Happiness (Matthew 5:1 - 12)

The Beatitudes are the first words of the sermon on the mount, And I think it’s important to understand a little about what they are—and are not—before we look at what they say. First of all, the scenes from Hollywood movies aside, they are not preached to a crowd. We picture Jesus standing on a hill, eyes of Hollywood-blue, proclaiming to a vast crowd . . . Well, there is a crowd: Jesus had been running around Galilee, healing the sick, curing the lame, driving out demons—you know, all those Jesus things—and as you can imagine, he attracted quite a bunch of people. Some of them were looking for someone to follow, others had ailments that needed healing, and some were what my real-estate queen mother would call looky-lous, people who just wanted to see a good show. (Police officers know these last folks well . . . They’re the kind who slow down at accident scenes to gawk at the mayhem, clogging up the works, making it difficult for emergency personnel to do their jobs.)

Though they had differing motives, all of them had something in common: they would get on Jesus’ every last nerve, and he’d have to take a break, usually, like this time, up on a mountain. But this time, he doesn’t go by himself just to pray, he takes his disciples along with him. So the first thing to understand about the Blesseds, as I like to call them, is that they aren’t preached to a crowd, just to his followers. They—like the rest of the sermon on the mount—are words spoken to insiders, those whom Jesus had called to be his followers. In fact, the entire sermon in the mount would perhaps be better called the Teaching on the Mount, which is especially interesting because the Greek word we translate for some inexplicable reason as disciple means literally “student.”

So. The Blesseds are private teachings of a teacher to his students, a fact that warms the hearts of Gnostic types everywhere, who believe that salvation is based on secret wisdom imparted at the dark of the moon by a sage named Jesus using lots of code words and secret handshakes and stuff. Which is partially true, of course: Jesus was, among other things, a sage and the Beatitudes are wisdom sayings, but they’re hardly secret: the verses here in Matthew are among the most famous in any Scripture, Christian or otherwise, and there’s another version for everyone to read over in Luke.

And there are a couple of other things to notice about the Blesseds: they are not performative. In other words, when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit” that does not confer blessings on the poor in spirit. It does not, as Captain Picard of Star Trek might say, make it so. But more important, is that the sayings are not prescriptive. That is, they don’t prescribe behavior, they’re not telling us what to do. Of course, they’re often used that way, as a kind of a carrot for good behavior: “you’d better be pure in heart if you want to see God!” Or “you won’t be filled if you don’t hunger and thirst for righteousness . . .” But notice that he doesn’t say that, he doesn’t say that people who aren’t  pure in heart won’t see God, just that those who are will.

Well. If the Blesseds don’t do anything, if they don’t actively bless the meek, the pure in heart, etc., and if they aren’t a set of rules we have to follow to get to heaven, then what are they? And perhaps more important, what good do they do? Well, what they are are the opposite of prescriptive, they are descriptive: Jesus is describing how stuff is to his students, he’s telling them how it is.

That’s why I prefer other translations of the Greek adjective macarios: for example, in the Scholar’s Version it uses “congratulations,” as in “Congratulations to the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” but that seems to me just a little too much like a game-show prize to me—congratulations on your new car!! —and I prefer the more traditional, and perfectly acceptable, “happy,” as in “happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” . . . It’s a statement of fact: they’re happy, Jesus says, because the kingdom of heaven (Matthew’s version of the kingdom of God) is theirs. And poor in spirit means exactly what it says—they are poor in terms of spirit. They don’t have much spirit . . . Contrast them to those who are rich in spirit: the supremely confident, those who think they’re the be all and the end all of the known universe, who think they’re the ones in charge, instead of God, as the poor in spirit know. So much for the take-charge kind of guy . . .

Happy as well are those who mourn, for they’ll be comforted, and we—or at least I—always think of those who’ve lost loved ones, and that’s appropriate on this All Saints Sunday, as we remember those we’ve lost, but when you think about it, there are many things we grieve . . . Our lost innocence, our lost sense of the rightness of the world . . . The desolation we have wrought on our once edenic world . . . Our cities, where it’s not safe for a woman to walk alone, not to mention be in the same room with Harvey Weinstein. Happy are those who grieve these things, Jesus tells us, for they shall be comforted.

And I have to wonder . . . how are the grieving going to be comforted? Those who have lost loved ones can be comforted—somewhat, at least—by the thought of their being in a better place, but what about those who grieve our loss of safety? What about those who mourn the terrible destruction of the environment, the galling loss of civility, or the continuing inequity in the world? Seems to me that the only thing that will help these folks are safe cities, environmental renewal, the abolishment of Twitter (just kidding . . . I guess) and a sudden and equitable redistribution of resources in the world.

Anyway, happy are the meek, Jesus teaches, for they shall inherit the earth. Well, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be worth a whole lot, after the exhaustion of all its resources—scientists say it’ll probably be sooner than later—and the conversion of the biosphere into a garbage dump, but ok: the meek are going to inherit it, whatever’s left of it. The meek—gentle, unassuming people, kind and considerate—they’re going to inherit it all, and another question is, from whom? Who’s owns it all now? Well, God, of course, God, ultimately owns it—the earth is the lord’s all all that is in it, says the psalm after all . . .

Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled . . . satiated by righteousness, overflowing with it like the jars at the Cana wedding were of wine . . . happy are the merciful, for they’re going to get mercy in return, they’re going to get what they give out—kinda karmic, isn’t it?—and happy are the pure in heart ‘cause they’re gonna see God. And it’s important to note that pure in heart doesn’t mean pure overall, as in sinless . . . It means undivided, that their heart—their will, their intention—is not divided between God and anything else, that like the old hymn says, their eyes are always turned upon Jesus, they’re always looking full on his wonderful face.

Finally, happy are the peacemakers, because they’ll be called children of God—doubtless through their association with the Prince of Peace himself—and happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first characteristic in the list—happy are the poor in spirit—and this one have the exact same consequent, the exact same “because”: theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Because it’s the kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of God, as it’s called over in Luke—that we’re talking about here. And though to Jesus’ students, it likely meant something yet to be fulfilled, maybe we know that the kingdom is right here, within us, and all around us.

In a way, Jesus is describing an alternate reality, it’s a reality that is present within us, that infuses us, perfuses us, and yet, in a way, is still unfolding. And when Jesus talks about the poor in spirit having the kingdom, is he speaking about being closer to realizing it, to actuating it in their lives? After all, of your own spirit keeps getting the way, it’s heard to hear that still, small voice within. And persecution, and the suffering that goes with it, has a way of stripping away the trappings of ego and self-regard that block access to the spirit, or at least that’s what Paul thought . . .

And now, after happy are those persecuted for righteousness sake, the Beatitudes, the “happies,” are in a sense over, the rhythm and patterns of the preceding verses end. And suddenly, Jesus gets personal—instead of speaking in the third person—for they shall see God—he he’s talking in the second, directly to and about his students.

“Blessed are you,” he says, “when people revile you and persecute you on my account”—And he is looking into their eyes, suddenly gentle, suddenly serious, and they think they could fall into those eyes . . . and were members of Matthew’s congregation, fifty years after Jesus spoke these words, were they feeling persecuted, were they being reviled by their fellow Jews? Did that resonate especially strongly with them? Did that comfort them in their travails?

What resonates with you about the Blesseds? What comforts you?. Because that is what the Beatitudes are there for, one of the things, anyway . . . Comfort, comfort ye my people, said the prophet Isaiah, and that that is what the Beatitudes delivers. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And we all mourn, don’t we? We mourn our lives the way we imagined them to be, our image of ourselves, carefully nurtured fed over the years, which sometimes—not always, but sometimes—comes crashing down around us. We mourn what might have been and what never will be, we mourn the past, and our regrets sometimes seem to flow like water, like a never-ending stream. We mourn the church, both individual congregations and the Church in the world, as it and they change beyond recognition, as they aren’t the way they used to be. And most of all, perhaps, most of all we mourn those who have gone before, and those whom we know will be here but a little time more. So join us in a few minutes as we acknowledge and remember the saints who have come before. Amen.

Coining a Phrase (Matthew 22:15 - 22)

     I almost always read from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, because it’s a reliable translation in modern English, but from time to time I like to break out the good old King James. In the case of our passage, the NSRV gives an accurate, but rather dull, “Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” while the King James reads “Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?” In my estimation, altogether more colorful and exciting. In the same vein, the NRSV reads “‘Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius” while the King James says “‘Shew me the tribute money.’ And they brought unto him a penny.” And though the NRSV is once again more accurate—it really is denarius in the Greek—the coin handed to Jesus has been known ever since as a “tribute penny.”

There’s a picture of one on the front page of your bulletin, and you can see the head(in Greek, eikon) of Emperor Tiberius with his hooked nose and prominent chin, wearing an imperial garland and a kingly frown. And on the back—the reverse, in coin-collector lingo—is his mama Livia done up as Lady Pax or in English, Lady Peace. But it’s what was inscribed around Tiberius on the obverse—that’s front to you and me—that got the Jewish religious authorities in an uproar. It said “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” And though they had no problem with him being the son of Augustus—after all, that’s who he was—they considered it blasphemous that Augustus had claimed to be divine, and thus Tiberius being a chip off the old divine block. Come to think of it, that might have been what got them mad at Jesus as well . . .

Anyway, the Romans required that taxes be paid with this specific coin, this tribute penny, so you can imagine how it made them feel. It was bad enough they had to pay taxes—which were pretty steep, and a burden on the poor—but to make them pay with a coin they weren’t even supposed to touch . . . well, that was just frosting on a very sour cake. Which, of course, was exactly why they did it, just another way of keeping the Roman thumb on them, another way of showing who’s boss.

And so it’s more than a little sly that the Pharisees ask him about paying taxes, because it’s a huge thorn in Jewish sides, and though the Pharisees are very opposed to paying the taxes themselves, just to make things interesting, they bring along some Herodians, supporters of the puppet governor Herod and therefore in favor of paying the taxes, as witnesses. They want to get Jesus in a double bind: if he answers the question in the negative—that he’s against paying the taxes—they could be sure that the Herodians would go running off to the man, and Jesus would be labeled as seditious, and therefore in hot water with the empire. If he answers the question in the affirmative, the Pharisees would have more dirt on him with his own people, and their plot to have him eliminated would be that much further along.

But first . . . they try to butter him up. “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” And the irony of it all is that though they’re being oily, and believe not a word of it, everything they say is true. Jesus is sincere, he does teach the way of God with truth, and he shows partiality to no one.. Not even big-wigs like the chief priests and rabbis, which, come to think of it, might be another reason they were out to get him.

So. They butter him up and then slip in the shiv . . . “Tell us, my pretty . . .” Ok, there was no “my pretty,” not even in the King James, it was just “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” And the law they were talking about was the Torah and it’s interpretations, and on the surface, they’re asking him for his interpretation, one interpreter to another, but

Jesus knows exactly what’s going on, because, well, he’s Jesus, and after blasting them for being hypocrites, asks them whose picture, whose icon, is on the tribute penny, and when they reply “Caesar,” his famous reply is “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's,” or, in the boring old New Revised Standard, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew says they are amazed, and maybe we should stop right here and ponder why. Why would they be amazed? After all, seems like a perfectly good solution to me . . . I mean, we do it all the time, we divide our capital—our money, our time, even our affection and esteem—between the state and church, some of us slicing the pie one way, some another, but we all do it nowadays without even a blink of an eye, and I think the key is in that word “nowadays” . . .

Nowadays, in this country at least, we are actually able to do what Jesus suggests, we’re able to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and at the same time, that which is God’s to God, we think nothing of it, but in Jesus’ time, it was a radical idea, for the simple fact that most of the time there wasn’t much difference between the two. Theocracy was the order of the day, every state and city-state had their Gods, and of course, one of the much-remarked geniuses of Imperial Rome was their never meeting a god they didn’t like. They had no problem letting each conquered entity keep their national gods, they just added them to the Roman pantheon, which is Greek for “all gods,” as long as you gave overall loyalty to the Empire, as represented by the Emperor.

Which would be ok for the Jews and all, except that starting with Augustus, Tiberius’ daddy, emperors began claiming to be divine—thus the inscription on the tribute penny. And unlike many of their neighbors, Jews were monotheists, which was so important that even today, observant Jews inscribe a tiny scroll with the Shema, AKA Deuteronomy 6:4, and place it on the doorposts around their houses, so they can always be reminded of one thing: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”

So this divine emperor thing wasn’t just some mild irritant to the Jewish people, not just something they could put up with. It struck at the heart of their religious identity, and for them, it was pretty obvious: you had to serve one entity or another, you couldn’t serve two masters. Either you served the emperor or you served God.

So what Jesus did was pretty radical. He took two competing ideas, two competing loyalties, and he found a third way, one unheard of in those days: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” And if that were all there was to it, we could all up and go home, ‘cause we’ve heard it a thousand times as a justification for paying taxes, but as usual for Jesus, it’s not quite that simple.

And it revolves around question of just what does belong to God versus what belongs to the government. Obviously, you have to keep the roads patched and pay for the sewers and protection against fire, but beyond those kinds of things . . . Just what does belong to God?

My favorite answer is everything. Everything belongs to God . . . as creator of the universe, everything ultimately is in Gods hands. After all, doesn’t Psalm 24 begin with “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it?” Q, as they say, E and D.

But while it’s a satisfying “gotcha,” and it may have been what Jesus meant, it’s not very helpful . . . It still doesn’t help us navigate the very modern set of confusing loyalties we face every day. And I think that the Greek can help us here. When Jesus asks the Pharisees and their buddies “whose head is this?” he uses the Greek word “eikon,” which all things being equal, I would prefer to see translated as “image,” as in “whose image is on this coin?”

And of course, Tiberius’ image is on that denarius, just as Lincoln’s and Washington’s and Jefferson’s are on ours, so you can give that to them, but where’s is the image of God’s? Or to turn it around, who is in the image of God? And this is as subversive, at least, as saying all things belong to God, because the answer of course is “we are.” We have been created in God’s eikon , in God’s image, and we belong to God. Not the Roman Empire, not the State of Ohio, not the U.S. of A. And we have been commanded to render ourselves unto God.  Let’s think about what that means. Amen.

Empty As a Pocket (Philippians 2:1 - 11)

     That was a clip from Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” recorded with the South African Township group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And every time I hear it I think of my time in Cameroon—I know, I know, different country, different music, but work with me here—I think of my time in Cameroon, and our short-term mission to the Bulu tribes-people. We were guests of the “Eglise Cameroonaise Presbyterienne,” the Cameroon Presbyterian Church and fed by the people of the churches, and to make sure we had meat every day, each parish would provide a chicken from their meager flock. And I was appalled, embarrassed, even—these folks might have had meat once a week, many even once a month, and here we were, eating their precious chicken. But we consoled ourselves with the thought that they would be very insulted if we didn’t take their hospitality. And who knows? It might even have been true.

     Anyway, that marvelous image in the song certainly applied to them—they were poor folks, “empty as a pocket, empty as a pocket with nothing to lose” and yet they were generous, they wouldn’t think of not sharing what they had with us visitors, nor did they think twice about supporting others, about giving freely to those who are in need. In their hearts, they knew who Jesus meant when he said love your neighbors as yourself: he meant everyone they meet.

     They were empty as a pocket, but not of their own doing . . . Their poverty was due to long years of European colonialism—British in the North and French in the South—and a corrupt current government. They weren’t empty by choice, but that’s what Paul asks of us he asks us to follow Christ and empty ourselves , to be empty as a pocket by our own choice.

      Our passage follows the one we talked about a few weeks ago, where he writes his sisters and brothers in Philippi, wistfully and with no little emotion, not knowing whether he would be released or put to death, because he was in prison for preaching the gospel. And it’s clear he had a special relationship with the Philippians, but at the same time, felt they needed some exhorting, some encouragement. They were undergoing some sort of persecution for their faith, just as he had. And he beseeches them to live lives worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that he, Paul, may know that they are in no way intimidated by their opponents.

     In our passage, he continues to exhort them, again trading upon their personal relationship: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete,” he says, proving that he’s not averse to using a little rhetorical pathos. And what would make his joy complete? That they be of the same mind, that they get along, and maybe the reason he’s so passionate about this is he’s seen plenty of the opposite in the churches he founded. In Corinth, they fought over who they followed—“each of you says,” he wrote, “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’” In Galatia, they fought over whether they had to be observant Jews before becoming Christians (Paul said no). And it’s possible that he’d heard the Philippians were divided over something or another.

      Whatever the case, he begs them to be united, to be of the same mind, as he puts it, “having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” And it’s important to realize that to Paul, the mind represents the entire shebang, as in be in full accord, be totally, wholly united, united in being . . . For example, he says, “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. . . . each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” To be of one mind is to be humble, to subsume your will to the will of others.

      To put it another way, we’re to be of one mind, and that mind is to be the one that is in Christ. Or as Paul says “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. “ Just as we’re supposed to clothe ourselves with Christ, we’re to be of the same mind. And the tendency is to take that metaphorically, or more accurately, as a simile: that our mind is to be somehow like that of Christ. But could it be more than that? Could it be that, somehow, we are to literally have the same mind? After all, as he said himself, Christ is mysteriously in us and we in him . . . and the goal of many a mystic spirituality is to unite with the God or Christ or Spirit that is within . . .

     Whatever the case, whatever Paul meant, it’s a set-up for some of the most beautiful prose he ever wrote. Actually, it’s not strictly prose but a kind of verse, and our best guess is that Paul is quoting a very early Christian liturgy, which we call a Christ Hymn (there’s another in Colossians). And he uses it to elaborate on what it means for the same mind to be in us as in Christ Jesus who, he says, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” That’s what it means to have the same mind as Christ, to empty ourselves like Christ.

     Paul is saying that by becoming human via the incarnation, Christ emptied himself of what he was to become an empty vessel. Scholar and author Cynthia Bourgeault says this became his standard operating procedure, writing that “in whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying.” To illustrate it, she cites O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi in which an extremely poor couple cannot afford to buy one another Christmas gifts, though each does have a prize possession—James, a gold watch given him by his grandfather and Della, her long, luxurious hair. And that Christmas, James sells his watch to buy silver combs for Della’s hair and Della sells that hair to buy James a golden fob for his watch, and though the sacrifice seems pointless, though it seems for nothing, in reality it makes the love between them tangible, it makes it manifest, visible to them and anyone else who happened to care.

     When Christ emptied himself of his God-like nature and became one of us, slave to the rhythms and rhymes of earth, pawn to the powers and principalities that eventually killed him, he became love manifest. Every time he healed the lame, urged the sick and brought good news to the poor, love became concrete, it became physical, palpable and perceptible to our senses. We could touch it in Bartimaeus, to whom he gave sight; see it in the Syro-Phonaecian woman, whose child he cured and dignity he restored; and feel it as we placed our hands in his sword-pierced side.

     Social-justice workers—peace enablers, hunger advocates and the like—have a very high burn-out rate. Besides physical exhaustion, it all seems so hopeless, so pointless. Despite their best efforts, when one child is fed, ten more take her place. Political refugees pack the earth no matter how many peace deals are brokered, how many despots are deposed. The toil of aid workers is grinding, never-ending and seemingly hopeless.

But whether they know it or not, whether they are Christian, Buddhist or atheist, love has become manifest in their actions, it’s become visible and concrete and solid through their deeds. Through their self-emptying, their self-sacrifice , divine love impacts the world. Whether they believe it or not.

     Through Christ’s bodily incarnation, love became incarnate as well. And every time those Bulu tribespeople give a chicken to hungry visitors, or sustain one another in village existence, love becomes incarnate, it becomes visible, manifest in them. And as followers of Christ, the same thing happens by means of our own self-emptying: God’s love becomes visible through us. Amen.

No Other (Galatians 3:27 - 29; Colossians 1:15 - 20)

     It’s World Communion Sunday, and as far as I’m concerned, it can’t have come too soon.  There’s been a rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence over the past several years, and I am at a loss to explain it.  Oh, there are all the partisan arguments, one side says one thing, another side says another, yet another says something else, and I’ve engaged in some of that myself, I’m sorry to say, but I really think it’s bigger than all of that, I think it has to do with the way we humans view reality, all of us, with the possible exception of very primitive, hunter-gatherer societies.  If there are any of those left.

And as I was re-visiting the Galatians passage from Paul, one of my go-to scriptures for World Communion, I came to the realization that Paul—and/or one of his disciples (we’ll get to that in a moment)—that they got it, whether they understood exactly what they had or not.  And to see why, let’s take a look at the two passages I read; first the one from Galatians, likely the one written first.

Paul wrote Galatians some time in the fifth decade after Jesus’ birth, sometime probably closer to 50 than to 60 Common Era.  Nobody is certain exactly where the church or churches were, and it’s likely that he established at least one of the churches himself (if there were indeed more than one).  It’s clear that he considered himself their spiritual father, and they’d been bad, and like any parent of such a child, he was angry.  Or at least the letter gives the appearance of anger; as the user or Greek rhetorical techniques, it can be difficult to tell what his actual mood was when he wrote his letters.

At any rate, the letter has an angry tone, and the reason isn’t important here, except to help locate our reading in the general stream of things.  The final verse of today’s passage is the conclusion of Paul’s argument as to why the Galatians are Abraham’s heirs according to faith instead of any external sign like circumcision.  And it has the sound of one . . . a conclusion, that is.  It’s a declarative statement of belief, one that he has derived in the preceding discussion: “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”  Anything else you might do, or have done to you, doesn’t matter.  If you belong to Christ, then you are a child of Abraham, and heirs of the promise to be God’s children, God’s people.

But what interests me this World Communion Sunday is what comes just before the conclusion: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  And it’s well understood that by Greek Paul means Gentile—in other words, anybody who’s not a Jew—and slave or free, male and female are obvious references, and it’s clear that he’s obliterating primary categories in the Middle East, primary labels, primary boxes in which people are placed . . . In Christ Jesus there is none of that.

And it’s also clear that in Galatians he’s speaking in a Christian context: those who are baptized into Christ, he says, have clothed themselves with Christ.  And for centuries, congregations would replicate that . . . When I was in Africa I witnessed such a baptism.  The candidates were dressed in street clothes, maybe a little more drab than usual—the Bulu are a colorful people—and after their baptism, black-clothed elders surrounded them as they changed, and voilá! The big reveal: they stood before the congregation clothed with Christ, in blinding white as if on Transfiguration mountain.  It’s those folks who, for Paul in Galatians, are one in Christ, in whom there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female.  Christians those who have been clothed in Christ.

Ok, now that we’ve got that straight, let’s fast forward a few years, maybe a couple of decades, maybe less, when Paul—or a follower thereof—penned the letter to the Colossians.  Because Colossae was destroyed by an earthquake in 61 CE, if Paul wrote the letter, it was likely around 60.  If a disciple wrote it in Paul’s name—a common practice back then—it could have been written sometime in the 70s, even as late as 80 years after Christ.  Whenever or by whomever, it shows a different, some say more advanced, theology.  Particularly, the author has a more cosmic view of Christ; or as Richard Rohr says, the Christ in Colossians is the Cosmic Christ.

The passage I read at the beginning is ground central for this concept.   Christ  “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,”Paul (or whoever) writes, and of course this harkens back to Genesis one, where humans were created in God’s image, and like what John says in his Gospel, all things in heaven and on earth were created in, through and for him, things Version should blue and invisible.  Note—all things, not just on the earth, but in heaven—the whole universe, the entire cosmos, “whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.”

In fact—and here’s the kicker—Christ “is before all things and in him all things hold together”. Note the present tense: we’re talking how things are right now, and this verse—especially the last clause, in him all things hold together (another translation might be subsist), is what made Teilhard de Chardin’s heart sing, because he saw in it a validation of what he had experienced mystically, the sacredness of all matter, that God was in everything, and that everything was held together in that divine presence.

And so we see that Pauline theology has developed, it’s changed between the writing of Galatians and that of Colossians.  If you asked Paul the question “who is in Christ?” shortly after the turn of the fifth decade, he might have answered “those who have been baptized into Christ.  If you asked him a decade or so later, he (or his disciple) would have said all things, and that includes all people, plants, rocks and horses, the whole cosmos, the whole shebang, all are in Christ.

Now.  Does that mean all things are Christian, that they follow Christ?  Of course not! as Paul himself might have put it.  It’s self-evident that not everyone  follows the path laid out by Jesus of Nazareth.  He’s is not talking about whether someone is saved or not, whether they’re justified or not.  Here in Colossians, he’s saying that all are in Christ, whether they know it or not.  And if we’re all in Christ, then we are all one in Christ, there’s neither Cypriot or Greek, Venezuelan or American, Israeli or Palestinian.  Neither Hindu or Muslim, Buddhist or Christian, Floridian or Puerto Rican, all are one in Christ Jesus.

So how can we fence anything or anyone else out from our regard?  If we are wrapped in Christ, suffused by Christ, glued together by Christ, how can we exclude anyone from the bounty given to us by God through Christ?  When we exclude another, when we regard another as inferior or superior, we exclude Christ, we regard Christ as inferior or superior.

And that gets us to that problem in the way most of humanity views the world, including but not limited to our Western culture:  we regard ourselves as separate, both from nature and from one another.  We regard nature as something to be tamed, to be used to further our own ends, and we regard one another in the same way.  We think about everything other than our own selves—what we think of as ourselves, that is—as separate, as other than ourselves.  As Cynthia Bourgeault puts it, we are subject and every other person, every other thing, is object.  Therefore, we are forever defending ourselves and what we have sequestered, that part of God’s bounty we so presumptively call “ours,” from those people and things we consider not us.  And conversely, because nature is separate, because it’s not part of us, we can use it up, exploit it for the aggrandizement of our supposed self.

But here’s the thing: if we are truly pervaded by Christ, if we are truly one in Christ, how can we talk about separation?  How can we call ourselves separate from one another or nature, which is also perfused by Christ?  Paul set the stage in Galatians and drove the nail home in Colossians: we can’t.  We can’t say that we are separate.  And if we’re not separate, if we are all embedded in Christ, if Christ—as he himself told us—is in everything, what we do to each other, how we treat immigrants, foreign nationals, even our enemies, is how we treat Christ.

And if there is no separation, perhaps equally difficult important, how we treat immigrants, the poor, the outsiders, those we seek to exclude, is how we treat ourselves.  Jesus famously told us to treat our neighbors as ourself, and we expend considerable energy and ink trying to figure out who our neighbors are,  it the answer is simple: who are our neighbors?  We are.  Amen.

Prisoner of Love (Philippians 1:21 - 30)

     The first thing to know about Philippians is that Paul wrote it from prison.  He was incarcerated because of his Gospel preaching, but we don’t know where, exactly, it was.  We do know that it was in a Roman jail, because he speaks of the imperial guard (in Greek, the Praetorium), who know he’s in jail for Christ.  We do have some idea of when it was written, though: probably about 62 CE, around thirty years after the crucifixion and ten years after Paul and Timothy established the Philippian church which, being in Greece, had the distinction of being the first Christian congregation established in Europe.

It is clear that Paul had a special relationship with that congregation; he visited the church twice—in 56 and 57–after he founded it, and speaks fondly of their relationship in the verses before our passage.  “I thank my God every time I remember you,” he says “because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now . . .  You hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me.”  He longs to see them, to be with them, and prays that their “love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight,” and assures them that his imprisonment has actually helped spread the Gospel, because the local sisters and brothers had been emboldened by his example, and enabled to preach without fear.

As the letter goes on, it becomes clear that he doesn’t know his fate, that he’s probably awaiting sentencing or something, and his bravado begins to appear a bit hollow.  “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that . . . Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death.”

As our passage begins, he muses about which one it’ll be, and lets us in on a little secret: he’d kinda prefer it to be death.  “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.”  Dying is gain.  His desire is “to depart and be with Christ,” as he puts it, “for that is far better.”  Life is hard, there is sickness and hardship and suffering, and Paul knows a lot about that, too . . . in that famous passage in Second Corinthians he describes it, saying he’s been “afflicted9 in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”  Oy.  If anybody had cause to want to die and be with Christ, it’s Paul.

And yet . . . This sort of thinking has pervaded Christianity for a long time.  Early on, in the popular conception, it became all about getting to that better place, all about pie in the sky by and by.  Fire-sale Christianity, it’s called—the idea that you do all this stuff on Earth so you’ll get to go to heaven.  Though most Christians at least profess to believe in Martin Luther’s sola gracia, there’s often an underlying conviction that you gotta be good enough.  It’s reflected in the way we speak about it, when a calamity befalls us saying “why me” and when Uncle Monty dies, he’s gone on to his great reward.

Of course, this has taken the next, inevitable step: called prosperity doctrine, it’s when that eternal reward gets pushed forward to our life here on earth.  If God rewards you for being a good little minion after death, what’s to stop God from doing it while we’re still kicking? Think Creflo Dollar—has there ever been a more apt name?—think Creflo Dollar and his 65 million dollar plane or Joel Osteen and his 17,000 square foot “family home.”

The problem is that prosperity-doctrine thinking forgets the other part of the formula: if dying is gain, living is Christ, and he didn’t live in no 10.5 million dollar house, or ask Peter and James to buy him a private jet.  No: the incarnate Christ hoofed it around Palestine, healing folks and preaching the Kingdom, and so did Paul.  And though we don’t know what Jesus did to support himself—he doubtless learned his father’s trade before he left home—we know Paul worked as a tent-maker while at the same time running around the Middle East establishing churches.

And after engaging in a little wist-ful thinking, he assures himself—and the Philippians of his confidence that God will keep him around for the sake of the gospel, to continue to do more of the earthly labor which, we know today, was crucial to the development of the church.  More specifically, he says, remaining in the flesh is “more necessary” for the church at Philippi.  “Since I am convinced of this,” he says, “I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith.”  Paul has a genuine love and regard for the fledgling Christians at Philippi, and an unshakable faith that God will do what is right by them, whatever God does with he himself.  They don’t call him a saint for nothing.

And he really wants to come visit them again, so he can share in their joy and celebration of Christ, or as he puts it, their boasting in Christ Jesus.  But just in case, he begins to exhort them, to encourage them, ‘cause exhorting and encouraging is what he does best.  And I wonder if he’s doing the same for himself, if he’s giving himself a bit of a pep talk to shake himself out of his momentary doubt. 

Whatever the case, he urges them—and himself?—to live their “life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” so that whether he gets to come and see them or not, he’ll know that they’re standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel.  And notice that he’s speaking, as he almost always is in his letters, to a group, to a congregation, not to individuals, and that here, as elsewhere—notably First Corinthians—he expects unity, that they’ll work in one spirit and with one mind for the Gospel.  He doesn’t expect purity of belief, but he does expect them to get along.

He also expects them not to be intimidated by their opponents, whoever they are, and reminds them that It’s a privilege not only to believe in Christ but to suffer for him as well.  And though this sounds a little foreign to our modern ears, in a time and place that spends great amounts of time and capital to circumvent it, Paul is adamant that suffering is good for one, that it builds faith and character, that it fosters advancement along life’s journey.  And after all, Paul isn’t preaching from a gilt-edged set or some crystal cathedral.  He’s lived those words, he’s experienced suffering, and has emerged stronger from the other side.

 And yet . . . There’s still that hope, that after all is said and done.  After we’ve run the race, done our best, there’s still the hope we will go home.  He speaks of it explicitly just before our passage, and for him, this expectation that God will do what is best for his beloved Philippians is coupled with that way real hope.  And   Paul knows a lot about hope; he wrote powerfully about it over in Romans: “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”  He is waiting for his fate with patience, he doesn’t see it yet, he doesn’t know which it’ll be, he doesn’t know whether he’ll continue to witness for Christ by his life or by his death,  but through it all he is filled with hope.

This is an invitation to focus on that hope, to find hope—and yes, joy—in the uncertainties of our lives.  And when our own prison moments come, we are invited to model for others, and for ourselves, what it means to face them with hope.  Like Paul, we can choose life. We can choose to look beyond our circumstances and believe that God will show us a way that will lead us out of our prisons, out of those valleys of shadow and death in which we all sometimes find ourselves. In those times, it is our faith and conviction that God will lead us out.  Amen.

Here Comes the Judge (Romans 14:1 - 12)

     In a passage not too long before this one Paul says “You know what time it is, how now is the moment for you to wake from sleep . . . the night is far gone, the day is near” and he’s talking about the return of Christ, which he believed was right around the corner . . . he believed that it would come before his generation was finished on earth.  After all, Jesus had said as much, and this was such an ingrained belief in that first generation of Christians that Paul felt compelled in his first letter to the church at Thessalonica to reassure them that all was well, despite some of their number dying before the second coming.  What was going on in the Christian community was a gradual awakening to the fact that the second coming of Christ wouldn’t be quite as soon as some of them had thought.  It was sort of like the folks who take all their worldly possessions up onto a mountain, sure that Jesus is coming again at 5:36 am on September 4^th, 1908, and when he doesn’t, they gradually begin to look around at one another, then file slowly, a few at a time, down the mountain . . .

That was going on with at least some of the first-generation Christians when Paul wrote Romans somewhere around 60 AD . . . Christianity was in a flux, it had not settled down into an orthodoxy – that wouldn’t happen for a century or so – and there were a lot of opinions about the way Christianity should be.  Among those were Paul’s own opinions, and he was writing to kind of give them an overview of his theology, which was very dualistic: as a good apocalyptic Jew he thought in terms of good and evil, light and dark.  In the paragraphs right before our passage he says “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.  Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

And so it’s clear that to Paul, that first line of our passage—“Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions”—should be taken in this context of his admonition to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  To put on the Lord Jesus Christ is to welcome those who are weak in the faith, but not for the purpose of feudin’ and fussin’ and fightin’.  And what does he mean by “weak in faith?”  “Some believe,” he says, “in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.”  So: here’s one characteristic of the weak: they restrict their eating.  The not-weak “believe in eating anything.  And he says, those who eat everything must not despise those who abstain . . . and those who abstain, must not judge those who eat.  Note the difference: he’s warning those who eat not to despise those who don’t, but those who don’t, he warns not to judge.  We’ll get back to that a little bit later.

Now.  Remember I said that Christianity was in flux?  That there had not been an orthodoxy established?  That’s what’s going on here.  And although we’re not certain about the specifics of what Paul is saying, we know the general outline.  There was a debate among first-generation Christians about which and how many rituals must be followed to be Christians in good standing.  Most prominent, were the Jewish dietary restrictions of the day, like eating pork or certain kinds of seafood . . . over in Galatians, Paul describes his disagreements with the pillars of the Jerusalem church—James and Peter, among others—about whether or not Christians should observe Jewish dietary rules.  And there were other traveling, Christian teachers—perhaps not unlike Paul—who taught that Jewish observances like circumcision and the following of the dietary laws were prerequisite to being Christian.  Paul was adamantly opposed to that way of thinking: “we know,” he wrote in Galatians “that a person is justified not by the works of the law” and by law, Paul means Mosaic law “a person is justified not by law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

And so, observing the law in general—and not just dietary laws, but all of the Mosaic law—is not necessary for what Paul calls justification, and we more commonly refer to as salvation.  But there were still a large number of brothers and sisters out there who believed that way, who were still what we might call traditional or old-school, that still believed Christians should refrain from doing certain things, like eating certain foods, and in our particular case, meat that had been offered to idols.  This stemmed from the general Hebrew rule against eating meat offered to God, and it had been extended to meat offered to any god, or as Jews would have it idols.  The problem is, you couldn’t always tell if meat had been offered to idols or not, it was common practice to sell it in the marketplace, after it had been slaughtered for sacrificial purposes, so it had become the practice in some places to avoid eating meat altogether.

But Christians—because their salvation, their being deemed children of God, comes not through observance of the law but by adoption through Christ—have great freedom which included, apparently, not worrying about whether or not meat had been offered to idols.  And for Paul, this freedom in Christ was very important:  As he wrote also in Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”  The yoke of slavery he refers to is the Torah and its rules about what you can and cannot eat.

And there were other rules causing problems: religions like Judaism and the pagan faiths of Paul’s converts had festival days.  Judaism had Passover and Purim, worshippers of the goddess Astarte had lunar observances, followers of the ba’als had harvest festivals.  And for Paul, freedom in Christ extended also to freedom from strict observance of these holy days.  As he puts it in our passage, “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.”  But those who observe the days, just like those who follow dietary laws, observe them in honor of the Lord, and those who don’t do the same.  They are all servants of Christ, worshippers of a common Lord.  And who is anybody to pass judgment on the servants of another?  Who is one servant to pass judgment on another?  All serve the same risen Lord.

 Those who eat, and those who don’t observe the festival days, who Paul here implies are stronger, must not despise those who do, who hew to the old ways.  Those who abstain, who hew to the old ways—who Paul calls weak—are not to pass judgment on those he might call stronger because, as he says, “God has welcomed everyone.”  Once again, note the differential: those who are advanced in their faith, those who have claimed their freedom from dietary laws and observance of holy days through Christ, must not despise, must not look down on those whose faiths are weaker, who cling to the old ways.  But by the same token, those who are more traditional, more old-fashioned, clinging to the old ways, must not judge those who are more traditional must not pass judgment on those who are more “advanced” in their faiths.

And I don’t know about you, but this is beginning to sound awful familiar.  Traditionalists, keepers of the old ways, judging the newer ways to be inadequate or downright unchristian?  The less traditional, more “advanced” Christians, looking down their noses at the more traditional in scorn?  There’s nothing more smug than a person who’s convinced of the new ways, baby, and who looks upon his more traditional—often older, but often not—brothers and sisters as provincial.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard mainline Christians—whose churches are by and large failing—make fun of those video-watching, hands-to-Jesus-raising, evangelicals, whose churches have been growing.

Conversely, there’s nothing more judgmental than Christians who hold to the old ways, who refuse to see that there may be more than one way to worship God, who think that a faith that keeps up with the times is a lesser faith than theirs.  Some of those same evangelicals, that advocate that “old-time religion,” where women are in their place and there are no gays anywhere near, are so judgmental, thinking that these peripheral differences, such as about who you ordain or sleep with, are fundamental to the faith, and that more open, tolerant expressions of Christianity are literally the work of Satan.

In a denomination like ours, the motto of which is “reformed and always being reformed,” these divisions become all the more acute.  They get labeled conservative and liberal, which is understandable: conservatives tend to resist change, they want to “conserve” the past.  Liberals tend to be more comfortable with a more progressive theology and, yes, sometimes contemptuous of those who aren’t; conservatives tend not to be as comfortable with modern theology, and just a weensy bit judgmental of those who are.  And it’s splitting our denomination apart.

But it happens within churches too . . . and often—but not always—it’s along generational lines, between people brought up in times.  George Thompson, of the Interdenominational Theological Consortium, call these cultural streams, and he points out that four are present in a lot of churches: Millennials, Boomers, Gen-X’ers and so-called “Silents”, those who grew up during World War II.  Each of these generational groupings grew up when the conditions surrounding them, with the nation and the local communities, were very different.  Because of this, they tend to view the world very differently: Boomers protested the Vietnam War, marched in civil rights demonstrations, dropped in and out of middle-class society, raised kids, married, divorced, and now expect everything life has to offer.  Generation X-ers, on the other hand, are less certain, the economic situation is not as clear, they’ve been raised to be more suspicious of middle-class trappings.  Millennials are wary of talking and institutions, distrustful of authority and even more worried about the future.  The Silents, called that because they don’t believe in protest, commit to institutions such as church, helped defeat Hitler and built the post-World War economy.  And the point is that each of these groups, because they grew up and matured under very different circumstances, view the world in very different ways, and—this is very important—they view church differently too.  Many times, without even knowing it: everybody tends to think that what is apparent, real and important to them is that way to everybody else.  And it just isn’t true.

And it’s along these lines that deep divisions within churches tend to develop, that underlying splits emerge—that often never surface directly, but only through trivial carping and fighting.  These generational divides, between people with different world views, different ideas about how society and church should be run—can cause deep fissures within our churches.

But Paul is having none of it.  We are not to judge or despise one another, but we’re to welcome everyone.  And once we get them here, we shouldn’t expect them to be just like us, to like the same music we do, to commit to do the same things as us . . . As Paul says, why do we pass judgment on one another?  Or why do we despise one another?  As Paul says, we all stand before the judgment seat of God, not that of one another.  We all serve the same Lord, who is Jesus Christ.  Who are we to pass judgment on another servant of Christ?  We are—and will be—accountable to God alone.  Amen.

Remember (Exodus 12:1 - 14)

     This is a seminal episode in the history of the Jewish faith, and therefore, our own.  And through the good offices of Cecil B. DeMille, it is easily envisioned in moviegoers of a certain generation, through that eerie scene in the Ten Commandments.  Remember?  The hand of the Lord, pictured as a greenish mist, creeping through the midnight streets . . . at first all is silent, then the cries begin, the shrieks as here and there, throughout the night, the firstborn of Egypt is taken away . . . and we parents can imagine that, can’t we, the horror of it . . . some of us have felt it, surely, but we all can feel it, empathize with it as the blackness creeps down into our being . . .

     And here, God gives Moses and mouthpiece Aaron instructions about how to avoid the destruction, how to side-step the tragedy.  And one wonders: why would God need an elaborate sign?  Why would God need blood on the doorposts to indicate who were God’s children?  Doesn’t God know?  Isn’t God omniscient, and the other two “omnis” to boot? Isn’t God omnipotent and omnipresent too?  Well, maybe the author of Exodus—traditionally supposed to be Moses himself—didn’t know about that when he wrote this dark little tale.  And indeed, this is a good example of the evolving picture of God we get from scripture, if it’s thought about in chronological order . . . in the Hebrew scriptures, we get this picture of a God who’s very much human . . . in Genesis, God walks up to Moses by the Oaks of Mamre, just walks on up looking like anyone else . . . and God is certainly not pictured as unchanging in these early scripture . . . God changes his mind on several occasions.  And God is vengeful in these early passages, sending Joshua to slaughter the men, women and children on Aiken, and killing all the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, and vengeance is certainly a human trait, no?

     But as the scriptures progress—we can tell about when each book was written—the authors’ perceptions of God change, so that by the end of the first century after Christ, first John can write that “God is love.”  And where in love is there room for vengeance?  Where in love is there room for killing innocent, first-born babes, even if they are of the hated Egyptians?    If God is love, what can we say about this story?

     Quite a lot, actually.  It is absolutely essential to our Jewish friends . . . it’s the establishment of Passover, the most important festival of the year.  And because of this, it has influenced us immensely.  It is because Passover is in the Spring that Easter is there as well.  And I think it’s interesting to compare the two . . . the festival of Passover commemorates the deliverance of the people of Israel from the clutches of the Pharaoh.  You remember the story . . . Jacob—named Israel by God when he wrestled with him on the banks of the Jabbok—grew wealthy and had twelve sons, and each son begat a tribe  . . . Reuben,  Simeon and Levi.  Judah, Dan and Naphtali.  Gad and Asher, Issachar and Zebulon.  And finally, Joseph and his little brother Benjamin.  Israel and his sons, forerunners of the Israelite people.

     And Joseph, who was a little snot, really, was despised by his brothers because of it, and they plotted to kill him . . . Rueben took pity on him, and as a result he was not killed, but then he was sold as a slave to a passing caravan.  By God’s grace, Joseph rose to power in the Pharaoh’s employ—some say he was the Pharaoh’s toady—but it was only through his intervention, his bringing of his family to Egypt, that the fledgling people of Israel were saved from a terrible drought.  And so the Hebrew people thrived in the land of the Pharaoh, but later holders of that office did not treat them so well, they were overworked building the Pharaoh’s great palaces and tending his crops and livestock, and their captivity became long and cruel.

     But in spite of it all, they were multiplied by the Lord, so that by the time Moses came along, they were legion, and after having to flee the wrath of the Pharaoh, he returned to confront him and set his people free.  Of course, this was easier said than done, and now, finally, here we are at the last straw . . . plague after plague is sent to bedevil the Egyptian ruler and his people, and every time, Pharaoh’s heart becomes hard, and he does not permit them to go.

     And now it’s the last straw . . . and whatever it is that happens, Pharaoh lets God’s people go.  And it’s the original expression of liberation theology, a reminder that salvation is not just spiritual, not just pie in the sky by and by, but—often—concrete and bodily.   And it’s important to remember this, when we hear the dark whisperings against liberation theology.  Right here is it’s locus, it’s genesis . . . the Israelite people are liberated here, and they become a peoples on that day . . . it is an act of liberation that is at the heart of the Jewish faith.

     And because of this, it is in our DNA as well . . . liberation—bodily freedom from oppression and captivity is in our bones.  And it’s why Moses was such a pivotal personage in African American streams of our faith . . . Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, Tell old, Pharaoh, let my people go . . . and when they sang that song, African American slaves were not singing about Moses, but about their own yearned-for freedom from captivity at the hands of white land owners.   Moses isn’t a revered name in African American circles for nothing, there have been a lot of black folks with that name over the years.

     If the Passover story is about liberation, it’s also about sacrifice: the lambs without blemish, chosen by each family, fattened up for four days, then slaughtered at sunset  . . . their blood is smeared on the doorposts and lintels, and when the Spirit of God sees the blood, God will pass over the house and move on to the next.  And so, it is literally the sacrifice of the blemish-less lamb, the blood of the lamb, that keeps the Israelites alive long enough to come up out of the land of the Pharaoh.

     Now . . . where have we heard that phrase “the blood of the lamb” before?  Could it be . . .  Jesus?  Christians appropriated the Passover symbolism to describe the indescribable, to describe the act of atonement that God effected through God’s son Jesus Christ.  Jesus became the lamb without blemish, without sin, who was sacrificed so that we might be forgiven for ours, forgiven once and for all time.   Christians, many of them Jews to begin with, used the imagery they knew to explain the mechanics of reconciliation.

     But we shouldn’t confuse imagery, we shouldn’t confuse an analogy, with the thing itself.  And in fact, the New Testament authors do not: they use a number of analogies for atonement.  They speak of Christ paying a price, serving a sentence, and making restitution for our mis-deeds.  Perhaps the most popular model is that Christ died instead of us, that he substituted for us by taking our place.  The way I like to think of it is using the so-called Christus Victor model, where Christ in effect defeats the forces of sin and evil, vanquishing them and thus setting us free.

     However we think about it—and if anybody tells you they know the truth, I have a bridge to sell you—however we think about it, the fact remains:  Christ died for our sins, and we have been redeemed, as sure as the Sun rises in the East . . . we have been redeemed.  We have been liberated by God as surely as our Jewish ancestors in the faith were, brought up from Pharaoh’s land.

     But our passage speaks of more than that.  More than just the act of liberation, it speaks of remembering that act as well.  “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months” and that Hebrew word for “beginning” is rash, or head, or chief.  Passover comes in the chief month, the most important month, and this story is the establishment of a tradition, of an ordinance:  This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.  You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord.  Throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.  An ordinance, an ordered thing.  Observant Jews, if they are faithful, cannot not  observe Passover.  That’s why they’re called . . . observant.

     In a similar manner, we are called to observe the Lord’s Supper.  Faithful Christians are not faithful if they do not . . . it is an ordinance.  Here’s what Paul had to say about it: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread . . .” and then he proceeds with the familiar words I will say to you in a minute.  The Lord handed it down to Paul, and he handed it down to the congregations he founded . . . it is an ordinance, an order.  Now, we Presbyterians believe, like the majority of Christians do worldwide, that it is more than that, that as a sacrament, God does something, that it is a means of grace, where grace is somehow dispensed.  But we too often overlook the fact that we are commanded to do it, in multiple places in the scriptures.

     And why are we commanded thus?  Well, Jews are commanded so that they and their families will remember the mighty works of the Lord, and God’s loving kindness toward them, and that is part of it too: do this in remembrance of me, Jesus said.   We are to do it so that we remember the gracious acts of a loving God.

But Paul gives us another reason, and it’s kind of a surprising one: for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, we are sharing the Gospel, we are fulfilling another ordinance, that we proclaim the good news in thought, word and deed.

     So next time we take the cup and the bread and say the words of Jesus and Paul, remember that other liberating act, that first act when Moses went down to Pharaoh’s land, and remember too our own tale of redemption, the act that is peculiar to us, when God became incarnate that we might be free.   Amen.