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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.

Walking by faith, anticipating sight (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/16/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1)

“…for we walk by faith, not by sight.” You can get a decent sermon out of that line from Paul. But some care is needed, since it’s vulnerable to misunderstanding and abuse. Misunderstanding: thinking that the invisible per se is more valuable than the visible. Abuse: recall Orwell in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Bluntly, when we talk about faith, what distinguishes us from the folk who wear aluminum foil hats to keep the aliens from controlling their minds?

It turns out that appeals to the senses show up at some key moments in Scripture. For example:

Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” (Matt. 11:4-6)

[From the beginning of John’s first letter:] We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– (1 Jn. 1:1)

Not to mention the very visible harvest and fully-grown plant in Jesus’ parables. In the middle of the last century the then Archbishop of Canterbury captured it well: “Christianity is the most avowedly materialistic of all the great religions.”

So when does sight or, more broadly, the senses, become problematic?

First, in our lesson from the Book of Samuel, the prophet Samuel anoints David. Working through the line of older brothers we hear:

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Appearances can give incomplete information. This is a point the Book of Proverbs, solidly empirical in orientation, makes repeatedly. You see a wealthy person. Wealthy through hard work or through theft? Can’t judge by appearances. You see a poor person. Poor through sloth or oppression? Can’t judge by appearances.

(Paul uses the same outward appearance/heart contrast in v.12. I wonder if he is alluding to the David story, which might align Paul with David and “those who boast in outward appearance” with David’s older—and rejected—brothers.)

Second, we’re in a story, and where we are in the story can determine what’s visible or invisible. That appears to be what’s in play in that line from Paul with which we started. Here it is in context: “So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord–for we walk by faith, not by sight.” In this part of the story the Lord’s out of sight, so, faith.

In the previous chapter, “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18). The glory is now invisible—but still worth attending to!

And story (time) is central to the logic of both of Jesus’ parables. Someone scatters seed, and for a good stretch nothing seems to be happening. But, oh, the harvest. Again, the proverbial mustard seed. Looking at the seed, we’d write it off. But just wait!

So, reliance on sight can be problematic because it gives incomplete information or because what’s visible depends on where we are in the story. The third reason is more profound—and more challenging. God coming in Jesus’ vulnerable flesh which climaxes in Jesus’ death and resurrection profoundly recasts what it means to see glory. So in the Gospel of John’s vocabulary Jesus being glorified and Jesus being crucified can be synonymous.

Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn. 12:23-24).

And this in turn shapes Paul’s understanding of glory. Recall what we heard earlier:

…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:10-11)

When I cited this earlier I focused on the “visible” part. Now notice what is visible: a cross-shaped combination of death and life. If the Corinthians aren’t paying attention they’ll conclude that Paul isn’t to be taken seriously because there’s little worldly glory in his ministry. But that’s to miss the point. If the crucified Jesus is the central revelation of God’s glory, then what we look for when we look for glory needs serious readjustment.

Where does this leave us? Briefly:

First, “the Lord looks on the heart.” We do well to remember the limits of our perceptions. And faced with decisions we pray for guidance.

Second, where we are in the story can determine what we can see or not. As often as not I find this very good news. With the problems we face “you can’t get there from here” can haunt me. Jesus’ parable reminds me that there are situations in which I not only don’t need to see—I don’t need to understand. “…and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

Third, Paul’s cross-shaped combination of death and life: the losses, the deaths we experience: united to Jesus’ story these can also make life visible. This isn’t a matter of technique; it can encourage our hope and patience.

Earlier in the letter to the Corinthians the issue of letters of recommendation comes up, and Paul doubles down on the visible: “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.” Paraphrasing slightly, “We don’t need no stinking letters.” That’s Paul’s hope for Corinth…and for North Lake. “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.”

Love complicates things (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

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Readings (Track 1)

In the middle of Jesus’ argument with the scribes he tells this short parable: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Plunder: that’s an intriguing image for what Jesus is about. For what God’s about, for that matter. The Exodus: plunder on a national scale. The mob stirred up by Paul and Silas’ presence in Thessalonica didn’t get it entirely wrong: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). No wonder Paul’s regularly in trouble—as we heard in our second reading.

But it’s not plunder for the sake of plunder (“My pile of loot’s bigger than yours!”), but, whether at the Exodus or in Galilee, for human freedom, restoring it so that it can be used well. Pulling back the camera to take in all of Mark’s Gospel, whether in the exorcisms, the healings, the conversations or the proclamation, that plundering is about restoring human freedom and encouraging us humans to use it well. The first thing out of Jesus’ mouth in that Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

The kingdom/reign of God, with two divine desires in play: that we be free, that we choose well. Either one of these would be easy to fulfill; both—that quickly gets complicated. Consider our first reading from Samuel’s time, a few centuries after the Exodus. The people have repeatedly used their freedom badly, and now they want a human king. A king: they’d celebrated the Lord as their king back at the Exodus (Exodus 15:18). But now, no, a human king “so that we also may be like other nations.” If God’s desire were simply that the people choose well, well, so much for freedom: no human king. But God desires both that they be free and that they choose well. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want; we’ll do it the hard way.

That’s a pretty good illustration of God’s love. God loves us too much either to compromise our freedom or to stop caring about our choices. Love—as any parent knows—complicates things. God can bring good out of our bad choices (the king is the template for the Messiah), but the price is high (“King of the Jews” was the sign on Jesus’ cross).

Does God always get what God wants? Since what God wants is that we be free and that we choose well, the answer is pretty clearly no. (That’s one of the main reasons why the Bible is a lengthy book!) And one of the recurrent challenges in worshipping this God is to respect both of these divine desires. If we think the people are choosing badly is their freedom really all that important?

Bad choices bring death. Adam and Eve choose badly in Genesis chapter 3; only one of their sons (Cain and Abel) is alive by the end of chapter 4. Death ends the story; death ends all stories. In the psalms one of the most frequent arguments the psalmists make for deliverance: rescue me, because in Hades no one praises you; that’s the lose-lose option. Shakespeare nails it in MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So if there were ever a game-changer, it’s Jesus’ resurrection (the motor for Paul’s reflections in our second reading). Death isn’t the end. Jesus’ transformed body grounds our hope for a similarly transformed body, “an eternal weight of glory,” as Paul put it.

How to tie this together? At least three ways come to mind. “God desires our freedom and that we use it well.” That, of course, is only one of many ways we might summarize what God’s up to. But play with it; wonder how it might serve to guide our outreach budget and activities.

Second. God desires our freedom and that we use it well. Because neither desire is negotiable God’s history with us is as messy as it is (recall, again, Holy Week) and Mick Jagger’s “You can’t always get what you want” turns out to apply to God as well. So we don’t know how all this will play out in the end. Will all be saved? We do know that it comes down to a fairly simple question: is my character such that I’d enjoy spending eternity with this God who keeps making hard choices and who loves my enemies as much as me?

In this respect heaven and hell reflect who we are. Recall that old analogy: a large banquet hall, the tables loaded. The complication is that our arms no longer bend at the elbows. At some tables, despair: despite increasingly acrobatic strategies no one can feed themselves. At other tables, delight: everyone feeding their neighbor.

A third way of tying this together: C. S. Lewis’ luminous sermon “The Weight of Glory” that draws on our second reading. After imagining what this weight of glory might mean, he pivots:

…it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.…There are no ordinary people.

God, in love, desires our freedom and that we use it well, for our choices really matter. That doesn’t make it easy for God or for us. Easy, apparently, is not the point.

The Spirit’s Many Roles (Pentecost, 5/19/2024)

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Readings (Acts, Psalms, Romans, John)

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Fiftieth (thank you, Altar Guild!). The Fiftieth? Well, ‘pentecost’ is simply the transliteration of the Greek word for ‘fiftieth.’ Fiftieth what? Well, that’s tied to the agricultural year, fiftieth day after the beginning of the harvests, so Fiftieth/Pentecost is a harvest festival, one of the three annual gatherings in Jerusalem. As Luke tells the story in Acts, this year the harvest being celebrated are the three thousand who are baptized in response to Peter’s sermon.

And that, in turn, provides one answer to the question of what the coming of the Spirit is for. At the end of Luke’s Gospel Jesus says to the disciples “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49). The coming of the Spirit is the fulfillment of that promise, and throughout Acts we watch the Spirit empower mission. Better, the Spirit takes the lead, and the disciples—like Peter in today’s text—are called on to explain what’s going on. As we think and pray about St Peter’s mission in and around North Lake this might be a model to attend to: how might the Spirit take the lead here?

What’s the coming of the Spirit for? John’s Gospel gives a different answer, focused on the disciples’ common life. Jesus passes the baton to the Spirit, so that the Spirit continues doing what Jesus has been doing. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” That’s a promise we put our weight on, whether in our use of a canon of Holy Scripture (these books and not those books), the episcopate as it developed historically, down to the commissioning of our representatives for this year’s General Convention. We count on the Spirit to guide us into all the truth.

Guide us into all the truth. It turns out that there are a couple different dimensions to truth in John’s Gospel, and both are important here. The first, in line with what I’ve just said, is cognitive. “[Y]ou will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32). That’s important. At the same time, Paul’s words to the Romans provide a sort of counterweight. Jesus’ words in John are—in part—about  the Spirit increasing our understanding; Paul takes comfort in the Spirit stepping in when we don’t understand: “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

One other thing about this understanding/not understanding tension. Recalling that passing of the baton in John, recall how seldom Jesus gave a direct answer to a question, or how often Jesus responded to a question with questions of his own. We shouldn’t be surprised if the Spirit follows that model, giving us—if we’re paying attention—more questions than we started out with. To sharpen the point: when looking for signs of the Spirit’s presence, some Christian traditions speak first about speaking in tongues. On the basis of this text in John, we might speak about having new questions.

The cognitive is one dimension of this guiding us into all the truth. The other equally important dimension is behavioral: doing the truth. “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (Jn. 3:21). Back in John’s Prologue we hear “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14). ‘Truth’ there is something like faithfulness. So “guide you into all the truth” is about guiding us into faithful living. So Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). If we’re looking for signs of the Spirit’s presence, not a bad place to start.

We’re hearing a rich combination of the Spirit’s roles: lead actor in the Church’s evangelism (Luke in Acts), Guide, both cognitive and behavioral (John), Intercessor when words/understanding fails (Paul). And Psalm 104 gives us one more: “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; / and so you renew the face of the earth.” God’s creation is ongoing, and the Spirit that hovered over the primordial chaotic waters continues to work throughout God’s creation, chaotic or not. Wherever we go, whatever situation we’re facing, God’s Spirit is already at work. That doesn’t mean that everything is peachy; it does mean that there’s no place that’s godforsaken. So the first step in mission or evangelism is usually to attempt to discern what God’s Spirit is already doing.

In other words, this global work of the Spirit warns us against thinking “guide you into all the truth” means only the Christians have truth. We witness to our experience, confident that the Spirit’s guiding into all truth is also global.

Let’s close this off with the other Collect assigned to this day: “O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Jesus, making the Father’s Name known (7th Sunday of Easter, 5/12/2024)

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Readings

In eight days we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, and already today’s readings are setting us up for it. The reading from Acts picks up from Thursday’s Ascension Day reading, and brings us to the end of the 1st chapter; chapter 2 opens on the Day of Pentecost. The Gospel narrates the heart of Jesus’ prayer for the disciples: Protect them! Sanctify them (Make them holy)! And the Father’s response to that prayer is chiefly in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

To appreciate what’s going on in Jesus’ prayer, recall the scene toward the start of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers in which Gandalf the wizard and Pippin the hobbit are in conversation: “Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for, the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth” (1965, 34).

“[A] great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.” Something like that same combination of care, sorrow, and joy is present, I suspect, in Jesus’ face and certainly in his words. Here he is, hours away from Judas’ betrayal and the tender mercies of the Roman garrison, talking about “my joy made complete in themselves.”

The joy is intimately connected to God’s Name: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.” Now that’s odd: they didn’t know God’s name? What’s going on here? It turns out that Jesus making God’s name known is multi-dimensional, each dimension inviting us to joy.

The fundamental revelation of God’s Name up to this point occurred when God through Moses brought Israel out of slavery. In that first conversation at the burning bush, God has announced his intention to deliver Israel from Egypt, and we get this interchange:

—If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?
—I AM WHO I AM.… Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’

“I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” The most frequent form of the name was probably pronounced “Yahweh” (in some older translations, “Jehovah”). In its abbreviated form it’s the ‘Jah’ in ‘Hallelujah’. Whatever the form, the Israelites learn the meaning of this Name in God’s actions for their liberation. They start out slaves; they end up free; that’s what ‘I am’ means. And periodically in the Old Testament we encounter this I AM again, particularly in the Greek translation with which Jesus and the NT writers —specifically John— would have been familiar:

See now that I AM. There is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand. (Deuteronomy 32:39; my translation)

You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I AM. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. (Isaiah 43:10; my translation)

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus takes up this name “I AM” in a whole series of statements, including:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35)

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (8:12)

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” (10:7)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (10:11)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…” (11:25)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (14:6)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” (15:1)

And in case we’re thinking “well, talk is cheap,” recall that Jesus says “I am the bread of life” after the feeding of the 5,000, “I am the light of the world” after giving sight to the blind, and “I am the resurrection and the life” just before calling Lazarus out of the tomb.

Nor did “I AM” always come with a predicate. Recall Jesus’ “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (John 8:58 NAB). Again, when the disciples in a small boat in the middle of a big storm cry out in fear as they see Jesus walking towards them over the sea, Jesus responds, “I AM; do not be afraid” (John 6:20 my translation).

Yes, Jesus has made the Name known to the disciples. Jesus’ actions, Jesus’ words, Jesus’ very being have taken that divine name revealed to Moses to a whole new level. The Israelites were filled with joy when finally out of the Egyptian army’s clutches; as we remember the liberation God has accomplished for us through Jesus, a greater joy can be ours.

There is a second dimension to this “I have made your name known.” The first is the presence and power of “I AM;” the second is Jesus’ distinctive use of “Abba,” the Aramaic word children typically used to address their fathers. We have no evidence of Jesus’ contemporaries using the word to address God; it probably would have seemed far too intimate. Most of the time the Gospels translate it into Greek. Its one appearance in the Gospels during Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane —“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14.36)— is a window on Jesus’ customary usage. And the intimacy with God Jesus experienced —evident also through today’s Gospel text—is offered to the disciples. Here are the other two appearances in the New Testament:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15 NAB)

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6 NRSV)

So Jesus making God’s Name known to the disciples isn’t simply about giving them —us— information, but about inviting us to participate ever more deeply in God, God our Abba, God the “I AM” who can bring out of any situation life, freedom, and joy.

There is a third dimension to this “I have made your name known.” Jesus sends us out into the world to baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By the end of the New Testament, that is clearly the Name of God that Jesus has made known to the disciples. Our God, not a monolithic unity, but a community of love and joy into which we are invited to enter. Who is the God in whose presence we live? A loving Father, whose two arms, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, are constantly extended to strengthen, guide, embrace us. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

You see, today’s Gospel text is pretty dense. I have tried to go for the core, the many ways Jesus has been revealing God’s Name —God’s reality, God’s character— to the disciples. Grasp this, and the rest falls into place: the deep gratitude in Jesus’ words, the awareness that all that he has is gift, Jesus’ trust in his Father’s continued care for the disciples, and the sense of passing the baton: You sent me into the world; I am sending them into the world. The world —the many ways we organize ourselves to shut out God— will do its worst, but will not succeed, any more than closing your eyes real tight, clenching your fists, and wishing real hard will keep the sun from coming up.

But all that falls into place only if we start with God. “I have made your name known…” Jesus said. Do not settle for anything less here. Do not get sidetracked. Life is too short to settle for anything less than “great joy, a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing.”

Creative perishing; the Creator’s interventions (4th Sunday in Lent, 3/10/2024)

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Readings

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We’re now two weeks out from Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week; the lectionary gives us this text to enter into its meaning.

Our texts are first about God’s love. Physicists talk about the different constants whose precise balance makes the universe possible: gravitation, electromagnetism, etc. Well, if God loved us any less, human history would have been very short.

Our verse talks about God’s love and our not perishing. Knowing God’s love, I can deal with the perishing part, and the ways I still opt for perishing. (That’s what we acknowledge when we confess.) Our three lessons offer portraits of what perishing looks like. Not all of it applies to any one of us; most of us will find something to chew on.

Finally, a word about “eternal life.” In the Gospel of John, ‘eternal life’ is not life after death. It’s God’s life in which we participate now. Because it’s God’s life, it’s not limited: it’s eternal. Because it’s God’s life, it’s full & festive. In the Gospel of John Jesus’ first miracle is turning a very large quantity of water into wine.

Numbers. Our first reading tells of Israel complaining —again— in the wilderness on the way from Egypt to the Promised Land. In the last two chapters God’s given them water from the rock —again— and given them victory over a local king —again— but Aaron the high priest has just died, and they’ve also been denied passage through Edom, which means a substantial detour.

So they are complaining against God and Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” That’s verse 5. On that trajectory, we’d be reading about them picking up stones to stone Moses in v.6. More, it’s a classic example of spin: all of this is your fault; we’re the innocent victims. The people neglect to mention that they’d asked for deliverance from Egypt & that they’d rejected God’s command to enter the Promised Land directly a few chapters back, which is why they’re in this wilderness. Spin.

To get the conversation back on track God sends serpents. Are all the bad things that happen to people God’s punishment? Of course not. Does God punish? Well, unless we thoroughly rewrite both the Old & New Testaments, yes. Here, for example. Both to get the conversation back on track and —probably— to save Moses’ skin, serpents. And when the people ask Moses to intercede, God tells Moses to put an image of a serpent on a pole, so that those who are bitten can look at that serpent and live. No natural connection between looking and living; just God’s choice. God seems to like physical signs: this one-time use of the bronze serpent, more enduring signs like the rainbow, or circumcision, or Holy Baptism, or Holy Eucharist.

‘Spin’…a new word for a very old practice. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” We learn it very early; by the time we hit puberty it’s become as natural as breathing. Worse, we often believe our own spin: it really is only their fault. And that erodes our capacity to repent. If I have nothing to repent of… If the words of the General Confession are mostly reminding me of other people’s sins, that’s perishing.

So it turns out that there are two portraits of perishing in these few verses. Getting bit by a serpent turns out to be the easy one: look at the bronze serpent. The other way of perishing is to be so deeply into spin that we know that it’s God & the rest of the world that’s not OK, not us. We don’t want to put God into the position of wondering whether more serpents are necessary. The good news is that God will not easily abandon us to our spin.

Ephesians. Paul’s letter gives us a different portrait of perishing. Recall the opening verses: “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

It’s texts like these that drive the examination of candidates in our baptismal rite. “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” (BCP 302)

OK. What are we talking about? We don’t find it difficult to come up with examples: Hitler’s concentration camps, Cambodia’s killing fields. Easy to come up with examples on our enemies’ turf! Where Satan might be active here? Ah, the blue state/red state, left/right divides. I suspect that one of Satan’s major accomplishments in this country is the frequency with which Christians simply parrot the Democratic and Republican talking points against each other. Righteous indignation is great for keeping the focus on the speck in the neighbor’s eye.

Relying on our own strength, renouncing Satan et al would be a futile exercise. In the context of Holy Baptism it’s a glad confession that God’s love in Jesus gives us a real alternative to following the course of this world.

But here we need another digression: “…following the course of this world.” What do we mean by ‘world’? “God so loved the world…” “…following the course of this world…” If we think about it, the New Testament uses ‘world’ in two very different senses. The first and primary sense: the world as God’s creation: as God’s creation it is good, God loves it, and God’s in the process of redeeming it. The second sense: the institutional opposition to God on the part of rebellious humanity in concert with Satan, the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world. In God’s world six days of work produce seven days of food. In the world we’ve laid on top of that sometimes not even seven days of work produce enough.

In other words, God’s world has been hijacked; Jesus is in the process of taking it back…and invites us to participate (baptism). As Paul puts it, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

Perishing: also about being part of this world order that sets itself in opposition to God. God’s love means that united to Jesus we can change sides.

Our Gospel. Here’s a third picture of perishing. “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Really? Only in extreme cases do we experience ourselves as loving darkness. Most of the time it’s simply a matter of sensing that some things are better off in an obscure corner.

And so, at the family level, it’s remarkably easy to fence off areas as “what we don’t talk about.” And those fences can become walls which tend to thicken over time.

Secrets. Some things don’t start out as secrets. They become secrets as we make choices regarding what we tell to whom…or not. This is one of the reasons we offer private confession in our tradition. It can be hard to believe that God can forgive or redeem what I fear to name. (And, of course, sometimes what I fear to name is not a sin at all.)

“…that everyone who believes in him may not perish…” Again, believing in Jesus is not believing things about Jesus. The demons Jesus exorcised knew lots of things about Jesus, for all the good it did them. Believing in Jesus is putting your weight on Jesus, trusting Jesus. It’s like trusting the rope when you’re first learning to water ski, or trusting your soles when you’re rock climbing. Believing in Jesus: knowing he’s got my back—and getting on with the work he’s put between my hands.

Perishing: loving darkness more than light. God’s love: offering us a love that frees us to inch into the light and discover to our astonishment that we are not destroyed, but restored.

In sum we humans have an impressive arsenal of ways of perishing. From our 1st lesson: we end up believing our own spin. From our 2nd lesson: we’re born into a world in rebellion in which God’s creatures are corrupted and destroyed; that’s what’s normal. From our Gospel: there are situations in which darkness is really…convenient.

The good news is that God loves us, and that God’s arsenal is even better equipped than ours. With our consent —sometimes as small and vulnerable as a grain of mustard— God continues to transform us into daughters and sons who can live and dance in the light.

Psalm 19 (3rd Sunday in Lent, 3/3/2024)

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Readings

Each of today’s readings could fuel multiple sermons. This time around let’s focus on Psalm 19. Thematically it breaks into three parts: creation (vv.1-6), the law (vv.7-11), and what we might call divine intervention (vv.12-14). Each part is an important part in a faithful life. Is it a complete picture of a faithful life? No. There’s no attention to the community—for that we’d need other psalms. But it gives us more than enough to think about this morning.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, / and the firmament shows his handiwork.” Creation proclaims God’s glory; creation is worthy of our sustained attention. The physicists give us the clearest picture of this, the fine tuning of the various constants that make a stable universe possible, for which see folk like John Polkinghorne. For the world of flora and fauna, I often return to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

“The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, or millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font. What is going on here? The point…is not that it all fits together like clockwork…but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz” (p.135).

“Consider the lilies of the field” Jesus tell us, and how much of his teaching depends on his having first himself considered God’s creation! So theologians like Augustine talk about God’s two books, Scripture and the book of nature. In short, the first part of our psalm: going outside and paying attention is a spiritual discipline.

If God’s glory is found in creation it’s equally found in God’s Torah (“teaching” or, more narrowly, “law”). The joy expressed in this second part, vv.7-11, is perhaps most clearly expressed in the Jewish celebration of Simhat Torah (“Joy of the Teaching/Law”). The Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) is read in the synagogue over the course of the year. Simhat Torah, in which members of the congregation dance with the Torah scroll, celebrates the end of the reading and the opportunity to begin the reading again. The Decalogue, that part of the Torah from our first reading, gives us an opportunity to enter into that joy. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” What follows: how to live as free people. The Godly Play curriculum calls this text “The Ten Best Ways to Live.”

“You shall have no other gods before me.” There is only one God we need to keep happy. An improvement over the various polytheisms then on offer, with multiple gods to keep happy. An improvement over our current de facto polytheism. So many gods want a piece; so many commercials: without me, you’re toast.

“Remember the sabbath day.” God’s creation is generous enough that six days of labor provides for seven days of life. If seven days are required, or if the scheduling is such that there’s no dependable weekly day of rest, that’s a sure sign that Pharaoh has returned.

You shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, etc. We don’t have to do these things to preserve/enhance our life.

“The Ten Best Ways to Live” indeed.

Now, the big surprise in the psalm is that it doesn’t end with v.11. After all that’s just been said about Torah, why do we need vv.12-13? Why indeed?

It turns out that we humans are pretty good at coopting/subverting anything, including Torah. In our best moments this happens almost by accident; in our worst, quite deliberately. The dog is wagging the tail, the dog is wagging the tail… and one day we discover the tail wagging the dog.

The activities Jesus discovered in the temple (John 2). “In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.” All that probably started legitimately enough: animals are necessary for sacrifice and some worshippers may have preferred to buy locally rather than bring the animals from their village. The money changing? Common currency had an image of the emperor, for whom divine prerogatives were claimed, and the temple authorities came to believe that such coins were inappropriate in the temple. It starts legitimately enough; but soon the penny drops that there’s a great deal of money to be made. The tail wags the dog, and all for the greater glory of God.

“Cleanse me from my secret faults…keep your servant from presumptuous sins.” The psalmist doesn’t explain how God does this, even as it’s clear that if it’s just me and Torah it’s not going to end well. How God does this: here’s where the psalmist could have talked about the community, particularly those members of the community that I don’t like to listen to. (“I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter” [Mk. 6:25].) It’s probably more prudent to listen to John than to leave God no other alternative than sending in Jesus, whip of cords in hand.

This unexpected turn in vv.12-13 is probably related to Paul’s critique of “the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning” in our second reading. Often the problem with this wisdom/discernment is that it assumes that we’ve heard all we need to hear from God. We have the Torah; we have the Bible; what more do we need? And we end up crucifying Christ again.

But the psalmist’s “cleanse me” trusts that it doesn’t need to end like this. “Cleanse me from my secret faults…keep your servant from presumptuous sins.” Why? Look at the last verse: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart / be acceptable in your sight, / O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” The heavens are declaring God’s glory—that’s where we started. The psalmist’s hope/prayer is that the psalmist’s voice finally join that voiceless praise.

Not a bad agenda for Lent—or the rest of the year: get outside and pay attention, drink deeply from Torah with its “Ten Best Ways to Live,” listen for how God—often through our neighbor—may be trying to free us from our self-serving readings.