Category Archives: Lent

That’s Not An Answer

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Luke 13:1-9, 31-35
             Why do bad things happen to good people? Conversely, why do good things happen to people who seem evil? Why should a murderer have joy? Why should a gracious person experience deep grief? This is the question Jesus is confronted with in today’s reading. People want to know why God allowed the faithful Galileans to be killed.
            Jesus responds by asking if the people who were killed in the accidental falling of a tower were worse sinners and deserved to die. The questions that are being raised go all the way back to Job and beyond. We want to know why there is suffering in the world. We want to know why it comes to us and to those we love and to those we deem innocent.
            So, Jesus, ever helpful, answers these deep, heartfelt questions with a parable (everyone’s favorite). He speaks of a fig tree that is not producing fruit and the desire of the owner of the garden to cut it down, presumably to make space for a tree that will produce. The gardener gets the life of the tree extended by promising to rededicate effort to its growth for one more year.
            It is tempting to make a metaphor or an allegory out of this parable. To say that we are the tree(s), God is the owner, and Jesus is the gardener- bargaining for more time for us to produce fruit. However, that scenario pits the Father and the Son against each other, instead of seeing them work together out of love for all creation.
            Jesus does not say why bad things happen; he skips right over that question. We want the world to make sense- for bad things to happen to “bad” people or for bad things to happen as a direct correlation to bad actions. It is not so. God is in the center of all events, but not the immediate cause of all that happens. God is present in all pain and suffering, but not at the root of these things. Human freedom and freedom in the created order can, unfortunately, lead to pain and sadness. (What is freedom in the created order? It means that some things happen like the growth of cancer cells or natural disasters or freak accidents.)

            Knowing that God is present in all things, but not the cause of all situations, Jesus does not answer the questions that we ask, but instead gives us the direction and information that we need to know and to remember. Through the parable of the fig tree, Jesus reminds us that pain will happen to everyone. Everyone will experience loss. Everyone will make a bad decision and experience consequences, sometimes negative and sometimes not. Everyone will (most likely) die. And everyone will experience God’s judgment.
            Jesus is reminding his hearers- then and now- that there are things we do something about and things we cannot. For the fig tree, and for us, fruitlessness is not inevitable. Through the Holy Spirit, God is constantly shaping us… using the events that happen to us and around us to bring forth good things for our neighbors, our communities, our families, and… even for ourselves.
            God is with us as we weather life’s experiences, but then helps us to grow into the producers that we have the potential to be. When we reflect on God’s grace, then, we have to ask ourselves if and how we are producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These things grow in us, by God’s help, and we are called to use them to mend the wounds in the world that are caused by bad choices, by poor use of freedom, by accidents, by the forces that oppose God and God’s good work.
            Instead of clearing up the mysteries of the ages, Jesus tells us that we are the answer to someone’s question. We are the answer to someone’s pain, to someone else’s inability to make ends meet, someone’s call for help, to the needs for justice, peace, and healing. Jesus reminds his disciples, his hearers, and those who would deride him that we can still produce this fruit without having all our questions answered.
            This is what it means to live in faith and to live together faithfully. Our life of faith is living together and living in the world until the time when we have all the answers, but the questions no longer matter. We are not brought together, we are not given faith, we are not believing for the answers. We are together, granted faith, and believing with the questions.
            Which does mean that we may become exasperated, on occasion with Jesus, with God, with the Spirit. We may yell. We may rend our clothing. But the difference between living in faith with doubt and not believing is revealed at the end of today’s reading. We can be with Herod, with the religious officials, with the people who demand answers or refuse reason, with those who reject Jesus. Or we can stand with Jesus, with the One who Saves, and say that we do not know all that we will know, but we know enough now, we trust enough now… to continue forward. We can say that we have received enough grace to sustain us into the next step. We can share with one another enough confidence that God is continuing to shape us, feed us, and nurture us into the producers of the fruits of the Spirit that the world so desperately needs.
            Jesus reminds us that, on this side of heaven, pain and death are going to happen. Judgment, God’s decisions toward us, is also inevitable. However, these things- separation, loss, and death- do not mean division from God. And they most assuredly do not mean inevitable unfruitfulness. The good news of God in Jesus the Christ is that God continues to use us for good, whether we know it or not. The world is changed through each of us, for Christ’s own sake. And we are gifted with the opportunities to be participants in God’s grace and creativity. We become co-workers and co-creators through the power of the Spirit.
            The Lenten season reminds us that the time to join with Jesus is now. We do so, invited by the grace we have already known. The promise of God in Christ to continue working in us so that we might bear fruit is the deepest measure of God’s grace. And while that grace does not answer all our questions, it helps us to live with our questions. The consolation of today’s reading is that we can live with questions and still live in faith.  

No Next Time

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Luke 10:25-37
            The parable of the Good Samaritan is a summer story. I do not mean that it happens in the summer, though it might, but that we usually get it in the summer. Well, into the Pentecost season, we hear this familiar parable. However, now we are hearing it where it comes in the gospel- at the start of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. He and the disciples have just left a Samaritan village, where they were not well-received, and they are now on the journey that will end where? (At the cross)
            Why are they traveling to Jerusalem? Is it so that they can be near the temple for Passover? Is it so that Jesus can confront the religious authorities and bring about revolution as the Messiah? The journey begin far off, but with each encounter and each parable- Jesus and the men and women traveling with him get closer to Jerusalem and the events of betrayal and crucifixion.
            Here’s a question, though, for the start of their journey. Is what happens in Jerusalem inevitable? Does Jesus haveto be crucified? Does the purpose of his time in the flesh on earth culminate in the events of one dark Friday? If we believe that people have free will, given to us by God, then Jesus does not have to end up crucified. People could choose to recognize the Messiah, they could heed to urging of the Holy Spirit, they could be open to God’s work in the world. But in anger and fear, in rigidity to their expectations, in a desire to control God, many people will stand and say, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
            Were there enough people to resist that? Maybe, but where were they? Many people who are in that Jerusalem courtyard believe they are good people. They believe they are people doing the right thing. Yet, when we look at it (and perhaps when others on the periphery looked at the crowd), we think they are very wrong. How could they think they were right to crucify Jesus?
            Where did they go wrong? Is it possible that the events in that courtyard start on the road to Jericho? Does denying Jesus in a story where well-intentioned people pass by a man dying in a ditch after having been robbed and beaten? The people who pass by have good reasons, you know. In the story, there are two people who pass by. Ostensibly, the priest and the Levite have very particular reasons for not stopping. If they touch blood or a dead body, they will be ritually unclean for a certain amount of time and, therefore, unable to perform their religious duties. It could have been a trap, set by the robbers, to gain additional victims from those who stop to render aid. The men may have been in a great hurry and trusted that any one of many others on a busy road would stop to help.
            Jesus offers these two examples because those listening to his story would have understood the religious reasons, but also known that carrying for others is supposed to trump religious minutiae. Then Jesus drops his bombshell for big effect, a Samaritan- one who is outside the laws of Moses and, thus, presumably outside the affections of God- is the one who does the right thing. A Samaritan is the one who genuinely has good reason not to stop and help a Jew, but who abandons all else, offers aid, and promises to return. (Speaking of, can you think of someone else unexpected who abandons their position, offers gracious aid, and promises to return?)
            One can always find a reason not to help. It’s just this time- when I’m so busy, when I’m not sure what to say, when things are tight, when I don’t want people to know how I feel about this, when I’m afraid… There are always good reasons for not acting this time (or ever), but are they good enough?
            The trouble with thinking that your reasons are good or that you’ve done enough is that the world keeps moving, the powers that oppose God keep working, and eventually… not stopping for someone, not speaking up, not heeding the Spirit’s urging… leads to standing in a courtyard with a crowd who are yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We wonder, “How did we get here?” and we tell ourselves it happened because Jesus came to die.
            But if he didn’t. If his death is the result of people’s actions, when did it start? It started when people wanted to pinpoint who deserves care, who deserves neighbor love… and who can be left in the ditch. It starts when people want to point out who “deserves help” and who made their own bed. It starts when there is a line drawn between people for any reason- for race, color, creed, habit, affection, or location.
            The Levite and the priest probably told themselves that they would stop next time. Next time. There’s always a next time. That’s one of the problems that Lent brings before us. Putting off caring for your neighbor, speaking up against injustice, making God a priority brings us right to the foot of the cross. In Lent, there is no next time. There is now.
            Now is the time. Now is when you stop. Now is when you call. Now is when you write. Now is when you reach out, stand up, speak to, lift high… There are no good reasons not to do so.
            The Lenten reminder that there is no next time is rooted in what we know is coming- not the death, but the resurrection. This is the season in which we reflect on what it means to be people whose decisions are not final. We like to think that the world hinges on what we do. Yet, all of history is in God’s own hands. “Crucify him” was not the last word, resurrection is. There is no next time because we are not waiting to receive God’s grace. It has already been poured out for us and on us. If we have already received, why should we wait to give?
            Recognizing Jesus as the one who saves the world does not wait for Easter. It doesn’t wait until we have more time, a better physique, or more money. It doesn’t wait until we are confronted with a clean-cut, sanitary, comfortable moral decision. Recognizing Jesus as the one who saves and is alive in us and in our neighbor… happens right now… with people all around us… all kinds of bodies, all kinds of needs, all kinds of grace.
            The road of the decision to crucify starts when people give small reasons for ignoring the needs of people in front of them and promise, “Next time.” God never says, “Next time” to us. Thus, it’s not a response that we should give to God.
Amen. 

Theology of the Cross (Sermon 3/18)

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Lent 4 (Narrative Lectionary, Year B)
Mark 12:38-44
            I like to start sermons with a story. I feel like a story helps us to get into the groove of listening and pondering what’s happening in the Scripture reading. The story is like a little bridge that we cross over into history and that history crosses over to meet us.
            However, in order to be true to the gospel of Christ according to Mark, today’s passage does not lend itself to a good story, to a catchy story, to a story that I want to remember and to tell. In Luke, the widow with her two coins is the hero of the story. In Luke’s account of this story, Jesus praises the woman for giving her last two coins. For generations, she has been upheld as the model of sacrificial giving for the cause of the church.
            For Mark, the woman is symbolic, too. But she doesn’t represent sacrificial giving. Instead, in Mark’s gospel, the woman is a sacrificial lamb, preyed upon by greedy church leaders who posture at showy displays of piety, but in truth consume the goods of the poor, down to their last coins and then their houses.  Mark’s version of this story puts me in mind of all of church history, the bad parts, not a story I want to open with today.
            In 70 A.D., the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. This is the second temple. The first temple is built under Solomon’s direction, with the conscripted labor of the Israelites. (Conscripted labor is a fancy phrase for slavery.) When it is destroyed and the people of Israel are held captive in Babylon, there is a deep longing for a place to connect with God. After the time of captivity, the second temple is built with money from Cyrus the Great. No matter how great he was, no matter how respectful of Hebrew history, Cyrus is Persian. This is not a king of Israel.
            The building project that is begun by Cyrus continues until it is finished under Herod the Great. By now, the structure of worship life in the temple is strictly monitored. Animals must be bought from the temple. Money has to be changed to temple coinage. The scribes and temple leaders demand, in the name of God, offerings for all kinds of sins. The cost of living righteously keeps many people in a cycle of poverty.
            Many people, regular people, probably have a deep sense of ambivalence about the temple because of this history. The building itself, the worship inside, the people who run the show. Yet it is also the place where people have felt close to God, where they have had deeply moving moments in their hearts or with members of their family, it is a place that is connected with hope, a future, and promises. This is what the woman believes she is giving her last two coins, too. So that someone else may have what she has experienced.
            Mark is trying to convey all of this in his story, in this fleeting description of Jesus and the disciples witnessing temple life. If Mark is writing before the temple falls, he is trying to remind people of what the story of the building is and of what Jesus said it would be, should be. If Mark is writing after the temple has fallen, he is trying to remind people of the corruption that was and the wholeness that can be.
            What Mark is conveying, what Jesus is showing, what the widow remembers is the best of what a community of faith can be. The truth that is revealed to and through a community of faith comes via the story that it tells. Is it a story of obvious glory, of fancy structures, of powerful leaders, of devouring the houses of widows for the sake of show? Or is the story of glory in the cross, of welcome and consolation, of quiet conversations, food and fellowship, support, and making ends meet?
            It’s amazing to me, though it shouldn’t be, that church history is filled with this story repeating over and over again. The story of people whose power or position went to their head and they began to build towers, cathedrals, and cities. They expected their influence to last forever. It didn’t and it can’t.
            We can’t hold the earthly idea of power, the idea that the scribes and so many since them have had… we can’t hold that idea and, at the same time, say that we trust God-in-Jesus who noticed the widow, who called unschooled fishermen, who spoke with isolated women, who healed lepers, who blessed children. The theology of glory, honor, and triumph can’t hold a candle to the theology of the cross. One is empty because it is hollow. The other is empty because of the power of God. One is pyrite, sparkly and worth nothing. The other is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
            The deep, dark valleys of church history, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly, can’t overcome the hope and comfort that is the story of God. This is the call to us, to each of us and to our congregation. We are called to remember that the life of faith isn’t about the story of this church, but about the story of God. The story of God-in-us and with us. The story of the family into which we have been adopted through baptism, the family table at which we eat together, the family circle that we see here and is completed in heaven.
            The story of the temple, of the building, of the scribes… the stories of seeking earthly power never end well. These things do pass.
            The story to which the widow belonged, the story into which we are called, the story of abundant life, the story of grace… it’s a story for the ages. For all ages. It’s the story that will carry us into the life that is to come.
Amen. 

Is God visible to you? (Ash Wednesday Sermon)

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Ash Wednesday (Year B, Narrative Lectionary)
22 February 2012
Isaiah 58:1-17, Mark 9:30-50
            What’s the smallest unit of measure in any society? The individual… Individuals make up our families, whether by blood or choice. The solo person gets added to more solo people and then we have a group… a congregation… a town… a state… and so on. There is no such thing as a self-made individual because everyone has some help along the way. No one makes himself or herself from the ground up. What’s the smallest unit of individual? A child.
            In our society, Western society, the child is the smallest individual. When we look at children, we see the possibility of a future productive individual, so we spend our energy in shaping that person. “What about the children?” is such a central question to our way of thinking that we easily miss what Jesus is saying by using a child as an example in this gospel lesson.
            In this period (and for well beyond it and still in some parts of the world today), children were not the smallest individual unit of society. They were the smallest productive members of the smallest societal unit- the family. If you survived infancy, the relief was not only that you lived, but that now you could help out! You could sweep, run errands, change straw, watch animals, help cook… whatever was appropriate for your gender and your family’s status. And you were socially invisible. A child still didn’t count until he or she was marrying out and cost money or marrying in and bringing money. A child is a non-person, uncounted.  
            So when Jesus, sighing over the disciples’ fight about greatness, calls a child… this should get our attention. First, Jesus separates the Twelve, so there must be a larger group. Secondly, the larger group must have men and women in it because a group of only men wouldn’t have children in it. Thirdly, the children might be invisible, but they can hear and they must have known who Jesus was or heard stories about him.
When Jesus sits the Twelve down and the rest of the crowd is close enough for the Teacher to call a child over, everyoneis listening. And then Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever welcomes on such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” A non-person, an invisible being represents Jesus, God on earth? An emissary represents his or her sender. The emissary of the king comes glittering and riding a fine horse, even if the king is struggling, because how people perceive the emissary is how they perceive the king.
            Jesus is the Divine Emissary. How Jesus is perceived (and received) is how God is perceived (and received). And here Jesus is telling the disciples (and everyone else) that in order to welcome God, you must train yourself to see what you previously treated as invisible.  Invisible like a child. Like a leper. Like a person with AIDS. Like hungry Africans. Like homeless Alaska Natives. Like a teenager with an eating disorder. Like a friend with depression. Like a lesbian or a gay man. Like a couple after a miscarriage. Like a person who goes to prison for murder. In order to welcome God, you must train yourself to see what you previously treated as invisible.
            In the season of Lent, many of us turn inward- thinking about our personal spiritual practices, our internal habits. There is nothing wrong with this. The ashes on our foreheads are also on our hearts, covering our quiet prayers, our doubts, our inward struggles. But Lent is not only about introspection. The inward reflection must be met with outward actions. Consider the words of Isaiah: Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble onself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
            Here’s the thing about Lenten discipline. We want to make it about God and me. God and Bob. God and Phyllis. God and Gene. Whether we set aside things that are truly in our way spiritually or whether we take up disciplines to challenge our thinking and our faith, the ultimate result shouldn’t be God and me… it should be God inme. Christ in me. Spirit in me.
            “God and me” is taken care of through Jesus the Christ. But God in me matters to the people I encounter every day. In order to welcome God, we must train ourselves to see what we previously treated as invisible. If you have ashes on your head (or on your heart), if you say you believe, if you wear a cross, if you participate in church activities of any kind… you are an emissary. What you do reflects the one who sends you. What you do reflects on Christ. On your Creator. On your Advocate. The people we miss because they are invisible to us are being denied an experience of Christ because of us. The people whom we engage with grace are having an experience of Christ because of us. Are we willing to open ourselves to greater encounters in Christ and with Christ as we walk toward resurrection?
This Lenten season, are we prepared to die, within ourselves and in our actions, to our prejudices, to our blind spots, to our fears, to our insecurities? Are you prepared to fast from injustice, from anger, from judgment, and from mistrust? Do you believe that you can close your eyes, receive the ashes- that marker of mortality, and have your eyes opened to new possibilities of grace? Are you willing to let Christ do that in you and through you?
             Even on Ash Wednesday, we are Easter people. Resurrection begins right now. You are an ambassador, an emissary for Christ, in Christ, with Christ…
            On each of these forty days, and beyond, God will be encountering you in other people. Do you see them? Do they see Christ?
Amen.
             

Keep Me Burning

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One of the things I do each week is put a fresh candle in the Eternal Lamp. I counted once and I estimate that I’ve already done this over 150 times. Same motions, same prayer…

No matter how many times I will do this, the thing that keeps me doing it is knowing that it’s not really me keeping the flame alive.

Welcome to Lent.

Monumental Transfiguration (Sermon 2/19)

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Transfiguration (NL, Year B)

19 February 2012
Mark 8:27-9:13 
            I’m going to Washington, DC at the end of March for a church conference. What should I see while I’m there? (Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument, etc) What are those things for? They serve as markers and reminders (monuments) to events and people of the past. They help us remember things we have promised not to forget and things we might try to forget and things we truly want to remember. Monuments serve as markers for the best and worst parts of our human nature, which is part of why we build them. Other people in other countries make the same effort, showing birthplaces and homes of famous leaders, historic places of worship, sites of battles and deaths.
            Knowing how likely we are as people to erect monuments and (now) to make attempts to preserve historic locations, can we really blame Peter for his desire to build a tent on top of that mountain? After all, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, there were many locations where people put up cairns or rock altars to commemorate God’s help or blessing. Here, on this mountaintop, Peter, James, and John have seen Moses and Elijah. (How they knew it was Moses and Elijah I have NO idea.) Literally in front of their eyes, they see the person through whom God gave the law and the foremost among the prophets.
            Not only is Peter seeing the two main heroes of Jewish faith, but he’s also seeing two people who have no monument other than their deeds. When Moses is not able to enter the Promised Land with the Israelites, he dies and is buried. They don’t carry his body with them and their motion is forward. No one knows where he is buried by the time anyone could go back to mourn him in location.
            Elijah is taken up into heaven in a whirlwind- a crash of thunder and winds that terrifies everyone who sees it. There’s no monument to Elijah. No specific place to go and contemplate his deeds. Again, the two main heroes of the Jewish faith have no monument other than their deeds.
           
Peter may be uncertain about what it means to believe Jesus is the Messiah, but he knows what to do if he’s seeing Moses and Elijah. Not only is this location obviously holy, but also a monument here would be helpful to so many people. What a good idea! And if they’re sticking around to build a monument, you know what they don’t have to do… head into Jerusalem. If what Jesus says about betrayal and death is true, maybe they can forestall it by working here on a monument, on booths that celebrate the revelation of Moses and Elijah.
            Then the voice comes from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” And with that the idea of a monument, as well as Moses and Elijah are gone, and they are there with Jesus and no one else. The disciples are still struggling, not just Peter, with what they are seeing as they travel with Jesus. They are trying to reconcile what they’ve heard their whole life with regard to the Messiah and the fact they believe… they want to believe… they’re trying to believe that God’s Anointed (Messiah) is right there with them.
            Not only is Jesus not acting in the swift justice, furious vengeance, David/Moses/Elijah hybrid that was dreamed (and maybe promised), but he’s also telling his disciples that they can’t follow him and act in that manner. In other words, they have to tear down the monuments of their expectations- the Messiah monuments in their hearts and minds- so that they can actually experience the Jesus who is right there with them. The Rock of their own imagination is stopping them from hearing the living Word, the Rock of Ages,  right there with them.
            The same thing happens to us. We have monuments… Bible translations, liturgies, denominational polity,… that we have built based on who we think Jesus is. We then get caught up in maintaining those monuments, which we interpret as right religious behavior, and forget to listen to the Living Word, to Jesus. Part of how we are to interpret Scripture, our own actions, our decision making is through the lens of Jesus- what Jesus would do and what Jesus would have you do… have us do. The monument, the marker, we build for Jesus is how we live our lives. 
            The mountain of the Transfiguration gives us a glimpse of Easter- just before we go back down the valley into the season of Lent… for the walk to Jerusalem. It may sound strange to say, but Easter becomes another monument that gets in our way… in the way of hearing the voice of Jesus. When we become intensely focused on the death and resurrection, we make just another monument of the cross and empty tomb. Another place to visit, to be moved by, and to leave.
            But listen to the voice of Jesus… we can be… we are transfigured as disciples for this life. We aren’t simply waiting for heaven, but we have the Messiah in our midst for living right now. This is a monumental advantage to a living God, to a God-with-us. We have received the Spirit so that we may be transformed and be transforming in our every day lives right now.
            Was Jesus the Son of God? Was he the Messiah? Did he walk on the earth? Does he meet us today? In essence, are God’s promises true? (Can I get an amen?)
            As part of the on-going transfiguration of our faith, we (like Peter, James, and John) have to tear down the monuments we have built to what we want Jesus to be, what we have made Jesus out to be… and allow Jesus’ voice to show us who He (and through Him, God) really is. This is part of the work of Lent- to hear and be changed by the radical power of who Jesus is… in his whole ministry. We, too, are being told to listen to the Beloved Son.
            What does Jesus say to his disciples, some of those hard words: “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.” That’s not a call to monument building- to lovely memorials of stone or gardens or well-preserved houses. It’s a call to a full life, lived in the Spirit… a transfiguring life that does not leave the world the same… a life that begins the minute you and Jesus go down the mountain.
Amen.