Well, you just heard how the historians told it, but I’m here to tell you how it was . . . Because although these events happened three thousand years ago, and I was an old man even then, I remember them well. I remember I was depressed . . . I don’t know whether it was what you’d call clinical depression today or not, but I felt downright bad. I could barely get out of bed, I could hardly choke anything down for dinner—and as a prophet, the last of the judges, no less, my meals tended to be on the sumptuous side . . . but I couldn’t eat, I kept pushing around my peas and potatoes and roast lamb with my fork until my wife said “Quit playing with your food, Samuel . . . don’t you know there are people in Samaria starving at this very minute, that’d give anything for a little of that lamb?” And even though I was an old man I’d have to say “Yes, dear” and pretend to shove some food into my mouth.
Why was I so depressed, you ask? Well, it was simple: God repented of making my dear friend Saul king of Israel. As the last of the judges, I was the one to anoint him . . . I remember that he was tall and fair to look at, well muscled and competent, and all the ladies sighed when they saw him, even my dear wife, and over the years he was King we became close, so close that I was almost a father to him; he was certainly more of a son to me than those good-for-nothing meshuganahs Joel and Abijah, and now, God had withdrawn his spirit from Saul, and that was a death knell for his king-ship, and sure, he’d done some bad things . . . there was that unlawful sacrifice that irritated the Lord, and the cursing of his own soldiers so they couldn’t eat . . . and oh yeah: the sparing of the enemy’s livestock when God had said to destroy it all. But, really: what was so bad? Only a little youthful zeal, maybe an over-idealistic concern for people . . .
But God decided to withdraw the favor of the Lord from Saul, and I admit it, I wept. That’s right, big strong manly judge of the Israelites, weeping before the Lord his God. And of course I had to be the one to tell him, and that just made it worse, and irony of ironies, I had to be the one to go out find and anoint his successor. “How long are you going to grieve over Saul, old man?” said the Lord. “He’s done with, kaput, it’s the end of his King’s Highway. I have withdrawn my spirit from him, and I’m not gonna change my mind. So buck up, quit your moping, I have a job for you. Fill your horn with anointing oil, saddle up ol’ paint, and go to Bethlehem. I’ve found a king for you and his dad’s name is Jesse.”
And I’m thinking “Riigght . . . because your choosing a king worked out so well the last time,” but I can’t say that out loud. What I do say is “You’ve gotta be kidding . . . if Saul gets wind of it, he’ll kill me. He’ll draw and quarter me, then take the quarters and feed them to the jackals, and after that he’ll throw them in the fire—crackle, crackle, crackle—and after that . . .”
“All right, all right, I get the message,” says the Lord my God, “Here’s what you do: take a heifer with you and say ‘I’ve come to sacrifice to the Lord,’ and invite Jesse and his sons—Jesse loves a good party, the old reprobate—and I’ll take it from there. All you gotta do is anoint the one I choose. No sweat!”
And in spite of my misgivings, I do what the Lord tells me—after all, look what happened to Saul when he didn’t! And I get to Bethlehem—that flea-bitten wide spot in the road—and the town fathers show up, bowing low and scraping, ‘cause they know who I am, and what power I hold, and they ask if I’ve come in peace, if I’ve come in shalom, and I say “In shalom . . . I come to sacrifice to the Lord, so clean yourself up and make yourself right with God, and come on along.” And I do the same for Jesse, they clean the sheep manure off their robes, and I sanctify him and his sons, and here comes the first of his sons Eliab, and I’m thinking “Hoo, boy! This gotta be the anointed of the Lord, big, strapping lunk of a man, just look at him!”
And he evidently thinks the same, ‘cause he struts along, looking like the cock of the walk, like he owns the whole place, and he is first-born, so he’d own two thirds of Jesse’s fortune after the old man was gone, and he glances at his reflection in the ceremonial bowl and smirks at himself, just like he was already king, and I say to God: “Well, do you want me to anoint him now, or later?”
But God says: “Don’t you dare . . . he isn’t the one. Don’t look on his appearance or his height or his noble brow . . . for I don’t see as you all do, as mortals do . . . you all look on the outward appearance, but I the Lord look on the inward person, on the heart.” That’s right, my friends: in the middle of a sacrifice, when I’m looking to anoint the next king of Israel, for Moses’ sake, God is giving me a theology lesson. But of course, I don’t say anything, seeing as how I’m not fond of being burnt to a crisp, and so Jesse calls Abinadab—nope—and Shammah—nope—and it’s beginning to look a little like the Miss Jerusalem (I was wondering when the swimsuit competition would start) and finally, all seven brothers have passed before me, and I have to tell Jesse “Sorry ‘bout that, the Lord hasn’t chosen any of these.”
And I ask him “Is that the last of them? Are all your sons here?” And he says “Well, there is one more, he’s the youngest, but he’s down watching the sheep.” And there’s a whole world unsaid here . . . youngest son . . . relegated to babysitting sheep while his brothers got to come to the sacrifice . . . and now I’m reminded of that other story, what is it, Cinder . . . rabbi? Cinder . . . jelly? About this girl kept doing scut work by her sisters ‘cause they thought she was worthless, and the impression is strengthened when I see the brothers rolling their eyes and nudging each other in the ribs. They evidently don’t think too much of this younger sibling.
But I have to tell Jesse “Go get him, bring him up here, ‘cause we can’t sit down to the sacrifice ‘til he’s been seen,” and they send a servant, and while he’s gone, we stand around making small talk—how ‘bout this heat? Shepherd’s almanac says it’s gonna be a short winter, but Achmed the hyena saw his shadow, stuff like that—and finally, there he is, and he takes my breath away, he’s so ruddy and full of life, and what about those eyes? He’s going to break the hearts of all the ladies at court with those eyes, and sure enough, God says: “Rise up and anoint him, for this is the one I’ve chosen!”
And so I take the horn of oil that I’d drug all the way from home, and anoint him in the presence of his brothers, who carp and complain, and roll their eyes even more, until suddenly, there is a rushing sound, as if it were the wind, and a radiance illuminates David’s face for just moment, so that it glows with an unearthly fire, and that shuts them all up, and I get on my mule and head back home to Ramah, humming a little tune, acting all nonchalant, as if I saw shepherd boy’s faces light up every day. And a thought keeps going through my head, and I can’t get it out, nor do know from whence it comes: God’s spirit goes where it will . . .
And even though David was a good looking kid, all ruddy and beautiful of eye and everything, I had to take God’s assurance that he was the King for Israel, that God had looked inside, deep into his heart and found it good. And by and large, he turned out to be a pretty good King, as kings go. In fact, I think you could say he was the best one we ever had, even including Good King Josiah not long before we were shipped off to Babylon. Those—ah—indiscretions with Bathsheba notwithstanding
Over the three millennia since I anointed the boy King, I’ve seen a lot of things . . .I’ve seen my people scattered over the earth, I’ve seen kingdoms come and kingdoms go, I’ve even seen religions come and go. In particular I remember a fellow Jew, born in the same town as David, who was hung up to die by the Romans, and whose worshipers nevertheless revere him precisely for that action, and they name themselves after him, and they’ve gotten real big over the millennia . . . they seem nice, but they have a penchant for killing those with whom they disagree . . .
And in all these years, what I’ve noticed is that the world will go after a looker, every time. They’ll go after outward appearances, the gilt and the glamor and the ruddy looks and beautiful eye. Only unlike God, that’s all they see . . . I remember the heads of your Christian religion, all the golden robes and funny hats . . . they wielded tremendous power, made kings and queens, and all this following a guy who wore rough robes and sandals, and let himself be hung up on cross. And it’s only gotten worse over the years. It’s only gotten worse since the advent of whatcha call it? Television, that’s it . . . I remember a debate in the last part of your 20th century between two candidates for president of what you call the United States—Is that like a King? I don’t understand this thing you call democracy—and it was one of the first debates on this television thing, and the guy who looked better on TV won because his opponent—I think his name was Nix … own, or something like that—looked sweaty and shifty. And I know that the tallest candidate has a distinct advantage . . .
And there’s another thing . . . a lot of times, the person with the most money wins, and not just for your president, either . . . Senators and congressmen, all win because they have the most money . . . and I can see this bias when I watch tele-visionwhich is all about doctors and lawyers and firemen and policemen, not about the majority who just barely make ends meet, who work two jobs at those stands where you can buy processed meat sandwiches—what do you call them? Ham-burgers?—you don’t see any TV shows about the poor who live from pay-check to pay-check. Just the glamorous jobs, and they all look good, and their hair is perfect. Of course, I usually watch only PBS . . .
And I guess it’s no different in your time than it was in the time when I was judge over Israel . . . mortals look on the outward appearances, but the Lord looks inside, upon the heart, and it was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I think it’s important for those who call themselves people of God to do the same, don’t you? Amen.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Rock Me on the Water (John 4:5 - 42)
Nicodemus came to Jesus at night ... He was embarrassed, ashamed, perhaps, that a man of his stature and learning should come to a carpenter's son ... Then again, he was a leader if the Jews, a prominent Pharisee. It wouldn't have done to be seen consorting with a trouble-maker, a threat to their hegemony and rule.
Although Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, the woman—John doesn't even bother to tell us her name—comes to the well, and thus to Jesus, in broad daylight. At noon, as a matter of fact, nearly the hottest heat of day, when the sun scorches your eyeballs and is reflected off the bleak, Samaritan rocks as if they were dusty mirrors. Nobody in their right mind leaves the house at noon, much less does any work ... water was normally hauled in the cool of the evening in those parts, when they wouldn't get sun-stroke from walking from house to well.
So a fair question is this: why did this woman, like Nicodemus, come at a most inopportune time? Clearly, it couldn't have been expressly to see Jesus. Unlike the Pharisee, she couldn’t have seen any of his signs—he hadn’t been doing them in Samaria. To the woman, he was just another dusty man on a dusty road. So it’s hard to say, but perhaps there's a clue in their conversation ... Jesus asks her to fetch her husband, and upon saying she had none, Jesus reveals that he already knows that she's had five in the past, and that the man she is now with isn't her husband.
Now, a lot of preachers have gone on about her "sin," and Jesus’ presumed forgiveness of it, and they apparently mean some kind of sexual misdeed, but Jesus doesn't go there. He just matter-of-factly lets her know that he knows, and it serves to convince her that he indeed is a great prophet. What others fail to understand is that it very likely wasn't her fault that she'd had five previous husbands. Women were no more than property in that culture, no more than chattel. In truth, we have no idea why the woman lost her husbands ... Divorce was entirely the prerogative of the man, and it could be for trivial reasons: in fact, there was a debate at the time over just how trivial. The eminent Rabbi Shammai opined that the reason had to be serious, while the equally eminent Rabbi Hillel claimed it could be for something as trivial as burning the soup.
Of course, life could be nasty, brutish and short in the first century, so it's likely that at least one of her husbands expired in some untimely way or another, thus leaving the woman wholly without protection, completely without a means of supporting her or any children she might have. In fact, it was imperative that a woman have a man of some flavor to support her, lest she and hers be reduced to begging.
But though I don't know for sure whether or not the woman was blameless, what I do know is that each time she lost a husband, her social status decreased or to put it crassly, she became increasingly damaged goods. So that by the time she got to the sixth man, it's likely she was little more than a maid, someone to haul his water, cook his food, and provide for his other needs.
All this suggests that the reason she comes to the well at the ungodly hour of noon is shame. Has she had enough of the stares, of the open contempt from her neighbors? Is she so out of the pale, so outside the bounds, so much of an outcast that she doesn't dare show her face when others are about? People who are constantly told that they are lesser, constantly reminded in some way that they are different and inferior—especially if it has to do with sexuality—tend to internalize it, and so I suspect that it isn't just a water jar she brings to Jacob's Well, it’s a load of shame to boot.
And marvel of marvels, the dusty man speaks to her ... He’s clearly a Jew, and a male to boot, and yet he speaks to her. She was so used to being ignored, so accustomed to being the invisible woman, persona non grata, that just being acknowledged is transporting to her, like a breath of fresh air.
And so begins a conversational dance that has the character of theological sparring, and also—dare I say it?—playful speech between a man and a woman. And what is important to understand is that there are movements to the dance, stages that lead the nameless woman to a genuine relationship with the Christ.
First movement: he asks her for water, she counters with “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” He answers her, explaining that Samaritan or not, he has a much greater gift to give her, and calls it “living water." Like Nicodemus, she takes it literally—"How can you give me any of this water?” she asks, "you don't even have a bucket!” And then she takes her first step toward the Kingdom: "are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who built this well?” It’s beginning to dawn on her that she's not in Kansas anymore, that this isn't just any old thirsty traveler . . .
Second movement: Jesus ups the ante . . . everyone who drinks of this water won’t ever be thirsty, he says, this water will become for them a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life. And I love this image, especially because I’ve been in some pretty arid places in my life . . . I picture stumbling along in the desert, heat rippling off the horizon, sweat stinging my sun-slit eyes … and there is a cool blast and a gusher, springing from the ground, disappearing into heaven . . . birds swooping joyously, palm trees bending toward the water, eager to suck up precious moisture.
And the woman, who in her life has known nothing other than the harsh desert, marvels at this image as well, she is captivated by it, and the image—along with the man who gives it—causes her to reach a new level of understanding—though it is imperfect still, and she who thought she had something for Jesus realizes it’s the other way around, she needs something from him . . . And it’s important to see that it’s Jesus who’s pulling her along this path, who is leading her to a saving faith . . . but unlike Nicodemus, she is open to it . . . could it be because of her shame, her low self estate in life? Could Nicodemus’ refusal to consider what Jesus is saying, or perhaps his inability to do so, have to do with his position, which was just about as respectable and important as any could be? Could his status in life—secure, well-to-do, in charge—keep him from being open to Jesus’ lead? Remember that ol’ camel and the needle’s eye . . .
Movement 3: Jesus tells her about her five husbands and the man she is living with—and again, there is no shaming, no saying “go and sin no more”—and she comes to the realization that he is a great prophet . . .
Movement 4: the woman assumes that because he is a Jew, he’d tell her that she must worship in Jerusalem, and he counters with a prediction—as befits a prophet—that soon they’d worship God neither in Jerusalem or on Samaria’s mountain, but—since God is spirit—true worshipers would worship in spirit and truth . . . and was radical to the nameless woman, ‘cause Samaritans—like their Jewish cousins—believed God resided in their temples, on their mountains. To say God could be worshiped in spirit and truth is to say that God could be worshiped anywhere—and this is what tips the Samaritan woman over the edge—by anyone.
And now she’s hooked, she starts thinking about the Messiah, and says the Messiah will come and tell them all things, including about who could worship whom on what mountain, and Jesus calmly says: “I am.” And although most translations add the “he” so that it reads “I am he,” in the Greek there is no pronoun, so it’s just “I am,” and who else—and where else—have we seen that phrase? On Mt. Sinai, of course, coming from a burning bush . . . and so in the fifth and final movement, Jesus declares himself fully to her, without reference even to “Messiah”—note that he never says the word. He just utters the Greek equivalent of God’s declaration on Mt. Sinai, I am . . .
And it is a remarkable disclosure, one that I don’t think Jesus makes to anyone else, and right then—at the worst possible moment—here come the disciples, back from town, and though they’re amazed, simply amazed that he is talking to a mere woman, they’re too polite to say anything, and the woman leaves her water jar—symbolic of leaving her old life behind—and runs into town, telling everyone “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?"
And in the Greek, it is clear that she believes Jesus is the Messiah, but what’s more interesting is the first sentence of that phrase . . . it seems to me to have an unfinished feel, especially in light of what we know of her past, and likely present. You could complete that sentence with four words: “Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done . . . and loved me anyway.” She doesn’t say the last four words, but they’re implicit in the joy with which she runs. “Everything she ever did” is a long list, and they’re ever before her, in the judgmental stares and backhanded comments of her neighbors. And for Jesus to know her past is one thing—prophets weren’t unheard of, after all—but for him to know her past and love her still, well . . . that is as new as springtime flowers, as fresh as a new creation.
Sisters and brothers, I can’t think of any society that has as many opportunities for shame as ours . . . it’s one of the by-products of our extreme individualism, and our national story that anyone can get ahead if they just work. And when someone has clearly not gotten ahead, the immediate inference is “well, they must not have worked hard,” and they’re branded a priori as lazy, as a class, as a group, and they internalize that judgment, and it can be terribly shaming.
But wait, there’s more! Western society is an equal opportunity shamer. We’re barraged by images featuring beautiful people, and we’re told what we should wear, how our hair needs to look, and how much we should weigh. And if we’re not like that, if we can’t afford the latest clothes, if we can’t afford to be toned and tight, or don’t have the genetic disposition, well, we internalize that too . . . Just as in Jesus’ day, women get it the worst . . . our society objectifies women, and the objects that it uses to fie them—get it? Object-i-fy?—the objects with which they are compared are impossibly slim and airbrushed. We’ve all known women, slim women, who are obsessed by what they imagine is a few too many pounds on their frame, and this causes no small amount of anguish and shame, and—not by accident—fattening of the diet industry’s coffers.
Men aren’t immune from this, however: Western society is an equal opportunity shamer, after all . . . I remember growing up, being a little—and I know you find this impossible to understand—overweight, and I was always last to be chosen for a team, and etc., and a child internalizes this, she or he gets to believing it, and it can cause a world of pain, a world of hurt.
But you know what? We are spirit, as well as flesh, and God is spirit, and as Jesus told ol’ Nicodemus, the spirit goes where it will . . . and although we can’t know everywhere it goes, we can be certain of one thing: the spirit was with that nameless woman at the crack of noon in Samaria, and the Spirit is here today, as is Jesus, who knows everything we’ve ever done—all the petty lies we might have told, all the resentments and animosity that we harbor, all the many things we do that separate us from God, Jesus knows all of these things, and loves us anyway. Amen.
Although Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, the woman—John doesn't even bother to tell us her name—comes to the well, and thus to Jesus, in broad daylight. At noon, as a matter of fact, nearly the hottest heat of day, when the sun scorches your eyeballs and is reflected off the bleak, Samaritan rocks as if they were dusty mirrors. Nobody in their right mind leaves the house at noon, much less does any work ... water was normally hauled in the cool of the evening in those parts, when they wouldn't get sun-stroke from walking from house to well.
So a fair question is this: why did this woman, like Nicodemus, come at a most inopportune time? Clearly, it couldn't have been expressly to see Jesus. Unlike the Pharisee, she couldn’t have seen any of his signs—he hadn’t been doing them in Samaria. To the woman, he was just another dusty man on a dusty road. So it’s hard to say, but perhaps there's a clue in their conversation ... Jesus asks her to fetch her husband, and upon saying she had none, Jesus reveals that he already knows that she's had five in the past, and that the man she is now with isn't her husband.
Now, a lot of preachers have gone on about her "sin," and Jesus’ presumed forgiveness of it, and they apparently mean some kind of sexual misdeed, but Jesus doesn't go there. He just matter-of-factly lets her know that he knows, and it serves to convince her that he indeed is a great prophet. What others fail to understand is that it very likely wasn't her fault that she'd had five previous husbands. Women were no more than property in that culture, no more than chattel. In truth, we have no idea why the woman lost her husbands ... Divorce was entirely the prerogative of the man, and it could be for trivial reasons: in fact, there was a debate at the time over just how trivial. The eminent Rabbi Shammai opined that the reason had to be serious, while the equally eminent Rabbi Hillel claimed it could be for something as trivial as burning the soup.
Of course, life could be nasty, brutish and short in the first century, so it's likely that at least one of her husbands expired in some untimely way or another, thus leaving the woman wholly without protection, completely without a means of supporting her or any children she might have. In fact, it was imperative that a woman have a man of some flavor to support her, lest she and hers be reduced to begging.
But though I don't know for sure whether or not the woman was blameless, what I do know is that each time she lost a husband, her social status decreased or to put it crassly, she became increasingly damaged goods. So that by the time she got to the sixth man, it's likely she was little more than a maid, someone to haul his water, cook his food, and provide for his other needs.
All this suggests that the reason she comes to the well at the ungodly hour of noon is shame. Has she had enough of the stares, of the open contempt from her neighbors? Is she so out of the pale, so outside the bounds, so much of an outcast that she doesn't dare show her face when others are about? People who are constantly told that they are lesser, constantly reminded in some way that they are different and inferior—especially if it has to do with sexuality—tend to internalize it, and so I suspect that it isn't just a water jar she brings to Jacob's Well, it’s a load of shame to boot.
And marvel of marvels, the dusty man speaks to her ... He’s clearly a Jew, and a male to boot, and yet he speaks to her. She was so used to being ignored, so accustomed to being the invisible woman, persona non grata, that just being acknowledged is transporting to her, like a breath of fresh air.
And so begins a conversational dance that has the character of theological sparring, and also—dare I say it?—playful speech between a man and a woman. And what is important to understand is that there are movements to the dance, stages that lead the nameless woman to a genuine relationship with the Christ.
First movement: he asks her for water, she counters with “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” He answers her, explaining that Samaritan or not, he has a much greater gift to give her, and calls it “living water." Like Nicodemus, she takes it literally—"How can you give me any of this water?” she asks, "you don't even have a bucket!” And then she takes her first step toward the Kingdom: "are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who built this well?” It’s beginning to dawn on her that she's not in Kansas anymore, that this isn't just any old thirsty traveler . . .
Second movement: Jesus ups the ante . . . everyone who drinks of this water won’t ever be thirsty, he says, this water will become for them a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life. And I love this image, especially because I’ve been in some pretty arid places in my life . . . I picture stumbling along in the desert, heat rippling off the horizon, sweat stinging my sun-slit eyes … and there is a cool blast and a gusher, springing from the ground, disappearing into heaven . . . birds swooping joyously, palm trees bending toward the water, eager to suck up precious moisture.
And the woman, who in her life has known nothing other than the harsh desert, marvels at this image as well, she is captivated by it, and the image—along with the man who gives it—causes her to reach a new level of understanding—though it is imperfect still, and she who thought she had something for Jesus realizes it’s the other way around, she needs something from him . . . And it’s important to see that it’s Jesus who’s pulling her along this path, who is leading her to a saving faith . . . but unlike Nicodemus, she is open to it . . . could it be because of her shame, her low self estate in life? Could Nicodemus’ refusal to consider what Jesus is saying, or perhaps his inability to do so, have to do with his position, which was just about as respectable and important as any could be? Could his status in life—secure, well-to-do, in charge—keep him from being open to Jesus’ lead? Remember that ol’ camel and the needle’s eye . . .
Movement 3: Jesus tells her about her five husbands and the man she is living with—and again, there is no shaming, no saying “go and sin no more”—and she comes to the realization that he is a great prophet . . .
Movement 4: the woman assumes that because he is a Jew, he’d tell her that she must worship in Jerusalem, and he counters with a prediction—as befits a prophet—that soon they’d worship God neither in Jerusalem or on Samaria’s mountain, but—since God is spirit—true worshipers would worship in spirit and truth . . . and was radical to the nameless woman, ‘cause Samaritans—like their Jewish cousins—believed God resided in their temples, on their mountains. To say God could be worshiped in spirit and truth is to say that God could be worshiped anywhere—and this is what tips the Samaritan woman over the edge—by anyone.
And now she’s hooked, she starts thinking about the Messiah, and says the Messiah will come and tell them all things, including about who could worship whom on what mountain, and Jesus calmly says: “I am.” And although most translations add the “he” so that it reads “I am he,” in the Greek there is no pronoun, so it’s just “I am,” and who else—and where else—have we seen that phrase? On Mt. Sinai, of course, coming from a burning bush . . . and so in the fifth and final movement, Jesus declares himself fully to her, without reference even to “Messiah”—note that he never says the word. He just utters the Greek equivalent of God’s declaration on Mt. Sinai, I am . . .
And it is a remarkable disclosure, one that I don’t think Jesus makes to anyone else, and right then—at the worst possible moment—here come the disciples, back from town, and though they’re amazed, simply amazed that he is talking to a mere woman, they’re too polite to say anything, and the woman leaves her water jar—symbolic of leaving her old life behind—and runs into town, telling everyone “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?"
And in the Greek, it is clear that she believes Jesus is the Messiah, but what’s more interesting is the first sentence of that phrase . . . it seems to me to have an unfinished feel, especially in light of what we know of her past, and likely present. You could complete that sentence with four words: “Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done . . . and loved me anyway.” She doesn’t say the last four words, but they’re implicit in the joy with which she runs. “Everything she ever did” is a long list, and they’re ever before her, in the judgmental stares and backhanded comments of her neighbors. And for Jesus to know her past is one thing—prophets weren’t unheard of, after all—but for him to know her past and love her still, well . . . that is as new as springtime flowers, as fresh as a new creation.
Sisters and brothers, I can’t think of any society that has as many opportunities for shame as ours . . . it’s one of the by-products of our extreme individualism, and our national story that anyone can get ahead if they just work. And when someone has clearly not gotten ahead, the immediate inference is “well, they must not have worked hard,” and they’re branded a priori as lazy, as a class, as a group, and they internalize that judgment, and it can be terribly shaming.
But wait, there’s more! Western society is an equal opportunity shamer. We’re barraged by images featuring beautiful people, and we’re told what we should wear, how our hair needs to look, and how much we should weigh. And if we’re not like that, if we can’t afford the latest clothes, if we can’t afford to be toned and tight, or don’t have the genetic disposition, well, we internalize that too . . . Just as in Jesus’ day, women get it the worst . . . our society objectifies women, and the objects that it uses to fie them—get it? Object-i-fy?—the objects with which they are compared are impossibly slim and airbrushed. We’ve all known women, slim women, who are obsessed by what they imagine is a few too many pounds on their frame, and this causes no small amount of anguish and shame, and—not by accident—fattening of the diet industry’s coffers.
Men aren’t immune from this, however: Western society is an equal opportunity shamer, after all . . . I remember growing up, being a little—and I know you find this impossible to understand—overweight, and I was always last to be chosen for a team, and etc., and a child internalizes this, she or he gets to believing it, and it can cause a world of pain, a world of hurt.
But you know what? We are spirit, as well as flesh, and God is spirit, and as Jesus told ol’ Nicodemus, the spirit goes where it will . . . and although we can’t know everywhere it goes, we can be certain of one thing: the spirit was with that nameless woman at the crack of noon in Samaria, and the Spirit is here today, as is Jesus, who knows everything we’ve ever done—all the petty lies we might have told, all the resentments and animosity that we harbor, all the many things we do that separate us from God, Jesus knows all of these things, and loves us anyway. Amen.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
The Night Stalker (John 3:1 - 21)
Do y'all remember Darren McGavin? He was a wonderful actor, probably best known for his role as the hilariously foul-mouthed, leg-lamp-loving father in A Christmas Story. But I first took notice of him in TV-movies and a series from the early 70s called The Night Stalker, where he played a newspaper reporter named Kolchak who investigated—and battled—evil creatures of the night: vampires, werewolves and the like. Kolchak stalked at night because, well, that's when his prey came out: at night. Nicodemus, the original night stalker, comes at night not because that’s the only time Jesus is up, but because of reasons of his own. And John doesn’t tell us what they are, but we assume it has something to do with his position as Pharisee, and member of the San Hedrin. We assume that it’s embarrassment, or even fear, that sends him lurking out after Jesus in the night. After all, though Jesus wouldn’t rip your throat out like the things Kolchak stalked, he was dangerous to the powers that be just the same. He threatened the dominant power structure of temple authorities and their Roman overlords, a structure in which Nicodemus was firmly entrenched.
So Nicodemus appears out of the darkness like a wraith, and by way of explanation, he says “Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher from God,” and I’m not quite sure who the “we” here is . . . does he represent a group? Is he the spokesman for a whole cadre of stealthy, but curious, Pharisees? Whatever it is, the reason he gives for knowing that Jesus comes from God is the signs he has done, the miracles which are described a little bit earlier in John: “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.” Perhaps that was it: Nicodemus was talking for all those folks, identifying himself with the many who saw those signs.
But note how Jesus answers him. He doesn’t complement Nicodemus on his perspicacity, he doesn’t congratulate him and the people on their newfound “belief in his name,” whatever that means. No. He launches into a discourse: “Very truly I tell you”—and when he puts it that way, you just know he’s serious—“no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” And always I have to stop right here because this is the first instance in this passage—but not the last—of what some people call “double-words.” In the original Greek, the word translated here as “from above” can also mean “again,” as in “born again.” And in fact, when I look in my Bible software, I notice that both the New International Version and the New American Standard Bible render it like that: “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And that’s the way Nicodemus clearly takes it: he very deliberately says “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” And in case we fail to get it: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
So the heart of this story seems to be a misunderstanding: Jesus is talking one thing—from above—and Nicodemus takes it to mean something else. Or does he? It’s possible that Jesus does mean “born again,” or perhaps—and this is what I think—he means both. Because Jesus is speaking about both a second birth, a re-birth, but also a different kind of birth, as he goes on to explain. “No one can enter the kingdom of God,” he says “Without being born of both water and spirit.”
But isn’t it just like a hyper-religious person, just like a counter-of-theological beans to flatten it out like that? Isn’t it just like an expert in religious law to reduce it to a matter of numbers? He seems to think that faith comes down to weighing the evidence and drawing logical, sane conclusions. How can this be, he asks, how can one enter the birth canal, enter his mother’s womb a second time? Wouldn’t that, I don’t know . . . hurt?
Maybe in addition to being the original night stalker he’s the original Presbyterian as well . . . always reasoning, always figuring, always counting the beans . . . he’s fascinated with evidence, with what he sees with his own eyes. After all, he’s one of the ones who believed in Jesus’ name—again, whatever that means—after he saw Jesus performing some miracles. In fact, in the paragraph just before our story, John tells us that Jesus wouldn’t entrust himself to any of those who believed simply because they’d seen.
Jesus takes a dim view of that sort of faith, that’s gained after seeing signs, and it becomes one of the gospel of John’s major themes. And Nicodemus is exhibit A of that philosophy, and Jesus tells him that you have to be born of both water—i.e., the waters of physical birth—and the Spirit. And this second birth comes from above, it is an act of God, for who else can confer the Spirit of God but God’s own self? And Jesus goes on to explain: what’s born of the flesh is flesh, and that born of the Spirit, from above, is spirit. What comes from flesh, from human nature, is more of the same: it’s flesh, which we all know is perishable. What we do on our own, without it being born from above, is perishable. Only what is done through and by the Spirit is spirit, is eternal.
And now Jesus starts admonishing him:” Don’t be astonished that I said to you ‘You must be born from above, ‘cause the wind blows where it wants to, and you can hear it, but you don’t know where it’s going to or coming from.” And here’s the second great double-word, the second great word-play in this passage: the Greek for wind is the same word as that for Spirit, and the same as that for breath. And everyone born of the Spirit is like that: they are the stuff of spirits, they are spirit, and you just don’t know where they’re going to be . . . and I find this to be a remarkable claim, don’t you? Being born of the Spirit, being born from above, a person is one with the spirit, and you don’t know where they might end up: the wind of God, the spirit, God’s very breath, blows where it will, and blows them where it will, if they’ll let it.
Well, one place you know the spirit-born will be is the Kingdom of God, and by this, John doesn’t mean heaven. For John, you are part of the kingdom as soon as you are born of the Spirit, as soon as you’ve had a genuine encounter with the Christ. For John, the Kingdom of God is on earth, and it is as much a way of being on that earth during life as it is of being with God after that life is over.
And Nicodemus doesn’t get any of it: the last words out of his mouth in this passage are “How can these things be?” And notice that he’s still trying to rationalize, still trying to relate these teachings to things he can understand, good proto-Presbyterian that he is. And Jesus answers him with no small amount of irony: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?" And this is the last word we hear from Nicodemus, he fades back into the darkness, and Jesus turns to a broader audience: from this point on, he uses the Greek plural, which I fancy can be rendered "you-all," and he’s speaking to everyone like Nicodemus, everyone who believes due to what they have seen, not due to the invisible blowings of the spirit-breath across the land.
And he might be speaking to those of us in this modern age, as well--those who are locked in a world of provablity, of cause and effect . . . If you can't measure it, if you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist . . . This is the world-view of the neo-atheists, like Sam Robards and Richard Dawkins, who I liked a lot better as a populizer of biology than his current role of defender of rational thought. They are as smug in their certainty as are the most intolerant fundamentalists you can imagine.
But you know what? The spirit-wind goes where it will, and no one--and that means neither you, nor I, nor the Reverend Billy Graham knows where it goes or from whence it comes, and that's a lesson we all have to learn, whether we are fundamentalists or the most liberal, tolerant Presbyterians in the world. And it means this dividing up of the world into the good guys, like us Good Christians, versus the bad guys,. like those smug atheist, i.e., those who are in versus those who are out, is nothing anyone should be doing. And yet, we—and in this I definitely include myself—continually do so, we pooh-pooh those who use the term "born again," for example, or those folks who get all emotional when they worship, throwing their hands up in the air, for St. Peter's sake, or rolling around on the ground, speaking in tongues, or singing idiotic praise songs . . . ours is a rational faith, our hymns have meaning, we do things decently, and in good order . . .
But the Spirit goes where it will, and it's dangerous to deny that fact . . . It causes religious wars, schisms, such as the one this denomination is currently undergoing, and crusades. It is not a feature of the Kingdom, which Jesus, in our passage, characterizes as what he himself, in his role as the Son of Man, has experienced and does: the Son of Man has ascended to and descended from the heavenly realms, and he must be lifted-up like that serpent that Moses stuck on a pole in the wilderness. And here is the final double-word, the final play on words, of our story: the Greek word for "lifted-up" also means exalted, and of course, Jesus was not only exalted, but lifted-up on a cross to die.
So the kingdom is characterized by this dual meaning: Jesus' exaltation, which is at the same time a humiliation, a gory death . . . and it is living out of—and living in—this reality that Jesus characterizes as believing in him, as opposed to, perhaps, believing in his name, so that that whoever believes in him may have eternal life, and this is arguably the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." And talk about separating those who are in from those who are out, this verse has been used as a way of weeding the sheep from the goats for a long time, as in if you don't believe in Jesus in exactly the way I believe, you're going to that other place. But notice that the word "believes" is a participle (and in Greek it's a lot more clear), which implies an ongoing thing. More importantly, it implies nothing about how that belief came about, so that you could put it this way: everyone who is believing in him, or is in a state of belief, may not perish but have eternal life. And since Jesus said right at the first that this re-birth comes from above, that it's god's doing, not ours, not any choice we make, how is it an indicator of any goodness, any superiority, in those who are believing? How can we use it to exclude anyone from who we think are the chosen people?
I am convinced that if those who use this verse to exclude, to brand, to draw a circle around those whom they don't like, or those who believe differently, if they were to read and really internalize the verse just after John 3:16, they--and indeed all of Christianity--would be much better witnesses to the risen, forgiving God than they tend to be. "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." That's save the world, the whole world, no exceptions. The Spirit goes where it will, indeed! Amen.
So Nicodemus appears out of the darkness like a wraith, and by way of explanation, he says “Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher from God,” and I’m not quite sure who the “we” here is . . . does he represent a group? Is he the spokesman for a whole cadre of stealthy, but curious, Pharisees? Whatever it is, the reason he gives for knowing that Jesus comes from God is the signs he has done, the miracles which are described a little bit earlier in John: “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.” Perhaps that was it: Nicodemus was talking for all those folks, identifying himself with the many who saw those signs.
But note how Jesus answers him. He doesn’t complement Nicodemus on his perspicacity, he doesn’t congratulate him and the people on their newfound “belief in his name,” whatever that means. No. He launches into a discourse: “Very truly I tell you”—and when he puts it that way, you just know he’s serious—“no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” And always I have to stop right here because this is the first instance in this passage—but not the last—of what some people call “double-words.” In the original Greek, the word translated here as “from above” can also mean “again,” as in “born again.” And in fact, when I look in my Bible software, I notice that both the New International Version and the New American Standard Bible render it like that: “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And that’s the way Nicodemus clearly takes it: he very deliberately says “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” And in case we fail to get it: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
So the heart of this story seems to be a misunderstanding: Jesus is talking one thing—from above—and Nicodemus takes it to mean something else. Or does he? It’s possible that Jesus does mean “born again,” or perhaps—and this is what I think—he means both. Because Jesus is speaking about both a second birth, a re-birth, but also a different kind of birth, as he goes on to explain. “No one can enter the kingdom of God,” he says “Without being born of both water and spirit.”
But isn’t it just like a hyper-religious person, just like a counter-of-theological beans to flatten it out like that? Isn’t it just like an expert in religious law to reduce it to a matter of numbers? He seems to think that faith comes down to weighing the evidence and drawing logical, sane conclusions. How can this be, he asks, how can one enter the birth canal, enter his mother’s womb a second time? Wouldn’t that, I don’t know . . . hurt?
Maybe in addition to being the original night stalker he’s the original Presbyterian as well . . . always reasoning, always figuring, always counting the beans . . . he’s fascinated with evidence, with what he sees with his own eyes. After all, he’s one of the ones who believed in Jesus’ name—again, whatever that means—after he saw Jesus performing some miracles. In fact, in the paragraph just before our story, John tells us that Jesus wouldn’t entrust himself to any of those who believed simply because they’d seen.
Jesus takes a dim view of that sort of faith, that’s gained after seeing signs, and it becomes one of the gospel of John’s major themes. And Nicodemus is exhibit A of that philosophy, and Jesus tells him that you have to be born of both water—i.e., the waters of physical birth—and the Spirit. And this second birth comes from above, it is an act of God, for who else can confer the Spirit of God but God’s own self? And Jesus goes on to explain: what’s born of the flesh is flesh, and that born of the Spirit, from above, is spirit. What comes from flesh, from human nature, is more of the same: it’s flesh, which we all know is perishable. What we do on our own, without it being born from above, is perishable. Only what is done through and by the Spirit is spirit, is eternal.
And now Jesus starts admonishing him:” Don’t be astonished that I said to you ‘You must be born from above, ‘cause the wind blows where it wants to, and you can hear it, but you don’t know where it’s going to or coming from.” And here’s the second great double-word, the second great word-play in this passage: the Greek for wind is the same word as that for Spirit, and the same as that for breath. And everyone born of the Spirit is like that: they are the stuff of spirits, they are spirit, and you just don’t know where they’re going to be . . . and I find this to be a remarkable claim, don’t you? Being born of the Spirit, being born from above, a person is one with the spirit, and you don’t know where they might end up: the wind of God, the spirit, God’s very breath, blows where it will, and blows them where it will, if they’ll let it.
Well, one place you know the spirit-born will be is the Kingdom of God, and by this, John doesn’t mean heaven. For John, you are part of the kingdom as soon as you are born of the Spirit, as soon as you’ve had a genuine encounter with the Christ. For John, the Kingdom of God is on earth, and it is as much a way of being on that earth during life as it is of being with God after that life is over.
And Nicodemus doesn’t get any of it: the last words out of his mouth in this passage are “How can these things be?” And notice that he’s still trying to rationalize, still trying to relate these teachings to things he can understand, good proto-Presbyterian that he is. And Jesus answers him with no small amount of irony: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?" And this is the last word we hear from Nicodemus, he fades back into the darkness, and Jesus turns to a broader audience: from this point on, he uses the Greek plural, which I fancy can be rendered "you-all," and he’s speaking to everyone like Nicodemus, everyone who believes due to what they have seen, not due to the invisible blowings of the spirit-breath across the land.
And he might be speaking to those of us in this modern age, as well--those who are locked in a world of provablity, of cause and effect . . . If you can't measure it, if you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist . . . This is the world-view of the neo-atheists, like Sam Robards and Richard Dawkins, who I liked a lot better as a populizer of biology than his current role of defender of rational thought. They are as smug in their certainty as are the most intolerant fundamentalists you can imagine.
But you know what? The spirit-wind goes where it will, and no one--and that means neither you, nor I, nor the Reverend Billy Graham knows where it goes or from whence it comes, and that's a lesson we all have to learn, whether we are fundamentalists or the most liberal, tolerant Presbyterians in the world. And it means this dividing up of the world into the good guys, like us Good Christians, versus the bad guys,. like those smug atheist, i.e., those who are in versus those who are out, is nothing anyone should be doing. And yet, we—and in this I definitely include myself—continually do so, we pooh-pooh those who use the term "born again," for example, or those folks who get all emotional when they worship, throwing their hands up in the air, for St. Peter's sake, or rolling around on the ground, speaking in tongues, or singing idiotic praise songs . . . ours is a rational faith, our hymns have meaning, we do things decently, and in good order . . .
But the Spirit goes where it will, and it's dangerous to deny that fact . . . It causes religious wars, schisms, such as the one this denomination is currently undergoing, and crusades. It is not a feature of the Kingdom, which Jesus, in our passage, characterizes as what he himself, in his role as the Son of Man, has experienced and does: the Son of Man has ascended to and descended from the heavenly realms, and he must be lifted-up like that serpent that Moses stuck on a pole in the wilderness. And here is the final double-word, the final play on words, of our story: the Greek word for "lifted-up" also means exalted, and of course, Jesus was not only exalted, but lifted-up on a cross to die.
So the kingdom is characterized by this dual meaning: Jesus' exaltation, which is at the same time a humiliation, a gory death . . . and it is living out of—and living in—this reality that Jesus characterizes as believing in him, as opposed to, perhaps, believing in his name, so that that whoever believes in him may have eternal life, and this is arguably the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." And talk about separating those who are in from those who are out, this verse has been used as a way of weeding the sheep from the goats for a long time, as in if you don't believe in Jesus in exactly the way I believe, you're going to that other place. But notice that the word "believes" is a participle (and in Greek it's a lot more clear), which implies an ongoing thing. More importantly, it implies nothing about how that belief came about, so that you could put it this way: everyone who is believing in him, or is in a state of belief, may not perish but have eternal life. And since Jesus said right at the first that this re-birth comes from above, that it's god's doing, not ours, not any choice we make, how is it an indicator of any goodness, any superiority, in those who are believing? How can we use it to exclude anyone from who we think are the chosen people?
I am convinced that if those who use this verse to exclude, to brand, to draw a circle around those whom they don't like, or those who believe differently, if they were to read and really internalize the verse just after John 3:16, they--and indeed all of Christianity--would be much better witnesses to the risen, forgiving God than they tend to be. "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." That's save the world, the whole world, no exceptions. The Spirit goes where it will, indeed! Amen.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Variations on a Theme (Matthew 4:1 - 11)
So. Jesus climbs up out of the Jordan, and this voice comes out of heaven saying “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And he doesn’t take a step—Mark says immediately—he hardly has time to breath before the Spirit leads him out into the wilderness to, as Matthew says, be tempted by the devil. Now, we all know that the Greek word rendered in our translation as “tempted” can be translated as “tested,” and it’s perhaps good to hold those two renderings in tension, to think of both temptation and testing as we consider what Ol’ Scratch is doing here.
And Jesus has no chance to catch his breath, he has no chance to bathe in the accolade that has just been laid on him—after all, he’s just been called God’s beloved—before he’s chucked into the so-called “wilderness, and this isn’t some kind of recreational area, with trout-filled lakes and picturesque mountains, or a lush jungle or crashing seashore: it’s just about the worst country you might imagine, with nothing at all to eat or drink, as is evidenced by the fact that he had nothing to eat for forty days and nights, and he comes out of that experience as one hungry guy. He’s famished, as Matthew puts it, and it isn’t apostolic hyperbole, he didn’t just appear famished—he could have eaten a camel, he was so hungry. That’s the first indication that Jesus wasn’t just playing at being a human being, he wasn’t God in a human-suit, he was human in every sense of the word.
And that’s one of the keys to this story: Jesus’ temptation or testing or whatever you want to call it is real. He is really being tested or tempted here. He has a real choice . . . if he doesn’t, then what good would it do us? And how could it be true, as it says over in Hebrews, that “we do not have a high priest”—talking about Jesus, here—“who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin?” To be “tested as we are” admits at the possibility of failure, the possibility of making the wrong choice, of failing the test. And what good would it be if the reason Jesus was without sin was because he couldn’t do it? To make his testing worth anything at all, to make it instructive to us as his followers at all, there has to be the possibility of his making the wrong choice.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “the Bible tells only two temptation stories, the temptation of the first man and the temptation of Christ, that is the temptation that led to humanity’s’ fall, and the temptation which led to Satan’s fall.” In this regard, it is useful to think of Jesus as the second Adam, and in fact that’s what Paul calls him, and we all know about Adam’s testin, we all know that Adam’s temptation didn’t turn out so hot . . . In fact, Bonhoeffer claims that “All other temptations in human history have to do with these two . . . Either we are tempted in Adam or we are tempted in Christ. Either the Adam in me is tempted – in which case we fall. Or the Christ in us is tempted – in which case Satan is bound to fall.” And this understanding is crucial: what we explore today isn’t Adam’s temptation, or my temptation, or your Aunt Tilly’s temptation. It is the temptation of one Jesus of Nazareth, under very specific circumstances: that within his relationship with God, whom he called Abba.
It’s not an accident that this happens just after the declaration from God of just who he is—we’re to get the point of this context, that although Jesus is being tested as the human being that he is, and that he has the same choice as you or I, it is within his context as beloved child of God that the temptation takes place.
So. What about the temptations themselves? There have been a lot of writing over the years, a lot of different spins put on them. One I like in particular, and which you might hear preached some day out of this pulpit, is pastor and theologian Michael Hardin’s theory that it is akin to a vision quest, of the sort engaged in by certain Native American Indians, where the subject enters the wilderness, often fasting, for a period of days to receive spiritual guidance.
But for today, let’s just take a look at what Matthew says about the three tests. The devil—the tester, the adversary, or whatever you want to call this personification of evil—the devil sees that Jesus is pretty hungry, and evidently thinks he can get at Jesus through his stomach—after all, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and Jesus was mighty hungry. So he says—and I imagine it’s a reasonable, soothing voice, not some cackle or hiss like in popular conceptions—he says “If you’re the son of God, command those stones over there” and he gestures at some dusty rocks “command those stones over there to become loaves of bread.” And it’s important to note a couple of things. First, the word our translation renders as “If” can just as easily be translated “Since,” as in “Since you are the son of God . . .” In other words, the devil isn’t contesting that fact, he’s not trying to get Jesus to prove it, he’s saying “Because you’re the son of God, command those rocks over there to become bread.”
The second thing to notice is that the devil doesn’t say “change those stones to bread,’ he says “command those stones to become bread.” In other words, he’s asking Jesus to exercise his power over nature, his control over something that his Abba has created. And even though Jesus can do it, that’s not the point: he doesn’t have the right to change something that God has made, he doesn’t have the authority. The devil is tempting Jesus to abuse his power, to exercise it without having the authorization. Sure, he could command those stones to become bread with one hand tied behind his back, but it would be an abuse of his power as child of God.
But wait . . . there’s more! He’s not being tempted to abuse his power just for the fun of it, he’s hungry, he has a need. He’s being tempted to abuse his power to take care of himself, instead of trusting his Abba to do the job for him . . . and hmmm . . . who does that remind us of?
But hungry as he is, Jesus is having none of it, and by way of refusing, he says “"It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" In other words, we live by what God promises us, we live by that trust, which is contained in the Word.
Ok, the devil thinks, this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. This particular child of God has got some backbone, he’s got some spine. And he knows scripture, too. Well, two can play that game, and he whisks Jesus off and stands him up on the highest point of the temple, and now he quotes scripture: “Since you’re the Son of God and all, throw yourself off; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" There, thinks the devil, that oughta’ do it.
But Jesus isn’t going to be fooled that easy. “Again it is written,” he says, “'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'” Do not try to force God to do anything, do not try to exercise power over the almighty. And it’s important to see that at heart, it’s the same temptation as the first: Ol’ Scratch is trying to get Jesus to put himself above God his Abba, or at least on the same level. He’s tempting Jesus to, in effect, command God. To force God to do something, to make a choice, which is what would happen were Jesus to take a header off the temple. And what son can command his parent?
The devil tries to get Jesus to put himself in a superior position to God, which is the natural position of tester to testee . . . and Jesus isn’t buying it. And the devil thinks Rats!—only it’s not really rats, what it really was, I can’t say in church—he thinks rats, this guy’s really good. Time to bring out the big guns, to go for the gold: He takes Jesus up onto some high mountain—apparently, the temple isn’t high enough—and Jesus sees the whole world laid out before him, but more than that, he can see all of creation, all of time . . . he sees lions knifing through the African veldt, the mighty skyscrapers of Manhattan far outstripping the ziggurats of Babylon, he can even see the first Adam, there in the garden with Eve.
And now the gloves are off, this is the whole enchilada: Jesus is tempted with ultimate political power, ultimate God-hood. Think of all the good he could do, think of all the hungering mouths he could feed, all the sickness and violence he could cure. And all of it would be his, says the devil, if he’d just fall down and worship him. But Jesus just quotes scripture again—demonstrating, you understand, just how to live by the Word—he just says “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'”
And so we can see that the three temptations of Jesus—to command over nature, control over God, and ultimate political rule—are just variations on a theme, that theme being power, control. It is the temptation to put himself in God’s place, to set himself up as the ultimate power. It’s the same temptation that Adam had, and the church itself has been more like the first Adam than the second. The very notion of Christendom which seems to be coming to an end, though it held sway for some 1600 years, is the domination—thus the dom in Christendom—of Christianity over other religions. Note that I didn’t say the dominion of Christ, but of the Christian religion. And this dominion was often enforced at the point of a spear, or the muzzle of a gun, and it is still used as a reason to put the interests of Western nations above that of others . . . we’re Christians, God’s on our side, therefore our cause is righteous.
But there are many ways that Christians try to control their own destinies, to control that which God should by rights control. We do this on a personal level—we strive and strive and strive, and then suppose that it is our own doing when we succeed, when we get ahead, forgetting, as the Psalmist wrote, that the Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
And we do it on a corporate, community level as well . . . we all have ideas about what is best for the church, we all try to be God and decide what is right, what will revive or transform God’s congregation. We tell ourselves that studies prove this or that—I’m sure some of you have heard me say this—we tell ourselves that we’ve heard that young people like this thing or another, and that of course God wants us to have plenty of young families, and be the church we once were. But that is just us talking, that is us trying to lead God, rather than the other way around.
Jesus resisted that temptation . . . he resisted the urge to seize control, to take matters into his own—undoubtedly capable—hands. But he didn’t do it alone, did he? He didn’t do it without help . . . it was through his relationship with God, whom he called Abba, that he was able to resists the blandishments of the tempter. He was declared “God’s Son, God’s beloved,” and it was through that relationship, as that child of God, that he was able to resist the temptation to control, and guess what? That’s how we can do it, too. Through Christ, and through our baptisms in him, we are beloved children of God. And in that family, we can take anything Ol’ Scratch can throw at us, can’t we? Amen.
And Jesus has no chance to catch his breath, he has no chance to bathe in the accolade that has just been laid on him—after all, he’s just been called God’s beloved—before he’s chucked into the so-called “wilderness, and this isn’t some kind of recreational area, with trout-filled lakes and picturesque mountains, or a lush jungle or crashing seashore: it’s just about the worst country you might imagine, with nothing at all to eat or drink, as is evidenced by the fact that he had nothing to eat for forty days and nights, and he comes out of that experience as one hungry guy. He’s famished, as Matthew puts it, and it isn’t apostolic hyperbole, he didn’t just appear famished—he could have eaten a camel, he was so hungry. That’s the first indication that Jesus wasn’t just playing at being a human being, he wasn’t God in a human-suit, he was human in every sense of the word.
And that’s one of the keys to this story: Jesus’ temptation or testing or whatever you want to call it is real. He is really being tested or tempted here. He has a real choice . . . if he doesn’t, then what good would it do us? And how could it be true, as it says over in Hebrews, that “we do not have a high priest”—talking about Jesus, here—“who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin?” To be “tested as we are” admits at the possibility of failure, the possibility of making the wrong choice, of failing the test. And what good would it be if the reason Jesus was without sin was because he couldn’t do it? To make his testing worth anything at all, to make it instructive to us as his followers at all, there has to be the possibility of his making the wrong choice.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “the Bible tells only two temptation stories, the temptation of the first man and the temptation of Christ, that is the temptation that led to humanity’s’ fall, and the temptation which led to Satan’s fall.” In this regard, it is useful to think of Jesus as the second Adam, and in fact that’s what Paul calls him, and we all know about Adam’s testin, we all know that Adam’s temptation didn’t turn out so hot . . . In fact, Bonhoeffer claims that “All other temptations in human history have to do with these two . . . Either we are tempted in Adam or we are tempted in Christ. Either the Adam in me is tempted – in which case we fall. Or the Christ in us is tempted – in which case Satan is bound to fall.” And this understanding is crucial: what we explore today isn’t Adam’s temptation, or my temptation, or your Aunt Tilly’s temptation. It is the temptation of one Jesus of Nazareth, under very specific circumstances: that within his relationship with God, whom he called Abba.
It’s not an accident that this happens just after the declaration from God of just who he is—we’re to get the point of this context, that although Jesus is being tested as the human being that he is, and that he has the same choice as you or I, it is within his context as beloved child of God that the temptation takes place.
So. What about the temptations themselves? There have been a lot of writing over the years, a lot of different spins put on them. One I like in particular, and which you might hear preached some day out of this pulpit, is pastor and theologian Michael Hardin’s theory that it is akin to a vision quest, of the sort engaged in by certain Native American Indians, where the subject enters the wilderness, often fasting, for a period of days to receive spiritual guidance.
But for today, let’s just take a look at what Matthew says about the three tests. The devil—the tester, the adversary, or whatever you want to call this personification of evil—the devil sees that Jesus is pretty hungry, and evidently thinks he can get at Jesus through his stomach—after all, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and Jesus was mighty hungry. So he says—and I imagine it’s a reasonable, soothing voice, not some cackle or hiss like in popular conceptions—he says “If you’re the son of God, command those stones over there” and he gestures at some dusty rocks “command those stones over there to become loaves of bread.” And it’s important to note a couple of things. First, the word our translation renders as “If” can just as easily be translated “Since,” as in “Since you are the son of God . . .” In other words, the devil isn’t contesting that fact, he’s not trying to get Jesus to prove it, he’s saying “Because you’re the son of God, command those rocks over there to become bread.”
The second thing to notice is that the devil doesn’t say “change those stones to bread,’ he says “command those stones to become bread.” In other words, he’s asking Jesus to exercise his power over nature, his control over something that his Abba has created. And even though Jesus can do it, that’s not the point: he doesn’t have the right to change something that God has made, he doesn’t have the authority. The devil is tempting Jesus to abuse his power, to exercise it without having the authorization. Sure, he could command those stones to become bread with one hand tied behind his back, but it would be an abuse of his power as child of God.
But wait . . . there’s more! He’s not being tempted to abuse his power just for the fun of it, he’s hungry, he has a need. He’s being tempted to abuse his power to take care of himself, instead of trusting his Abba to do the job for him . . . and hmmm . . . who does that remind us of?
But hungry as he is, Jesus is having none of it, and by way of refusing, he says “"It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" In other words, we live by what God promises us, we live by that trust, which is contained in the Word.
Ok, the devil thinks, this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. This particular child of God has got some backbone, he’s got some spine. And he knows scripture, too. Well, two can play that game, and he whisks Jesus off and stands him up on the highest point of the temple, and now he quotes scripture: “Since you’re the Son of God and all, throw yourself off; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" There, thinks the devil, that oughta’ do it.
But Jesus isn’t going to be fooled that easy. “Again it is written,” he says, “'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'” Do not try to force God to do anything, do not try to exercise power over the almighty. And it’s important to see that at heart, it’s the same temptation as the first: Ol’ Scratch is trying to get Jesus to put himself above God his Abba, or at least on the same level. He’s tempting Jesus to, in effect, command God. To force God to do something, to make a choice, which is what would happen were Jesus to take a header off the temple. And what son can command his parent?
The devil tries to get Jesus to put himself in a superior position to God, which is the natural position of tester to testee . . . and Jesus isn’t buying it. And the devil thinks Rats!—only it’s not really rats, what it really was, I can’t say in church—he thinks rats, this guy’s really good. Time to bring out the big guns, to go for the gold: He takes Jesus up onto some high mountain—apparently, the temple isn’t high enough—and Jesus sees the whole world laid out before him, but more than that, he can see all of creation, all of time . . . he sees lions knifing through the African veldt, the mighty skyscrapers of Manhattan far outstripping the ziggurats of Babylon, he can even see the first Adam, there in the garden with Eve.
And now the gloves are off, this is the whole enchilada: Jesus is tempted with ultimate political power, ultimate God-hood. Think of all the good he could do, think of all the hungering mouths he could feed, all the sickness and violence he could cure. And all of it would be his, says the devil, if he’d just fall down and worship him. But Jesus just quotes scripture again—demonstrating, you understand, just how to live by the Word—he just says “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'”
And so we can see that the three temptations of Jesus—to command over nature, control over God, and ultimate political rule—are just variations on a theme, that theme being power, control. It is the temptation to put himself in God’s place, to set himself up as the ultimate power. It’s the same temptation that Adam had, and the church itself has been more like the first Adam than the second. The very notion of Christendom which seems to be coming to an end, though it held sway for some 1600 years, is the domination—thus the dom in Christendom—of Christianity over other religions. Note that I didn’t say the dominion of Christ, but of the Christian religion. And this dominion was often enforced at the point of a spear, or the muzzle of a gun, and it is still used as a reason to put the interests of Western nations above that of others . . . we’re Christians, God’s on our side, therefore our cause is righteous.
But there are many ways that Christians try to control their own destinies, to control that which God should by rights control. We do this on a personal level—we strive and strive and strive, and then suppose that it is our own doing when we succeed, when we get ahead, forgetting, as the Psalmist wrote, that the Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
And we do it on a corporate, community level as well . . . we all have ideas about what is best for the church, we all try to be God and decide what is right, what will revive or transform God’s congregation. We tell ourselves that studies prove this or that—I’m sure some of you have heard me say this—we tell ourselves that we’ve heard that young people like this thing or another, and that of course God wants us to have plenty of young families, and be the church we once were. But that is just us talking, that is us trying to lead God, rather than the other way around.
Jesus resisted that temptation . . . he resisted the urge to seize control, to take matters into his own—undoubtedly capable—hands. But he didn’t do it alone, did he? He didn’t do it without help . . . it was through his relationship with God, whom he called Abba, that he was able to resists the blandishments of the tempter. He was declared “God’s Son, God’s beloved,” and it was through that relationship, as that child of God, that he was able to resist the temptation to control, and guess what? That’s how we can do it, too. Through Christ, and through our baptisms in him, we are beloved children of God. And in that family, we can take anything Ol’ Scratch can throw at us, can’t we? Amen.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
People of the Cross - Ash Wednesday, 2014
It’s become popular to refer to us Christians as “Easter People,” and of course that’s what we are . . . we’re people living in the promise of the resurrection, in the sure hope of redemption and the coming Kingdom of God. After each worship service, as we go out into the world, we are witnesses, signs pointing to that coming new reality – that through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin and death have been vanquished, and creation is being made new. As usual, Paul said it best – “Listen!” he says, “I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed . . . the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised . . . and we will be changed . . . "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"” As Easter people, we live that promise, we live that hope, that anticipation of ultimate victory.
But . . . let me tell you another mystery . . . it’s not here yet! The Kingdom of God on earth, unstoppable, like a freight train, has not yet completely arrived. That final trump has yet to sound, our resurrection has yet to occur, the saints have yet to come marching in. Paul knew that only too well – he was forever warning his congregations not to live as if they were already resurrected. It’s all in the future tense for Paul, all yet to come, yet to be. He knew that the Christian life isn’t all fun and games, isn’t all sweetness and light, that it doesn’t protect us from calamity and catastrophe . . . In our scripture from Corinthians, he details hisheartache and persecution for the faith . . . he says he’s endured “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger . . .” It’s hardly the stuff of TV preachers, hardly the “something Good is going to happen to you” school of Christianity. If you just turn your life over to Jesus – and send in a check for nineteen-ninety five plus postage and handling – your troubles will be over. You’ll live a life of victory, God will bless you ten-fold, and all your taxes will get paid on time. You mean that hasn’t happened to you? Well, you must not be trying hard enough, or praying long enough, or hard enough . . . Because God will bless you if you just let him.
That’s a siren song for new converts, and it gets them through the doors, and into the pews. It can grow churches faster than weeds . . . but it neglects one thing. In all its proclamation that we’re bound for glory, all that stuff about the coming resurrection, all that talk about Easter People, it forgets that we’re also Crucifixion People, we’re also People of the Cross. We’re the people for whom Jesus Christ, righteous and blameless and spotless before the Lord, was spiked to a tree and hung up to die. We’re the people of the crucifixion, people for whom God emptied himself of God-hood, took the form of a slave and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. We are Crucifixion People, People of the Cross, every bit as much as Easter People, and we can never let ourselves forget it. Without the cross, there can be no resurrection, without death, there can be no life, without Good Friday there can be no Easter morning.
During Lent we remember all this, all the sadness, all the heartache . . . we remember the human condition, and meditate on our frailties and lapses, on our sins of omission and commission, and the fact that often – but not always – we just can’t seem to get it right. Once again, Paul says it best . . . “I do not understand my own actions,” he says, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And during Lent, we look at all this unflinchingly, clear-eyed . . . and through the ages, the church has developed spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines, to help us do that, to help us meditate and spend time in prayer and quiet reflection . . .
In our reading from Matthew, Jesus gives us a catalog of spiritual practices . . . giving alms to the poor . . . praying . . . fasting . . . but more than that, he details how to do it right: He says: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" and that's pretty cold, isn't it? I mean, its pretty cut and dried – f you run around showing off, if you do these things in order to be seen, to be on the Six-O'clock News, or written up in the Curry County Reporter, you won't be rewarded by your Father in heaven – and I don't know what that means, exactly, but it can't be good . . . and then he goes ahead and explains just what he's talking about – Whenever you give alms, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you pray, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you fast, don't be like the hypocrites . . . those hypocrites must've been pretty bad . . . elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus calls them "white-washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth." Ouch! You don't want to be like them . . . to Jesus, hypocrites were folks whose worship was empty, who did it for the wrong reason, who said great and flowery things, who preached one thing and did another, who practiced the letter of the law, but neglected its heart.
When you give to the poor, don't blow a trumpet for Pete's sake, don't be like the hypocrites, for they've found their rewards right here on earth . . . rather, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing . . . and when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, who never met a press-conference they didn't like, who stand up close to the microphone in church and out on the street corners . . . they've got their rewards . . . go into your room and shut the door, pray in secret, and God'll see you anyway, and will reward you . . . and when you fast, you don't have to look like it, all hang-dog and everything, all down-cast and droopy-faced like those hypocrites, who after all have their rewards right here on earth . . . when you fast, spruce yourself up, put some gel in your hair and wash your face . . . and God, who sees in secret, will reward you.
And note that Jesus doesn't say if you fast, or if you pray, or if you give to the poor, he says when you give, when you pray, when you fast. We're expected to pray, fast and give to the poor – we have no option. It’s given that we do them. What Jesus is concerned with here is the right way to do these things, so they call attention to God, not us. So that God gets the credit, not us. So that God is exalted, not us. It’s a warning against empty worship, against hollow words, against becoming white-washed sepulchers, pretty on the outside, but on the inside full of bile.
It's the same thing over in Isaiah, in the chapter we read earlier . . . the prophet is told to shout out, not to hold back, to announce to God's people their rebellion . . . even though day after day they seek God, day after day they delight in God's name . . . God ignores them, God does not reward them, and they ask God "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why do we humble ourselves, when you do not notice?" The people worship and fast and pray, but God does not favor them . . . and they are perplexed. They don't understand . . . And in Isaiah's poetry, God answers them: Look! you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look! you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist . . . Such fasting will not make your voice heard on high!" Their worship is hollow, it's centered around themselves, not God . . . they worship, they pray, they fast but it's only for their own interests, for their own glory, not God's. It's the same rap Jesus has for the hypocrites. They serve their own interests, they build themselves up, they do it for their own egos and pleasure and delight, but not for the glory of God.
And that brings us back to good old Paul, and our reading from his second letter to Corinth – the people in that church was living as if they’d already arrived, as if their resurrection was complete, They lived as Easter people, but not also as people of the Cross. And he reminds them, right up front, of what was done for them – God “made him to be sin who knew no sin . . ." Through the cross, Jesus Christ, the son of God, embodied sin, he took it all on himself, even though he was blameless, even though evil had not touched him . . . he became sin itself, incorporated it into his being . . . for Paul's sake, and the Corinthians' sake, and for our sake . . it was nothing the Corinthians did, nothing Paul did, nothing we have done . . . and if it's nothing we have done, there's nothing to be proud of, no reason to boast . . . and that's the function of Lent, isn't it? That's why we talk so long and loud about contemplating our sinfulness, about focusing on the cross before we move on to celebration. It's why Lent lasts 40 days, longer than Advent or Christmas, and second in length only to Easter. Without it, we're in danger of self-satisfaction, of smugness, of assuming that we've arrived rather than we're just on the road. The recognition of our role in the salvation equation, and just how high a price was paid to balance the books, helps guard against empty worship, against self-fulfilling ritual. It helps keep us from being whitewashed tombs.
And so here we are . . . Ash Wednesday 2014, the beginning of Lent, the beginning of the forty days, a time of prayer and giving and fasting, a time when we give up things dear to us to remind us of another sacrifice, to help us to remember whose we are, and what price was paid . . . when we recall that we are not to be exalted, only God. In a few minutes, I'll place the ashes on your foreheads, as a sign that we are earth, the stuff of the ground, animated with the breath of God, given all we have, all we will ever get, by our maker. We will remember where we came from, that we are only flesh, only dust, only ashes of the Earth, dust to dust and ashes to ashes, and to ashes we shall return. Amen.
But . . . let me tell you another mystery . . . it’s not here yet! The Kingdom of God on earth, unstoppable, like a freight train, has not yet completely arrived. That final trump has yet to sound, our resurrection has yet to occur, the saints have yet to come marching in. Paul knew that only too well – he was forever warning his congregations not to live as if they were already resurrected. It’s all in the future tense for Paul, all yet to come, yet to be. He knew that the Christian life isn’t all fun and games, isn’t all sweetness and light, that it doesn’t protect us from calamity and catastrophe . . . In our scripture from Corinthians, he details hisheartache and persecution for the faith . . . he says he’s endured “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger . . .” It’s hardly the stuff of TV preachers, hardly the “something Good is going to happen to you” school of Christianity. If you just turn your life over to Jesus – and send in a check for nineteen-ninety five plus postage and handling – your troubles will be over. You’ll live a life of victory, God will bless you ten-fold, and all your taxes will get paid on time. You mean that hasn’t happened to you? Well, you must not be trying hard enough, or praying long enough, or hard enough . . . Because God will bless you if you just let him.
That’s a siren song for new converts, and it gets them through the doors, and into the pews. It can grow churches faster than weeds . . . but it neglects one thing. In all its proclamation that we’re bound for glory, all that stuff about the coming resurrection, all that talk about Easter People, it forgets that we’re also Crucifixion People, we’re also People of the Cross. We’re the people for whom Jesus Christ, righteous and blameless and spotless before the Lord, was spiked to a tree and hung up to die. We’re the people of the crucifixion, people for whom God emptied himself of God-hood, took the form of a slave and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. We are Crucifixion People, People of the Cross, every bit as much as Easter People, and we can never let ourselves forget it. Without the cross, there can be no resurrection, without death, there can be no life, without Good Friday there can be no Easter morning.
During Lent we remember all this, all the sadness, all the heartache . . . we remember the human condition, and meditate on our frailties and lapses, on our sins of omission and commission, and the fact that often – but not always – we just can’t seem to get it right. Once again, Paul says it best . . . “I do not understand my own actions,” he says, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And during Lent, we look at all this unflinchingly, clear-eyed . . . and through the ages, the church has developed spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines, to help us do that, to help us meditate and spend time in prayer and quiet reflection . . .
In our reading from Matthew, Jesus gives us a catalog of spiritual practices . . . giving alms to the poor . . . praying . . . fasting . . . but more than that, he details how to do it right: He says: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" and that's pretty cold, isn't it? I mean, its pretty cut and dried – f you run around showing off, if you do these things in order to be seen, to be on the Six-O'clock News, or written up in the Curry County Reporter, you won't be rewarded by your Father in heaven – and I don't know what that means, exactly, but it can't be good . . . and then he goes ahead and explains just what he's talking about – Whenever you give alms, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you pray, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you fast, don't be like the hypocrites . . . those hypocrites must've been pretty bad . . . elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus calls them "white-washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth." Ouch! You don't want to be like them . . . to Jesus, hypocrites were folks whose worship was empty, who did it for the wrong reason, who said great and flowery things, who preached one thing and did another, who practiced the letter of the law, but neglected its heart.
When you give to the poor, don't blow a trumpet for Pete's sake, don't be like the hypocrites, for they've found their rewards right here on earth . . . rather, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing . . . and when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, who never met a press-conference they didn't like, who stand up close to the microphone in church and out on the street corners . . . they've got their rewards . . . go into your room and shut the door, pray in secret, and God'll see you anyway, and will reward you . . . and when you fast, you don't have to look like it, all hang-dog and everything, all down-cast and droopy-faced like those hypocrites, who after all have their rewards right here on earth . . . when you fast, spruce yourself up, put some gel in your hair and wash your face . . . and God, who sees in secret, will reward you.
And note that Jesus doesn't say if you fast, or if you pray, or if you give to the poor, he says when you give, when you pray, when you fast. We're expected to pray, fast and give to the poor – we have no option. It’s given that we do them. What Jesus is concerned with here is the right way to do these things, so they call attention to God, not us. So that God gets the credit, not us. So that God is exalted, not us. It’s a warning against empty worship, against hollow words, against becoming white-washed sepulchers, pretty on the outside, but on the inside full of bile.
It's the same thing over in Isaiah, in the chapter we read earlier . . . the prophet is told to shout out, not to hold back, to announce to God's people their rebellion . . . even though day after day they seek God, day after day they delight in God's name . . . God ignores them, God does not reward them, and they ask God "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why do we humble ourselves, when you do not notice?" The people worship and fast and pray, but God does not favor them . . . and they are perplexed. They don't understand . . . And in Isaiah's poetry, God answers them: Look! you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look! you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist . . . Such fasting will not make your voice heard on high!" Their worship is hollow, it's centered around themselves, not God . . . they worship, they pray, they fast but it's only for their own interests, for their own glory, not God's. It's the same rap Jesus has for the hypocrites. They serve their own interests, they build themselves up, they do it for their own egos and pleasure and delight, but not for the glory of God.
And that brings us back to good old Paul, and our reading from his second letter to Corinth – the people in that church was living as if they’d already arrived, as if their resurrection was complete, They lived as Easter people, but not also as people of the Cross. And he reminds them, right up front, of what was done for them – God “made him to be sin who knew no sin . . ." Through the cross, Jesus Christ, the son of God, embodied sin, he took it all on himself, even though he was blameless, even though evil had not touched him . . . he became sin itself, incorporated it into his being . . . for Paul's sake, and the Corinthians' sake, and for our sake . . it was nothing the Corinthians did, nothing Paul did, nothing we have done . . . and if it's nothing we have done, there's nothing to be proud of, no reason to boast . . . and that's the function of Lent, isn't it? That's why we talk so long and loud about contemplating our sinfulness, about focusing on the cross before we move on to celebration. It's why Lent lasts 40 days, longer than Advent or Christmas, and second in length only to Easter. Without it, we're in danger of self-satisfaction, of smugness, of assuming that we've arrived rather than we're just on the road. The recognition of our role in the salvation equation, and just how high a price was paid to balance the books, helps guard against empty worship, against self-fulfilling ritual. It helps keep us from being whitewashed tombs.
And so here we are . . . Ash Wednesday 2014, the beginning of Lent, the beginning of the forty days, a time of prayer and giving and fasting, a time when we give up things dear to us to remind us of another sacrifice, to help us to remember whose we are, and what price was paid . . . when we recall that we are not to be exalted, only God. In a few minutes, I'll place the ashes on your foreheads, as a sign that we are earth, the stuff of the ground, animated with the breath of God, given all we have, all we will ever get, by our maker. We will remember where we came from, that we are only flesh, only dust, only ashes of the Earth, dust to dust and ashes to ashes, and to ashes we shall return. Amen.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
An Illuminating Episode (Matthew 17:1 - 9)
This week was the anniversary of the death of the most beloved Presbyterian minister of the last century ... do you all know who that is? Of course ... it was Fred Rogers, and on his show, he used to have a word of the day. He’d be addressing the camera, maybe putting on his sweater or his tennies, and he’d say “The word for today is ‘cow’” and he’d ask us “can you say cow?” and then a beat: “I knew you could.” And I liked the word of the day so much that I decided we needed one for today, so our word of the day is “intertextual.” Can you say intertextual? I knew you could . . . and though Mr. Rogers would have had a cool little low-tech puppet show about it, you’ll just have to be content with this boring old sermon . . .
But why “intertextual?” Well, it describes a way of reading scripture that all us seminary types are taught, but doesn’t get much play out in the pews . . . We usually read the Bible in chunks we call passages, isolated one from another. Problem is, that’s not usually the way it was meant to be understood. Though few—if any—writers of scripture knew what they wrote would end up as scripture, they were all written with a body of literature in mind. The books and letters we call the New Testament were written with the Old Testament Scriptures in mind; thus the themes and events depicted in the Chris tian scriptures echo, play off-of, and play around with themes and events in the Hebrew Scriptures. In a similar way, part of a New Testament book will often reference another part of itself or, indeed, another book in the New Testament altogether.
If we don’t pay attention to these things, we miss a large part of the meaning intended by the author. It’s like in a film, when you’ve seen an actor before, you can’t help but be affected by it, you can’t help but make the connection, even if only on a subconscious level, and it colors how you view the present film. Filmmakers take advantage of this all the time, most obvious when an actor is cast against type . . . nice-guy Tom Hanks was cast as a mob killer in The Road to Perdition, and it gave the role part an extra resonance, another layer of depth . . . and the director wanted this to happen, was counting on it . . . and so writers of Scriptures counted on their audiences to get the intertextuality, to make the connections, to add that little extra fillip of meaning to their own writing.
And today’s passage is the poster-child for intertextuality, it’s positively lousy with the stuff, so it behooves us--as the careful biblical scholars we are--to take it into account. First, the most obvious, the Old-Testament angle . . . who else do we know who had a theophany on a mountain top? Of course, we just heard it a few minutes ago . . . Moses goes up onto the mountain, and a cloud covers the mountain, and the glory of the Lord settles on Mt. Sinai . . . and the cloud covers it for six days, and on the seventh day—get it, seven? The earth was created in that many days, so the establishment of the law is the new creation?—on the seventh day, the day God rested, God calls out of the cloud . . . and it’s during those 40 days on Mt. Sinai that the Hebrew religion is established . . . a new creation indeed . . .
In our passage, Matthew is careful to situate Jesus’ mountaintop experience “six days later,” and six days later than what, you ask, and if we read just before our passage, we see that the transfiguration happens six days after Jesus predicts his own second coming: “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.” And now—six days later, on the seventh day—Jesus trudges up the mountain, and as with Moses, a cloud has descended upon the mountain, and God speaks out of the cloud, just like with Moses, and it’s clear that we’re supposed to read this as a new creation, just like with Moses. And is it conceivable that Matthew also wants us to view Jesus as a kind of a new Moses . . . perhaps bringing a new covenant?
In a few minutes, we will take the bread and break it and take the cup and pour it and it is indeed the new covenant in Chris t’s blood . . . and ours is the new covenant, and Jesus is the new Moses . . . and as if to emphasize that fact, there’s Moses up there with him, and Elijah to boot, and here’s Jesus hob-nobbing with the two greatest figures in Israelite history, or at least two pretty great ones, anyway, and again, the message is clear: Jesus is of a kind with Moses—who brought the Law—and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. He’s right up there with the law and the prophets, one with them, in a sense . . . it’s like all those political endorsements with the candidate being photographed with the movie star . . . Jesus is of a kind with the Moses and Elijah, with law and prophets.
And Peter’s down with that, he’s cool with it, so much so that he wants to build three booths—our translation has dwellings, but it’s better as booths—he wants to build them booths, one for Jesus and one for Moses and one for Elijah, he wants them to stay together—perhaps to celebrate metaphorically the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, to celebrate this oneness of Jesus and the Judaic past. But even as he’s speaking, God cuts him off, a bright cloud envelops them—again, like Moses—and a voice comes out of the cloud, and says “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.”
And if that sounds familiar, it should: it’s more intertextuality, more echoes from the past, this time the recent past, and from the book of Matthew itself. These are the exact same words that come down from the cloud at Jesus’ baptism—"This is my son the beloved with him I am well pleased" and we are reminded of that dove and that time when the mission of Jesus came upon him, and we can see that our vision of Jesus and Elijah and Moses cut from the same cultic cloth is only partially correct, in Jesus we’re dealing with the beyond, the over and above, not just the along-side, and this freaks Peter and the others out, and they fall on their faces in fear, with the words of God ringing in their ear—this is my Son, and to the words from the river, the voice adds "listen to him," and when they do, what’s the first thing they hear? "Do not fear . . . get up, and do not be afraid" . . . and when they do that, when they look up, there’s no more Moses, no more Elijah, no more transfiguring light, just Jesus, and they get the picture: there is nothing but Jesus, the lone fulfillment of Law and prophets, there’s nothing but the Chris t.
And now, today, 2000 years later, this story has become our scripture, our text of texts . . . and we are charged with reading our own life, of examining our own narrative intertextually, in light of those texts written so long ago . . . it can be argued that this is the task of interpretation, of preaching, even, that we read our own stories and find echoes in them of our scriptures . . . that it’s in those echoes that we sometimes find application, overlap, places where what was written so long ago become available to us, here and now, today . . .
And of course, the obvious echo for these times is the transfiguration itself, and in Greek it has a stronger sense, of transformation, of metamorphosis . . . and we are seeking this transformation, seeking to open ourselves to God’s transforming grace, knowing full well that—as was the case with Jesus on the mountain, and Moses on his mountain before him, it is the spirit of God who will do the transfiguring, who will descend upon us like a dove and create in us a new morning.
The temptation is to be like Peter, to set up booths, to build houses to protect and enshrine the past, but the God of transformation, the Spirit of transfiguration, booms out of the clouds, out of the fog of the future, and says No! This is my son, the beloved that you are proclaiming. Listen to him . . . and like the disciples there on that mountain, we cover our eyes, we fall on our faces, we are sore afraid . . . but then Jesus touches us, and we remember God’s words—This is my son! Listen to him, and when we do, when we turn our eyes upon him and him alone, we hear the words that are as germane to us as they were to Peter and James and John: Get up, get moving, and above all do not fear. Amen
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