John 15:9-27
May 17, 2009: Sixth Sunday of Easter
I have a confession to make: I have misled you a bit with the sermon title this week. But, if it’s any consolation, I did so out of ignorance, not intention. I made an assumption about this familiar passage that was challenged by a closer reading of the text. I don’t think this passage is really about sacrifice – at least not as we traditionally use that word. When I originally selected this passage I imagined it meant that we are to be willing to sacrifice our lives in order to save our friends; I thought being willing to die was a mark of true friendship. “No one has greater love than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”
Concurrently, I wondered how in the world I would talk about that kind of requirement. I didn’t like the implications. I wondered if the model for our behavior was Jesus dying on the cross for his friends. Maybe we are supposed to be like the early martyrs of the faith – willing to sacrifice our very lives. Exactly what, I wondered, am I supposed to die for?
If you, like me, make this same assumption and fears it’s implications, we are in very good company. Most people who write about this passage claim there is a relationship between what Jesus asks of us and what Jesus did on the cross – sacrificing his life for his friends.
One writer in commentating on this passage says we should be “willing to go so far as to suffer danger and death to express love”. Another writes, “Friendship was such a key relationship in the ancient world … that friends ideally might sacrifice their lives for one another”. Certainly, all of us have heard this passage used in the context of soldiers being willing to lay their lives down in battle for their fellow soldiers. In a world that so values heroism and valor, this assumption that we’re being asked to be willing to sacrifice our lives for our friends is understandable.
It is quite possible this idea of giving up our lives exists in other places in our scriptures. There may, indeed, be times to sacrifice even to that degree. But that is another sermon.
This passage, in the gospel of John, really isn’t about that. It is about friendship – about what kind of friends we should be to one another. But, he does not talk about friendship based on a willingness to make a heroic sacrifice. He isn’t talking about us being willing to take a bullet to save our friend’s life. In fact, you might be interested to know, John never uses the word “sacrifice” in his gospel. Never. All of the other gospels do, but not John.
I did some word study this week, and I know the danger of boring you to death with such details. But, I realized early on that the English language is limited enough that it is insufficient in helping us understand this passage. These limitations come in many flavors. For example, one problem is that sometimes we have only one English word to use to translate multiple, distinct Greek words. There are three words commonly used for love in the bible…yet we only have the one word, love.
Another problem is that synonyms in English do not always correlate well to like words in Greek. For example, the Greek word “thysia” is used to indicate sacrifice of life. This is the word John doesn’t use. The other gospel writers use it in reference to Jesus sacrificing his life on the cross and to talk about animal sacrifice. Loss of life is implied in this word “thysia”. And while we commonly consider “laying down one’s life” as a synonym for “sacrificing one’s life”, the word here – the one John uses – for laying down one’s life for a friend is the word “tithemi”. These two words, thysia and tithemi, are not synonyms. They do not have the same meaning.
When you look at how John’s word “tithemi” is used elsewhere in the New Testament, you see that it is used when a person in need of healing is brought to Jesus and “laid down” in front of him. It is used in stories like the one where Jesus raised Jarius’ daughter from the dead by “laying” his hands on her head. When John talks about laying our lives down for our friends, he is not talking about death. He is talking about the way we are called to be in relationship with our friends – with each other.
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. There is no greater love than to lay our selves, our very alive selves, in front of our friends and in doing so opening up space for the possibility for healing. “No longer are you servants,” Jesus says, “but I call you friends”. And why? Because, Jesus says, the disciples now know everything. Jesus has laid himself open to the disciples. He was vulnerable with them so they could be changed by him. This is a dramatic shift, from servant to friend. Jesus is requiring of them a relationship that is no longer hierarchical, it is mutual. This, Jesus says, is the greatest love.
John uses only the word “agape” for love in this passage. We know that “agape” is the fullest kind of love possible. It is the love we receive from God, it is what we are to strive for in our love for God. And agape is distinct from “eros” and “philia” love. “Eros” is love that encompasses some level of erotic or romantic love. And philia is conventionally understood as the love we feel for friends. But here, it is very clear, John calls us to love our friends not with philia love, but with agape love – the exact same kind of love God has for us. This is the most intimate kind of love. It is love in which we are completely known and choose to know another person in the deepest way possible.
I fear that in general we have lost this understanding of friendship in our society. We don’t really have a model for the love John writes about. We have our family, and often this approaches the agape level of love. Then, we either have friends that we feel philia love for. Or we have intimate relationships – and we seem to assume that all intimate relationships have an erotic component. There is not really a model in our society for intimate relationships with others outside of marriage or romantic relationships. And we generally don’t define friendship as the greatest love we can have.
Between John’s time and ours, we may have lost the biblical notion of friendship along the way. But some of the early Christian theologians knew how essential these relationships were. They wrote extensively about Christian friendship – and they absolutely believed it included agape love – complete intimacy. Thomas of Aquinas in the 13th century wrote of the need to see a friend as another self. We are, he believed, a part of each other as much as we are a part of ourselves. Augustine of Hippo, who lived only 300 years after Jesus, wrote, “this is what one says to one’s friend: Thou, half my soul”. What these writers knew was that friendship – biblical friendship – requires radical vulnerability. Laying aside our own egos, and entering into the reality of another person.
Jesus talks about this radical vulnerability as “abiding” in each other. We should live in, dwell, take up residence in, each other’s lives. And, in an effort to redeem myself a little big, I think this is where sacrifice does come back into the picture. We have to sacrifice our own egos in order to completely take on the world of another. This is what we do when we abide in God – our identity is no longer defined by the world, but by our relationship to God. We shed our egos, the personalities and expectations we and others have laid on us, and live completely in God. All that matters – our only identity – is that we are beloved children of God.
In the same way, we should shed our egos, our masks, our expectations and judgments – of others and self, in order to take up residence in someone else’s life. We sacrifice pride, control, comfort with the status quo – in short all those things which build walls between our true selves and the true self of an other. And, honestly, for some of us, these sacrifices might even be more difficult than imagining ourselves taking a bullet for a friend.
Think about the vulnerability this implies. We often care for others, we listen and help as best we can, we love and feel for the other. But do we abide in each other? As we keep finding in this sermon series, we are called far beyond conventional understandings of things like love, share, feed, and now friendship. In order to dwell in an other, we have to let ourselves be seen – the good and the bad, and the other has to become transparent to us. No putting on happy faces or hiding painful feelings. We take up residence in each other. We take on the world – the whole self – of another person in order to know them, love them, help them, heal them. They become another self. This is agape love. This is as intimate as it gets, really.
And no doubt, when we contemplate doing this, we uncover some big fears: Fears that we will be overwhelmed by another’s needs; that we will be rejected or judged; that we will lose ourselves completely; that this other person who I have completely opened myself to is just a bottomless pit of need that will never let me go; fear that we will be disappointed. We are no longer talking about a world of heroism or valor, this is powerlessness and vulnerability. This is the love we are called to have for one another.
And there seems to be yet one more sacrifice we need to make in order to have this love. The shocking thing is this: as we read on in John, we find out that when we build such friendships and love in this way, we run the risk of the world hating us. This is hard to imagine. Why would the world hate such beautiful love? Well, I don’t think people do, in theory. But, those walls, the ones we are to sacrifice, are what make us safe and secure. They protect us from our own deepest truths and feelings – often things that can be painful to look at, and they protect us from others knowing us more deeply than we would like. Those walls keep our fears at bay. The idea of vulnerability is so abhorrent in our culture that inviting someone into such a relationship – or worse, offering yourself like that to another – is not welcome. It disrupts the system and we don’t like disruption. Such a thing would meet resistance at least, but Jesus suspects such a life – which really is like the life he led – will attract actual hate.
We don’t like being vulnerable. It’s just not our way. Maybe with our spouse or partner, maybe with a close family member, but what would it be like to be this way with our friends. And I don’t think Jesus is talking about forming a couple of close friendships that look like this. He is talking to the disciples about how they should relate to each other and to the world once Jesus is gone. This is what it now means to be a disciple. They have been entrusted with the ministry of Jesus, and Jesus says that as they continue to abide in him, they will live like he did, love like he did: They will live with everyone as friends.
We are now the disciples. He is talking to us as a church. We are to live as friends, just as Jesus is our friend. Agape love. We are to live like this with each other – you and I and all of those sitting here today or those who are connected to our church. At least that’s where we start. That’s where the disciples began. Think about what this would mean. Our church would no longer be a place where we gather each week and care about what’s going on in each others lives. This would be where we would come and lay down our lives for each other. You life would become mine. We would become completely transparent, and we would choose to dwell in each other, taking on each others lives as our own. I would feel your pain as if it were my own. I would allow you to know those places in me that need healing and let you see the parts of me I hide from the rest of the world.
We often talk about church as a family. But Jesus says that family isn’t enough. We’re to be friends – deep, intimate friends – with each other. This is how we live as Christ. This is where it starts. But, as always, it doesn’t end here. Our common humanity with each person we meet is enough to enter into a friendship with them. After learning how to be friends here, we become capable of laying down our lives for people who are nothing like us. Maybe we can even lay down our lives for our enemies.
We will meet resistance. This is not standard operating procedure for everyday relationships. We will likely meet resistance in our own selves. But we have help. We have been given the Spirit of God, the spirit of truth, to guide us and embolden us. That spirit carries the friendship of God for us – connects us so intimately to God that we can say that we dwell in God. This is how we find what we need to then dwell in each other – to lay down our lives for each other. This is how we are able to make the necessary sacrifices to be true friends. Amen.
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Bibliography
Buber, Martin. I and Thou
Cates, Diana Fritz. Choosing to Feel.
Huey, Kate. Friends Together (http://i.ucc.org/StretchYourMind/OpeningtheBible/WeeklySeeds/tabid/81/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/193/Friends-Together-May-1117.aspx). Weekly Seeds, iucc.org, 2009
Kruchwitz, Robert B. I Have Called You Friends (http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/61816.pdf) study guide, Christian Reflection, The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2008.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Christ as Verb: Share
Acts 2:42-47
May 10, 2009: Fourth Sunday of Easter
What a beautiful vision! “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” As we continue to look at what it would mean to understand Christ as verb – as opposed to a name that always follows Jesus – this week we look at Christ as “share”.
Many years ago there was a book that became wildly popular called, “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten”. Robert Fulghum believes the ethics of living can be simplified into the basic concepts we learned as children. I have to admit I never read the book, but I’m guessing Fulghum listed, “sharing with others” as one of those things you learned in kindergarten that you should still do as an adult.
I like the idea of Fulghum’s book, but I think the Christian ethic can’t be boiled down into something so simple. We might talk to children about sharing toys with their friends, and that may translate into adults sharing all kinds of resources with people they know. But this passage from Acts is clearly something far beyond that. People share absolutely everything in common. It is no longer a matter of me sharing what I have with you; the concept of me having anything disappears completely. That is an incredibly beautiful vision.
And these early Christians weren’t just sharing out of obligation. Surrounding this description of radical sharing is an atmosphere of incredible joy. If we called it happiness, that wouldn’t begin to cover it. We’re talking about ecstatic joy. This joy comes from two amazing events that happen just before our passage. First, there was Pentecost. This is when the closest friends and disciples of Jesus are blanketed with the Holy Spirit. They once again have God living among them – and now in them – in a way that they can feel. They begin to rejoice – in multiple languages no less. And those who are witnesses to this event can hear and understand every language being spoken. Not a bad day at church, huh?
The second event comes after Peter gives an sermon directed at those witnesses to Pentecost, who were at first skeptical that God would bestow anything on these common folks who followed Jesus, a common criminal. But when they heard Peter’s sermon, they were immediately moved to repentance and chose to be baptized into this new community, joining their lives to the risen Christ. They were born again and the exuberance is uncontainable.
So first there was the miracle of Pentecost, then this scene of mass conversion and baptism, and then, before they got around to sharing everything in common, we read that they saw unmistakable, tangible signs of God’s presence among them. It says, “Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles”. It doesn’t give details of these signs and wonders, but surely if they were anything like Pentecost, they were very convincing.
So we have a beautiful vision of community which comes about in the midst of great joy fueled by a deep and abiding sense of God’s presence. There we have it – our instructions for being the church. So, let’s stop worship and while I run home to get my computer and bike and dining room table and everything else I own, you all can go get all your possessions and we’ll met back here in an hour. We can just store it all in the room next to my office and then sell it at our next garage sale.
The Christian ethic always seems to call us one or two or ten steps farther than what we learned in kindergarten, doesn’t it? If someone asks you for your shirt, give them your coat also. Forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven times. Feed 5,000 people even when you barely have enough for a small family. Give everything you have to the poor. Even those who look with lust upon their neighbor are committing adultery.
Some claim these commands in the bible are hyperbole – and most of the time, I’m one of the them. But, I think we have to at least stop for a moment and consider the possibility that we are to take these things literally. The author of Acts is describing a picture of the earliest church community and we should at least stop for a second or two and consider that this is not only possible for us but preferable.
But whenever I do pause like that, this Christian ethic inevitably evokes in me a sense of defeat and frustration – and no small amount of guilt. I realize there is no way to get from here to there. I go back to understanding these ethical guidelines as hyperbole because that is the only way they can apply in a realistic way to my life as it currently stands.
Part of what impedes us on the path getting from here to there, I think, is that our daily lives don’t look much like what was happening in this dramatic scene in Acts. Maybe if I was caught up in something that big, that powerful, that ecstatic and dramatic, I would have more motivation to live like they did. Where the heck are our wonders and signs? If I had just a couple I might trust in the vision a little bit more. Where are our Pentecost and our baptisms that lead to mass transformation and rejoicing? Without these, it is hard, if not impossible, to make such a dramatic change in our lives. We are different – very different from those early Christians. So of course our lives will not look like theirs.
The truth is, if these dramatic things happened to us, most of us would find it terrifying. And by we, I mean most of us mainline, reserved Presbyterian types. We tend to recoil from the ecstatic religious experiences. There’s a reason we’re not all Pentecostal…so to speak. And really, there are some good reasons for this. Sometimes that kind of bigness, that level of intense emotion, leads to big badness. In other words, ecstatic, emotional experiences are not always from God, yet clearly they can have the reach and power to impact a lot of people. And in our mainline habitual humility and refusal to claim our truths as the only, universal truth, we can never be sure if such an experience is from God or not, so we err on the “safe” side. That is, we err on the side of less dramatic change in our lives.
So, given this unbridgeable gap between us and these early, Pentecostal, Christians, how do we let this passage work in us and change us? And, do we give up completely on the radical Christian ethic that will, Jesus assures us, bring about nothing less than the kingdom of God here on earth?
I think the answer might lie in going back again to the larger context in which this passage sits. Right before the descending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the scripture tells us: “They were all together in one place.” They were together. The resurrected Jesus had just ascended into heaven – left them again. Yet even as sadness and despair started taking over again, they still came together. And when you read all of chapter two, you see that they listened to Peter read scripture and then give a sermon. They prayed, they were baptized, they had 3rd Sunday potlucks and ate with glad and generous hearts, and they broke bread together. All of those things are present in the formation of this early community. And of course, we know, they had been doing these things over and over, long before the dramatic experience of Pentecost. And, what do you know? We do all those things too.
Now, I doubt my sermon will have the affect of bringing 3,000 people into our church – as Peter’s sermon did. I doubt that when we baptize Slane, we will be inexplicably moved to ecstatic joy and bring everything we own, sell it and give to the poor. But, we do come together, we pray, we break bread and baptize. And I would say that we do some pretty radical sharing compared to what goes on in our culture today. We give – a lot. We choose to care for those beyond our immediate family and closest neighbors. We take an offering every single week. This small group of committed Christians gives $120,000 a year to the church because we believe in the mission of this church.
The fact is we live in the “meantime”. Most of us are somewhere between the day of resurrection and the coming again of God in such an obvious, physical, miraculous way at Pentecost. This fantastical passage sits in the midst of the entire story of the people of God, found in this huge book we call the bible. To open ourselves to a new kind of sharing and the necessary transformation to live it out, we just need to keep living the story: Coming together over and over, in good times and bad, during times of God’s presence and absence, with people of all sorts, to listen for God’s word, to pray, to baptize, to break bread together. In the meantime, we continue our work as Christ in this world as we share to the best of our ability – and we can celebrate the signs that point to our generous hearts.
I love baptisms. Who doesn’t? They are so joyous – the promise of new life in the face of a death-filled world. Hope embodied. This one small life feels like an infinite set of possibilities. But I also love baptisms because they are one of the sacraments. Unfortunately, in the absence of ecstatic, dramatic things happening when we baptize and share communion, we can forget what a sacrament is. It is an act that for a moment bridges the gap between us and the earliest Christians who were so changed by their baptism – starting with Jesus. It is our response to what we believe is the in-breaking of God into our world.
God came as Jesus to share this holy meal with us in the most intimate way possible, so we continue to share this meal with as many people as we can in this most intimate setting. God came as the Holy Spirit compelling people to repent and be baptized, and so we baptize as our response to God’s spirit moving among us today. Sometimes, I admit, they are just acts, routine rituals when we are as likely to be thinking about our mountain of laundry as we are God’s inbreaking. But, we keep doing them, because I believe our continued practices of coming together to share in such sacraments, to listen as best we can for God’s word that too often feels distant, to respond in the many ways we do even if it falls short of some ideal – I believe this is how we prepare ourselves to see the wonders and signs.
As we baptize this baby, our newest member who will join us in this life-style of church from her first days on earth, maybe we will see the wonder of that, the sign of God’s inbreaking. Slane will be steeped in our Christian practices and stories her whole life. That is the promise we are all about to make. She is grafted into the body of Christ, of which we are all a part – a body that moves in this world at times revealing a little bit of what the kingdom of God looks like. As we baptize Slane, maybe we will see that not only is there hope that our world will one day look like the ultimate ideal, we will realize that it is inevitable.
Dan and Sara shared with me an experience they had one day as they were gazing upon Slane as only new parents can. They contemplated how Slane was a part of them biologically even before she was conceived. The makings were already there. They said that as they held Slane, they realized that they also held their grandchildren. The coming of the kingdom of God is inevitable. It’s not biology that binds us to our faith ancestors and descendants; it is the unceasing practices of the church. And so we celebrate this baptism as the sign that God’s kingdom, and in that we allow for the possibility that the drama will unfold, if not for us, for the Christian community of the future. The makings are already here. Amen.
May 10, 2009: Fourth Sunday of Easter
What a beautiful vision! “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” As we continue to look at what it would mean to understand Christ as verb – as opposed to a name that always follows Jesus – this week we look at Christ as “share”.
Many years ago there was a book that became wildly popular called, “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten”. Robert Fulghum believes the ethics of living can be simplified into the basic concepts we learned as children. I have to admit I never read the book, but I’m guessing Fulghum listed, “sharing with others” as one of those things you learned in kindergarten that you should still do as an adult.
I like the idea of Fulghum’s book, but I think the Christian ethic can’t be boiled down into something so simple. We might talk to children about sharing toys with their friends, and that may translate into adults sharing all kinds of resources with people they know. But this passage from Acts is clearly something far beyond that. People share absolutely everything in common. It is no longer a matter of me sharing what I have with you; the concept of me having anything disappears completely. That is an incredibly beautiful vision.
And these early Christians weren’t just sharing out of obligation. Surrounding this description of radical sharing is an atmosphere of incredible joy. If we called it happiness, that wouldn’t begin to cover it. We’re talking about ecstatic joy. This joy comes from two amazing events that happen just before our passage. First, there was Pentecost. This is when the closest friends and disciples of Jesus are blanketed with the Holy Spirit. They once again have God living among them – and now in them – in a way that they can feel. They begin to rejoice – in multiple languages no less. And those who are witnesses to this event can hear and understand every language being spoken. Not a bad day at church, huh?
The second event comes after Peter gives an sermon directed at those witnesses to Pentecost, who were at first skeptical that God would bestow anything on these common folks who followed Jesus, a common criminal. But when they heard Peter’s sermon, they were immediately moved to repentance and chose to be baptized into this new community, joining their lives to the risen Christ. They were born again and the exuberance is uncontainable.
So first there was the miracle of Pentecost, then this scene of mass conversion and baptism, and then, before they got around to sharing everything in common, we read that they saw unmistakable, tangible signs of God’s presence among them. It says, “Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles”. It doesn’t give details of these signs and wonders, but surely if they were anything like Pentecost, they were very convincing.
So we have a beautiful vision of community which comes about in the midst of great joy fueled by a deep and abiding sense of God’s presence. There we have it – our instructions for being the church. So, let’s stop worship and while I run home to get my computer and bike and dining room table and everything else I own, you all can go get all your possessions and we’ll met back here in an hour. We can just store it all in the room next to my office and then sell it at our next garage sale.
The Christian ethic always seems to call us one or two or ten steps farther than what we learned in kindergarten, doesn’t it? If someone asks you for your shirt, give them your coat also. Forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven times. Feed 5,000 people even when you barely have enough for a small family. Give everything you have to the poor. Even those who look with lust upon their neighbor are committing adultery.
Some claim these commands in the bible are hyperbole – and most of the time, I’m one of the them. But, I think we have to at least stop for a moment and consider the possibility that we are to take these things literally. The author of Acts is describing a picture of the earliest church community and we should at least stop for a second or two and consider that this is not only possible for us but preferable.
But whenever I do pause like that, this Christian ethic inevitably evokes in me a sense of defeat and frustration – and no small amount of guilt. I realize there is no way to get from here to there. I go back to understanding these ethical guidelines as hyperbole because that is the only way they can apply in a realistic way to my life as it currently stands.
Part of what impedes us on the path getting from here to there, I think, is that our daily lives don’t look much like what was happening in this dramatic scene in Acts. Maybe if I was caught up in something that big, that powerful, that ecstatic and dramatic, I would have more motivation to live like they did. Where the heck are our wonders and signs? If I had just a couple I might trust in the vision a little bit more. Where are our Pentecost and our baptisms that lead to mass transformation and rejoicing? Without these, it is hard, if not impossible, to make such a dramatic change in our lives. We are different – very different from those early Christians. So of course our lives will not look like theirs.
The truth is, if these dramatic things happened to us, most of us would find it terrifying. And by we, I mean most of us mainline, reserved Presbyterian types. We tend to recoil from the ecstatic religious experiences. There’s a reason we’re not all Pentecostal…so to speak. And really, there are some good reasons for this. Sometimes that kind of bigness, that level of intense emotion, leads to big badness. In other words, ecstatic, emotional experiences are not always from God, yet clearly they can have the reach and power to impact a lot of people. And in our mainline habitual humility and refusal to claim our truths as the only, universal truth, we can never be sure if such an experience is from God or not, so we err on the “safe” side. That is, we err on the side of less dramatic change in our lives.
So, given this unbridgeable gap between us and these early, Pentecostal, Christians, how do we let this passage work in us and change us? And, do we give up completely on the radical Christian ethic that will, Jesus assures us, bring about nothing less than the kingdom of God here on earth?
I think the answer might lie in going back again to the larger context in which this passage sits. Right before the descending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the scripture tells us: “They were all together in one place.” They were together. The resurrected Jesus had just ascended into heaven – left them again. Yet even as sadness and despair started taking over again, they still came together. And when you read all of chapter two, you see that they listened to Peter read scripture and then give a sermon. They prayed, they were baptized, they had 3rd Sunday potlucks and ate with glad and generous hearts, and they broke bread together. All of those things are present in the formation of this early community. And of course, we know, they had been doing these things over and over, long before the dramatic experience of Pentecost. And, what do you know? We do all those things too.
Now, I doubt my sermon will have the affect of bringing 3,000 people into our church – as Peter’s sermon did. I doubt that when we baptize Slane, we will be inexplicably moved to ecstatic joy and bring everything we own, sell it and give to the poor. But, we do come together, we pray, we break bread and baptize. And I would say that we do some pretty radical sharing compared to what goes on in our culture today. We give – a lot. We choose to care for those beyond our immediate family and closest neighbors. We take an offering every single week. This small group of committed Christians gives $120,000 a year to the church because we believe in the mission of this church.
The fact is we live in the “meantime”. Most of us are somewhere between the day of resurrection and the coming again of God in such an obvious, physical, miraculous way at Pentecost. This fantastical passage sits in the midst of the entire story of the people of God, found in this huge book we call the bible. To open ourselves to a new kind of sharing and the necessary transformation to live it out, we just need to keep living the story: Coming together over and over, in good times and bad, during times of God’s presence and absence, with people of all sorts, to listen for God’s word, to pray, to baptize, to break bread together. In the meantime, we continue our work as Christ in this world as we share to the best of our ability – and we can celebrate the signs that point to our generous hearts.
I love baptisms. Who doesn’t? They are so joyous – the promise of new life in the face of a death-filled world. Hope embodied. This one small life feels like an infinite set of possibilities. But I also love baptisms because they are one of the sacraments. Unfortunately, in the absence of ecstatic, dramatic things happening when we baptize and share communion, we can forget what a sacrament is. It is an act that for a moment bridges the gap between us and the earliest Christians who were so changed by their baptism – starting with Jesus. It is our response to what we believe is the in-breaking of God into our world.
God came as Jesus to share this holy meal with us in the most intimate way possible, so we continue to share this meal with as many people as we can in this most intimate setting. God came as the Holy Spirit compelling people to repent and be baptized, and so we baptize as our response to God’s spirit moving among us today. Sometimes, I admit, they are just acts, routine rituals when we are as likely to be thinking about our mountain of laundry as we are God’s inbreaking. But, we keep doing them, because I believe our continued practices of coming together to share in such sacraments, to listen as best we can for God’s word that too often feels distant, to respond in the many ways we do even if it falls short of some ideal – I believe this is how we prepare ourselves to see the wonders and signs.
As we baptize this baby, our newest member who will join us in this life-style of church from her first days on earth, maybe we will see the wonder of that, the sign of God’s inbreaking. Slane will be steeped in our Christian practices and stories her whole life. That is the promise we are all about to make. She is grafted into the body of Christ, of which we are all a part – a body that moves in this world at times revealing a little bit of what the kingdom of God looks like. As we baptize Slane, maybe we will see that not only is there hope that our world will one day look like the ultimate ideal, we will realize that it is inevitable.
Dan and Sara shared with me an experience they had one day as they were gazing upon Slane as only new parents can. They contemplated how Slane was a part of them biologically even before she was conceived. The makings were already there. They said that as they held Slane, they realized that they also held their grandchildren. The coming of the kingdom of God is inevitable. It’s not biology that binds us to our faith ancestors and descendants; it is the unceasing practices of the church. And so we celebrate this baptism as the sign that God’s kingdom, and in that we allow for the possibility that the drama will unfold, if not for us, for the Christian community of the future. The makings are already here. Amen.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Christ as Verb: Eat
Luke 15:1-32
May 3, 2009; Third Sunday of Easter
We are resurrection people. That is the proclamation of Easter, of the whole Christian faith, really. It’s not always clear what this means, but one thing I think it implies is that we reenact the resurrection whenever we are together as the body of Christ in this world, alive and moving in concert with each other to live out the ministry Jesus began 2000 years ago.
So each week during the Easter season, we are looking at how we might be Christ by seeing Christ as a verb – as action in this world. Last week we looked at how our eating habits can affect our ability to feed others. If we eat or consume things in such a way that there is none left over after we have had our fill, then feeding the hungry, whether in body, mind or spirit, will be impossible.
This week we return to eating habits – but from a slightly different angle. Last week Christ was in the verb “feed”, this week we find Christ in the action of “eating”. Of course, really, it’s not so much how and what we eat, but with whom and how often and in what spirit we eat.
Today we hear Jesus tell three parables: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. These parables are all tied together because they form the response Jesus made to an accusation levied by the religious elite in his day. The accusation was that he ate with sinners.
We live in a food-saturated world. It is everywhere, available in every imaginable form: fast-food, ready-to-eat, partially cooked, raw, organic, processed, canned, frozen. We have more variety to choose from than is even remotely reasonable. Food is a given for us. We have it, we can get it, and we can eat it whenever we want. Not so with the Jewish people in Jesus’ day. The Jews were not, by and large, starving or dying of hunger. But food wasn’t a given. Hosting a meal cost something in a time of scarce resources. So choosing to eat with others was not a small thing – it meant something more than it probably means to us most of the time. Meals were significant symbols of togetherness, especially meals beyond the immediate family circle. Eating practices were very reflective of social systems and relationships. The people you ate with were like family, a part of your intimate group that lived together, worshipped together, forged life’s ups and downs together.
Among the Jews, meals also often had an added sacred layer, and were ritual acts meant to symbolize communion between God and God’s people. Those present were a part of God’s family. Tithes were taken, and rituals done to reenact the exodus and other foundational faith stories. Meals solidified their identity as God’s children – chosen, loved, and freed. So being accused of eating with the wrong people was the same as being accused of worshipping with the wrong people and with choosing the wrong people to be a part of the Jewish family.
Most of us can remember back in grade school that dreaded time each day: you have gone through the lunch line and have your food and you pick up your tray and turn to face… the sea of tables: the concrete reminders of the stratification of grade-school society. There was an encyclopedic sized book of unwritten rules about where you sat in the lunch room. In general, the system was ordered first by grade. Then it broke into large categories of the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs’. And those were further broken down into how “in” and how “out” you were. In the world of pre-teen callousness, some were definitely outcasts. Sometimes the outcasts would find one another and eat at their own table, but all too often someone would eat entirely alone.
This last outcast, of course, is the sheep separated from the flock and the coin the woman lost. For whatever reason, they have been deemed unworthy, or see themselves as unworthy, to be a part of the “in” crowd. Lunch rooms can be terrifying places for the outcast. But that was nothing compared to being one of the outcast living in Jewish society under Roman occupation in the 1st century. To be separated from any group of people – out there on your own – could be a life or death matter. People cared for their own. And Jesus is redefining who we should understand as “our own”.
Eating with people was not a sideline to Jesus’ ministry – it was central. Over and over we find Jesus sharing food with people in ways that upset the religious and social order of the day. And we often find amazing things happening when Jesus eats with people throughout the gospels; water is turned to wine, people are healed, sins are forgiven, people completely change their lives. Eating is no small matter to Jesus, and so who he eats with is of no small concern. That is the set up for these parables: Jesus hears people talking about him saying he is upsetting the religious cart by eating with the wrong people – and so he explains himself. He tells three parables.
In the parables of the lost sheep and coin, the assumption is that sheep should be back with sheep and coins should be back with coins and the good shepherd or the owner of the coins are right do whatever they can to make this happen. The analogy is that God’s children should be back with God’s children, so any one not in the fold is to be sought out and brought back.
Can you imagine what this would look like in a grade school lunchroom? Someone who sits comfortably among her friends would walk over to the one sitting alone and invite them to join in the group. All of us know, sadly, the disruption this would cause the system and that many would react negatively. And some would actively resist such a change in the system because it would, genuinely, threaten what they have. They might start another table and exclude the offender – the one who tried to change the rules. In my day, the repercussions of lunch room social violations spread far beyond the lunch room.
Eating meals with sinners was a bold move meant to bring those who are on the margins of society into the Jewish fold and care for them like family. Jesus says, “Come to the table. You are one of us, you are welcome to eat with us.” At the same time, he tells the insiders, “Open your door, move over and set extra places. We must make our resources stretch farther and we should joyously welcome these family members that have been separated from us for far too long.”
The parables tell us he sought the outcast, like a lost sheep, and brought them into the fold by inviting them to a meal and sharing God’s table with them. But in practice, Jesus was more likely to go find the outcast and, instead of inviting them to his table, he would plunk down right there and create with them God’s table in their midst – a table where people became family through the sharing of bread and wine. Jesus made the outcast the center of religious life – they were the honored guests at the banquet of God.
It’s like the most popular girl in the lunchroom picking up her tray of undercooked macaroni and cheese and leaving her friends completely to eat at the table where the outcast sits. Now it is not a matter of whether the “in” group will choose to include someone. Her move has shifted the question completely. Those left behind now wonder, “Is she saying that now the “in” table is over there? Is she saying that we have to come with her?”
The third parable, the prodigal son, brings it all home, so to speak, by ending not just with a meal shared with sinners, but with the glorious banquet where the sinner is the honored guest. We know the story well: The younger son demands his inheritance early and leaves his family to go sin his little heart out. At some point he finds himself not only not invited to eat at someone’s table, he has no food at all. In desperation, he heads back home. And we know that once the son comes home, the father insists on a great banquet with the finest food to welcome this no-good guy back to the family.
In all of these parables, Jesus answers the accusation of the Pharisees by saying, “I eat with sinners because they are part of the family. It’s that simple. Sheep need to be with sheep, coins with coins and brothers and sisters need to be with their family. And we are all brothers and sisters. Any good Jew – like any good shepherd or any good father – would do exactly the same.” No doubt the Pharisees were not placated by these parables. In fact, Jesus predicts their response in describing the reaction of the older brother – the good one. The older brother knows good and well what it means to eat with someone. It honors them and declares they are a part of the “in” crowd, a part of the family. So what is his response to this? He is appalled; he doesn’t eat; he skips the banquet. Like the Pharisees who cringe at the thought of eating with the people Jesus declares to be part of the family of faith, they miss the meal – they become the ones separated from God’s banquet – from God’s family.
In the end, not only does Jesus eat with sinners, but he turns the tables completely on the religious insiders by claiming that because they do not do the same, they are the ones missing out on the meal. They are now the outsiders in God’s family and must choose to join the feast in its new location with its new guests if they want to be a part of the family again.
This (our communion table) is God’s table, or rather it is a symbol of God’s table. It is what we would imagine God’s table to be like. Every time we gather for communion, we become a part of these parables. Just like the three parables, we and those around us, are lost in different ways and for different reasons. Sometimes we are like the sheep, wandering but in no particular direction. Sometimes we are like the coin – completely powerless to move from our stuck places. Sometimes we are like the lost son; we know the way home, but we just haven’t hit the bottom hard enough yet. Sometimes we’re the outcast, and sometimes we’re the ones who cringe at the disgusting riff raff Jesus wants us to eat with. Sometimes we come because we feel invited by the one we follow, but other times we find ourselves here gathered around this ordinary table and then are stunned to see that Jesus has invited himself to join us here to eat with us, wherever we are, and as we are.
This table, this ritual, gives us occasion to ask ourselves the profound questions raised in these parables: Who is present at our table? Who is missing? If I come, even though I am lost, doubting, ashamed or guilty, will Jesus really eat with me? Do I have a place at this table? How is my relationship to each of you changed because we have shared this one common loaf and one common cup?
This is a ritual of eating. The hope of this ritual is that as a sacrament we are transforming this space for a brief moment into God’s banquet hall. We act out a drama that imagines what the world would look like if every table were set by God and every table had Jesus sitting in one of the chairs. In this drama, we declare with words: All are welcome. All are forgiven. Even though we know we don’t yet live up to those words. We give life to a possibility, to a reality that contrasts deeply with the rituals we participate in all the time that work against God’s banquet. Our daily routines become rituals that separate, stratify, segregate, clarify boundaries and borders. Rituals that demean others and demean us. These are the things we do – most often without thought – that reinforce the social structure we already have.
This table defies that. When we gather and claim that we eat together with the one who ate with sinners as a way of life, we tell a story so different from the one we hear so often – that we are better than others, that we are the insiders, that we need to keep up appearances, that being good is what matters. Just the possibility of something else is enough to see another way. Every month we have a momentary experience – however imperfect – of eating with Christ, being welcomed without condition and with abundant grace to this table prepared for us. It is also a momentary glimpse into a promised future that we can’t quite grasp, but can never stop reaching for. In this promised future, we all belong together – just as all sheep belong to the fold no matter how far one might have strayed, all of God’s children belong to the same community no matter what has kept us apart until now.
We come for different reasons and from different places, and when we arrive at this table we are met by the living Christ, welcoming us into the fold, reminding us that we are an honored guest at God’s table. Then, in the wonderful equation of the resurrection, though we arrive as individuals, through this transformative experience of possibility, we leave together as the body of Christ to eat with people, to seek out those sitting alone at a table in the corner of the lunchroom, or those lost, or those too afraid to even move and too ashamed to even ask to sit with us. We leave to take this meal – this table – into the world to share it as Jesus shared with the sinners and outcasts of his day. In this act of eating, we become the resurrection – the living Christ in this world.
Like the father who rejoices when his son returns home, let us cry out to all: Come, let us eat and celebrate! Amen.
----------------------------------
Bibliography
Brueggemann, Walter: The Word Militant: Preaching in a Decentered World; Fortress Press, 2007
Hinkle, Mary: Wherever You Are; Pilgrim Preaching: Keeping Company with Biblical Texts and the People Who Hear and Peach Them
Long, Dr. William: All That I Have is Yours
Taylor, Barbara Brown: Table Manners; The Christian Century, 1998
May 3, 2009; Third Sunday of Easter
We are resurrection people. That is the proclamation of Easter, of the whole Christian faith, really. It’s not always clear what this means, but one thing I think it implies is that we reenact the resurrection whenever we are together as the body of Christ in this world, alive and moving in concert with each other to live out the ministry Jesus began 2000 years ago.
So each week during the Easter season, we are looking at how we might be Christ by seeing Christ as a verb – as action in this world. Last week we looked at how our eating habits can affect our ability to feed others. If we eat or consume things in such a way that there is none left over after we have had our fill, then feeding the hungry, whether in body, mind or spirit, will be impossible.
This week we return to eating habits – but from a slightly different angle. Last week Christ was in the verb “feed”, this week we find Christ in the action of “eating”. Of course, really, it’s not so much how and what we eat, but with whom and how often and in what spirit we eat.
Today we hear Jesus tell three parables: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. These parables are all tied together because they form the response Jesus made to an accusation levied by the religious elite in his day. The accusation was that he ate with sinners.
We live in a food-saturated world. It is everywhere, available in every imaginable form: fast-food, ready-to-eat, partially cooked, raw, organic, processed, canned, frozen. We have more variety to choose from than is even remotely reasonable. Food is a given for us. We have it, we can get it, and we can eat it whenever we want. Not so with the Jewish people in Jesus’ day. The Jews were not, by and large, starving or dying of hunger. But food wasn’t a given. Hosting a meal cost something in a time of scarce resources. So choosing to eat with others was not a small thing – it meant something more than it probably means to us most of the time. Meals were significant symbols of togetherness, especially meals beyond the immediate family circle. Eating practices were very reflective of social systems and relationships. The people you ate with were like family, a part of your intimate group that lived together, worshipped together, forged life’s ups and downs together.
Among the Jews, meals also often had an added sacred layer, and were ritual acts meant to symbolize communion between God and God’s people. Those present were a part of God’s family. Tithes were taken, and rituals done to reenact the exodus and other foundational faith stories. Meals solidified their identity as God’s children – chosen, loved, and freed. So being accused of eating with the wrong people was the same as being accused of worshipping with the wrong people and with choosing the wrong people to be a part of the Jewish family.
Most of us can remember back in grade school that dreaded time each day: you have gone through the lunch line and have your food and you pick up your tray and turn to face… the sea of tables: the concrete reminders of the stratification of grade-school society. There was an encyclopedic sized book of unwritten rules about where you sat in the lunch room. In general, the system was ordered first by grade. Then it broke into large categories of the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs’. And those were further broken down into how “in” and how “out” you were. In the world of pre-teen callousness, some were definitely outcasts. Sometimes the outcasts would find one another and eat at their own table, but all too often someone would eat entirely alone.
This last outcast, of course, is the sheep separated from the flock and the coin the woman lost. For whatever reason, they have been deemed unworthy, or see themselves as unworthy, to be a part of the “in” crowd. Lunch rooms can be terrifying places for the outcast. But that was nothing compared to being one of the outcast living in Jewish society under Roman occupation in the 1st century. To be separated from any group of people – out there on your own – could be a life or death matter. People cared for their own. And Jesus is redefining who we should understand as “our own”.
Eating with people was not a sideline to Jesus’ ministry – it was central. Over and over we find Jesus sharing food with people in ways that upset the religious and social order of the day. And we often find amazing things happening when Jesus eats with people throughout the gospels; water is turned to wine, people are healed, sins are forgiven, people completely change their lives. Eating is no small matter to Jesus, and so who he eats with is of no small concern. That is the set up for these parables: Jesus hears people talking about him saying he is upsetting the religious cart by eating with the wrong people – and so he explains himself. He tells three parables.
In the parables of the lost sheep and coin, the assumption is that sheep should be back with sheep and coins should be back with coins and the good shepherd or the owner of the coins are right do whatever they can to make this happen. The analogy is that God’s children should be back with God’s children, so any one not in the fold is to be sought out and brought back.
Can you imagine what this would look like in a grade school lunchroom? Someone who sits comfortably among her friends would walk over to the one sitting alone and invite them to join in the group. All of us know, sadly, the disruption this would cause the system and that many would react negatively. And some would actively resist such a change in the system because it would, genuinely, threaten what they have. They might start another table and exclude the offender – the one who tried to change the rules. In my day, the repercussions of lunch room social violations spread far beyond the lunch room.
Eating meals with sinners was a bold move meant to bring those who are on the margins of society into the Jewish fold and care for them like family. Jesus says, “Come to the table. You are one of us, you are welcome to eat with us.” At the same time, he tells the insiders, “Open your door, move over and set extra places. We must make our resources stretch farther and we should joyously welcome these family members that have been separated from us for far too long.”
The parables tell us he sought the outcast, like a lost sheep, and brought them into the fold by inviting them to a meal and sharing God’s table with them. But in practice, Jesus was more likely to go find the outcast and, instead of inviting them to his table, he would plunk down right there and create with them God’s table in their midst – a table where people became family through the sharing of bread and wine. Jesus made the outcast the center of religious life – they were the honored guests at the banquet of God.
It’s like the most popular girl in the lunchroom picking up her tray of undercooked macaroni and cheese and leaving her friends completely to eat at the table where the outcast sits. Now it is not a matter of whether the “in” group will choose to include someone. Her move has shifted the question completely. Those left behind now wonder, “Is she saying that now the “in” table is over there? Is she saying that we have to come with her?”
The third parable, the prodigal son, brings it all home, so to speak, by ending not just with a meal shared with sinners, but with the glorious banquet where the sinner is the honored guest. We know the story well: The younger son demands his inheritance early and leaves his family to go sin his little heart out. At some point he finds himself not only not invited to eat at someone’s table, he has no food at all. In desperation, he heads back home. And we know that once the son comes home, the father insists on a great banquet with the finest food to welcome this no-good guy back to the family.
In all of these parables, Jesus answers the accusation of the Pharisees by saying, “I eat with sinners because they are part of the family. It’s that simple. Sheep need to be with sheep, coins with coins and brothers and sisters need to be with their family. And we are all brothers and sisters. Any good Jew – like any good shepherd or any good father – would do exactly the same.” No doubt the Pharisees were not placated by these parables. In fact, Jesus predicts their response in describing the reaction of the older brother – the good one. The older brother knows good and well what it means to eat with someone. It honors them and declares they are a part of the “in” crowd, a part of the family. So what is his response to this? He is appalled; he doesn’t eat; he skips the banquet. Like the Pharisees who cringe at the thought of eating with the people Jesus declares to be part of the family of faith, they miss the meal – they become the ones separated from God’s banquet – from God’s family.
In the end, not only does Jesus eat with sinners, but he turns the tables completely on the religious insiders by claiming that because they do not do the same, they are the ones missing out on the meal. They are now the outsiders in God’s family and must choose to join the feast in its new location with its new guests if they want to be a part of the family again.
This (our communion table) is God’s table, or rather it is a symbol of God’s table. It is what we would imagine God’s table to be like. Every time we gather for communion, we become a part of these parables. Just like the three parables, we and those around us, are lost in different ways and for different reasons. Sometimes we are like the sheep, wandering but in no particular direction. Sometimes we are like the coin – completely powerless to move from our stuck places. Sometimes we are like the lost son; we know the way home, but we just haven’t hit the bottom hard enough yet. Sometimes we’re the outcast, and sometimes we’re the ones who cringe at the disgusting riff raff Jesus wants us to eat with. Sometimes we come because we feel invited by the one we follow, but other times we find ourselves here gathered around this ordinary table and then are stunned to see that Jesus has invited himself to join us here to eat with us, wherever we are, and as we are.
This table, this ritual, gives us occasion to ask ourselves the profound questions raised in these parables: Who is present at our table? Who is missing? If I come, even though I am lost, doubting, ashamed or guilty, will Jesus really eat with me? Do I have a place at this table? How is my relationship to each of you changed because we have shared this one common loaf and one common cup?
This is a ritual of eating. The hope of this ritual is that as a sacrament we are transforming this space for a brief moment into God’s banquet hall. We act out a drama that imagines what the world would look like if every table were set by God and every table had Jesus sitting in one of the chairs. In this drama, we declare with words: All are welcome. All are forgiven. Even though we know we don’t yet live up to those words. We give life to a possibility, to a reality that contrasts deeply with the rituals we participate in all the time that work against God’s banquet. Our daily routines become rituals that separate, stratify, segregate, clarify boundaries and borders. Rituals that demean others and demean us. These are the things we do – most often without thought – that reinforce the social structure we already have.
This table defies that. When we gather and claim that we eat together with the one who ate with sinners as a way of life, we tell a story so different from the one we hear so often – that we are better than others, that we are the insiders, that we need to keep up appearances, that being good is what matters. Just the possibility of something else is enough to see another way. Every month we have a momentary experience – however imperfect – of eating with Christ, being welcomed without condition and with abundant grace to this table prepared for us. It is also a momentary glimpse into a promised future that we can’t quite grasp, but can never stop reaching for. In this promised future, we all belong together – just as all sheep belong to the fold no matter how far one might have strayed, all of God’s children belong to the same community no matter what has kept us apart until now.
We come for different reasons and from different places, and when we arrive at this table we are met by the living Christ, welcoming us into the fold, reminding us that we are an honored guest at God’s table. Then, in the wonderful equation of the resurrection, though we arrive as individuals, through this transformative experience of possibility, we leave together as the body of Christ to eat with people, to seek out those sitting alone at a table in the corner of the lunchroom, or those lost, or those too afraid to even move and too ashamed to even ask to sit with us. We leave to take this meal – this table – into the world to share it as Jesus shared with the sinners and outcasts of his day. In this act of eating, we become the resurrection – the living Christ in this world.
Like the father who rejoices when his son returns home, let us cry out to all: Come, let us eat and celebrate! Amen.
----------------------------------
Bibliography
Brueggemann, Walter: The Word Militant: Preaching in a Decentered World; Fortress Press, 2007
Hinkle, Mary: Wherever You Are; Pilgrim Preaching: Keeping Company with Biblical Texts and the People Who Hear and Peach Them
Long, Dr. William: All That I Have is Yours
Taylor, Barbara Brown: Table Manners; The Christian Century, 1998
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