Room at the Table

Mark 7:24-37

September 9, 2018

            Our dog Boris was a wonderful dog. He was gentle and sweet-tempered. Before I had human babies, he was my baby. I skipped a church meeting to stay home and finish the Snoopy cake I was making for his first birthday and birthday party. He was my kids’ first friend. When Phoebe had a sleepover, he let her and the other girls paint his nails without a whimper of protest. He was such a good and beloved dog; when he died we had a funeral for him. Along with our neighborhood friends, Sam and Sonja, we gathered in the backyard to say goodbye. We lifted up our prayers and memories, then at the end of the service Zach and Sam brought out their Nerf guns. They raised them up and gave Boris their version of a 21 gun salute. Zach told me they wanted to do that, because, “that’s what you do when someone important dies, and Boris was important.”

            Boris was a wonderful dog. I keep a framed picture of him in my den, because I will always love him and miss him. I loved him and I love him. But there was a moment in my life with Boris when I had to choose between him and Phoebe. As the saying goes, I was getting great with child, and Phoebe was an energetic two-year-old. We were outside on a spring day, maybe decorating the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. I don’t fully remember. What I do remember is that we lived on a corner lot of two well-traveled streets. Phoebe decided to start toward one street, and Boris decided to run toward the other. Cars were coming. I chased Phoebe, which was not easy considering that I was, as I said, getting quite great with child. I hoped that Boris would have enough sense not to get hit by a car, but I didn’t hesitate to let him go while I went after my daughter. It was more important to save her. No matter how much I loved Boris, and I did and do. My child came first.

            You’ve probably already guessed that everything turned out just fine. I caught Phoebe. Boris stayed out of the street. Everyone was safe and well, and I have never questioned the choice I made. I would suspect that none of you are questioning that choice either. Of course, you had to run after Phoebe. Of course, you had to save your child first before you saved your dog, no matter how beloved he was to you. My reaction was the normal reaction of any parent, and that’s that.

            It’s all great, until we get to this passage in Mark’s gospel, and we read these words of Jesus to this Syrophoenician woman. It would seem that Jesus puts into words the choice that I made between my daughter and my dog.

            “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            Say what? While I don’t question my choice on that day so long ago; it was a choice between an actual child and an actual dog. In this situation Jesus is comparing this woman, a human being, to a dog. There are loads of justifications proposed for why Jesus said this and how he said it; we’ll get to some of those. But it’s important to look first at what is happening in this story.

            Jesus made his way to Tyre and Sidon. This was Gentile territory. Tyre was not only a Gentile region, but it also had a history of great animosity toward the Jewish people. So not only was Jesus staying in a place that was “other,” he deliberately went to a town where he was the “other.” Culturally, he was the other in this situation. The text states that he did not want anyone to know that he was there. Perhaps he reckoned that if he stayed in a Gentile home, he would attract far less notice than if he stayed in a predominantly Jewish setting. But that was not to be. Even there in Tyre, his presence was not only noticed, but sought out.

            A woman heard about him. She had a daughter who was tormented by an unclean spirit, and she wanted Jesus to heal her child. She knew Jesus could heal her child. She went to where Jesus was staying and bowed down at his feet. She was Syrophoenician; about as “other” from Jesus as she could possibly be.

            “She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

            There it is. These are the words with which we must contend. We have to live with them, sit with them, wrestle with them. What is interesting is that the woman did not try to counter Jesus’ comparison of her to dogs. She didn’t argue that, although I would not have blamed her if she had. Instead, she turned his comparison on its head.

            “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

            Her answer and her unwavering faith and determination to see her daughter well reached Jesus. He answered,

            “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

            If the woman spoke again, we do not have it recorded in this text. What we do know is that she left, and returned home to find that her daughter was lying on the bed, demon free.  

            As I said, we have to contend with these words of Jesus. And as I also said, there are a lot of justifications and explanations for why he said what he did, and what his words may have actually meant.

            One explanation that I have heard endlessly is that Jesus used a word for dog that meant “puppy,” or “beloved family pet.” He was not referring to a wild dog in the street. He was comparing her to a puppy. That may be true, but would you want to be compared to a puppy? If your daughter, your child, was sick and you were scared and anxious and desperate for her to be healed, is that the answer you would want? It wouldn’t be my first choice.

            Some have postulated that Jesus was not being unkind, but that it was a matter of timing. The time for the Gentiles would come, but not yet. It was not yet time for the Gentiles to be pulled into the promise of God Jesus brought. That promise was first for the children of Israel.

            Again, if this were your child, would you want to hear that it just wasn’t her turn yet?

Nope.

            Another theory to explain these words of Jesus is that he was testing her. He was testing her faith. Clearly her answer was the right one, and he told her so. She passed! She won the prize. Her daughter was healed. But at what other time does Jesus test someone’s faith before he heals them? He may have pushed people and questioned the people around him. He certainly spoke hard truths, and he wasn’t afraid to get angry if the situation warranted it. But when did he test someone before he healed them?

            Maybe what we have to do, and I have said this in other sermons on this text, is allow these words to be what they sound like. Jesus gave an unkind response to a woman in need. We don’t want to do this because it runs counter to our understanding of who Jesus was and is. But maybe that is exactly what happened.

            We believe that Jesus was both human and divine; fully human and fully divine. Wouldn’t that mean that Jesus’ had human responses, and human frailties? Jesus may have been tired and overwhelmed and needed a break. He went to this house hoping not to attract notice. But even there he was found. And he was found by this woman. Maybe in a moment of exhaustion, he responded to her the way we might: sharply, curtly and with a lack of patience and compassion.

            But she refused to be deterred. She refused to let it go or to slink away in shame. Her daughter needed healing, and she would do anything to make that happen. Maybe in this exchange, Jesus learned something from her. We have other examples in scripture of people arguing with God, questioning God, negotiating with God. We have other examples where people were determined to see God keep God’s promises. Maybe that’s what happened in this moment. Maybe Jesus learned something from her. Maybe he learned something about the scope of his own mission.

            Maybe even Jesus learned that there is plenty of room at the table, for us and for those we believe are “others.”

            Tuesday marks the 17^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is unfair to reduce the tragedy of that day and the reasons behind it to any one single factor. Yet even as I say that, it seems to me that we humans spend a lot of time believing that there is limited room at the table. September 11^th showed the terrible, destructive consequences of that thinking taken to its extreme.

            If Jesus could learn that there is room at the table, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that healing one does not take away from the healing of the other, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that the table is big enough and the world is wide enough for all of God’s children to find a place, couldn’t we? Couldn’t we finally learn that there is room at the table for all? May we learn that lesson; may we learn it soon. Amen.

From the Inside Out

Mark 7:1-9, 14-15, 21-23

September 2, 2018

            There is a humorous television commercial out right now – an ad for the pest control company, Terminix. Here’s how it goes. The Terminix man comes to the door of a nice home. The woman who owns the house is obviously relieved that he has finally arrived. Clearly, she is in great distress about the puzzling pest problem she’s facing. You realize why it’s puzzling when the two go inside. Her home is immaculate, spotless, and sanitary to the nth degree.

            The home owner takes the Terminix man into the kitchen, bemoaning as she goes that she cannot fathom why bugs are coming into her home, because she keeps it spotless. She tells him that there isn’t a crumb of food to be found anywhere. To prove her point, she opens the doors to her pantry. There, in perfect order, are neat rows of clear containers keeping her food secure. I believe they are even arranged by color. When this woman said that not a crumb or stray speck of food could be found, she meant it.

            The Terminix man has to give her the bad news that bugs don’t always come into a home looking for food. They come to get away from the cold, to build their nests and to reproduce. She cringes in horror at the thought, and the Terminix man goes on to tell her how the company can get rid of the bugs and return her home to its pristine state once more. At the end of the commercial, he makes the mistake of putting his hand on her counter, leaving potential germs. She quickly takes care of that by moving his hand and spraying cleaner on the spot.

            The point of the ad is to sell Terminix. But it is a funny commercial, and what makes it funny to me is this woman and what is supposed to be her over-the-top neatness. But here’s the thing; while I might laugh along with others at this woman, secretly I want her pantry. I want that kind of order. I want all of my food packed securely into air-tight containers, and I want to have the kind of pantry where they can all be arranged in neat rows, arranged, if not by color, than alphabetically.

            Now that my confession is out of the way, you’re probably wondering what the heck this commercial has to do with our passage from Mark’s gospel. After all, Jesus made no mention of clutter or insects anywhere in the verses that we read, or in the verses that were left out. While the Pharisees and scribes did ask about the lack of hand washing among some of the disciples, this was not an encounter about hygiene. It was, instead, a confrontation about defilement.

            “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

            Looking at this question through our particular modern lens, the Pharisees and scribes don’t seem off base at all. We know about germs. We know that hand washing is one very effective way of preventing the spread of sickness and disease. Every public restroom you go in has a sign up saying that all employees must thoroughly wash their hands before returning to work. Hand washing is a given in our culture. But again, the tradition of the elders that the Pharisees and scribes referred to was not about hygiene or sanitary practices. It was about defilement. It was about being ritually clean or unclean. That’s why hands were washed and food from the market place was washed; and pots, cups and bronze kettles were washed. In one way it would seem that the world Jesus and these religious authorities lived in was divided into clean and unclean. One walked side-by-side with ritual uncleanness all the time. Because of that, observing the tradition of the elders was necessary to avoid defilement. Just as the woman in the commercial believed that keeping her home scrupulously clean would deter insect infestation, the people in Jesus’ context believed that defilement could be deterred and avoided by controlling their external reality. Defilement came from the outside, so they worked on keeping that outside in check.

            But Jesus turned that tradition on its head.

            “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. … For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

            From the inside out; it seems to me that was the point Jesus was making. If you want to know what defiles a person, look at what is on in the inside, not the outside. I do not think in any way that Jesus was saying that the Law didn’t matter or was unnecessary. After all, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law. Even though what defiles originates from the inside out, outward laws are still needed to restrain and constrain our worst impulses. Setting legal boundaries on human behavior is part of what makes societies function. But legalism is something else. That’s the issue that Jesus had with the Pharisees, the scribes and the other religious authorities. They took the Law, capital L, and expanded and extended it into lists of legal do’s and don’ts.’ They forgot that the reason God gave the people the Law, was not for the sake of legalism but for the sake of love.

            Jesus spent a lot of time trying to get people to understand that; to understand that the heart of God was the source of all love. So if you really want to know where defilement originates, you have to look at the heart. Defilement comes from the inside out, not the other way around.

            Yesterday, Brent and I made a trip down to Dallas to visit the 6^th Floor Museum at Diehly Plaza. The former name for this museum was the Texas Book Depository. It was where Lee Harvey Oswald was working when he became infamous for assassinating John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. The 6^th floor is where Oswald made what is called the sniper’s nest. It is where he spent the day waiting for the president’s motorcade to come by, and it is where he took his rifle and fired three shots. The first one missed, the second hit the president and Governor Connelly, and the third one finished its ultimate purpose.

            This was not a lighthearted or fun museum to visit. It was sad. It was incredibly sad. It was haunting because unlike some museums, we could actually walk down the sidewalk where Oswald walked when he left the building. My fiancée is a self-described geek about this particular moment in history, so after we toured the museum, we followed the path of both the motorcade and Oswald for the rest of that day. We drove the route to Parkland Hospital, where the president was taken. We passed by the Trade Market where the president and the first lady were heading for a luncheon, and where the president was supposed to give a speech. Then we went to the boarding house where Oswald stayed during the week when he was working at the depository. We drove by the house where Oswald and his wife lived before they moved to a farther suburb, and we saw through a slat in the fence the backyard where he had his picture taken with the rifle that would be used to kill the president. We stopped at the spot where he gunned down a police officer, Officer Tippet. It is a place where an historical marker has finally been erected – not to remember Oswald, but to remember Officer Tippet. And finally we went to the Texas Theater, now another historic landmark, and saw for ourselves the place where Oswald was captured.

            It was haunting to see all these sites, but even more than that it was sad; so incredibly sad. What a waste of life. What a waste of potential and possibility, and for what? I thought about it and realized that seven children were left fatherless that day: President Kennedy’s two little ones, Officer Tippet’s three children, and Oswald’s own two little girls. And why? For what?

            As we were driving back to Oklahoma, Brent shared a story with me from Oswald’s brother, Robert. Robert went to visit his brother while he was in jail. Apparently Robert stared intently into his younger brother’s eyes, trying to understand, to fathom what would have made his brother do something like this. Perhaps he stared into his brother’s eyes trying to see a glimpse of humanity that he hoped was there.

            Oswald told him, “Don’t stare into my eyes trying to find something, brother. There’s nothing there.”

            That which defiles, that which truly defiles, comes from the inside out. Certainly our external circumstances help to shape us, even define us. But Jesus said it is what lives in the heart that defiles. The violence that we do to one another, the harm that we cause, the pain that we spread, that comes from within.

            But if that which defiles comes from the inside out, than isn’t it also true that what is most good, most kind, most loving also comes from the inside out? It is that goodness, that kindness and compassion and love that we seek to nurture in this place. It is that which we seek to nurture when we come to this table; when we remember Jesus through the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. And when we come to this table, we not only enlarge the goodness that lies in our hearts, we see one another a little more as God sees us; we see one another through Christ’s eyes.

            May our God of grace help us to share all that is good from the inside out, to give more, care more, do more and love more. Thanks be to God. Amen.

This Difficult Teaching

John 6:56-69

August 26, 2018

            Back in the early 1990’s, a movie came out about the afterlife. It wasn’t your typical film that about what heaven or, for that matter, what hell may be like. Defending Your Life had a different take on what happens when you die. Daniel Miller, a man in his 30’s, divorced, working in a comfortable job, living a comfortable but non-descript sort of life, dies suddenly in a car accident. He wakes up dead and finds himself in Judgment City; it’s sort of the waiting room of the afterlife. Arriving in Judgment City is your first stop when you die. Actually, the first stop is being housed in a Judgment City hotel room to sleep, because apparently dying takes a lot out of you and the newly dead need their rest.

            What happens in Judgment City? The name is rather self-explanatory. You, actually your life, is judged. Judgment City is where you defend your life. During the day, you are in a courtroom of sorts. Like any courtroom, you have a prosecutor and you have a defense lawyer – more of an advocate really. You, your advocate and the prosecutor watch clips from your life. Then you’re asked to defend the decisions you made or didn’t make. There are two possible outcomes – you go back to earth to live a new life and get it right this time or you go … on. The “on” is never fully described. It just means that you got it right in your life on earth, and you’re allowed to go … on.

            Judgment is not based so much on morality, but on whether or not you lived your life in fear. Morality, standing up for your convictions, doing what is right, is connected to fear. It takes courage to do the right thing. Daniel Miller, played by Albert Brooks – who also wrote and directed the movie – was not a bad or immoral person. He didn’t do anything particularly wrong. But he didn’t do anything particularly memorable either. He lived a very fearful life. It probably didn’t seem so fearful when he was living it. He lived a life that many people live. It was … fine. But it turned out that most of what Daniel did and did not do was based on fear. And fear is what you are judged on. Did you live your life in fear? Then you need to go back and do life again. Learn to live without fear. Learn to be brave, to be courageous. Learn to live without fear.

            The nice thing about Judgment City is that while you defend your life during the day, at night you can have fun. You can eat anything you want without gaining a single ounce. There are restaurants and even bowling alleys – Judgment Lanes. The majority of the people in Judgment City are old, but another person close to Daniel’s age is Julia, played by Meryl Streep. Julia’s life had been full. She definitely lived without fear, or if she was afraid, she overcame it. Daniel falls in love with Julia – really falls in love. And it’s this love that finally pushes him to find his courage. He was sentenced to go back, to live life again. Julia was allowed to go on. Without giving away the ending, Daniel changes his life … or his afterlife.

            A life lived in fear is the premise of Defending Your Life. I realize that this does not meet our Christian understanding of the afterlife. But what about our life now? Do we live lives of courage or do we live lives of fear? I pose this question because I think that fear plays a part in the passage we read from John’s gospel.

            We have finally reached the end of chapter 6 in John. Next week we return to Mark’s gospel. We get a break from pondering Jesus as the bread of life, the living bread from heaven, and especially, eating his body and drinking his blood. I mean it when I say we get a break. These words are not easy to read, to preach or to understand.

            According to the text, we are not alone in finding them challenging. Those listening found them hard to swallow as well.

            “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’”

            Note that it was not just any old folks who struggled with what Jesus was teaching. John refers to them as disciples. These were people who had followed Jesus, who were learning from Jesus, who believed in Jesus. They were disciples, but Jesus’ teaching about being living bread from heaven was just too much for them. They couldn’t wrap their heads around it. They couldn’t go any further, and they turned back. They turned away. They were afraid.

            The word that the New Revised Standard Version translates as “offend,” actually comes from the Greek word for scandal. Jesus asked them if his words scandalized them. To go even deeper, the root of this word literally means “stumble over.”

            Do my words, my teachings scandalize you? Do they make you stumble? Yes. The disciples who had been following Jesus stumbled over his words, and they could not find a way to get back up and keep going. It was just too much.

            What about Jesus’ words made them so fearful, other than the obvious answer that delving into his flesh and blood has an “Ew! Yuck!” factor, as we talked about last week? Remember that the underlying theme in John’s gospel is relationship. Jesus, the Word became flesh, became this flesh so that we could have a relationship with him, and through him, with God. Abiding in John’s gospel is about abiding in relationship. Staying in John’s gospel is about relationship. Jesus gave up his flesh and blood so we, the world could have a new relationship, a new life with God. Considering all of this some 2,000 years later, we might think that there should be no fear involved whatsoever. These disciples who turned away just didn’t get it. They did not have all the knowledge that we have. They were afraid because they didn’t know the rest of the story, and we who do, are not afraid.

            Or are we? Think about it. What does it take to be in a real relationship, a full relationship, an intimate relationship? It takes vulnerability. It takes intense honesty. It takes a willingness to reveal ourselves, to show ourselves with all of our flaws and failings. I think this is true in our marriages, our family relationships, and our deepest friendships. Being vulnerable, being honest, being willing to show ourselves for who we truly are is a scary thing. Staying on the surface of a relationship is much safer, much easier.

            If it is scary in our human relationships, how much more frightening is it when we consider our relationship with God? I’m not talking about a relationship based on the fear that God is going to strike us down at any moment. I’ve heard that kind of relationship preached far too often. I’m talking about recognizing that being in relationship with God calls for a deep and abiding trust. It calls for a willingness to let go of control, to realize that there is more than we can understand or explain. For us being in a relationship with God the Father comes through being in a relationship with Jesus the Son. That relationship with the Son calls us to imitate the Son. That is discipleship. We seek to follow Jesus, to be his disciples. But that means we are called to do what he did, to live as he lived. We are called to love, really love in word and in deed, the stranger, the other, those who seem most unlovable. And we are called not just to pity, but to put ourselves in their shoes, to walk their journey. Being a disciple calls us to hard places and to do hard things. This is a difficult teaching, and it is a difficult doing.

            It takes courage to love like this. It takes a letting go of our fear. But when we let go of our fear, when we step up and find this courage, we have a fullness of life that is joyful and brimming, overflowing, with love and hope. This is the abundant life that Jesus spoke of. It is a life based not on fear or caution but on love.

            It would be easy to walk away. Sometimes we do just that. I know I have. We are ever walking the line between discipleship and betrayal. Perhaps we don’t betray as Judas did, but we betray when we give into our fear, give into hopelessness. But the good news is that we are covered by grace. Jesus does not stop calling; Jesus does not give up on us or walk away from us. May we summon up our courage and let go of the fear which keeps us from living full lives; lives of discipleship, lives of love. After all where else can we go, really? Who else can we turn to? It is Jesus that has the words of eternal life. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Living Bread

John 6:51-58

August 19, 2018

            “This is my body given for you.”

            “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.”

            “The body of Christ.”

            “The blood of Christ.”

            I sometimes wonder what it would be like if someone who had never heard anything about church – about Christ, about Christianity, someone with no cultural references, no memories of visiting church with their grandparents or going to Vacation Bible as a kid – walked into our church just as we were celebrating communion. What would they think? What would they hear? What would they see? What would they believe we were doing?

            I read a story in a blog I follow about preacher and scholar,Martin Copenhaver, who witnessed a moment like the one I described. The setting was a traditional church. The communion table was spread with fine linens and a beautiful chalice and plate. The minister stood and solemnly intoned the words of institution: the body of Christ, the blood of Christ. And in a moment of quiet, a holy pause, a little girl in the congregation who was really listening to what was being said, suddenly exclaimed, “Ew! Yuck!”

            It was when I was attending a Catholic Junior College that I first realized that different denominations understand what happens in the Lord’ Supper differently. Some traditions, such as Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopalian, believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood. When we were discussing this belief in my required theology class, Father Dolehide asked a Catholic student what he thought about when he took the Eucharist. The young man looked somewhat shamefaced, and then he said,

            “Honestly, Father, I just close my eyes and try not to think about it.”

            My fellow student’s answer was not, “Ew! Yuck!” But the underlying sentiment was similar to that of the little girl’s. He was taught that the bread and wine became the body and blood, so he just closed his eyes and tried not to let his imagination get the best of him.

            I admit that I take comfort in our Presbyterian understanding of the Lord’s Supper. This is a communion table, not an altar. Christ is spiritually present, which means that we are eating bread and drinking wine – or grape juice. There is no mystical substitution going on. The bread stays bread and the grape juice stays juice. I take great comfort in all of that, because I get the “Ew! Yuck!” factor. If I really believed that the bread became flesh and the wine became blood, it would be a lot harder to deal with. My comfort level about communion remains high until I get to this passage from John’s gospel.

            “So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.’”

            Our English translation does not adequately describe the scandal of these words, nor the shock and disgust the people listening to Jesus must have felt. What Jesus was saying was an abomination according to the Law and prophets. It was repugnant.

            John’s gospel is metaphorical and layered with meaning, but in this case, the verbs in Jesus’ words are vivid and more literal. The first verb for eat was more like a gentle supping, but it switches to a verb that can be translated as gnawing. When Jesus spoke of eating his flesh, he wasn’t necessarily being metaphorical. He was talking about them gnawing his flesh. Was Jesus inviting the people around him to come over and take a bite of his arm or leg? No, of course not. But clearly he was trying to make a point, an intense point. I am the living bread. God gave your ancestors manna in the wilderness to sustain them, but that manna did not last. I am the living bread, I am the bread that lasts. If you want to abide in God, then you need to abide in me and I in you. You have to eat this living bread and drink this living blood.

            Abiding in John’s gospel is not just about staying someplace. Abiding in John’s gospel is about being in relationship. Jesus was making the connection between God and him; a relationship with God comes through him, the Son. And that relationship was cemented, founded, grounded, made eternal through eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

            So what does all of this mean? What does this have to do with us, not just when we’re sitting here gathered around this table, but in our everyday lives? How will digging into this strange passage from John help us on Tuesday? How does it counsel or comfort us as we just try to get through the everydayness of life?

            I think we have to go back to the first chapter of John, to those first verses, specifically to, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God, our God, is not just out there somewhere watching from a distance – like that popular Top 40 song from years ago. Our God is the incarnate God; as Dr. David Lose put it, the carnal God. God became one of us. The Word became flesh, our flesh. I learned this week that the Hebrew idiom, “flesh and blood,” is about a person’s whole self. If I speak of giving God my flesh and blood, then I am giving God my whole being – my heart, my mind, my body, my soul, my everything. God becoming flesh and blood in Jesus was God giving us God’s whole self, God’s whole being. God asks the same of us in return. Jesus, in dying on the cross, gave his whole self, did he not? He gave his flesh. He gave his blood.

            As strange and even gory as his words sounded, Jesus was not speaking of something cannibalistic. He was telling those who would listen, that he would give his flesh and blood to them and for them. He gives his flesh and blood to us and for us. He gives his life so that abundant life for the world, for all of us, is possible – not just in some distant future, but right now. It is about a relationship, an abiding in him, in God through him, that goes far beyond any external relationships we may have.

            To quote from Martin Copenhaver:

            “The New Testament uses many different images to express the intimate relationship between Jesus and those who believe in him, and John gives us many of the most familiar expressions of this relationship: Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep. He is the vine and we are the branches. He abides in God and we abide in him.

            In this passage, however, language is pressed to its limits to express the indissoluble participation of one life in another. For those who receive Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body. It is the ultimate communion – the coming together, the union of the Savior and the saved.”

            “The indissoluble participation of one life in another.” Whenever we gather around this table, whenever we share the bread and drink the cup, we are remembering and renewing this indissoluble participation of our lives in Jesus and with one another. God became flesh and blood so that God’s whole self would be given to us. Jesus literally gave up his flesh and blood through death for our sake. God resurrected Jesus so that new life could be ours. Jesus is the living bread, and we are called to taste it, to eat it, to remember and know that “that his life clings to our bones and courses through our veins.” Sisters and brothers, may we all taste and see the goodness of our God.

            Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rules for the New Life

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

August 12, 2018

            Many years ago when my kids were younger, we were getting ready to go on a road trip. I no longer remember exactly which trip this was – I think our destination was somewhere out west – but our road trips usually involved long hours in the car. I would always come up with activities that would make time pass a little easier. My love of listening to audio books started on these long car journeys. But no matter how hard you try to keep folks engaged, when you’re in the car for a long period of time restlessness eventually sets in. And when restlessness reared its head the trouble would start.

            In order to create a more harmonious atmosphere for our drive, and to preserve my sanity, I sat down and created a list of rules. I printed it out and read it aloud to everyone who would share space in the car. I told everyone involved that I was bringing it with me as a reminder of how we were all expected to behave. I don’t remember my rules verbatim, but I know they sounded something like this.

            1) Sibling shall not hit, tease, annoy, irk or otherwise pester other sibling.

            2) Children shall not backtalk or sass a parent.

3) All litter, including candy wrappers, paper, straws, etc., shall be thrown away at every stop.

            4) There shall be no whining.

            5) Mom will be listened to; i.e. no interrupting, no talking over or ignoring her.

6) This trip is supposed to be fun, so everyone will have fun – whether they like it or not.

I’m sure there were more rules than that. Knowing me, I probably came up with ten; kind of a Ten Commandments of a family car trip. But we hadn’t even walked out the door of our house before at least two of the rules were broken. I don’t think we’d even reached our destination before I abandoned the whole list altogether. It was a long trip.

I’m not telling you this to disparage my children; but long trips confined in a car wear on everyone – kids and adults alike. I thought perhaps my list of road trip rules might soften the edges of the journey. But I forgot how hard it can be to abide by certain rules when you’re dealing with other human beings. That seems to be a universal reality.

My title for this sermon is not my own, meaning I didn’t pluck it out of my own imagination. Although it is not in your pew Bible, it is the subheading of this particular passage in my Bible. Rules for the New Life – everything about this particular passage is summed up in the title. We have a new life together; therefore we need new rules for how to live this life together.

You may be thinking to yourself, why are you saying it’s so hard for us to follow rules? We follow rules all the time. Our society and culture is predicated upon the assumption that most people will follow the rules. Rules set the boundaries of our society. Abiding by the rules makes it possible for us to live in society, to function in society. There have to be rules, and we all follow them. If we didn’t there would be mass chaos all the time.

Since there isn’t mass chaos all the time, it would seem safe to assume that we already know the rules that help us live together somewhat harmoniously. But these rules in our passage today read differently than say traffic rules. These are rules for the new life. And abiding by these rules can be much more difficult and challenging than taking turns at a four-way stop sign.

At first reading, it seems as though if we just obeyed these rules than everything would be hunky dory. Again, it may seem as though we already obey them. Most of us don’t go around lying, and the first rule in verse 25 is “putting away falsehood, let all of us speak truth to our neighbors …”

Does that mean that Paul thought everyone was a liar or a potential liar? No, but it does mean that it can be easier to avoid the hard truths we should speak to one another. If you were here last week, think about the passage that was read from Second Samuel. Think about the hard truth the prophet Nathan had to confront David with. David broke several of the commandments with his relationship with Bathsheba, and with setting her husband, Uriah, up to be killed on the front lines. Nathan telling David, “You are the man!” was a hard truth. Maybe other people in the king’s life would have probably just told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear. Sometimes putting away falsehood is not so much about lying as it is about truth, hard truth.

Paul went on to talk about being angry. Just as Jesus addressed conflict among his followers in the gospel of Matthew, assuming that there would be conflict, Paul rightly assumed that people would get angry. Anger is a reality, but it’s how you handle your anger that can make all the difference. Not all anger is bad. When we see injustice, oppression, cruelty, we should rightly be angry. But what do we do with our anger? How does it motivate us? What actions stem from our anger? If we respond to cruelty with more cruelty, is that being angry but not sinning?

Paul’s words about thieves should be obvious. Thieves should give up stealing. However this was not just about refraining from one bad behavior; it was about turning that behavior into something that served others. Engage in honest labor, not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the needy all around you.

Another rule for the New Life is one that I especially struggle with: watch my words. It’s not that I try to speak evil, but how often have my words torn down rather than built up? One admonition that my mother repeated over and over was “you can’t take back words.” That goes back to being angry, but not sinning doesn’t it? How many times have I said something in anger that I regret? More times than I’d like to admit. You can’t take back words, so let no evil talk come out of your mouths. Words that tear down cause grief to the Holy Spirit.

The community that Paul addressed came together not because they were of the same birth family or the same ethnic or cultural background. They came together out of love for God in Jesus Christ. They formed a community because God loved them first, and because they recognized that love. The seal of the Holy Spirit was what bound them together, and to tear down one another in anger grieved the Spirit that formed them.

These rules for the New Life called the community to “put away bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together will all malice.” But these rules were not just about what they should not do, they were also, and even more importantly, about what they should do.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

The Rules for New Life are not just rules about what we don’t do, but are about what we are called to do. They are about who we are called to be, and how we are called to try and live with one another. The Rules for New Life are a reminder that our lives are not our own. Our lives belong to God. The Rules for New Life are a reminder that we are not just individuals taking up our own particular space in the world. We are members of one another. We belong to God, and we belong to each other.

Just this week I stumbled upon a news video from the BBC about a Greek woman known as Mama Maria. Greece has been a landing point for the thousands of people fleeing the violence and war in Syria and other places in the Middle East. Many refugees have found shelter in other European nations, but many more have been turned away. Many of these refugees have been sent back to Greece. Yet whether a refugee is just arriving to Greece or returning, Mama Maria feeds them. She owned a restaurant in her small village, and she fed them there – by the thousands. She never charged anything, she just fed them. She saw them suffering and scared and far away from home, so she did the one thing she knew could do. She fed them.

She fed them until threats against her forced her to close her restaurant. She was told repeatedly to stop doing what she was doing. But her belief that this is her calling is so strong, she refuses to stop. She can no longer feed refugees in her restaurant, but she can feed them in her home. And she does; because we are members of one another. Maybe Mama Maria would not articulate it that way, but she doesn’t have to. Her actions speak for her. In her act of feeding, she imitates God. She loves as Christ loved us.

We are members of one another. Ultimately, this is what these Rules for the New Life are all about. They are a reminder that living together in this new life is not just about restraint or refraining from bad behavior. It is about actively seeking to do what is good and kind and tenderhearted for the other. It is about forgiving. It is about imitating God; the God we know through his Son; the Son who willingly died so that we might live a new life. We are members of one another, may we follow the rules of this new life, now and always.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Desperate

Mark 5:21-43

July 1, 2018

            Desperate. Desperate is a word I probably take for granted. I probably overuse it. The lunch hour comes and goes and I don’t get a chance to eat, and suddenly I’m desperate for some food. My gas tank gets down to the lowest point it can go, and I’m desperate to get some more gas. I’m worried about having too much month at the end of the money, and I start feeling desperate – even though we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and clothes on our backs.     

In an online dictionary, the first definition of the word desperate, an adjective, is “feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.”

With this definition in mind, what does desperate look like? Desperate is going from doctor to doctor trying to find someone who can diagnose what’s wrong with your husband or your wife or your mother your kid. Desperate is sitting with your kids in the car outside of a police station, waiting until you see an officer, and then asking for help because you can’t go home. Home is where you might get killed. Desperate is taking your children and fleeing your home and your homeland because bombs are dropping or soldiers are marching or gangs are shooting. A few years ago, when a baby boy’s body washed up on the beach after he and his older brother and parents fled from the civil war in Syria in a tiny, un-seaworthy boat, Alice and I read a poem together as part of our worship service. My paraphrase of part of that poem is this, “a parent doesn’t put their child into a boat unless the water is safer than the dry land.” And a parent doesn’t take their child across a desert unless the other side looks safer than the home they’ve left.

The people in this story from Mark were this kind of desperate. It was desperation that motivated and drove them. When Jesus got in the boat in the passage we read last Sunday, he went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. That was the gentile side, the land of the “other.” Now he and the disciples have crossed back again to more familiar ground. It would seem from our reading of Mark’s text that the minute Jesus stepped out of the boat, he was met by a great crowd of people. The crowd gathered around him, and although Mark gives us no lengthy descriptions of the scene, I can imagine that it was noisy. That many people gathered in one place, clamoring for Jesus’ attention, would have been noisy.

Through the crowd came Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. As a leader, he would have had some status in the community. And that status would have given him some power and authority. Jairus could have easily sent someone to talk to Jesus, to ask for help, but Jairus himself came. Jairus must have pushed his way through the throng of folks gathered around Jesus. When he reached him, he did not tap Jesus on the shoulder or reach out to shake his hand. No, when Jairus reached Jesus, he fell to his knees before him and begged him, repeatedly,

“My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”

We do not read what Jesus may have said in response, but we do know this. Jesus started to go with Jairus. The crowd followed. The crowd was so great and pushing, it must have almost seemed like an entity unto itself. The crowd pressed in on Jesus. Before Jesus could go very far, before he could reach Jairus’ daughter, another person pushed her way through that tight pack of people.

It was a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. At just about the same time Jairus’ daughter came into the world, this woman had begun to bleed. I cannot, nor do I want to; imagine how awful those twelve years must have been for that woman. As so often happens in the gospels, we are not given her name, but we do know that she had suffered much. She had endured much under the care of many doctors, but instead of getting better, she had only grown worse and worse and worse.

But here was this man; here was this man who had become known for doing wonderful things. He had become known, not only for his miraculous healings, but also for casting out demons and speaking about God in a way no one had ever done before. Here was this teacher, this rabbi, and the woman who had suffered for so long thought,

“If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

She didn’t presume to even look at the teacher must less ask, plead or beg him for help. She just knew that if she could touch his clothes, she would be made well. She was right. She was made well. She felt it in her body; she felt it in the depth of her being that finally the bleeding had stopped. But perhaps what she did not know, what she did not realize was that as soon as her fingertips brushed the rough cloth of Jesus’ robes, not only would power discharge from Jesus like a charge of electricity, Jesus would also realize that something had happened.

Even though Jairus’ daughter lay at the point of death, Jesus stopped. In that moving mass of humanity, with so many hands grasping at him, he stopped and turned around and looked and asked,

“Who touched my clothes?”

Who touched your clothes? Do you see how many people are around you? Do you see how many people are touching your clothes right now? How can you even ask, “Who touched my clothes?” Look! Everyone is touching your clothes!

But Jesus knew. And the woman knew. She must have been terrified. She must have been beside herself with fear and panic and worry. Not only had she snuck her way to a healing and been caught, she had also potentially made the rabbi and everyone else around her ritually unclean. Because you see this woman was not only physically ill, in the eyes of her community, in the eyes of the Law, she was ritually unclean. For the time of a woman’s menstrual cycle, a woman was in a state of spiritual uncleanliness; not to be touched. This woman had lived in that constant, unceasing, unrelenting state for twelve long years. Yet, she had risked everything to touch the clothes of this man because she wanted to be healed. Now she had been found out, caught. What would happen to her now?

Maybe she could have stolen away from Jesus through that crowd as quietly and as quickly as she had moved through it toward him. But the jig was up. It was better to come forward, then to hide. She came forward, trembling in fear, and fell on her knees before him. Jesus did not scold or reprimand. Instead he said,

“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

He had healed one daughter of Israel, but just as this was finished the news reached him that it was too late for the other daughter. Some people came to tell Jairus not to trouble Jesus any longer. His daughter was dead. But Jesus only kept going, telling Jairus,

“Do not fear, only believe.”

When they reached the house, Jesus only let Peter, James and John accompany him inside. Already the mourners had gathered around the little girl, weeping and wailing. Jesus said,

“Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”

Even through their tears and grief, they could not help but laugh. Sleeping?! Hah! Dead is dead. But Jesus ignored them. He sent them outside, and taking only Jairus and the girl’s mother and the three disciples, he went to where the little girl lay. He took her by the hand and said,

“Talitha cum,” “Little girl, get up.”

And she did.

Two healings. Desperate people. The power of touch. A desperate parent will go to any lengths to save their child. I know I would. A desperately ill person will go to any lengths to find some healing, some help. I know I would.

I’m not sure how to end this; because as beautiful as these healings are, not all desperate people get what they most desperately need. Not all children who are sick get better. Not all people who fight against illness for years live. Not all desperation finds a happy ending. No parent would risk putting their child in a boat if the water were not safer than the dry land. No parent would risk taking their child across a desert if the other side were not safer than what they left behind. But they are desperate. And as good as I find the good news, telling desperate people to just hold onto that is not enough. It does not seem sufficient. I don’t have answers for why some children live and some do not. But I do know this. We are called to see and hear and acknowledge and love the desperate people in this world. Not having the answers does not let us off the hook. We are called to love them, to see them as God’s children just as clearly as we see ourselves as God’s children. We are called to offer our hand, to do whatever we can do, because we are the Church. We are the body of Christ in this world. We are Jesus’ hands and we are Jesus’ feet. That is our call. That is our commission. That is our commandment. And if we don’t do it, who will?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Don't You Care?

Mark 4:35-41

June 24, 2018

            Adrenaline works. When my older sister was a toddler, she and my brother, who was a baby, and our parents, were at a church picnic. As toddlers are wont to do, she got away from the person watching her and started toddling off from the picnicking folk right toward a street. And on that street there was a car. I’m not sure which of my parents saw this first. But according to my mother, my father sprinted toward my sister and snatched her up before she could enter the street. Whenever she tells this story, my mother says that she has never seen my dad run as fast as he did that day. My dad and his brothers were all athletic, so I assume he was a fast runner anyway. But when he saw my sister heading toward the street, he beat any previous speed he had ever reached before. Adrenaline works.

            Adrenaline was also working when my dear friend Shelia confronted gang members with a bat on her front porch in Chicago. They were harassing a friend of her daughter’s who had been sucked into gang life, but had broken free of it. That was not an easy thing to do, and gangs apparently don’t forget or forgive former members. Well Shelia saw what was happening, and she grabbed her bat and marched out there and let them have it. They left. But here’s what you need to know about that bat. It was not a regulation size baseball bat. It was one of those small souvenir bats. It would probably have broken in two if she had swung it too hard, much less used it on someone. These were gang members, and Shelia reflected later that they could have easily killed her right there. But in the moment she didn’t think about her own safety. She was furious that these strangers were on her property, threatening this young man. Perhaps it was the force of her fury that scared them away, but she chased away gang members with a souvenir bat. Adrenaline works.

            Adrenaline is the hormone that is secreted by the adrenal glands, and it is typically associated with our fight or flight response to stress. I suspect that adrenaline was being pumped by the bucketful on that boat in the Sea of Galilee. In my mind the adrenaline flowing that night was practically visible as the boat was being swamped by the wind and deluge of rain from the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

I’ve tried to imagine what it must have been like in that boat that night. Not all of the disciples Jesus called were fishermen, but the first four were. They would have been well aware of the storms that could turn the Sea of Galilee, which is really a lake, not a sea, into a raging tempest. If you wonder how it is possible that a lake could experience such terrible and dramatic storms, think about the storms that can generate on any of our Great Lakes. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot is not just a depressing song. It’s a depressing song about a shipwreck on a Great Lake. My point is this, like the Great Lakes the Sea of Galilee was subject to terrible storms, and at least four of the men on the boat with Jesus would have been aware of that fact.

So I can imagine that when the storm began and the water got rough, the disciples’ first response was not to wake up Jesus. Their first response was probably to try and hold fast through the storm. Maybe they prayed it would pass quickly. Maybe they thought they could continue to navigate and hold the boat aright. But that was not to be. Instead, the storm grew worse. The water and the wind and the rain were battering the boat that held Jesus and the rest of the boats that sailed alongside them. Maybe they tried to bail, but with that much water coming in bailing was pointless.

Finally, when it seemed that they were truly about to sink, to rest in watery graves, they turned to Jesus. Jesus was asleep in the stern. In the midst of that violent and wild gale, Jesus was sleeping, his head on a pillow.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Rabbi, Teacher, don’t you care?! We are about to go down with the ship and you’re sleeping?! I’ve heard of staying cool in the midst of crisis, but come on! Wake up! Help us! Don’t you care?!

Jesus’ response was to wake up and not just calm the sea. He rebuked it. He rebuked it just as he did unclean spirits. He rebuked the wind, and said to the sea,

“Peace! Be still!”

And with those three words, the wind stopped. The waters calmed. The sea was peaceful and placid once more. But here’s the funny thing, the terror that the disciples felt at the storm did not abate. Instead it transferred. They were frightened by the storm, but when Jesus calmed it, they were frightened by him.

I realize that the fear they felt over what Jesus did was along the lines of reverential awe. But they were still pretty scared. In a matter of minutes, the disciples moved from thinking Jesus did not care because he did not wake up to,

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Who then is this indeed?

Why did Jesus get into the boat in the first place? It almost sounds like a strange twist on the old joke about the chicken. Why did the chicken cross the road? Why did Jesus get into the boat? To get to the other side.

This passage, these last verses in chapter 4, begins with a simple phrase – probably one we don’t give much thought to.

“On that day…”

What had happened on that day? Jesus had been telling parables about the kingdom of God. Jesus had compared the kingdom of God, the reign of God, first to a Sower of seeds, then to a growing seed that grows and flourishes without much help from the person who scattered it, and then to a mustard seed that grows from the tiniest of seeds to a flourishing, flowering shrub that hosts birds of the air.

That’s what had been happening on that day. That’s what Jesus had been teaching on that day. Now it was evening of that day, and Jesus told the disciples,

“Let s go across to the other side.”

What was on the other side? The other side was the home of the other. They were heading to gentile territory. Jesus will leave the boat only to be confronted by a man possessed by a legion of demons, living in the tombs, in the land of gentiles. That’s what waited for them on the other side. They were going to the place where the other resided, a land, as one commentator put it, where no respecting rabbi or teacher would dare venture.

In between the land of the familiar and the safe and the people who were like them, and the land of the other, they face a storm so terrible it threatens to drown them all. And in this in between they witness a miracle. Jesus rebuked the wind and calmed the sea.

Why were they still so afraid?

How often have I said that if I had been lucky enough to have been in Jesus’ presence my faith would never falter?! How could the disciples see and experience the miracles Jesus performed, and still have such little faith? But I think this story is testament to the fact that miracles do not necessarily equate to stronger faith. I’ve probably seen more miracles than I realize, and that has not kept me immune from struggles with faith and doubt. And it was not just that the disciples witnessed a miracle of healing, they witnessed Jesus doing what only God could do. He rebuked the wind. He calmed the sea. He controlled creation. And yeah, they were scared. But who wouldn’t feel some sense of awe or imposing reverence that borders on fear in the presence of God? I think I would. I suspect some of you might too.

It seems to me that what happened in that boat was not just about a miracle, it was about a moment of recognition of who Jesus truly was and is. And in that moment the disciples moved into a deeper relationship with Jesus. They still won’t get it. They will struggle and fail and fear. But in that moment they sensed that this was not just about what Jesus could do, it was about who he is.

So where does this leave us? What does this matter for us on Tuesday? Is it just about Jesus being in the boat with us when we are swamped and afraid? Is it a reminder that Jesus does in fact care? Yes, but I think there’s more to it. I think this is a story about relationship. The disciples moved from what to who. They were touched by God’s presence in a way they could not have foreseen or completely understood.

Jesus had been telling them about the kingdom of God. Now they were going to the other side to see that kingdom lived out in a new way. And in the in-between, they encountered God in a new way; they crossed into a relationship with God they had not experienced before.

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

They encountered God in relationship with Jesus. They crossed to the other side with him. They went to the land of the other and back again. What does this mean for us? It seems to me that when we find ourselves touched by God’s presence, that moment does not necessarily eradicate our fears. Instead, it offers us the opportunity to deepen our relationship with God. And when we go deeper into that relationship, then we find the courage to get out of the boat, to go to the other, to not only think about the kingdom of God, but to do our best to live it.

Why did Jesus get into the boat? To get to the other side. Let us follow.

Alleluia! Amen.