the New Testament.

“And [Jesus] did not do many deeds of power [in his hometown], because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58).

More dramatically—also from Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me” (25:42-43). That’s some serious waiting.

So while as individuals or communities of faith we’re regularly waiting on God, we’re card-carrying members of nations that regularly keep God waiting, hence that line in one of our confessions: “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.”

Let’s sum up. “O Israel, wait for the Lord.” That’s directed to us.

Rather than disengagement, waiting is a productive way of staying engaged.

And, yes, the good Lord also waits, and sometimes that’s something we can do something about.

God’s Clashing Desires (5th after Pentecost, 6/23/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1, 1st set)

What a combination of readings: David & Goliath, Jesus in the middle of the lake calming the storm—and Paul pleading with the Corinthians.

Let us start with the obvious. Our world has plenty of Goliaths, enemies who claim to dominate our present and future. Our world has plenty of storms. It is very good news that Goliath’s claims are simply claims, that the pitch black skies and the water-drenched deck at unbelievable angles are not the last things we’ll experience. The battle is the Lord’s: Goliath doesn’t get the last word, our feet will again be on solid ground. These are stories to hang onto, and there are times in our lives when that’s all we need to hear from them.

But how does Paul’s “through great endurance” fit into those stories? It’s not Paul’s fault; David and Jesus had their share of “through great endurance” moments. It’s that in many situations “where’s my slingshot” isn’t the appropriate response—though we’ve all had experience with folk like that. There were probably parts of Paul that wished for a slingshot, wished to simply shout into the storm “How about you all just shut up and do what I say!” Why not go there?

Recall our Old Testament lesson from two weeks ago: the people want a king, which the Lord and Samuel think is a really bad idea, and the Lord tells Samuel to give them what they want. How do we make sense of that?

Wrestling with the text two weeks ago, this is what I came up with. God wants two things, that we be free and that we make good choices. Either would be relatively easy. Together, not so much, as any parent knows. This combination of desires is one way to talk about God’s love. God loves us: desires that we be free, desires that we make good choices. “We want a king like all the nations.” “OK; we’ll do this the hard way.” A king can serve as a template for the Messiah.

Where this gets challenging: God desires that we share these desires. This is typically not an easy sell. Recall that scene in Luke, when the Samaritan village refuses hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. James and John: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). Desiring people’s freedom and that they choose well means that their good becomes primary, so Jesus has to work on the disciples’ notion of greatness: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-44). Discipleship is a lengthy process because learning to desire what God desires doesn’t come easily.

Which brings us to Paul, trying through letters to reset his relationship with the Corinthians. They’re a typical congregation, working out what being Christian means, and sometimes avoiding that work. The city of Corinth’s motto could have been “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” so some in the congregation assumed “The one who has the most spiritual gifts wins.” So Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about spiritual gifts, culminating in that bracing chapter that begins “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).

And in the text we heard this morning Paul details what that love has meant: “great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love.”

Paul gives them this long list not to score points—though perhaps that’s not completely absent, Paul being human and all—but because this is how the Corinthians need to love each other. So that—picking up David’s words—“all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not save by sword and spear.”

Paul’s saying nothing new here, simply reminding the Corinthians of Jesus’ story, a story that’s to become our story. Jesus’ love, a love serving others, means a story of death and resurrection. So in our baptism we pray “Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection.”

God desires that all be free and that all use their freedom well. For that God needs a people committed to that project, and baptism is how we are enlisted. “Yes, Lord, I want to learn to love as you love, desiring people’s freedom and that they use it well. I want to learn to serve them, so that Jesus’ death and resurrection play out in this flesh.” Amen.