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“Let anyone with ears listen!” (7th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/12/2026)

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Readings (Track 2)

How did the world come into being? Israel’s neighbors gave wildly diverse answers to that question. The first chapter of Genesis, echoing one of the Egyptian answers, tells us that God brought the world into being through the word. “Let there be light…” (v.3) “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place…” (v.9) “Let the earth bring forth living creatures…” (v.24). Whatever else we learn from that chapter, we learn that God’s word gets things done.

The psalms return repeatedly to the theme of the word’s power. Psalm 29, which we use every year at Jesus’ Baptism, is one of the better known: “The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; / the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor. / The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; / the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (vv.4-5).

So when the Word of the Lord—by now clearly with a capital ‘W’—assumes human flesh, we expect it to be powerful, irresistibly powerful. Anything less, and we ask the question John the Baptist asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt 11:3). We heard some of Jesus’ responses to this puzzle last week; in today’s reading we encounter another of his responses.

Jesus tells a story about a sower who sows on different sorts of soil. The seed fares rather badly in the first three soils, but produces yields of 30, 60, and 100-fold in the fourth.  The meaning of the story is not self-evident. Fortunately for the disciples—and us—Jesus explains: the sower is sowing the word of the kingdom. The story invites us to wonder about the ways in which the word of the kingdom and a seed are similar. A seed is at once powerful and vulnerable. It can multiply at astounding rates. (Those of us who are not farmers mostly experience this with weeds.) It is vulnerable—to birds, to thin soil, to inhospitable surroundings. The word of the kingdom—the announcement that the kingdom is near, the description of the life of the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount—is powerful. In the right soil: St Peter, Catherine of Sienna, Martin Luther King Jr. But it is surprisingly vulnerable: even John the Baptist struggles to accept it, and many of Jesus’ hearers don’t even try.

So the story tries to help Jesus’ followers understand the decidedly mixed reception Jesus is receiving. It is a hopeful story: there will be a spectacular harvest. It is a sober story: much of the seed sown will not bear fruit.

Nevertheless—why does God play it this way? It causes us constant confusion. We’re used to power being used to compel. God has that power, but chooses not to use it that way. Something about valuing our freedom. So the seed is vulnerable as well as being powerful.

But Matthew, Mark, and Luke include this story not simply because of its importance in understanding what was happening in Jesus’ ministry then, but also because the Word comes to us repeatedly, and the challenge comes to us as it did to the original audience: “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Frederick Bruner writes “Everything is focused on the essential: that the seed enter the soil—that the Word be heard for what it is, the Word of God. Nothing else matters as much.… The soil that regularly lets seed in, regularly gets fruit out; it is that simple. ‘Seed in, fruit out.’ The soil’s whole task can be summarized in one mandate: give the seed room!” (Matthew, A Commentary 2:7).

“Seed in, fruit out.” That’s a different vision of a life well-lived than our culture offers us. It’s a more hopeful vision of a life well-lived, for rather than splitting life into pre-productive, productive, and post-productive, it tells us that at any age we can receive the seed, give it room, bear fruit.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” This imperative is behind one of Archbishop Cranmer’s greatest contributions as he re-formed the English church in the 16th Century. The monks had the Divine Office; the laity had the stained glass windows. Cranmer boiled the eight daily services of the Divine Office down to two, simplified the schedule of readings, and made these two offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, the backbone parish life. So, open the Book of Common Prayer, and, voila, these come first. And today a variety of smartphone apps make the Daily Office even more available.

“Seed in, fruit out:” that sounds pretty passive. So, a different image. Our life as Christians is improv. We’re baptized into a long story: Abraham and Sarah, King David, Queen Esther, Mary and Joseph… Jesus’ harvest metaphor and books like The Revelation give glimpses of the story’s ending. Our challenge is to improvise, to live in ways that fit into and maybe enhance the story. And for that most of us need ideas, so Nehemiah in the Persian bureaucracy, Tobit exiled in Nineveh, Dorcas of Joppa and her sewing machine: good friends. So, the Daily Office.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” It turns out to be remarkably difficult to listen. William Stringfellow, a lawyer/lay theologian/activist who will probably enter Lesser Feasts and Fasts once the normal 50-year waiting period has past:

“Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word. It is very much like that when a person comes to the Bible…”

“Let anyone with ears listen!” And so we’re reminded, once again, that the challenges of relating to God and relating to each other are intimately related. Habits of careful listening (or not) in one sphere will bleed over into the other, for better or worse.

Listening to Jesus’ parable in today’s hyper-polarized context, two additional observations. First, we’d probably misread the parable if we assumed that any of us are only one sort of soil. Speaking personally, yeah, all four soils. Second, and related, it’s important to keep listening. Even the best of our improv can go off the rails remarkably quickly. It took the French revolution less than three years to get from the Declaration of the Rights of Man (8/26/1789) to the guillotine (4/25/1792).

But it would be a mistake to orient a sermon on this text toward exhortation. The bottom line: the Sower has come and is with us. There will be a rich harvest. Left to ourselves discouragement and despair might make sense—but we have not been left to ourselves. “I am with you always—he promised—to the end of the age.” So, today, this week, “Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Let’s do this together!” (6th Sunday after Pentecost; 7/5/2026)

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Readings (Track 2)

The oracle from the prophet Zechariah—our first reading—may sound familiar, for Matthew uses it to interpret Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week. Perhaps we’re hearing it today because Jesus’ self-description as humble (πραΰς) echoes Zechariah’s description of this victorious king (עָנִי/ πραΰς).

In any case, the oracle was probably puzzling to Zechariah’s hearers. Now only an insignificant bit of a vast Persian Empire, “Lo, your king comes to you; / triumphant and victorious is he” would sound like very good news, the restoration of David’s Empire. But “humble and riding on a donkey”? Better a war chariot; you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight! Zechariah doesn’t explain how this will work, but it’s probably a clue as to what ‘humble’ means. This king’s triumph and victory isn’t from having a bigger army, but from trust in Israel’s God, who earlier in the book had proclaimed “Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the LORD” (2:10).

And this humility, by which also we find our humanity in our dependence on God, is probably related to Zechariah’s addressing his hearers as “prisoners of hope.” Hope’s a hard sell, whether then or now. The majority opinion: better to have enough clout so that you don’t need to hope. But “enough clout” is a moving goalpost (never quite enough), and Israel’s God is trustworthy, so hope is something to lean into, rather than to avoid.

Let’s turn to today’s Gospel. Despite their best efforts, neither John the Baptist nor Jesus have managed to move the needle much towards repentance and renewal. Matthew juxtaposes two of Jesus’ responses to this. The first: Jesus’ description of “this generation:” like children who want too many contradictory things, or haven’t figured out or faced what they really want. For a modern treatment of the theme, recall C.S. Lewis’ novel Till we have faces: “How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?”

(Perhaps coincidently, the semi-continuous reading of Romans in our second reading has us hearing Paul’s description of the divided self. Remarkably, after twenty centuries commentators are still unable to agree as to whether Paul is describing his past [pre-Christian] or present [Christian] experience. If nothing else, this underscores the difficulty we humans have in giving—or recognizing—a useful account of ourselves!)

Jesus’ second response: a prayer—and here we’ll need to slow down. “The wise and the intelligent:” wisdom and intelligence per se are good (Deut 1:13; Hos 14:9 etc.). The problem is that they can be used in self-serving ways, as Isaiah in particular observed (19:11; 29:14), ways that can spell disaster for others. Matthew gives us an example of this at the beginning of his Gospel. Herod’s cruelty and paranoia were proverbial. “Better to be Herod’s pig than son” is commonly attributed to the emperor Augustus. But when asked where the Messiah was to be born, the wise and intelligent respond considering only their own interests, consigning the infants of Bethlehem to certain death. Later, as John’s Gospel recalls, the wise and intelligent—in this case, the high priest—reason “it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (11:50). So the Father “hiding” things in Jesus’ prayer turns out to be simply letting the effects of the decisions of the wise and intelligent play themselves out. Where the Father’s initiative comes in is in nevertheless revealing to infants, as we’ve watched in Jesus’ calling of Peter, Andrew, James, John…

By the way, circling back for a moment to this business of self-knowledge, if I’m reading these stories about Jesus’ opponents and thinking “What bad people!” I need to recall Paul’s words to  the Corinthians: “Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.… So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall” (1 Cor 10:6, 12).

“[N]o one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” That reflects the conflict that’s been building between the wise and intelligent and Jesus over what their people’s history is about, what the commandments are about. Jesus’ reading of the situation: his opponents have so painted themselves into a corner that they’re no longer hearing their own Scripture, e.g., today’s psalm: “The Lord is loving to everyone / and his compassion is over all his works.” So yes, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” (& 9:11) and repeatedly recalls Hosea’s “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (9:13; 12:7). In other words, as Matthew portrays it, the assumption of the wise and intelligent that they know enough about God to be able to write off Jesus is delusional.

Today some assume that they know enough about God to be able to evaluate the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, etc. as potential guides. Others assume that in proclaiming “Jesus is the only way to God” they know who that God is. Jesus’ words might give both groups pause. What Jesus’ words imply may be something like this: for everyone—the preacher included—discipleship is the lifelong process of coming to know the God of Jesus (Segundo Galilea).

“[A]nd anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” And what Jesus chooses: an open invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” What an invitation, and how easy to misunderstand. It’s not a rest in which I have everything under control. It’s not a rest in which I have enough clout that I don’t need to hope. It’s rest because I’m not trying to play god, and am learning—however slowly—to trust Jesus’ God.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart…” Other teachers would talk about the yoke of the Torah or of the commandments; “my yoke” would have raised eyebrows. It follows from Jesus’ unique relationship to the Father, so that back in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly says “You have heard it said…but I say.” But Jesus puts this unique relationship at the service of his hearers: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” rather than taking it as a reason for separation or self-protection. “Gentle and humble in heart” indeed.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I suspect Jesus throws in things like this also to see if we’re paying attention.  Easy, light? In the Sermon on the Mount we heard: “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life” (7:14). Easy, light? I suspect Matthew wants us to wonder about that, wondering that might take us in a variety of directions. I wonder if in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole it isn’t something like this: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” because we’re doing this together.

Triumph and victory arriving not in a war chariot, but “humble and riding on a donkey.” An invitation to double down on hope, rather than seek enough clout to leave hope behind. That’s also the invitation of the Table around which we’ll soon be gathering. Everyone is welcome; there is room for everyone; there is enough for everyone. For Jesus continues to extend the invitation: let’s do this together.

The God who makes a way where there is no way (5th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/28/2026)

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Readings (Track 1)

Looking back at God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, one of the psalms: “Your way was in the sea, / and your paths in the great waters, / yet your footsteps were not seen” (77:19). One reader summarizes: “God makes a way where there is no way.” God makes a way where there is no way: that’s perhaps the most important thing to learn from our first reading.

The story gives us something of both God’s and Abraham’s perspectives; let’s look at both.

God’s perspective. “After these things God tested Abraham.” Why a test, and why such an extreme test? Recall the project as announced in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s future with the human family is riding on Abraham. As Mark Twain put it, “Some folk say not to put all your eggs in one basket. I say: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!”

Why such an extreme test? Well, recall Abraham’s servant’s words: “The LORD has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.” So is Abraham serving God for God’s sake, or for the flocks and herds? Throughout the history of Israel and the Church this has been one of the recurrent core questions. Pick your favorite worst moment in the Church’s history, and this issue is probably at the core. What was the bottom line in the Spanish conquest of the Americas: God or Gold? We have “In God we trust” on our currency. Really? And in which god are we trusting? As the Book of Job frames the question, is God worth serving for nothing? At least, please God, may Abraham, the Father of the faithful, get it right.

So I think we hear sheer relief on God’s part toward the end of the story: “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.’”

No less intense, of course, was the experience from Abraham’s perspective.

Our issue, how God could command human sacrifice, would not have been Abraham’s. While prohibited in the Law of Moses, it does not seem to have died out in popular religion until the destruction of the Temple in the 6th Century BC.

Rather, the issue both for Abraham and the Bible itself: what happens when the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict. “I will make of you a great nation;” and just how is the sacrifice of Isaac part of that?

Gideon —one of the judges—with God’s promise to deliver Israel from the Midianites. And what does God command? Get rid of most of your army.

Ahaz —King of Judah— caught between a very hungry Egyptian Empire and an equally hungry Assyrian Empire. Isaiah the prophet issues God’s command: call all your ambassadors home, tear up the mutual assistance treaties, trust in God alone.

Jesus, with “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” ringing in his ears. If there was ever a mandate for action, there it was. And so he meets the tempter in the wilderness, and the command of God as recorded in the Law of Moses vetoes all the tempter’s suggestions for putting the Kingdom on the fast track.

If Jesus is not going to turn stones into bread, not going to let the angels deliver him very miraculously & very publicly, not going to negotiate with the one credible power broker this side of heaven, what future does Jesus’ Kingdom have?

God has given us some breathtaking promises. An almost inevitably —that’s why there are so many stories of this in the Bible— we encounter situations in which the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict.

In countries where it’s dangerous to be a Christian, Christian parents face this challenge. Raise our son or daughter as a Christian, or let the local mosque/temple/party headquarters handle their formation? In other contexts there’s still the challenge captured by Thomas More in Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons: “But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought…” Nevertheless we raise our children to be more like Thomas More than, say, Richard Rich, whose perjury at More’s trial greased the skids for his execution.

Sometimes it’s more narrowly focused, some version of the warning with which last week’s Gospel ended: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

In these situations the rationale for the command may be opaque, without rhyme or reason. We need the parish around us in such moments, not only to keep us confusing God’s command with our own fears, but also, when it is God’s command, to remind us that Abraham, Gideon & Jesus don’t make bad company.

So we pick up the knife, pick up the fire, and walk with Isaac up the hill. What happens when we get there is not in our control. Abraham got a divine voice and a ram. Gideon sent the Midianites packing. Hezekiah, Ahaz’ son, was rescued from the Assyrian army. Jesus got three nails, a cross, and a crown to go with it. And on the third day that turned out to be the case of God making a way where there was no way. What is in our control is our obedience, our witness.

All well and good —some of us may be thinking— unless you’re the ram. The Jews, out of their generations of experience in serving God “for nothing” have a story about this.

Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said: Nothing of this sacrifice was lost. The ashes were dispersed in the Temple’s sanctuary; the sinews David used as cords for his harp; the skin was claimed by the prophet Elijah to clothe himself; as for the two horns, the smaller one called the people together at the foot of Mt Sinai, and the larger one will resound one day announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[1]

And so we follow this God who makes a way where there is no way into the coming week.

[1] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.

Sarah and that “God’s Story + My Story = One Story” Idea (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/21/2026)

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Readings (Track 1)

Sam Kamaleson, a pastor from the Indian subcontinent with whom I worked at World Vision, used to talk about God’s story (one hand) and my story (the other hand) becoming one story (fingers interlaced). Easier said than done; today’s lessons give us an opportunity to think about it.

God’s story. Three weeks ago (Trinity Sunday) our first lesson was the creation story, seven days of God declaring this is good, that is good, the whole thing very good. It’s a very different perspective than the Babylonian (creation itself and humans in particular formed from the corpses of defeated gods of chaos) or the Greek (only a second-rate deity would be fool enough to deal with matter). No: creation is good, the material world is good.

We can pick up the story in Eucharistic Prayer C:

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

We should be, I think, surprised that the prayer doesn’t continue with “And so You pulled the plug on the whole thing” or “And so You decided to hang out with the dolphins for the next few thousand years.” Surprisingly, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the beginning of a pilot project aimed at what the Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world. God comes to Abraham and Sarah: what might we do together? God’s story + their story becoming one story. That’s the story contained in the Old Testament, the story rebooted when God takes on human flesh in Jesus, the story we enter with our baptism.

It’s probably fair to say that from Sarah’s perspective the project didn’t start out well. She had not borne Abraham an heir, to the point that, bowing to custom, she presented Abraham with her Egyptian slave Hagar so that she might produce an heir by proxy. Hagar conceived, and, understandably, passed up no chance to remind everyone that she was the birth mother of Abraham’s heir. So Sarah had an enemy, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Until, finally, God promised her a son, and delivered on that promise Now Sarah can do something about her enemy. Foreshadowing the treatment her people will receive from the Egyptians some generations later, she demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. And Abraham does so—only after receiving God’s promise to look after Hagar and Ishmael.

And in the story we’ve just heard God keeps that promise to Hagar, preserving Ishmael’s imperiled life as God will preserve Isaac’s imperiled life in the next story. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

The Jews, descended from Isaac, and the Arabs, descended from Ishmael, already in the OT are often at odds. And here Sarah’s God is providing a well for Ishmael. The Jews have a legend about that: “the angels appeared against Ishmael before God. They said, ‘Wilt Thou cause a well of water to spring up for him whose descendants will let Thy children of Israel perish with thirst?’ And God: “well, yes.”

God’s story + my story = one story. For Sarah in this episode, not so much, because she’s hit one of the really difficult bits: that someone is my enemy doesn’t mean they’re God’s enemy, that God listens to me when I pray Ps 86 (today’s psalm) and listens to my enemy when they pray Ps 86.

This is a difficult enough bit that the OT keeps coming back to it. Here are a couple more stories.

Some generations later Moses has led Israel out of Egypt, and Joshua has just brought the people across the Jordan to take possession of the promised land. Reading from the fifth chapter of Joshua:

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (Jos 5:13-14)

“Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” “Neither.”

Some centuries later the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Aram (modern Syria) are at war. In a legend from that period, the king of Aram learns that his recent raids have been unsuccessful because the prophet Elisha has been warning the Israelite king about them. He sends out a large force to surround Elisha’s city and capture Elisha. Elisha sees the force, and asks God to blind the soldiers. God does so, and Elisha leads them to the Israelite capital. At this point the Israelite king enters. Reading from the sixth chapter of 2 Kings:

When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” He answered, “No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.” So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. (2Ki 6:21-23)

So when Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies as an integral part of what God’s kingdom is about, this isn’t new. Jesus is simply reporting how he’s observed the Father acting “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—not to mention Hagar, the reply to Joshua, Elisha’s treatment of the Aramean raiders.

So when Jesus sends his disciples out to announce this kingdom, he understandably anticipates opposition, because everyone knows that right-thinking people try to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Right-thinking people will take Barabbas over Jesus any day.

“But this love of enemies business can’t be that important to God. If it were, God would impose it.” But that takes us back to the creation story. God thinks that human freedom is good. God thinks that the church’s freedom is good. So God does what God can do, like the woman in one of Jesus’ parables, putting leaven in the dough in the hope of the whole thing rising. God continues to stretch out the now nail-pierced hand to us: how can we make My story and your story one story?

God’s story; my story; one story. There are many ways that invitation will come to us in the coming week. Some of them may have to do with how we choose to respond to our enemies. May our choices bring God joy.

Abram: God’s call, God’s project (2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/7/2026)

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Readings

Today’s readings pretty much set the preacher’s agenda: faith—the faith of Abraham Paul celebrates, the faith shown by the woman with the hemorrhages in the center of Matthew’s story. So let’s attend to how Genesis chooses to start the story.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”

Genesis opens with the creation story we heard last week. The following chapters narrate the repeated human distrust (lack of faith) that results in the expulsion from the Garden, Cain’s murder of Abel, the violence that brings on the flood, the tower of Babel project thwarted by God’s confusing their language. A fellow named Lamech captures it:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Our world. And, as the flood story made clear, simple punishment does nothing to change the human heart. What can God do?

Parenthesis: religion is often described as trying to answer our questions: Why do we live? Why do we die? What are we supposed to do? What may we hope? Holy Scripture has a different starting point. It speaks of God and the challenge God faces: a world of beauty filled with creatures bearing God’s own image—often acting as though they’re set on auto-destruct. How to heal this world? If we have questions for which we want answers, so does God!

In God’s initial address to Abraham there’s a fundamental shift in God’s strategy, from dealing with the whole human race, to focusing in a particular way on one family: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham and Sarah are the beginning of a pilot project, not because God doesn’t care about the world, but because God’s strategy is to influence, to bless the world through this family. As in any pilot project the point is to show that something can and does work, in this case, God’s vision for what authentically human life looks like. This is what a human community looks like that isn’t set on self-destruct. The reason for Israel’s existence—and for the Church’s existence, for that matter—is the healing of the world. As William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940s said, “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

But back to Abraham. Almost the first event after that divine call is…a famine. The folk preaching a simple theology of prosperity (obey God and God will make you rich) really do need to read their own Bibles. Abraham obeys God and arrives in Canaan just in time for…a famine.

So they continue south to Egypt in search of food.

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.” (Vv. 11-13)

That really should have worked. As the brother, Abraham can control access to Sarah, stringing along suitors until they give up or the famine is over. But Murphy’s Law kicks in: Pharaoh takes an interest in Sarah, and what Pharaoh wants, Pharaoh gets.

Now at this point the silences in the text are truly remarkable. We aren’t told what Abraham makes of the situation: he’s lost Sarah; he’s gained a lot of wealth. We aren’t told what Sarah makes of the situation: Abraham or Pharaoh? Nor are we told how long this goes on. But as the story continues, it’s clear that what is decisive is not what Abram or Sarai make of the situation, but what God makes of it.

But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.” (Vv. 17-19)

We began our reading with that extraordinary divine call. At the end of our reading both God and Abraham have new problems. Abraham: this divine call apparently does not mean that life’s going to be a bed of roses. There’s still plenty of room for famines and rapacious rulers. “Would it have been that difficult for God to have put me in a less hostile environment?” How am I supposed to trust a God who apparently leaves me so unprotected?

But if Abraham has a problem, God has an equally serious problem. God’s made this promise to Abraham: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But it turns out that Abraham is quite prepared to lie and offer up his own wife to save his own skin, putting at risk not only his own reputation, but God’s. All those plagues on Pharaoh’s house are not a very promising beginning to “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I’ve described it as God’s problem; today’s Gospel gives us another possible angle. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Sinners—like Matthew the tax collector, like Abraham, like us.

What do we see in the Egypt story? A God whose call does not translate into an easy life for God’s people, a people of God who can cause profound embarrassment for God. How much does God love us? Enough to be this vulnerable…and we’re only at the 12th chapter of the Bible. And it’s in this context that our faith can grow.

“I am the Way:” Jesus’ invitation to continual learning (5th Sunday of Easter 5/3/2026)

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Readings

In this morning’s collect we prayed “Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life…” That’s also the collect nudging the preacher: there’s your focus.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This text often shows up in discussing other religions, and, at worst, gets reduced to a flag we wave at others. It, is, indisputably, narrow, and so aligned with the other Gospels. This year we’re reading Matthew, so it’s worth recalling the way these words restate what we hear towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (7:13-14)

Or again,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell– and great was its fall!” (7:24-27)

Nevertheless, notice that Jesus here may be making a somewhat different point. Thomas had just asked “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It sounds like a request for some sort of map. But now that Jesus is onstage, Jesus is the map. The Gospel of John put it this way in its prologue: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17). Jesus, the living person, not some abstraction, whether Jesus’ teaching or Jesus’ action, is the map, the way, and the truth, and the life. So it’s a call, an invitation, to an ongoing relationship, to ongoing learning.

Why ongoing? Recall the observation “We see things not as they are but as we are.” So any significant learning is going to involve transforming who we are. This is why we hear Paul saying “I appeal to you…to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God– what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:1-2).

Coming to the Father—back to Jesus’ statement—is a process of continual following, continual transformation. Paul gets it right: it’s not a head trip. “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Growing pains: if we’re doing it right, they’re ongoing.

Thomas thought that Jesus could give us a map apart from Jesus himself. Philip’s request, “show us the Father,” exemplifies a different misunderstanding, as though there were distance between Jesus and the Father, Jesus the little mystery, the Father the big mystery, or, in one of its variants, Jesus as Good Cop, the Father as Bad Cop. No. Jesus and the Father: it’s the same mystery, the same luminous mystery in which we’re invited to enter.

Continued learning, continued transformation. For example? We understand that God is not more like a man than a woman. But our traditional language (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”) can confuse that. How do we respond? Again, what does it mean to be Christian now in this place? Also the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding pushes that question toward the front burner. Discernment is always a challenge: where is God inviting my/our focus?

But back to Thomas. The problem with any map, even God-given maps, is that we’re tempted to so focus on them that we stop listening to the Giver. Since in our first reading Stephen gets in trouble over what he says about the temple, let’s think about the temple. Exodus chapters 25-31 describe how the tabernacle—the mobile temple—is to be built; chapters 35-40 describe its building. And large portions of Leviticus and Numbers describe its staff, its sacrifices, etc. So the temple’s important.

But it doesn’t take long for Israel to start assuming that as long as the temple is operating, they can neglect, say, the “love your neighbor” or the “love the foreigner” part. This comes to a head in Jeremiah’s time:

“Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’… Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’– only to go on doing all these abominations? (Jer 7:4, 9-10)

The temple is a gift. But if we so focus on the gift that we stop learning from the Giver, it doesn’t end well. In the time of Jeremiah, “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell– and great was its fall!” That would be the Babylonians destroying the temple, about 600 years before Jesus.

But back to Stephen. What if we hear today’s psalm (Psalm 31) on Stephen’s lips? Surrounded by a crowd right at the boiling point, he is not put to shame. “Look…I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” On the one hand he isn’t rescued from the stoning. On the other, he is rescued from the greater danger: he doesn’t become like his enemies. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

“Be my strong rock” the psalmist prayed. Jesus: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” Stephen showed himself to be one of the wise. Jesus’ words as found in Matthew’s Gospel, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (5:43-44), Stephen had heard and acted on these, and received the vision for which so many have prayed: “Look…I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

A couple more observations and I’ll close.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” An invitation to continual learning from Jesus.

“I appeal to you…to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God– what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:1-2).

In our second reading Peter captures this with his “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.” And our temple theme from Stephen’s story moves centerstage: “Come to him [Jesus], a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” God’s got a mobile temple again—in the form of every local parish. To do what? “…to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” “Spiritual sacrifices”—we might translate “sacrifices inspired/powered by the Spirit”—that’s open ended. Since we’re reading Matthew this year we might recall:

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Mat 5:14-16).

So much that we need to keep learning from Jesus. Keep that in mind also as you look for your new rector. Look for someone who’s learning. Look for someone with whom you can continue learning.

Learning Holiness (3rd Sunday of Easter, 4/19/2026)

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Readings

Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Even though only Luke’s Gospel narrates Jesus’ ascension, all four Gospels wrestle with how Jesus can be present to us now. Mark, the earliest Gospel, is perhaps the most profound. Recall the young man’s words to the women at the tomb: “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (16:7). Work at doing what Jesus told us; everything else will sort itself out. In Matthew we hear “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (18:20). In John Jesus speaks repeatedly of the Holy Spirit (“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” [14:16]). Luke tells us about two disciples on the road to Emmaus who encounter Jesus as Scripture is opened and bread is broken, a one-time event, but equally—transparently—each local community’s gathering around Word and Table.

That’s good, because we need that ongoing interaction with Jesus for any number of reasons, one of which we encounter in our reading from Peter’s first letter, including the verses just before our reading started:

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1:13-16).

We need that ongoing interaction with Jesus also because Peter’s “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors” is often a good description of our notions of holiness, righteousness, goodness, etc. Since we’re reading Matthew this year, recall the Sermon on the Mount, in which, early on, we hear “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). Jesus’ audience would assume that high on the list of what righteousness looks like, of what distinguishes God’s people from others would be practices like keeping the Sabbath and observing the Mosaic food laws. But Jesus says nothing about the Sabbath or the food laws in the entire lengthy Sermon. The practices that Jesus thinks should distinguish God’s people? The love of enemies. The absence of anxiety. “And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (5:47) “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things” (6:31-32a).

So instead of the Pharisees’ checklist we use Jesus’ checklist? Hardly, for neither the Pharisees at their best nor Jesus were using checklists, but rather examples to spur reflection. Why? First, it’s God’s character and conduct define holiness, righteousness, etc. And Paul’s “For now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1Co 13:12) applies also to our knowledge of God. So, our holiness or righteousness is always going to be partial, an approximation. That’s bad news if we want a checklist. It’s good news as long as we keep learning, for the quest for holiness is the quest—at God’s invitation—to enter ever more deeply into the inexhaustible mystery and glory that is God.

Reflection, second, because holiness, righteousness: in specific situations context matters. So, again, Matthew’s first story features Joseph, who’s identified as righteous, and who’s about to dismiss Mary quietly. It takes an angel to help Joseph understand his context (Mary’s pregnancy), and, thank God, he listens.

So we get admonitions like this from Paul:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God– what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2).

“Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph 5:10).

Let me come at this another way. From our first reading: “’Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, “Repent…’” That might suggest that repentance need only happen once. But when, centuries later, Martin Luther put up a list of 95 theses (propositions) to be discussed, he opened with this one: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” That might sound rather dreary. But read alongside Paul and what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount, it’s an invitation to continual learning. Repentance, the profoundly hopeful recognition that with God’s help we’re not stuck; we can do better.

Recalling Paul’s “For now we see in a mirror, dimly,” there’s plenty of room for doing better.

And this is also why we hear this from Peter: “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” Why? Even with the best intentions we hurt each other, and asking and granting forgiveness come easier if there’s love. Equally important, as a learning community, we need that love to listen deeply, also to hear the silences.

I like the saying attributed to Mark Twain: “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from making bad decisions.” In the Apostles’ Creed we say “I believe in…the forgiveness of sins.” That should be freeing us up to acknowledge our bad decisions—and learn from them.

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly.” Sometimes because we can’t do any better, sometimes because we rather like it that way. But the Spirit that brooded over that formless void at creation rarely leaves things as they are, even if the change is at a glacial pace. From today’s Gospel: “Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.” But the two (male) disciples ignored that. The same chief priests and leaders who crucified Jesus had always told them that women were unreliable witnesses… The chief priests and leaders were wrong about Jesus but right about women? Seeing in a mirror, dimly—on steroids. It took us until 1976 to ordain women.

“You shall be holy, for I am holy.” We’re still learning what that means. But Jesus promises at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20), so we don’t need to be learning alone.

Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Nurturing trust in a perilous world (2nd Sunday of Easter, 4/12/2026)

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Readings

Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Today’s psalm, Psalm 16, is about trust. Various psalms focus on trust—Psalm 23 is the best known—not because trust is easy, but because it doesn’t come easily. Fear narrows our focus, produces a sort of amnesia. Trust often demands attention, mindfulness.

“Protect me.” The danger is unspecified, which is fine: there are so many situations in which we need this psalm. The psalmist nurtures trust by recalling God’s past actions: “My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; / indeed, I have a goodly heritage.” A few years back I put together a list of people, events, places—mostly people—evidence for God’s trustworthiness. I return to it periodically, add to it periodically. If you don’t already have something like it, I’d encourage you to try it in whatever form (pictures, songs, etc.). The psalmist has it right: “Bless the Lord, O my soul / and forget not all his benefits” (103:2).

Because God’s proved trustworthy in the past the psalmist can entrust to God their future:

My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices;
my body also shall rest in hope.

For you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor let your holy one see the Pit.

You will show me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy,
and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.

In contrast to Peter’s reading in our first lesson—we’ll come back to it—the psalmist isn’t talking about what happens after death. “The path of life, fullness of joy:” that’s for this life.

Now, just before Lent we were hearing Matthew 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. We rarely hear most of Matthew 6, which focuses on God’s generosity and our trust, ending with “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt6:31-33). If we ask where Jesus is getting this, psalms like Psalm 16 are surely part of the answer.

In today’s Collect we prayed “Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.” That’s—appropriately—a pretty general petition. Psalm 16 encourages me to notice the substantial overlap between faith and trust, to hear “show forth in their lives” echoing Jesus’ teaching back in the Sermon on the Mount. Because God is reliably generous and has our back (Matthew 6, echoing Psalm 16), we can trust and leave anger, lust, revenge, and hatred of the enemy to the gentiles (Matthew 5).

Peter at Pentecost, of course, reads Psalm 16 differently, a reminder—in case we needed it—that Scripture, the word of the living God, can speak to us in different ways. God’s Easter action broke open David’s words spectacularly, like one of those geodes on display at the Cave of the Mounds. “’He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” Alleluia? Alleluia!

But, we might wonder, the psalm’s “Protect me” followed by flogging, beating, crucifixion? So Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer is important: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Mt26:39). “Protect me” is still there, but it’s one of those situations in which trust means it’s not the only petition that’s there.

And this, in turn, means that we don’t know how God will answer our “Protect me” prayers. God bats last: that we know. Will it look more like the psalmist’s “My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; /
indeed, I have a goodly heritage” or Jesus’ cross and resurrection? That’s actually familiar territory for God’s people. Recall Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego facing Nebuchadnezzar with his idol and fiery furnace: our God may or may not deliver us; we’re not bowing down to your idol (Dan 3:17-18). Mark remembers Jesus promising a combination: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age– houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions– and in the age to come eternal life” (Mar 10:29-30).

Our second reading from 1 Peter lets us watch one way this can play out. Peter’s hearers are suffering “various trials.” And Peter celebrates that they “are being protected by the power of God” so that the trials will prove their faith genuine.

We’d need a number of sermons to begin to do justice to today’s Gospel, and, having focused on Psalm 16, I’m not going to try. Nevertheless, a couple notes on John’s closing (“But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”).

We watch that “through believing you may have life in his name” play out in the Gospel itself. Imagine: a whole week between the two narrated Sundays with most of the disciples all “Alleluia” and Thomas “Some evidence, please!” And after a week of that they’re still together. Just before the Passion, Jesus to these disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Joh 15:12). And, however imperfectly, they’d done it. They’re still together, and that’s life.

Let’s pull back the camera. “Through believing you may have life in his name.” Jesus’ resurrection: God’s verdict that the guy who proclaimed “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt5:3) was not certifiable. Anger, lust, hatred: that’s death. Giving anger, lust, etc. a pass, loving one’s enemy: that’s life. The New Testament, in other words, leaves no space between believing that Jesus is the Messiah and trusting, putting our weight, on his teaching.

“Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.” I would invite us to do two things this week. Look for ways to nurture our capacity to trust this God. Remember our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world—including, these days, the Middle East—who are also praying this prayer. What does Jesus’ “love one another” mean?

Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Acts 13:38-39: A Holy Week Meditation

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Toward the end of the sermon Luke gives Paul in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia we hear “Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” (Act 13:38-39 NRSV) The theme of forgiveness of sins is common in Acts; what’s Paul (Luke) talking about in v.39?

Fitzmyer’s commentary (1998) confirms that this is an old question. “It is sometimes said that Luke is here introducing a nuance, so that he makes Paul declare that the Mosaic Law would justify people from some things but not from all…it may be a misreading of Luke to insist on that nuance, as some interpreters have done” (pp.518-519). OK, if that’s not what Luke is doing, what is Luke doing?

Perhaps Lohfink’s chapter “Dying for Israel” in his Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is relevant. The people’s leadership’s decisive rejection of God’s eschatological messenger has created a new situation—and we’re off the Mosaic map (no paragraph that starts “Should you happen to murder God’s eschatological messenger, prepare these sacrifices…”). Recalling one of Jesus’ thinly veiled parables as recorded in Luke, after the vineyard tenants kill the owner’s “beloved son,” the owner “will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (20:16). If that’s the context/situation, the possibility of forgiveness becomes the question.

Nor is this simply a Jewish question. Pilate is our stand-in, equally culpable despite his clumsy attempt to distance himself from the whole affair (“So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted” (Luk 23:24).

The evening before, as Luke records:

“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.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” (22:19-20)

And here I pass the mic to Lohfink: “Therefore in this moment Jesus and Israel were faced with an entirely new situation, and that new situation demanded a new interpretation. To argue that Jesus never spoke before about his blood, about substitution and atonement, is not to the point. It assumes that the existence of individuals and of nations is carried on outside history. But the new interpretation Jesus gives in this very moment when the people of God is at the point of squandering its election for the sake of the world does not happen just anywhere and at any time. It happens at the Passover meal, at one of the holiest hours of the Jewish year. Jesus interprets his death as a final and definitive saving decree of God. Israel’s guilt, concentrated in Jesus’ death, is thus answered by God: he does not withdraw election from his people but instead truly allows that people to live, even though it has forfeited its life. That is precisely what the Bible means by ‘atonement’” (p.261).

Spirituality 101 (5th Sunday in Lent, 3/22/2026)

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Readings

“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Paul’s words from our second lesson give us a way of focusing what’s at stake in the other readings. The other readings, in turn, remind us that Paul isn’t spouting theory, but capturing Israel’s experience with God, before & after Jesus’ resurrection.

Our first reading comes from Israel’s exile in the bowels of the Babylonian Empire. To get into the spirit of the text, had our 2003 invasion of Iraq gone very badly, we could have spent the last twenty years with a large portrait of Saddam Hussein displayed at every major intersection, on every dashboard, and —if we were prudent— in our living rooms. What hymnody the Israelites are producing is coming out like this: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” This is not a faith you either can or want to pass on to the next generation. The portrait of the exiles in this text is a vivid picture of “flesh,” flesh as human possibilities. “Flesh” is not evil, but it is limited, vulnerable, and tends to leave God out of the equation.

And this is precisely where Ezekiel’s vision picks up, taking the people’s self-description with utter seriousness. Precisely there, where hope has flat-lined, the Spirit begins to work. And before long there is a very large army. To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

John gives us a story within a story. The inner story: Jesus, Martha, Mary & Lazarus. To set the mind on the flesh is death; in situations like this one, flesh can see no other option than death. What Jesus comes up against, particularly with Martha, is the natural assumption that we all know how the real world works, so that when Jesus shows up in the real world the most he can do is participate in the grieving process.

It’s the most natural thing in the world. We assume we know how the world works, and then sort out whether we think there’s a god, who Jesus was, etc., all within the constraints of how we know the world works.

Mercifully, Jesus doesn’t let himself be trapped, even by Martha’s theology, at once pristine and dismissive: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” —not that it’s going to do our brother any good right now. He goes to the tomb: “Lazarus, come out!”

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa in the 4th Century, used to say that any god we could understand was not worth worshipping. Well, we certainly don’t understand Jesus. Why the delay in coming to Bethany? It’s there in the barely veiled complaint/greeting the sisters give Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Between this and last week’s text (“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”), some fear a darker possibility: we’re just props for an egotistical god. No. “Jesus began to weep.” Whatever is going on, the motor is God’s love.

Any god we could understand is not worth worshipping. And the God worth worshipping —my corollary— is going to turn our notions of the world upside down. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”(Hamlet 1.5.168-169) The C of E clergyman J. B. Phillip’s Your God is too small is as relevant to us now as when it was published in the mid twentieth century.

That, too briefly, is the inner story. The outer story is Jesus vs. the religious leaders. Setting the mind on the flesh is death —not only ours, but the death of others. In this case, Jesus. Recall Caiaphas’ brutal logic:“it is better…to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

That brutal logic still reigns. Affordable drugs? At the cost of the pharmaceuticals’ profits? Curb global warming? At the cost of the energy companies’ profits? So it’s just about evil CEOs and Boards? No: how long would the shareholders tolerate reduced profits? It is better that one man/the vulnerable die than that we try getting off the tiger’s back.

“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Ezekiel and John have let us watch how that plays out. Flesh qua human possibilities: death & despair, both for ourselves and for others. Spirit. Not any spirit, but the Spirit who enfleshed Ezekiel’s bones to create a formidable army, the Spirit poured out by the risen Christ.

Ezekiel’s bones, Lazarus’ bones, and too many situations today where fear, anger, and the brutal logic of every-man-for-himself have the upper hand. As the psalmist put it “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord!” Too many situations in which our immediate response is some version of Martha’s “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”

Last Sunday we heard Paul’s “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” Whether at the family, local, or national level, what might the Spirit want to do with our bones? As in Ezekiel’s experience, the Spirit isn’t bound by our menus (“It’s either X, Y, or Z.” “It’s either what this or that caucus in Congress wants.”) As in the Exodus, the Spirit is good at making a way where there is no way.