Tag Archives: Revised Common Lectionary

On losing and saving one’s life (2nd Sunday in Lent, 2/25/2024)

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Readings

At about the same time that Abraham and Sarah were in Canaan, there lived in Egypt a bureaucrat named Sinuhe. Through circumstances not of his choosing he ended up spending time in Canaan. Eventually he got back to Egypt; here’s a section from his memoirs describing that happy return:

I was placed in the house of a Royal Son. There was noble equipment in it, a bathroom and painted devices of the horizon; costly things of the Treasury were in it. Garments of Royal stuff were in every chamber, unguent and the fine oil of the King and of the courtiers whom he loves; and every serving-man made busy with his task. Years were caused to pass away from my flesh, I was shaved and my hair was combed. A burden was given over to the desert, and clothing to the Sandfarers. And I was clad in soft linen, and anointed with fine oil; by night I lay upon a bed. I gave up the sand to them that dwell therein, and oil of wood to him who smears himself with it.

It’s an unexpected window on what must have been Abraham’s experience, moving from the urban comforts of Ur and Haran to the frontier area west of the Jordan River. He had moved there in response to God’s command and promise of land, posterity, and blessing. He arrived; he waited, and waited, and waited. Months turned into years, years into decades, and still he owned no land, and had no children.

I wonder what advice we would have given Abraham. I wonder what advice I would have given Abraham. At what point do you throw in your cards and walk away? We remember Abraham and hope to be counted among his true sons and daughters because he didn’t walk away. He was still there when God Almighty showed up after his 99th birthday, confirmed the earlier promises by a formal covenant (treaty), and announced that within a year Abraham and Sarah would be changing diapers.

Abraham would have understood Jesus’ words: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” What else do you call leaving Ur & Haran for the outback, and staying for decades supported by nothing more than a promise?

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” What was true of Abraham was true of Jesus as well. Abraham left Mesopotamia; Jesus left heaven. As that ancient hymn puts it:

who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Jesus does not ask of us anything he’s not already asked of himself.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” The Ash Wednesday service invited us to self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and here we are.

“Follow me.” Also today folk sometimes experience Jesus calling them pretty directly to far-off places: Ur to Haran to Canaan. Usually, it’s a matter of doing the best one can to let Jesus’ life flow in ours in the midst of our responsibilities, to offer up lives whose faithfulness will give God joy.

It’s easy to hear Jesus’ words as unreasonable demand: deny oneself…lose one’s life. How might we think about that?

For starters, Jesus’ words echo a truth we’ve already met in other areas of life: any serious project requires self-denial. If I want to learn a musical instrument, or a sport, or a craft, I have to set aside time, time that I may want to spend doing something else. Or take a more serious project: becoming a parent or a spouse. Here we start out by signing a pile of blank checks. And then the checks begin to come in, some small, some large.

Our culture, of course, does not help us much here. Daily we’re told that the highest good is our individual self-fulfillment, and that our duty to self-fulfillment trumps any other commitments we’ve made along the way.

When we turn to Jesus, the temptation is very strong to understand the Christian way as another means of self-fulfillment. Fortunately, we have 20 Centuries’ worth of experience to remind us of why this is a bad idea. In pre-Reformation England, for example, it was necessary to set a limit on the size of the bishop’s entourage —cooks, falconers, hunting dogs, etc— during Episcopal visitations. At the popular level, a great deal of the energy that fueled the 16th Century reformations was anger over this sort of clerical abuse of position.

Not that we have to wear bishops’ purple to participate. As disciples, we naturally try to save our lives. Here each of us face our own challenges. I, for instance, can be very jealous of what I call “my time,” so part of parenting involved the repeated challenge to be generous with time. Again, there have been times when I’ve found myself in a desert, and the temptation has been very strong to throw in the cards and walk away. Lent is a time to reflect on these particular challenges, and again ask for God’s grace to respond to them.

Now, a warning. There has been a strong tradition in our culture that values men’s selves more than women’s selves. Women are supposed to deny themselves to serve men; men are supposed to assert themselves. Jesus’ words are horribly misunderstood if they’re heard as supporting that tradition. In the Bible’s vision both men and women bear God’s image, both are called to be stewards of the world’s resources. Jesus has no interest in asking us to deny a self we have not yet learned to value.

To return to our theme, from the perspective of God’s project, Jesus’ words are absolutely necessary because the alternative —discipleship as self-aggrandizement— is so damaging to the Church, so damaging to our common life.

Follow me. Responding to that call may mean long stretches in the wilderness; it will mean a continual struggle against co-opting that call into another means of self-defined self-fulfillment. Friday mornings we pray “grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace” and in quite unexpected ways God responds.

But there is a deeper logic to Jesus’ words than simply avoiding the Kingdom’s getting co-opted. We assume that we know who we are. So of course we’re in a perfect position to chart the path to our own fulfillment. “Captain of my ship, master of my soul.”

But spouses and parents know that as they give themselves to these roles they enter a voyage of self-discovery. Even more so the way of discipleship: in the process of following Jesus I discover who I am.

In an old Hassidic story, a rabbi receives a vision of the Gate of Heaven with many people outside. A voice of great beauty is calling out names, and people are entering the gate. But there are more names than people entering, so the rabbi asks an angel standing nearby, “Where are the people whose names are called and aren’t entering?” “They are here” —replied the angel— “but they do not know their own names. Only when they learn their own names will they be able to recognize them when they are called.”

As we continue to respond to Jesus’ call, we continue to learn who we are, we get better—God willing—at recognizing our own names.

Baptism’s Deadly and Life-Giving Waters (1st Sunday in Lent, 2/18/2024)

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Readings

Quite a set of water images in today’s readings—and an opportunity to think about our baptism.

Peter compares the waters of Noah’s flood and the waters of baptism. Our first reading: a scene just after that flood. Meanwhile, Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan river, a location that in Israel’s memory is firmly paired with the crossing of the Red Sea. God parts the Red Sea to save Israel from the Egyptian army; God parts the Jordan to allow Israel to enter the promised land dry-shod. So: Noah’s flood, Israel passing through the Red Sea, Israel passing through the Jordan, Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan, our baptism.

All these water images juxtaposed with today’s psalm suggests that whatever baptism is, it’s not a “get out of jail free” card, a fast-forward to the “and they lived happily ever after” part. It’s a dangerous business—as spelled out pretty clearly in the prayer book (p.306):

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

The water at the start of creation: the earth a formless void, darkness covering the face of the deep, a wind from God sweeping over the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2). Not somewhere we’d choose for vacation. At the bank of the Red Sea: stay here and die or enter that eerie dry path between the walls of water. “The baptism of John:” that’s the John whose arrest our Gospel records.

Back to the BCP: “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” The world is such that our best option is being buried with Christ in his death. And this, pulling back the camera, after publicly declaring a change in allegiance (p.302): from rooting/working for Pharaoh to rooting/working for Moses.

Baptism, in other words, is something that happens in the middle of a war zone. Baptism doesn’t remove us from that war zone; it does begin a process of learning how to live there with integrity.

That’s not easy. Fredrich Nietzsche, one of the more interesting 19th century philosophers: “Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that’s who you become most like.” Not always true, but true more often than we’d like. How do we avoid our cure being worse than the disease?

And that’s where psalms like Psalm 25 come in. The enemies are the presenting problem (v.1). But the psalmist is equally clear that not all the problems are external (v.6). Elsewhere in the psalm: “forgive my sin, for it is great” (v.10). So the dominant plea is not for protection—although that’s certainly there—but for instruction (vv.3-4). Vv.7-8 continue the theme—and the psalmist is clearly including themselves among the “sinners, humble, lowly.”

Humble. There’s a too-often ignored truism in management and military circles that what bites you is often not the unknown, but the unknown unknown, those areas where you’re not aware that there’s something you don’t know. I think that would have resonated with our psalmist. The psalmist—we, for that matter—isn’t in a position to say “Lord, teach me about A, B, and C.”  Too often—as friends and neighbors know—it’s the teaching about H, I and J that’s needed. Lent isn’t about coming up with another set of New Year’s resolutions. Humility: staying attentive to what God might be trying to each us despite our assumptions.

So, on this first Sunday in Lent: if the cries for help in Psalm 25 resonate, we shouldn’t be surprised. Our baptism wasn’t about getting us out of those turbulent waters, but about positioning us to live—to thrive—in them. Recall the prayer after baptism:

Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. (p.308)

I like the “gift of joy and wonder in all your works” part; I’d guess that the different petitions in that prayer are pretty closely related, so that if I want the joy and wonder, I’d best not shortchange the “inquiring and discerning heart” part. And I really don’t want to end up as another example for Nietzsche to use. Psalm 25’s petitions for ongoing learning might help me with that.

Bodies: A Sermon (Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/11/2024)

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Readings

Have you noticed that the story of Jesus could easily be summarized as the story of what happens to Jesus’ body? He is born; he is baptized; he is crucified; he is raised from the dead; he is caught up to sit at God’s right hand. And here, in today’s reading, his body undergoes metamorphosis. It’s as though the star that guided the magi (whose arrival we celebrate at the Feast of the Epiphany) takes up residence in Jesus (whose transfiguration we celebrate on the last of the Sundays after that Epiphany before entering Lent). And when the focus isn’t on Jesus’ body, it’s on Jesus doing things to other peoples’ bodies: healing them, casting out demons, teaching some to follow him around and do what he does.

This is particularly true of Mark’s Gospel, the backbone of this year’s Gospel readings. In Mark Jesus doesn’t talk much. Jesus talks more in Matthew and Luke, and a great deal in John, but even in John we might wonder if his body isn’t still center stage.

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20th Century, used to say that Christianity was the most materialistic of the great world religions. Because it’s not just Jesus’ story: the Bible starts with God creating a material world and exclaiming “good,” “good,” “all very good.” Jesus sends us out to preach and pour water over (or dunk) those who respond to our preaching, and gives his very Body and Blood to us repeatedly in the Holy Eucharist. All this, note, so that extraordinary things can happen in our bodies.

In the second reading we heard Paul talking about the light of the creation, the light of the transfiguration in us: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” Had we extended the reading one more verse we would have heard what this light does in our bodies. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

So in Catholic Christianity—of which Anglicanism is an expression—we take this very seriously. Our spirituality is a spirituality of the body. The body is not a problem; the body is not something to be transcended; it is a privileged place in which God encounters us and we respond to God in this combination of death and life. Very briefly, our spirituality contrasts with two other widespread Christian families of spiritualities. The first family focuses on the mind: the point is to know stuff, to have—in some forms of this spirituality—the Right Theology. (As though the devil hadn’t ingested more right theology than we’ll ever learn.) The mind’s important—no question—but in service to our other dimensions.

The second family focuses on the emotions—in a wide variety of ways. The point of worship may be to have a particular emotional experience. One may judge the genuineness of one’s Christian identity be the quality of one’s emotional responses, whether at the point of conversion, or subsequently. Or one may make one’s emotional response the compass of one’s decision making: I do what feels right; I don’t do what feels wrong. I don’t do what I would otherwise think is right if it feels inauthentic.

To all of which a spirituality of the body responds: let my body follow Jesus’ body, and surprisingly often the mind and or the emotions will fall into line. The path to understanding is often obedience. The path to healthy emotional responses is often obedience. I’m faced with a neighbor I don’t love. Rather than wait for the emotion of love to kick in, I act (my body acts) in a loving manner, and a surprising number of times the emotion sorts itself out.

This Catholic spirituality of the body shapes what we do on Sundays in the most basic of ways. Start with architecture: as soon as Christians were free to design their own worship spaces, they designed them along the lines of a temple, a building in which God was resident. When the Sacrament is reserved, God is resident. In 16th Century Europe most of those who broke with Catholic spirituality designed their worship spaces as academic lecture halls, and their clergy dressed in academic gowns. This was “Right Theology” to the Nth degree. Late in the 20th Century a new design emerged: the worship space as talk show studio.

In the Catholic tradition our worship space is a place where God is present, not only in fulfillment of the promise “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20 RSV) –common to all the Christian traditions—but in the Sacrament. So we do things with our bodies here that we don’t do elsewhere: we kneel, we bow, we genuflect. Our minds and our emotions—who knows where they are some days—but at least our bodies can be here to celebrate the off-the-charts goodness of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

We do weird things with our bodies in here to prepare ourselves to weird things with our bodies out there, to engage in random, unprovoked acts of kindness for the sheer heaven of it. Some team wins the Superbowl and their fans erupt into the streets. Each Sunday we celebrate the final score: Jesus 1, Death 0 and receive the very life of Jesus into our bodies so we can take that into the streets.

The Holy Eucharist is the fulcrum of our life. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas; what happens here is designed not to stay here. Here our bodies acknowledge that God is God and we aren’t God. We hear again of this God’s generosity to us. We share “the peace of the Lord” with those who are like us and those not like us. We come together to a common table: there is enough food for everyone, there is enough room for everyone. The whole world’s going to look like this some day; today it’s here and in every place of Christian worship, and our privilege is to take it all in, and then take it all out into the streets.

“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

“Set us free” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany)

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Readings

A few minutes ago we prayed “Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.” It turns out that asking how God answers this prayer is a useful entry into our readings.

Our first reading comes from that part of the Book of Isaiah that assumes the people exiled in Babylon. The glad good news: God is about to set the people free to return to their land. But, as today’s text makes clear, the people after decades of Babylonian captivity doubt both God’s power and God’s will to save them.

God’s power: Isaiah seeks to rekindled their imaginations. The scale and splendor of the heavens: that’s all the work of our God, putting on a show every night that would have left Cecil B. DeMille bright green with envy. This God will have no trouble bringing Israel home. Well, today too much light pollution to see what Isaiah’s audience was able to see every night. But we have the work of the physicists, whose attention to the fine tuning of our universe so that there is—Isaiah’s words—”a tent to live in,” leads some to conclude that the only way to avoid acknowledging the Creator is to posit an infinite number of universes, we being in the happy position of living in the one in which life is possible.

God’s will to save: Isaiah will focus on that in the following chapters.

Meanwhile, toward the end:

He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

How does Isaiah describe those who respond appropriately? “Those who wait for the Lord.” That’s interesting: after celebrating God’s power at work now, what is there to wait for? To extend Isaiah’s language, we could contrast God as Creator and God as Savior, the God whose blessing sustains this fertile world, the God whose saving puts things right. And there’s waiting in both: the farmer waits for the rain; the people (here) wait for release.

“Wait for the Lord” here is pretty much hope in the Lord. And it’s that hope as much as anything that gives the power the text celebrates. In the pony rides in my childhood, the ponies always picked up the pace once the stables were in sight. And hope plays no small part in the NFL games we’ve been watching through the season.

Today’s psalm: it overlaps to a fair degree with Isaiah. Noteworthy here is the last full verse we read:

But the Lord has pleasure in those who fear him, *
in those who await his gracious favor.

Here the psalmist pairs fearing the Lord (“fear” often shorthand for our proper stance vis à vis God) and waiting for God’s action.

Returning to our collect, in Isaiah and the psalm, God setting us free, giving us liberty, may be first about awakening our hope. That’s not all it is, but for Isaiah’s audience that’s where it had to start.

Today’s Gospel: it’s part three of Mark’s portrait of that long day in Capernaum: calling the disciples, teaching and exorcising in the synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, caring for the crowd that assembled around the house at Sabbath’s end, snatching time for prayer before heading off. After our earlier readings—and in the text itself—there’s joy: all that waiting has not been in vain.

At the same time, notice the disconnect Mark’s pointing of the camera represents. Isaiah pointed us to the heavens, but here we’re in a corner of Roman-infested Galilee. The psalm’s focus was on Jerusalem, and here we’re very far from Jerusalem. (The Jerusalemites had about the same opinion of Galilee as New Yorkers have of the Midwest.) It would have been so easy to write off anything happening in Galilee. And that’s the tricky part about hope. Hope can go bad if it clutches its idea of how fulfillment should happen too tightly.

God setting us free, giving us liberty: it’s also about allowing for surprise, the fulfillment of our hopes in ways we didn’t expect. That was the tragedy of many of the Pharisees: they had hope in spades. But when it was fulfilled: “Give us Barabbas.”

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians looks like the odd man out. He’s still working that meat offered to idols question, now using his own conduct as an example. There were many ways of being what we might call an influencer. You could charge high prices for your services and hang with the beautiful people like the sophists. You could drool down your beard and leave no social convention unbroken like the cynics. What are Paul the Pharisee’s choices?

There’s no direct line from any of the other readings to Paul. But if we pull back the camera a little…

The same Isaiah who pictured God in majesty above the celestial court gave us this:

24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money,
or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.
But you have burdened me with your sins;
you have wearied me with your iniquities. (Isa. 43:24)

3 Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from your birth,
carried from the womb;
4 even to your old age I am he,
even when you turn gray I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. (Isa. 46:3-4)

And of that same Jesus, the sovereign protagonist in today’s reading, Paul will write in Philippians:

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. (Phil. 2:6-7a)

God does power and authority not by insisting on privilege, but by—in our language—moving way outside God’s comfort zone. And that’s Paul’s model: “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.”

God setting us free, giving us liberty: for Paul, it’s about freedom to act divinely, moving outside his comfort zone for the sake of others. And that’s, of course, the conduct he’s encouraging his hearers to adopt. That’s how Paul’s hope expresses itself, not in the anxious defense of his privileges (immaculate Hebrew pedigree, Roman citizen, advanced studies), but moving outside his comfort zone to stand in solidarity with all for whom Christ died.

“Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life…” What’s the answer to that prayer look like? From today’s lessons: that journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, or, in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer, “bring us to that heavenly country.” That’s the endgame. Meanwhile, as with Isaiah’s audience, it’s about awakening hope, so that when freedom comes we won’t be too busy distracting ourselves to notice. Set us free with a hope that doesn’t betray us by locking God into a script so narrow that no surprise is possible (the temptation of the Pharisees). Set us free to express our hope not in clinging to privilege, but, with Paul, in moving outside our comfort zone.

“Grant us your peace” (4th after the Epiphany)

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Readings

In this morning’s collect we prayed “in our time grant us your peace.” What are we praying for? What would an answer to this prayer look like? In John’s account of the last supper we hear Jesus say “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” (14:27a). “Not as the world gives:” I wonder if that warning lies behind Paul’s “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), language picked up in the blessing at the close of the Mass. When we pray for peace, what are we praying for? Let’s work that question as we go through today’s readings.

The Deuteronomy reading, part of one of the many paragraphs in the book dealing with life in the land the people are about to enter. Rather than consult soothsayers, necromancers, sorcerers, etc. the people are to listen to the prophets the Lord raises up. When there is need, the Lord will not be silent; the Lord will speak. That confidence that the Lord will not be silent may be part of the peace for which we pray. Of course, whether we will like what the Lord says through the prophet is a different question. That’s the issue lying just under the surface of our Gospel reading. ““What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Too often that’s the question thrown at the Lord’s prophets not by unclean spirits, but by the Lord’s own people.

Our reading from Paul’s letter. The Corinthians had asked about food sacrificed to idols. In Corinth, as in most cities in the Empire, there would be multiple temples, many of which sacrificed animals in worship of their god, whose meat would be consumed either by those present in the temple or sold to the general public. That the Corinthians asked about this and from Paul’s response it’s clear that the question was disputed. The Corinthians were probably hoping for a simple yes/no answer; what they got was three chapter’s worth of reflection that mostly threw the problem back in their laps. (Quick moral: if our formula for peace is “Just tell us what to do”…) We hear part of Paul’s reflection this week, part next week.

Paul starts by contrasting knowledge and love: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Yes, knowing that these gods aren’t real you can make a case for pigging out. But what of the fellow Christian who sees you in the temple and concludes that maybe it’s OK to combine worshipping Jesus with Jupiter, Apollo, etc. That’s where love needs to kick in, otherwise “by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed.”

There are a couple of points to tease out here. First, the peace for which we pray isn’t a matter of peace in my heart, never mind what’s happening in my neighbor’s heart.

Second, if we contemplate arguments in the church, past or present, they’re mostly about competing claims to knowledge. When the language of rights is introduced, my knowledge gives me the right to do X: game, set, match. This is, of course, the way arguments go outside the church. From Paul’s perspective the tragedy is that the church rarely offers a different way of holding together knowledge and love. “In our time grant us your peace.” After reading Paul we’re thrown back on Jesus’ “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and acknowledge—hopefully—how much we need to learn. “Grant us your peace” and “teach us to be peacemakers” may be two sides of the same coin.

Our reading from Mark continues the Epiphany revelation/manifestation theme. Still drawing from the first chapter of Mark, we encounter Jesus, “the Holy One of God,” against whom the unclean spirits are powerless. Jesus’ power: that’s good news, and part of the foundation of the peace for which we pray. Unclean spirits: an issue in many other parts of the world, not so much here. Here, between drugs and Madison Avenue unclean spirits might be overkill.

But back to the text. All this, notice, occurs in a synagogue. Had Jesus not shown up, it would probably have been a peaceful gathering. Jesus shows up, perhaps thinking this a good way to answer the “grant us your peace” prayer.

Now by this time you may be wondering whether this “peace” has any positive content. Well, yes. It assumes and nurtures relationship, both vertically (Deuteronomy) and horizontally (Corinthians). It understands that we’re works in progress (Corinthians) and that that’s OK. It assumes and nurtures trust, and therefore courage, so that Jesus can say just hours before his arrest “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (Jn. 14:27). With this peace Jesus finds a storm in the middle of the Sea of Galilee a good moment for a nap. I could use some of that peace.

“In our time grant us your peace.” And after today’s readings we might add some additional prayers. From Deuteronomy: “And grant us ears to hear what you have to say to us.” From Corinthians: “And teach us to be peacemakers.” From Mark: “And save us from confusing peace and tranquility.”

William Percy, author of today’s offertory hymn (#661) nailed it: “The peace of God, it is no peace, / but strife closed in the sod. / Yet let us pray for but one thing— / the marvelous peace of God.”

On hearing “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” 2,000 years later (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany)

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Readings

There’s a strong sense of urgency that drives Mark’s story. No time for the genealogies that appear in Matthew and Luke, or for John’s evocative meditation on the Word that was God and became flesh. At Jesus’ baptism Jesus sees the heavens “torn apart.” Immediately after the baptism the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, but Mark doesn’t slow down to describe the temptation there. No. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” How near? Near enough that Simon, Andrew, James, and John are to drop what they’re doing and follow.

One can get—and I assume you’ve heard—many good sermons based on these verses. They capture a profound truth: Jesus’ call to follow is powerful and non-negotiable. That’s reflected in our baptismal rite and in our Eucharistic prayers. We pray “Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice” (Prayer B), giving Jesus each week a blank check.

Nevertheless, the events Mark describes were some twenty centuries ago. How does that affect how we hear the text? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near:” this is the language of apocalyptic, a mindset that we meet occasionally in the Old Testament and frequently in the New Testament. There are two worlds: this world and the world to come. In this world God’s rule is—at best—contested. In Luke’s account of the temptation, the devil, having shown Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, says: “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please” (Lk. 4:6). In the world to come God’s rule will be uncontested. The transition from this world to the world to come will not be smooth, and the sooner that transition happens, the better. So at the end of his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes “Maranatha!” (“Come, Lord!”).

Jesus, notice, didn’t buy into the apocalyptic mindset uncritically. John the Baptist (probably enthusiastically): “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10). Jesus: “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” (Matt. 5:43-44). Regarding the “how near” question, Jesus warns “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mk. 13:32). Apocalyptic writers—I’m thinking of various books that didn’t make it into our Bible—often tried to sneak a glance at the Father’s desk calendar. Apocalyptic, we might say, is one of Jesus’ languages, but not his only language.

Paul, frankly, might have paid more attention to that “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” The advice he gives to the Corinthians assumes that the day/hour is imminent enough that long-term planning should be put on hold. Despite that, there’s much of value in this chapter, and since this is the only Sunday we hear any of this chapter, let me notice some of that “much of value.”

Toward the beginning of the chapter: “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Cor. 7:3-4). That’s a vision of mutuality that in most times and places we’re far from putting into practice. And it’s worth noticing that in the entire chapter there’s not a word about procreation. So any claim that sex in marriage is justified only if in obedience to “be fruitful and multiply” has to rely on someone other than St. Paul (or the rest of the authors of Scripture, for that matter).

A bit later in the chapter: “But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind” (1 Cor. 7:7). That is, to live as a celibate is a gift; to live as a married person is a gift. Each gift, each calling, has its proper integrity, its proper value. Paul, a celibate, prefers his gift, but manages to refrain from declaring it objectively superior.

Nevertheless, there’s that “the appointed time has grown short…  For the present form of this world is passing away.” Two thousand years later, what do we do with that? We find one possible response in the second letter attributed to Peter: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:8-9). It would be silly to argue with that, and, in fact, our first reading reminds us of one way this plays out. Jonah preaches in Nineveh, capital of a paradigmatically wicked empire, and the capital repents. So “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” That business of forgiving seventy-seven times (Mt 18:22): is that how God operates?

If the argument in 2nd Peter works for you, go with it. Some days it works for me; other days, not so much. The argument assumes that the delay is a problem, and within the apocalyptic mindset it is: the sooner the transition from this world to the world to come, the better. But this is not the only mindset or language with which Scripture works.

Here’s something from the Wisdom of Solomon, one of the books in our canon prior to the Reformation:

21 For it is always in your power to show great strength,
and who can withstand the might of your arm?
22 Because the whole world before you is like a speck that tips the scales,
and like a drop of morning dew that falls on the ground.
23 But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things,
and you overlook people’s sins, so that they may repent.
24 For you love all things that exist,
and detest none of the things that you have made,
for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.
25 How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?
Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?
26 You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.
12:1 For your immortal spirit is in all things.
2 Therefore you correct little by little those who trespass,
and you remind and warn them of the things through which they sin,
so that they may be freed from wickedness and put their trust in you, O Lord. (Wis. 11:21-12:2)

In our baptismal rite we pray that God will give the newly baptized “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” The author of the Wisdom of Solomon might want us to recognize in that joy and wonder a dim reflection of God’s own joy and wonder. So that’s another way of thinking about being two thousand years out from today’s Gospel.

Our we might recall that text from Isaiah we heard in the third week of Advent:

61:1 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
…
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion…
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isa. 61:1-4)

Starting from this text, two thousand years because we “oaks of righteousness” have been given a big project. The Jesus to whom we call “Maranatha” is also the one who said “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The God who was happy to give the Colorado River millions of years to create the Grand Canyon is happy to give us time.

So: cry “Maranatha,” nurture that joy and wonder in God’s works, build up the ancient ruins? It’s not a matter of choosing one of these mindsets or orientations; each has deep roots in Scripture. Each can provide a necessary corrective to the others. What blend is appropriate to any particular time and place depends on our context, our reading of the “signs of the times.” In the parish we won’t all blend them in the same way, which can be a source of strength if we listen carefully to each other. But by God’s grace we’ll continue to work at finding a faithful blend as we together respond to Paul’s encouragement: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).

“Know me…lead me”: A Meditation on Ps 139 (2nd after the Epiphany)

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Readings; Psalm 139

A curious set of readings! The Gospel: the calling of Nathael, picking up in a general way the Epiphany theme. The calling of Samuel: probably chosen as an Old Testament parallel to the Gospel. The reading from 1 Corinthians: well, it looks like the Lectionary editors wanted to put these chapters somewhere, and ended up distributing them in all three years of the Epiphany season. As for the psalm, the editors probably chose part of it for the theme of divine knowledge present both there and in the Gospel. We read all of it this morning, because in its entirety it’s worth a sermon. So, please open the BCP to pages 794-795.

What sort of psalm is it? The requests starting in v.18 suggest an individual petition. We find vv.18-21 uncomfortable enough that the Sunday Lectionary always omits them. The Psalter itself seems to work more on the principle articulated by John Chapman: “Pray as you can; don’t pray as you can’t.” If vv.18-21 are in my heart, the Psalter thinks it’s better to get them out there on my lips so God and I can deal with them together.

What of vv.1-17? They’re some sort of lead-in to vv.18-23: you, Lord, with your wonderful knowledge, are well-positioned to respond to the requests. But vv.1-17 really look like they’ve taken on a life of their own past any narrow rhetorical use, exploring this wonderful knowledge in surprising ways. So let’s start there.

Verses 1-5, addressed—like the whole psalm—to God, put God’s knowledge center-stage. What isn’t clear from these verses is whether the speaker is celebrating or complaining. Governments these days are getting better at surveillance, a trend Orwell worried about in his book 1984. We’re all over the map in our responses to this, but what when God’s surveillance capacities dwarf them all? What does God do with all this knowledge? The speaker/the poet hasn’t tipped his/her hand.

Verses 6-11 and 12-17 explore the theme in space and time. Space: wherever I go, you’re there. And in the middle of vv.6-11 the first clue as to what God is doing with this knowledge:

Even there your hand will lead me
and your right hand hold me fast.

“Lead…hold me fast.” God’s using knowledge for the speaker’s good, and is not about to let go. We might think of Jesus’ words in John: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (10:27-28). “If I climb up to heaven, you are there; / if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.” That’s something to hang onto.

Moving from the abstract darkness of v.11 to the darkness of the womb, the speaker describes God’s knowledge and involvement from their beginning: “you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “I will thank you because I am marvelously made” or, as Alter translates it, “for fearsomely I am set apart.” That’s not an affirmation reserved for Olympic athletes; the Psalter invites us to echo it, to claim it, even while dealing with demanding limitations. And if we claim it for ourselves, we claim it for our neighbor, also when (thinking of our southern border) it’s inconvenient to do so.

Returning to the petitions starting in v.18: obviously Jesus’ teaching (commands!) and example expand our prayer options regarding the enemy. To the degree that we’ve let Jesus mess with our imagination, what do we do with these verses? The desert fathers probably got it right, understanding the enemy as—to use the language of our baptismal service—the “sinful desires that draw you from the love of God.” With care, a certain ruthlessness is indicated: “And if thy right hand offend thee…” (Matt 5:30).

What of vv.22-23? The speaker is self-aware enough to understand that this divine scrutiny is still needed, self-aware to know that “whether there be any wickedness in me” is an open question. (There is perhaps a gentle irony in this coming right after the imprecations of vv.18-21.) “Search… know… try… look well” “and lead me in the way that is everlasting.”

That final request is perhaps the most interesting line in the psalm. We might wonder why it’s necessary: the speaker surely has Moses’ law. As Joseph said to his brothers, “Do this and you will live” (Gen. 42:18). And here we might recall Psalm 19, back on p.607. Immediately after exuberant praise of the law (vv.7-11), we encounter “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” The law is necessary, but—given our limited self-knowledge and our recurrent desire for self-deception—not sufficient. “Cleanse me!” Or, in today’s psalm’s language, “lead me.”

OK, and how does God do that? Scripture’s counter-question might be: Is there any means God doesn’t use? Joseph’s dreams, that angel-in-disguise who guided Tobias, Balaam’s ass, John the Baptist (Whose head do I want on a platter this week?)… There’s that lovely line from Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack… in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” There’s profound divine humility here, our God being happy to use the smallest crack. But it does require at least some part of us to be listening, to be awake.

John, author of today’s Gospel, incorporates this appreciation for divine knowledge in his portrait of Jesus. When Jesus is surrounded by an enthusiastic but unreliable crowd John tells us “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone” (Jn. 2:24-25). Recall too the Samaritan woman’s testimony: “He told me everything I have ever done” (Jn. 4:39). So, in today’s reading, Nathanel: “Where did you get to know me?” (Jn. 1:48)

And if we return to the question of what God/Jesus does with this knowledge, with Jesus’ leading: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Nor does this seeing leave Nathanel/us unchanged. Paul, writing to those exasperating Corinthians, some of his least promising hearers: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

How does change happen?

Change is at the core of our Eucharists. In the Great Thanksgiving the celebrant prays:

“Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace…”

The change in the bread and wine: that’s the simple part. The change in us (“sanctify us”)—how does that work? One of the images Scripture uses is that of potter and clay. From Isaiah we hear “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (64:8). And texts in the Wisdom of Solomon (15:7), Sirach (33:13), and Paul highlight the potter’s freedom to do with the clay as he wills. From Romans: “Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?” (9:21). The meditation in today’s psalm runs along parallel lines: “For you yourself created my inmost parts; / you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

From the way Paul uses the image in Romans we might conclude that we have as little to do with the change in us as we have in the change in the bread and wine. Which is why we need Jeremiah. If we listen to what Jeremiah is saying—as opposed to what we assume he’s saying—what we hear is that the potter is responsive to what the clay does.

“At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.”

When it comes to change in us, our choices matter.

That, of course, is what drives Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading. Hyperbole is one of Jesus’ favorite rhetorical tools, and here, in the style of Moses’ final speeches in Deuteronomy, he lays out the either-or: disciple or not, life or death: your choice. And sometimes we need that sort of wake-up call.

But most of the time, I’d guess, we need something other than the sledgehammer—which brings us to our reading from Philemon.

I recalled this letter a few weeks back. Philemon’s slave Onesimus had run away, ran into Paul, and become a Christian. Paul is sending Onesimus back with this letter, in which he appeals to Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” “Welcome him as you would welcome me.”

The stakes are high for everyone. Onesimus: the owner’s free to do whatever he wants with his property, so returning to your owner might look like a monumentally bad idea. Philemon: he’s a Christian, but one look at Onesimus may be enough for him to revert to business as usual. Paul: Paul can write inspiring letters: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). When push comes to shove, is that true?

The stakes are high, which makes Paul’s approach all the more surprising. In much of our experience, the higher the stakes, the greater the coercion. Come April 15, Washington does not appeal to me to file my tax return. And it’s easy to take the absence of coercion as evidence that the issue isn’t important. For the state that’s often true; for Paul—or God, for that matter—no. Paul values Philemon’s freedom—God values our freedom—too highly to coerce, even when the stakes are high. (Not that Paul won’t get pretty close to that line, even while trying not to cross it!)

So Paul points toward the desired outcome: that Philemon receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” “Welcome him as you would welcome me.” “Knowing that you will do even more than I say.” But Paul leaves the details—all the crucial details—in Philemon’s hands.

How does change happen? Paul’s letter to Philemon is an important model. The safe thing would have been for Paul to keep Onesimus away from Philemon. Paul—and Onesimus—choose to give this slave-owner Philemon the opportunity to contribute to this “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” business.

Let me take the “so what?” in two different directions.

Paul’s encouragement to Philemon to let his Christian identity shape his conduct: who knows what that might inspire if we stay awake? My home parish, St. Dunstan’s, aware that the church sits on property previously belonging to the Ho-Chunk, put together a Land Acknowledgement Task Force a while back, which concluded that simply saying “Sorry ‘bout that” was insufficient. So, starting this year, there’s a $4,000 line item in the annual budget—under building, not outreach—to go to the Ho-Chunk. It’s a step.

The way Paul appeals to Philemon is probably a helpful model for us as we interact with each other regarding the important stuff. Paul really cares what Philemon decides. He’s not shy about appealing to their shared history. But he wants Philemon’s decision to be free, not coerced. You could do worse than read Philemon together with your new rector!

The psalmist prayed “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Philemon, Onesimus, Paul, you, me: all marvelously made, all terribly vulnerable. And our ever-hopeful God sends us together into the coming week.

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1); Gospel: Luke 13:22-30

Well, that was a cheerful Gospel! They say that sermons are supposed to have good news. I suppose that the good news in this one is that if we periodically experience the Christian life as quite challenging, that’s not because we’re doing it wrong.

“Will only a few be saved?” That was one of the hot questions in Jesus’ time, the sort one might use to size up new teachers. Who’s included in God’s coming Kingdom? It’s a sort of multiple-choice question: the very faithful Jews, all the Jews except the notorious sinners, all the Jews, all the Jews & the very virtuous Gentiles? This isn’t so much a question about life after death, as about who participates when God’s Kingdom is established on this earth.

Jesus’ answer is “None of the above.” Jesus offers a number of quite troubling images: a narrow door, an unsuccessful interview with the house’s owner, other people streaming in from all the compass points. More importantly, he shifts the question from a conversation about “them” to an exhortation to the crowd: “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

Today we talk about the Church as wide and inclusive. That’s in Jesus’ answer too: “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.” But to talk of wideness and inclusivity alone is perhaps not the whole story.

Back to our text, it’s not hard to place this interchange within Jesus’ ministry. Like John the Baptist, Jesus warns the Jewish audience not to presume on their Jewishness. So, we non-Jews can devote the rest of this homily to feeling superior? Nope. The repeated warnings in the Epistle to the Hebrews remind us that going on autopilot is even more dangerous for us: “if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven!”

So, if “Strive to enter through the narrow door” is also directed to us, what’s it mean? What response is it calling for?

“The narrow door” is—obviously—a metaphor. In Luke’s Gospel it seems to point towards the Great Commandment and Jesus himself.

The Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God —that is, Yahweh— with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” So much for all the other gods that diminish our humanity! So much for the multitude of temptations to love our neighbors less than ourselves or end up loving ourselves less than we’d love even a pet. “Strive to enter through the narrow door” and “strive to live humanely” may turn out to be the same exhortation.

It’s worth noticing that this strive-to-enter-through-the-narrow-door exhortation is one that Jesus has already applied to himself. Jesus is making his way to the death that awaits him in Jerusalem. This is what loving God and loving his neighbor mean for Jesus in this situation. Doors usually involve four pieces of wood; Jesus’ narrow door is constructed of two.

But the narrow door is also about Jesus himself. It’s sometimes said that Jesus preached the Kingdom of God and that the Early Church preached Jesus. And that’s half of the truth. The other half? Jesus’ words and actions implied a unique role for Jesus in the Kingdom: the anointed / the Messiah / the Christ. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” The Gospel of John comes at it differently: how are we supposed to love God (so the Great Commandment) if we don’t know God? Jesus makes God known. Jesus is the reality check on our images of God.

For the Gospels, the Great Commandment and Jesus are not two separate doors but one and the same door. For this reason, from the beginning, the Church has engaged in mission, so that there are places like Holy Cross very far from Jerusalem, with none of us looking particularly Jewish.

“Strive… For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.” Turning our attention from ‘the narrow door’ to the trying-and-not-being-able part, what’s that about?

First, “strive” is rather like the verb we met last week in Heb 12: “run with perseverance.” Athletic and military metaphors are frequent in the New Testament; this is a world in which the virtues of the soldier and the athlete are needed.

“And will not be able” recalls another text from Luke: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” And for “wealth” we could substitute any number of other gods.

Recall the traditional way to catch a monkey. Take a coconut and make a hole in it, just large enough for the monkey’s hand. Tie the coconut down, and put a sweet inside. The monkey smells the sweet, puts his hand into the coconut, grabs the sweet and the hole is too small for the fist to come out. The monkey will do anything except let go of the sweet. So you can wait till it falls asleep, goes unconscious from exhaustion or simply walk up & throw a net over it.

The sweet: for us humans it may be an addiction, or an exaggerated need for survival or security, affection or esteem, power or control. All of these can fatally get in the way of our loving God and our neighbor. They can warp our perception of our surroundings, so that we see others simply as competitors, and make us vulnerable to leaders who play on our fears.

We really want God’s Kingdom; we really want that sweet, whatever it is.

Recognizing that we’re holding onto the sweets —we typically discover a whole series— letting go of them, more single-heartedly loving God and our neighbor: all these are different ways of talking about the same life-time project. For this we are baptized and come to this communion rail. For this we rely on each other’s prayers and Jesus’ intercession. For this we make use of the means of grace: prayer, Scripture, the neighbor who doesn’t tell us what we want to hear. Jesus is our door.

Our culture encourages us to see ourselves as free. Scripture tends to see freedom as something we achieve, like the freedom to play a musical instrument well, or the freedom to speak another language well. So, to circle back to today’s psalm, if we pray it with today’s gospel as background the focus does shift:

Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, *
from the clutches of the evildoer and the oppressor.

Looking down at the clutched hand… I really want that sweet; I really want freedom. Sweet Jesus, have mercy.

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

Last week, looking at the Colossians reading, I said “And that’s the question for us: Jesus as the solution to my ‘spiritual’ needs, or Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world?” That set up Jesus’ conversation with Martha and listening carefully to Jesus.

But if we stay with Colossians, what more might it want to say about “Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” now?

Of course, “Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” does sounds unbelievable, which is why Abraham and Sarah pop up so frequently in the New Testament. Well past the childbearing window, the Lord says “I will make of you a great nation” and they head for that new land, and hang in until they’re changing diapers. “Sounds unbelievable” is familiar territory for us people of faith.

But back to Jesus as healer/victor. How does societal healing, or, more broadly, societal change happen?

That’s the key question for organizations like World Vision, the relief & development agency where I worked for a couple decades. How, for example, to introduce a promising agricultural innovation? What you usually need is a few farmers willing to try it. If it works, it sells itself. The neighbors have been watching, now they want it too.

This is the strategy behind God’s calling Abraham/Israel. Here’s Moses in Deuteronomy:

“See…I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’” (4:5-6)

And it remains the strategy with the renewal of the Israel project in Jesus’ followers. Here’s Paul in Ephesians: “and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (3:9-10). This is why the New Testament gives little attention to evangelism and a great deal of attention to the quality of life in the emerging congregations.

Quality of life. That would take a lot of unpacking. Here, let’s focus on what Paul is doing in Colossians. Last week Paul spoke of thrones, dominions, rulers and powers. He’s speaking of civil authorities, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, for he’s also speaking of the customs, institutions, mental frameworks, that pretend to rule his hearer’s lives. Adjust the vocabulary a little and it all sounds very familiar: how many dimensions of our lives get ruled by “that’s just the way things are!” Take the economy for example. No one controls it. It has its priests (the economists). Sometimes it’s healthy. Sometimes it’s sick. Sometimes it demands sacrifices. Paul: the congregation is the place where the defeat of these powers is visible. Jew and Greek? One in Christ. Slave and free? One in Christ. Male and female? One in Christ.

That’s hardly easy. As in most agricultural test plots, we’re not dealing with virgin land, but with land that’s been badly treated. So Jesus’ life-giving death and resurrection needs to play out again and again in Jesus’ followers. This is, I think, what Paul was talking about in last week’s reading: “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.” Our baptism sets us up for this, as Paul reminds us in today’s reading: “when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”

The New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink writes:

Sin does not just vanish in the air, even when it is forgiven, because sin does not end with the sinner. It has consequences. It always has a social dimension. Every sin embeds itself in human community, corrupts a part of the world, and creates a damaged environment.

So the consequences of sin have to be worked off, and human beings cannot do so of themselves any more than they can absolve themselves. Genuine “working off” of guilt is only possible on a basis that God himself must create. And God has created such a base in his people, and in Jesus he has renewed and perfected it.

Lohfink continues, quoting from Dag Hammarskjöld’s diary:

Easter, 1960. Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who “forgives” you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.

The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.[1]

“Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” now? Yes, as Jesus empowers his followers to continue his costly healing/forgiving work, to continue to show in their common life that the powers don’t get the last word.

Showing in their common life that the powers don’t get the last word: that’s a long-term project. The powers don’t get the last word; “that’s just the way it is” doesn’t get the last word. A few random examples: In the 4th Century, Basil in Caesarea established the first hospital with inpatient facilities, professional medical staff, and free care for the poor.[2] In the Middle Ages—as I recalled last week—water and wind power took the place of forced human labor. In recent centuries Genesis’ declaration that all humanity—not just the elites—bear God’s image began to be heard in new ways, and voting rights slowly expanded. So today governments claim legitimacy based on the people’s continued consent—however flimsy that claim. Quite breathtaking, really, what Jesus has accomplished through the Church.

Our story, of course, is not one of unbroken progress. God values our freedom, so things can go forward, backward, or sideways. We now have—God help us—for-profit hospitals. So Abraham and Sarah remain crucial as pioneers in trust. And speaking of Abraham, in God’s generosity loss doesn’t get the last word. The rabbis noticed that poor ram caught in the thicket that Abraham sacrificed instead of Isaac; Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said this:

“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 Mount Sinai and the larger one will resound one day, announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[3]

Our Colossians reading started with “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” Continue: there’s a world out there badly needing healing, badly needing transformation. What might Jesus be seeking to do through us?

[1] Jesus of Nazareth pp 255-256.

[2] Cf. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lostinaoneacrewood/2020/01/03/basiliad-basil-of-caesarea-social-justice-worlds-first-hospital/.

[3] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.