Tag Archives: Discipleship

Jesus or the pigs? (2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/22/2025)

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Readings

We’re at a major milestone in the Church Year: green, not white, and we’ll be in green for about half a year. Think about it: half a year to celebrate the divine acts that underwrite the new covenant: Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Week, Pentecost. Half a year to…? Our Godly Play curriculum calls it “the Great Green Growing Season,” time for these divine acts to do their work in our bodies and souls.

It turns out that today’s readings aren’t bad ushers into this season.

The Gospel. When we meet the man who meets Jesus, he’s possessed by a legion of demons, naked, maybe remnants of chains hanging from his arms and legs, totally bedraggled. Soon he’s “clothed and in his right mind.” Hallelujah. But, if that were all that salvation involved we’d hardly need six months for the Great Green Growing Season! So it’s worth noticing that this isn’t the end of that man’s story. He wants to go with Jesus, but Jesus: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Home: that would include the folk who had held him down while others put on the chains and shackles and who were not obviously celebrating his recovery. Yes, we might say that his story has just gotten more interesting. But that’s for the future. In the moment, Jesus’ heart is glad.

Staying in the country of the Gerasenes for the moment, notice that Luke is equally interested in its other inhabitants. At the beginning of the story the demons are in the man; at the end of the story—well, they disappeared with the herd of swine that went over the cliff. And, Luke tells us, “all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to”…stay? No: leave. Their preference was clear: better the demons in the man than in an eminently marketable herd of pigs.

Now, notice that in our Gospel the story’s already politically charged: the demons are collectively called “Legion.” And it would have been quite impossible for the disciples not to have relished this story—for a time at least—as a sort of down payment on what Jesus would do about the Roman legions.

But let’s come at its politics in a different way. The demons in the man or in the pigs? In our world that’s the sort of choice we regularly meet. No matter what the economic system, power typically gets used so that the powerful receive the benefits and the costs are paid by others. Often this works because we’re happy to see low prices and don’t ask too many questions about why the prices are low. Or again, our group is virtuous; they are vicious. The demons stay safely among them and our pigs continue fattening up nicely. And then Jesus comes and upsets everything. Jesus did that through his Body the Church in South Africa to overturn apartheid and in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe to overturn the Communist regimes. Welcoming Jesus can mean losing the pigs.

So one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is Jesus attempting to direct our attention to our pigs. And if we pay attention we’re a little freer, there’s a bit more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

Let’s head north to the churches in Galatia, a Roman province in the center of what is now Turkey, the recipients of Paul’s letter. Teachers had come into the congregations telling Gentiles that they needed to keep all the Law of Moses, including the ritual parts. Bacon & scallops: out! Sharing meals with Christians who don’t observe these standards: out! Paul: the ritual part was provisional until Christ. In Christ there is a new humanity: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.”

Hallelujah. But wait a minute. So much of our identity is wrapped up in our ethnicity, in our social status, in our sexuality. And Paul’s warning us that none of that can be automatically carried over. None of that can be the foundation of what “I” means; of what “we” means. When Nicodemus asked “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (Jn 3:4 [NRSV]), while he misunderstood Jesus’ words, he did understand the magnitude of the challenge.

Jesus’ image shows up in our liturgy for Holy Baptism: through the water of Baptism “we are reborn by the Holy Spirit” (p.306). Glorious. But it should leave us wondering: is there anything we don’t need to relearn? Pretty much the whole of the New Testament is an invitation to echo Dorothy’s famous line: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Not surprisingly, it’s easier to see in others what happens when we neglect Paul’s words. When in Rwanda Christian Hutus were killing Christian Tutsis and vice versa, we knew that something was wrong. I’m an American Christian. Christians in other parts of the world may wonder: is “Christian” determining what my being American means, or vice versa?

So one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is Jesus attempting to further shape how we negotiate our identities. And when we cooperate we gain a bit more freedom, there’s more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

Our reading from Isaiah is downright frightening. It’s from the words directed to those who returned from exile in Babylon. It’s frightening because some in Israel are still following the same practices that brought on the exile in the first place: sacrificing to other gods, ignoring the Mosaic Law, exploiting the poor. It’s sort of a limit case of what Paul’s worried about in our second reading: this crowd has no interest in the Lord shaping their identity. They’ve just added the Lord to their collection of deities, and continued with business as usual. They’re not asking, they’re not seeking; they’re stuck.

Mercifully, one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is that Jesus attempts to get us unstuck. Last Sunday’s reading gave us a lovely series of images of that, God’s Wisdom continually calling out to us, “rejoicing in his inhabited world, / and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:31). God’s Wisdom—we could equally say God’s Holy Spirit—is constantly at that, through the words of a lover, a friend, a passer-by, an enemy, through the natural world, through the words of Holy Scripture—and that’s just the beginning of the list. And when we cooperate we’re a little freer, there’s a bit more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

So, welcome to the Great Green Growing Season. Who knows where our Elder Brother Jesus will meddle, whether noticing this or that particular herd of pigs, wondering how our baptism might further transform our identities, employing various versions of WD-40 to get us unstuck. Such meddling is usually not initially welcome, but as we cooperate we gain some freedom, there’s more green for our neighbors and us, and Jesus’ heart is very glad.

Bread, Wine, Feet (Maundy Thursday, 4/17/2025)

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Readings

Passover. Our first reading marks its beginning. It celebrates the Lord’s power to save, to make a way where there is no way. It celebrates this God as champion of liberty, enemy of slavery. And here we are tonight, remembering how Jesus observed Passover that night.

Jesus did at least two things. He reinterpreted two of Passover’s symbols, the bread and the wine, to point to his coming death. Liberty, passing from slavery into freedom, demands more than defeating the current human Pharaoh. The underlying problem: our ancestral rebellion and distrust of God, and Jesus’ death deals with that. So, at every Eucharist, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”

That, it turns out, is the easy part. The harder part: changing our behavior so that we stop acting like little Pharaohs at every opportunity. So Jesus starts washing their feet and caps it with “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

“This is my body that is for you.… This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Two sides of the same coin.

What’s going on here? Toward the end of the Gospel reading we heard “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Washing each other’s feet, leaving behind the endless competition for status: that’s finally about love. As is, for that matter, “This is my Body; this is my Blood.” As the Gospel of John says elsewhere “God so loved the world…”

Toward the end of the Song of Songs we hear “Set me as a seal upon your heart, / as a seal upon your arm; / for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave” (8:6a). Pharaoh’s kingdom is powered by death; only love will defeat it.

Jesus’ Baptism–and Ours (1st Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/12/2025)

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This sermon was delivered at Holy Cross, Wisconsin Dells, in 2022.

Then as now we’ve never lacked idiots declaring—often with sandwich boards—that the end is near. Perhaps that’s why Luke gives us two long chapters of backstory so that we take this “idiot” John the Baptist seriously.

First there’s Elizabeth’s extraordinary pregnancy when she and Zechariah are “very old” (CEB). Then Mary’s even-more extraordinary pregnancy, being a virgin. John is born to Elizabeth, and his father Zechariah responds with a lengthy prophecy speaking of “a mighty savior” and of being able to serve God “without fear.” Mary, even before Jesus’ birth, sings what we know as the Magnificat:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

After Jesus’ birth the shepherds convey the words of the angel and the angelic military chorus, and Simeon and Anna add their witness in the temple. So, John the Baptist is no ordinary “idiot.”

John’s message is, I think, three-fold: (1) “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” God is coming to set things right. (2) Repent! When God comes it’s prudent not to be obviously part of the problem: stop hoarding, stop extorting! (3) Me, I’m just the warm-up act. It’s all very apocalyptic. The newspapers might have called it the “Apocalypse Now” tour. Things have to be pretty bad for apocalypse to sound like a good idea, and the crowds flocking to John give us a pretty good idea of life in the benevolent claws of the Roman Empire.

And, at the end of today’s Gospel: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In those words of the Divine Voice many hear echoes of three biblical texts:

The new king’s witness in Ps 2: “I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’” (Ps. 2:7).

The Lord’s introduction of the servant in the midst of exile: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1)

The Lord’s words to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Gen. 22:2).

John is hardly underplaying what’s going on here! And all three of these texts continue to echo in Luke’s Gospel. Psalm 2: Jesus sorting out his messianic role, which is essentially about what it means to live as a human being. Isaiah 42: Jesus assuming the mantle of the servant—and invites his followers to do so as well. What sort of service pleases God? Genesis 22: Jesus continuing on a trajectory over which he has limited control.

There are many things that we might explore in this and the other readings. Since we’ll be doing the renewal of baptismal vows in a few minutes I’ll focus on just two.

First, this salvation that everyone’s been celebrating—Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, Anna, John—doesn’t play out predictably. Luke’s mention of John’s imprisonment brutally yanks John offstage, and signals what Jesus is getting himself into. This is probably not what John had in mind when he proclaimed “every tree…that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And Simeon had warned Mary “and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” And the echo of the words to Abraham in the words to Jesus. Fast-forwarding to Paul, who started his career very certain of how God’s salvation was going to play out, being baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection means giving up our illusions of control.

Second, for all that Zechariah, Mary, John, etc. get right, there’s plenty that they don’t get right, plenty of room for ongoing repentance. Zechariah responds with so little faith to Gabriel’s announcement that Gabriel decides it would be better for all concerned if Zechariah would just shut up until John’s birth. The story we heard last week of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple: every parent’s nightmare, but also evidence that Mary and Joseph had no idea who was living under their roof. This pattern continues with the disciples, so that in Luke’s telling they chose the Last Supper to continue their argument about who’s the greatest (22:24-30). They all end up abandoning Jesus. So, when in the renewal of the Baptismal Covenant we say “I will, with God’s help,” Luke would probably want us to remember that “God’s help” includes graciously accepting our repentance. Jesus tells us to accept a brother’s or sister’s repentance even seven times a day (Lk 17:3-4); our firm hope is the God does likewise.

Let us close with the collect for Friday from Morning Prayer: “Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.”

Holy Week in Stereo (The Sunday of the Passion, 3/24/2024)

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Readings

One of my memorable high school discoveries was that of stereophonic sound. Before, recorded music had come through a single channel. Now it was coming through two channels—one for each ear. It was like being there!

Mono, stereo: something like that is at play in our dual focus as Christians in Jesus’ life and our life. It’s in today’s collect, as it is in many of our collects: “Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection…”

And it’s in our second lesson from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Scholars generally agree that Paul is using one of the earliest Christian hymns to Christ—it works pretty well laid out as poetry. And the reason Paul uses it is because he’s trying to encourage his listeners to think and act differently. Recall what he says just before the hymn: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. (Phil. 2:3-4).

A moving hymn—and we might not have known it had not Paul needed to talk to the Philippians about their own life together.

Jesus, the hymn says, “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” The pagan rulers—the Egyptians for millennia, the Mesopotamians more subtly, and now the Roman Caesars (as long as it didn’t get back to Rome) were happy to drape themselves in divinity to increase their authority, to increase—if that were possible—the perks of the job. And now here’s Jesus, the only one who could have legitimately done that, who refuses it, and says to his followers “So Jesus called them and said to them, “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. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mk. 10:42-45)

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Paul’s talking about the big-ticket items, the issues that can divide Christians, divide churches. But he’s equally talking about the small-ticket items, the small decisions we make almost without realizing that we’ve made decisions. Sunday morning comes: do I decide where to be based on what I think I need or want, or based on the interests of others, those with whom I’ve been made one Body in Jesus? During the week: which people do I stay in touch with, whose interests am I serving?

As we move into Holy Week we can listen in mono, attending only to Jesus’ story or attending only to our world. Let’s be intentional this year about listening in stereo: Holy Week’s simultaneously about Jesus and about how we live as Jesus’ followers. Listen in stereo: it’s not simply like being there, it’s being there.