Psalm 98
November 14, 2010
“O sing a new song to Yahweh, who has done marvelous things.”
This is not just instruction for us to sing; it is a claim about what happens when we see the goodness, the beauty, the bounty of creation. We become caught up in song –the song of creation, and we become a part of the larger song. Broadly defined, that means the movement, rhythms and melodies of our lives. It means the dances we do in our relationships with friends, family partners, spouses to music that can only be called love. It means the stunning music made by people who have a “gift”. It means the joyful lilt in someone’s voice when they share good news. This Psalm reminds us – because sometimes we need reminding – we are in a beautiful song called life and we can join the chorus. Psalms in general remind us that from the beginning of time, hymns have been sung in response to all of life.
The countless hymns of praise, from the song of Miriam and Moses at the Exodus to the hallelujah chorus at the end of the Book of Revelation, arise out of the structure of faith in the dialogue with God. Wherever the movement of God is discerned in the accomplishment of some palpable grace- whether the birth of a child, the restoration of a broken relationship, or the realization of peace in the midst of hostility-human beings respond. They respond in a mode of speech: the hymn of praise and thanksgiving.
I want to share a prayer with you written by Walter Brueggemann. He captures the reality of many of our lives – an often song-less, mostly one-dimensional life that is dominated by monotonous, monotone tasks. He knows we do, much of the time, have to live in the tasks. But the Psalms must be allowed through on a regular basis – new songs, new energy, new dimensions to life and faith. And as Brueggemann points out, in our tradition, we find those songs in the scriptures – in the poetry, in the parables, & the music whispering through the words of the Psalmists. We find them in our hymnals and choral pieces. We find song in the organ and piano and chants and familiar refrains. Part of our ritual of church, part of the reason we worship is to be immersed in song – singing, playing, listening, melodic praying. And in that immersion we are taken from the secular and profane to the sacred and transcendent.
Brueggemann writes,
Here we are, practitioners of memos:
We send e-mail and we receive it,
We copy it and forward it and save it and delete it.
We write to move the data, and
organize the program,
and keep people informed –
and know and control and manage.
We write and receive one-dimensional memos,
that are clear and unambiguous.
And then – in breathtaking ways – you summon us to song.
You, by your very presence, call us to lyrical voice;
You, by your book, give us cadences of praise
that we sing and say, “allelu, allelu.”
You, by your hymnal, give us many voices
toward thanks and gratitude and amazement.
You, by your betraying absence,
call us to lament and protest and complaint.
All our songs are toward you
in praise, in thanks and in need.
We sing figure and image and parallel and metaphor.
We sing thickness according to our coded community.
We sing and draw close to each other, and to you.
We sing. Things become fresh. But then the moment breaks
and we sink back into memo.
We are hopelessly memo kinds of people.
So we pray, by the power of your spirit,
give us some song-infused days,
deliver us from memo-dominated nights.
Give us a different rhythm,
of dismay and promise,
of candor and hope,
of trusting and obeying.
Give us the courage to withstand the world of memo
and to draw near to your craft of life
given in the wind.
God’s presence, God’s book, God’s hymnal, even God’s absence evoke song if we immerse ourselves in all of these things. We sing and things become fresh, new, hopeful. In the face of an insistent pattern in life that always leads us to work to accomplish things, to achieve goals, to live useful lives, and to carry on an unceasing array of programs to justify our existence, the sound of sacred song frees us to do nothing but give thanks to God.
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with the Psalms. Familiar verses strike a chord in us: I lift up my eyes to the hills; you have searched me and know me; yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. These verses accompany us through the ups and downs of life, providing comfort and assurance of God’s presence with us. But we also read the Psalms and at times cringe. The authors celebrate a vindictive God, believe God deserts and betrays, and they ask God to smite enemies.
But even in those cringing moments, maybe we can see that the message is that all of life can be sung – because song is built into everything. The people are “singing” all of their life…even their theology. Now we might disagree with some of their theology, but what if we agreed that all of life is suitable to be sung. What would that means for us. How can we sing our theology? We obviously do this with our hymns. But we also do this when our lives move in harmony with what we believe. We do this in our silence, listening for what creation has to sing to us, or just because a measure of rest is exactly what the song needs at times. We sing our theology when we joyfully live for others and when we have relationships of poetry.
Making music is essential. Experiencing music is essential. And not just any music…there is a lot of music out there that’s great to listen to. And a lot of music can lift our spirits and make us happy or allow us to feel our melancholy and grief. But not all music draws us out of secular space into sacred, transcendent space. The music and song the psalmist is talking about is extremely specific: It is song that praises God – that gives testament to who God is and our gratitude for who God is. It’s sacred music: that isn’t confined to “church” music – and some church music fails to be sacred, but sacred because it points us and others to God.
Studies show that one big reason people come to church is because they get to sing with a group. That may seem trivial or shallow and I may wish it was to hear the sermon, but think about it: While some people have opportunities to make music outside of church, most of us do not. And if we don’t have opportunities to connect with sacred song, our lives risk becoming flat and one dimensional. The “noise”, rather than the song of life will fill our ears. We will hear the whirl of cars engines rather than the roar of the sea; we will hear the impatience in people’s voices rather than the percussion of a rain storm; we will hear the anxious musings in our head instead of the prayers of the wind. For most, each week this is when we can break loose in song; this is where we can clear our ears of noise and fill them with Psalms. And the compelling thing is that it is not about professional music where I need to be good at singing or worried about who will hear me and how I will be judged. It is sacred music where I am a part of lots of voices and instruments that are merely participating in the larger song of creation.
The fact that singing draws so many of us to church tells me that the importance of that cannot be overstated. It’s visceral – it’s how we’re built…to make song, to love song. Just like the seas were created to roar and the hills are made to clap their hands.
I remember when I was on parental leave after adopting Lydia; I was with my parents up in Cedar Falls and I went to church with them. It was 2007, years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had just finished writing curriculum on faith and torture. For years I had struggled with the silence of the church on these issues, as if our faith had nothing to say.
I honestly don’t remember what was said that day in the sermon – please don’t tell the minister…I’m sure it was because I was distracted by my new baby. But I can remember that we sang, “The Church’s One Foundation.” Now, in general, when I just read the words of this hymn, some of it is hard for me theologically, and it doesn’t really make sense anymore in our current context. But it is, of course, a very familiar tune to this life-time church-goer. For this reason I imagine as we sang it was connecting me to something deep before I really noticed what was happening.
But, when we got to the third verse, I was swept away in the song – becoming fully aware and transformed by both the music and the words:
“Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed, yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up ‘how long?’”
With the cry of the saints, “how long?” the tears welled up in my eyes. I’m not sure I really understood why. This was about churches splitting over doctrine in the 1860s. That doesn’t really capture me now. But like I said I had been thinking about the failure of church and the persistence of war and torture. The hymn was breaking free of its historical box and becoming a new song in that moment; asking a question deeply planted in my soul. And then the hymn went on:
“Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore;”
And now the tears were streaming down my face. The truth is, my life had become very small when I adopted Lydia. It was about bottles and vomit and doctor appointments and lack of sleep. This was my version of memos and emails. But God’s song broke in and took me to a different place. The song was old, but it was my new song in that place. I had no connection to the historical setting that gave rise to the hymn, just as I really lack connection to the historical setting of the Psalms. But it was sacred song.
And I wasn’t just crying because I thought it was all hopeless. There is lament in this hymn: The cry goes up “how long?” But there is hope and trust in God in the very next phrase: “And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.” The morn of song. It will be a new song to God! The tears came both from sadness and from a hope that God would answer, “not much longer…in the meantime, keep singing, keep acting, keep seeking .” I felt hope because singing that song in the church, where we claim a different foundation than politics, nationalism, ethnic identity or power, it gives me hope…it calls me back to the world and to what I can do to respond. It is in church that I find my foundation – Christ – to keep me trying to be faithful even in the face of intractable problems. “Soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”
Sacred song celebrates human impossibilities that become God's possibilities. One of the most frequent themes of the psalms of praise is the celebration of God's reversal of the way things are: lifting up the lowly and putting down the mighty, feeding the hungry and giving sight to the blind. All human definitions of the way things have to be in this world are challenged and overturned. The melody of creation is always singing of possibility, and when we sing, when we write Psalms and make music, we too proclaim the impossible to be possible.
The beauty of Psalms is that we simultaneously sing them, and they grab us and pull us into sacred space. Even though we often feel stuck in a world without music, God will, in Brueggemann’s words, summon us to song in breathtaking ways. Hymns in church, wind in corn fields, clapping in thunder, Psalms in scripture. Breathtaking. Every week, this is a summons to song –worship is a call to give thanks for God’s goodness and bounty. The music is our lament, our gratitude, our hope, our joy, our declaration of faith, and our commitment to live as faithful people. So, sing a new song to Yahweh: Because God has done marvelous, marvelous things! Amen.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Sad to be a Sadducee
Haggai 1:15b-2:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
November 7, 2010
I have to admit something – this week I had a case of the inspiration blues. Generally, when I read the biblical texts early in the week, something strikes me – grabs my attention. I like to think this is inspiration, or the Holy Spirit. Depending on the week, you might think it is not at all inspired and certainly not by the Holy Spirit; but whatever it is, it at least gets me started down the path of sermon writing for the week.
This week, the days were coming and going and – nothing. I put the bulletin together not knowing where I would go with all this. You’ll notice there’s no title. We’re reading all three texts this morning in part because I kept thinking it would increase my odds of being inspired if I kept reading all of them …you know, keeping my options open. But, in the end, no great burst of inspiration.
So, assuming the Holy Spirit doesn’t take weeks off, I struggled to figure out what might be hindering her presence. By Friday, I was finally able to admit to myself that I actually figured it out early on, and then spent the rest of the week in denial about it. The reason I was not feeling inspired is that I am one of those Sadducees.
Now, I am usually pretty willing to be challenged by a text; I can relate more to the Pharisee in a story at least as often as I relate to the disciples. Of course Pharisees are not all bad: Jesus was from the Pharisaic tradition. Most of them were really trying to be good, religious folks. According to the authors of our gospels, while they were sometimes used as the foil, they weren’t always wrong, or evil, and some, of course, were big followers and fans of Jesus. It’s just that the Pharisees sometimes got lost in the religiosity and missed the spirituality. So, I can be challenged by that – I know I do the same from time to time.
But Sadducees are a whole other level – at least for the author of the Gospel of Luke. Whether or not his portrayal of the Sadducees is historically accurate or fair, he is certainly making a point about some people he knew. He has an impression of some fellow Jews that is, to put it mildly, less than sweet.
In Luke the Sadducees play the role not just of the “misguided, hard-headed, elite”, but of the “really bad folks.” The bottom line for Luke was that they were against Jesus in every way. To begin with, they did not believe the same things Jesus – and the Pharisees for that matter – believed. For example, they, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe in the resurrection; in this passage they are making fun of that belief. But they couldn’t just agree to disagree; it was extremely important to them to find a way to discredit Jesus in front of his followers because his movement – his followers – were becoming a problem for the Sadducees.
Sadducees were literalists…they believed you followed every word of the Torah down to the dots and tittles. More than that, they believed that their enforcement of those laws – which were often heavy handed – kept order in the temple and among the Jewish Community. And as an added benefit, the rules and the enforcement kept them right where they were; in power.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in an oral tradition as well as the written Torah, and that oral tradition kept reinterpreting the scriptures for the current time and place. The Sadducees rejected this completely because it threatened the ordered system. Then, Jesus went many steps further; not only was he always reinterpreting the scriptures, bringing them to new life in new ways, applying them in ways that upset the system instead of codifying it, he also did things like predict the destruction of the temple: the locus of power for the Sadducees; he called for complete release of captives (the breakers of the law the Sadducees sought to enforce); called for nothing short of a complete reversal of how things were being done! The Sadducees were sensing a movement, led by Jesus, that would bring chaos in the highest degree, and their complete demise in the end.
Finally, what we need to remember about the Sadducees, at least as Luke saw it, is that, when they were unsuccessful at discrediting Jesus, they decided to kill him outright, and in Luke’s story, they played a large role in his execution.
All of that’s to say, it’s no fun to realize you might be a modern day Sadducee. I did not find it inspiring. But, Sunday comes week after week regardless of my inspiration, so I forged ahead.
I realized that it’s actually pretty easy to be a Sadducee for most of us. It pretty much entails doing nothing. It’s pretty much going along happy with how things are because how things are works pretty well for us. For me it’s not about being a literalist, but it is about supporting systems and institutions that keep me firmly planted in my comfortable life. For me it means denying the more radical messages of Jesus that would require of me radical change, and holding fast to the ones that make me feel good about being Christian. It means suppressing anything of Jesus that would require an overhaul of my life and the way things are, even if that means a metaphorical killing of Jesus.
And I’m pretty good at this: I suppress those more radical parts through rationalization, denial, ignorance, and distance. I explain away his more enigmatic and challenging teachings by saying he lived in a different time and place, that the authors had a different understanding of the world and science, and he probably didn’t do and say everything the authors say he did. Whenever I come up against a passage that really seems to be calling me to a different way of life, I tell myself, “I’m no Jesus. I can’t be perfect like him. I’m doing the best I can.” When it’s convenient, I distance myself from Jesus’ humanity, seeing him more as a kind of superhero in a cartoon than as a human, subject to all the limitations and temptations as I am. That way I don’t have to admit that I have the same capacity Jesus did. And if all else fails, I just ignore passages I don’t like. It’s the metaphorical equivalent of discrediting and killing Jesus – all to avoid upsetting the apple cart of my life and the world.
I know what the Sadducees knew: Jesus’ message and way of life is threatening to the status quo – and I benefit from the status quo. So, discrediting, softening, twisting the message are a way of life for me – and if those don’t work, I do what I can to kill the message altogether. It’s a bummer to realize you’re a Sadducee.
But, that realization is just the starting place. What we have in the story of Jesus, in the scriptures, and in the movement of the Holy Spirit is a way to move out of the role of the Sadducee and into the role of disciple. The bible is story after story calling us to a faithful way of life; and these stories recognize that such a life is difficult. The authors too knew what it’s like to be afraid of change, to resist the counter-intuitive ways of God and to struggle with prioritizing serving others over self-interest. “Take courage,” the author of Haggai says. “Take courage,” he says three times! The way of faith is not always easy. It requires courage.
But where does courage come from? Or better, what motivates us to make difficult choices that might disrupt our lives. What compels us to give of our time, resources, energy and image in order to serve others, seek peace and champion the least among us?
Haggai is a prophet who lived during the time the Jewish people were returning to Jerusalem after living in exile in Babylon. When they got to Jerusalem, they were trying to make everything like it was before. They had been demoralized by the experience of exile and now they wanted their old life back, beginning with the temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. But as they started to rebuild, Haggai knew the answer didn’t lie in going back – that would of course lead to the same results…corrupt kings, oppressive systems, widespread misery and the ultimate crumbling of the community. Haggai knew they needed a new way of being, one they didn’t know and weren’t comfortable with. Faith for them meant they had to go forward into an unknown future. For this they needed courage, and for Haggai that courage is found in God’s presence.
But when Haggai talks about God’s presence, it’s not just God being with them in the present, but in the future as well. It is this presence of God in the future that is compelling. The prophets spend a lot of time painting a picture of the future: a time when there’s no more weeping, no more wars, no more hunger or slave labor. In this case, Haggai gives them a picture of a future temple – more glorious than the past one. It’s more glorious, of course, not because it is a more beautiful building adorned with great wealth, but because it will be a part of God’s realm. It’s a vision of a world ruled by a God of grace and mercy, justice and equality and a promise that surely such a thing exists in the future.
These visions and the belief that God’s promises of such a world were sure and sound were compelling to the prophets – and presumably the people who listened. After Jesus died, this got translated into a vision of a time when Jesus would come again and institute God’s realm in full among us. Belief that such a thing would happen, literally and likely even in their lifetime, was compelling to the early Christians. It motivated them to take risks, to join in a movement that left the established world behind. It gave them courage.
But, I don’t believe that – at least not in the same way it seems the early Christians did – the author of Luke did. I don’t have the same beliefs of Haggai about temples and God wiping clean the face of the earth in order to make something better. I certainly don’t see God as a director in the sky, sending in the rain and sun on cue, and holding back the main character, Jesus Christ, until just the right moment. Maybe belief is the wrong word. I just don’t find it compelling. The idea of a second coming instills no courage in me. It’s not enough to get me to give up comfort and security in order to live as a radical disciple of Jesus. And that made me feel like a Sadducee this week.
But there is something underlying these beliefs and something in what Jesus said to the Sadducees, that connects for me. The common thread is that the prophets, the authors of the gospels, Paul and his students were painting pictures where life replaced the dead and desecrated things around them. For some this was the second coming, for some this was a picture of almost a second paradise, and for some this was a new temple in place of the one that was destroyed. For all of them, it was new life. Jesus says, “God is the God of the living, not the dead.” He says it in response to the Sadducee’s question about resurrection, but Jesus knew that question was not sincere – it was meant to discredit him.
So his answer is not a defense of the doctrine the of the resurrection. What he is really saying is that when we do the same, when we are tempted to discredit, rationalize, twist and soften in order to avoid the radical message his life brings, we should remember that we are created to be drawn into life, not perpetuate systems of death.
I’m really not the Sadducee. The Sadducee isn’t a real person – it’s a caricature in Luke. I can identify with the temptations and the inclinations of the caricature, and at times my life is driven by those temptations and inclinations. But at my core – at your core – because we are made in the image of the God of the living, we are all drawn to participate in a world that is life-giving to everyone. The barriers and challenges to that are many. Comfort is one of the biggest barriers at times. Denial is one of the biggest barriers at times. But take courage: Take courage in the fact that when we follow that pull toward life, we will find more life, more joy, more freedom than we have now. Probably not more comfort or security or social acceptance. But those are not life-producing on their own, not in the sense of life that Jesus talks about.
I think it’s our very nature. We are drawn to life – we are drawn to God as the life-force. It’s actually a movement built into creation itself, and I think we all have moments of feeling a part of this. I think this is what keeps us connected to church – those moments when we realize we are part of something larger than ourselves…maybe even a part of building a future we can only imagine in prophetic terms and will never see. I don’t think we come to learn what to believe about resurrection, or the second coming, or creeds and doctrines. I think we come because we do see the dead and desecrated places in our world and that we know there is a way to bring life to these places.
It can be easier to talk about the doctrine – to discredit outmoded, archaic ways of thinking, but I think we want to change our lives and so we seek a God not of dead doctrines but of living waters. I think we know there is something more to life than just being comfortable, or even being happy, because we know deep down how connected we are with all of creation, and that our true life is found when all flourish. There’s nothing compelling in getting the religion test right….naming all of the books of the bible or reciting the Nicene creed or having proper progressive theology.
What’s compelling is to be with people who seek ways to foster life in the world, who seek a God that moves and loves and years for the wholeness of creation, to participate with a Divine presence that wants more than what the world can give…I think that’s compelling. I think that can break through any tendencies we have to be the Sadducee. And we have that here – not perfectly, not all the time, but this is a place of the living. This is a place where people’s faiths are alive and so God is moving in our worship and our ministries and our lives. And that’s inspiring. Thanks be to God. Amen.
November 7, 2010
I have to admit something – this week I had a case of the inspiration blues. Generally, when I read the biblical texts early in the week, something strikes me – grabs my attention. I like to think this is inspiration, or the Holy Spirit. Depending on the week, you might think it is not at all inspired and certainly not by the Holy Spirit; but whatever it is, it at least gets me started down the path of sermon writing for the week.
This week, the days were coming and going and – nothing. I put the bulletin together not knowing where I would go with all this. You’ll notice there’s no title. We’re reading all three texts this morning in part because I kept thinking it would increase my odds of being inspired if I kept reading all of them …you know, keeping my options open. But, in the end, no great burst of inspiration.
So, assuming the Holy Spirit doesn’t take weeks off, I struggled to figure out what might be hindering her presence. By Friday, I was finally able to admit to myself that I actually figured it out early on, and then spent the rest of the week in denial about it. The reason I was not feeling inspired is that I am one of those Sadducees.
Now, I am usually pretty willing to be challenged by a text; I can relate more to the Pharisee in a story at least as often as I relate to the disciples. Of course Pharisees are not all bad: Jesus was from the Pharisaic tradition. Most of them were really trying to be good, religious folks. According to the authors of our gospels, while they were sometimes used as the foil, they weren’t always wrong, or evil, and some, of course, were big followers and fans of Jesus. It’s just that the Pharisees sometimes got lost in the religiosity and missed the spirituality. So, I can be challenged by that – I know I do the same from time to time.
But Sadducees are a whole other level – at least for the author of the Gospel of Luke. Whether or not his portrayal of the Sadducees is historically accurate or fair, he is certainly making a point about some people he knew. He has an impression of some fellow Jews that is, to put it mildly, less than sweet.
In Luke the Sadducees play the role not just of the “misguided, hard-headed, elite”, but of the “really bad folks.” The bottom line for Luke was that they were against Jesus in every way. To begin with, they did not believe the same things Jesus – and the Pharisees for that matter – believed. For example, they, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe in the resurrection; in this passage they are making fun of that belief. But they couldn’t just agree to disagree; it was extremely important to them to find a way to discredit Jesus in front of his followers because his movement – his followers – were becoming a problem for the Sadducees.
Sadducees were literalists…they believed you followed every word of the Torah down to the dots and tittles. More than that, they believed that their enforcement of those laws – which were often heavy handed – kept order in the temple and among the Jewish Community. And as an added benefit, the rules and the enforcement kept them right where they were; in power.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in an oral tradition as well as the written Torah, and that oral tradition kept reinterpreting the scriptures for the current time and place. The Sadducees rejected this completely because it threatened the ordered system. Then, Jesus went many steps further; not only was he always reinterpreting the scriptures, bringing them to new life in new ways, applying them in ways that upset the system instead of codifying it, he also did things like predict the destruction of the temple: the locus of power for the Sadducees; he called for complete release of captives (the breakers of the law the Sadducees sought to enforce); called for nothing short of a complete reversal of how things were being done! The Sadducees were sensing a movement, led by Jesus, that would bring chaos in the highest degree, and their complete demise in the end.
Finally, what we need to remember about the Sadducees, at least as Luke saw it, is that, when they were unsuccessful at discrediting Jesus, they decided to kill him outright, and in Luke’s story, they played a large role in his execution.
All of that’s to say, it’s no fun to realize you might be a modern day Sadducee. I did not find it inspiring. But, Sunday comes week after week regardless of my inspiration, so I forged ahead.
I realized that it’s actually pretty easy to be a Sadducee for most of us. It pretty much entails doing nothing. It’s pretty much going along happy with how things are because how things are works pretty well for us. For me it’s not about being a literalist, but it is about supporting systems and institutions that keep me firmly planted in my comfortable life. For me it means denying the more radical messages of Jesus that would require of me radical change, and holding fast to the ones that make me feel good about being Christian. It means suppressing anything of Jesus that would require an overhaul of my life and the way things are, even if that means a metaphorical killing of Jesus.
And I’m pretty good at this: I suppress those more radical parts through rationalization, denial, ignorance, and distance. I explain away his more enigmatic and challenging teachings by saying he lived in a different time and place, that the authors had a different understanding of the world and science, and he probably didn’t do and say everything the authors say he did. Whenever I come up against a passage that really seems to be calling me to a different way of life, I tell myself, “I’m no Jesus. I can’t be perfect like him. I’m doing the best I can.” When it’s convenient, I distance myself from Jesus’ humanity, seeing him more as a kind of superhero in a cartoon than as a human, subject to all the limitations and temptations as I am. That way I don’t have to admit that I have the same capacity Jesus did. And if all else fails, I just ignore passages I don’t like. It’s the metaphorical equivalent of discrediting and killing Jesus – all to avoid upsetting the apple cart of my life and the world.
I know what the Sadducees knew: Jesus’ message and way of life is threatening to the status quo – and I benefit from the status quo. So, discrediting, softening, twisting the message are a way of life for me – and if those don’t work, I do what I can to kill the message altogether. It’s a bummer to realize you’re a Sadducee.
But, that realization is just the starting place. What we have in the story of Jesus, in the scriptures, and in the movement of the Holy Spirit is a way to move out of the role of the Sadducee and into the role of disciple. The bible is story after story calling us to a faithful way of life; and these stories recognize that such a life is difficult. The authors too knew what it’s like to be afraid of change, to resist the counter-intuitive ways of God and to struggle with prioritizing serving others over self-interest. “Take courage,” the author of Haggai says. “Take courage,” he says three times! The way of faith is not always easy. It requires courage.
But where does courage come from? Or better, what motivates us to make difficult choices that might disrupt our lives. What compels us to give of our time, resources, energy and image in order to serve others, seek peace and champion the least among us?
Haggai is a prophet who lived during the time the Jewish people were returning to Jerusalem after living in exile in Babylon. When they got to Jerusalem, they were trying to make everything like it was before. They had been demoralized by the experience of exile and now they wanted their old life back, beginning with the temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. But as they started to rebuild, Haggai knew the answer didn’t lie in going back – that would of course lead to the same results…corrupt kings, oppressive systems, widespread misery and the ultimate crumbling of the community. Haggai knew they needed a new way of being, one they didn’t know and weren’t comfortable with. Faith for them meant they had to go forward into an unknown future. For this they needed courage, and for Haggai that courage is found in God’s presence.
But when Haggai talks about God’s presence, it’s not just God being with them in the present, but in the future as well. It is this presence of God in the future that is compelling. The prophets spend a lot of time painting a picture of the future: a time when there’s no more weeping, no more wars, no more hunger or slave labor. In this case, Haggai gives them a picture of a future temple – more glorious than the past one. It’s more glorious, of course, not because it is a more beautiful building adorned with great wealth, but because it will be a part of God’s realm. It’s a vision of a world ruled by a God of grace and mercy, justice and equality and a promise that surely such a thing exists in the future.
These visions and the belief that God’s promises of such a world were sure and sound were compelling to the prophets – and presumably the people who listened. After Jesus died, this got translated into a vision of a time when Jesus would come again and institute God’s realm in full among us. Belief that such a thing would happen, literally and likely even in their lifetime, was compelling to the early Christians. It motivated them to take risks, to join in a movement that left the established world behind. It gave them courage.
But, I don’t believe that – at least not in the same way it seems the early Christians did – the author of Luke did. I don’t have the same beliefs of Haggai about temples and God wiping clean the face of the earth in order to make something better. I certainly don’t see God as a director in the sky, sending in the rain and sun on cue, and holding back the main character, Jesus Christ, until just the right moment. Maybe belief is the wrong word. I just don’t find it compelling. The idea of a second coming instills no courage in me. It’s not enough to get me to give up comfort and security in order to live as a radical disciple of Jesus. And that made me feel like a Sadducee this week.
But there is something underlying these beliefs and something in what Jesus said to the Sadducees, that connects for me. The common thread is that the prophets, the authors of the gospels, Paul and his students were painting pictures where life replaced the dead and desecrated things around them. For some this was the second coming, for some this was a picture of almost a second paradise, and for some this was a new temple in place of the one that was destroyed. For all of them, it was new life. Jesus says, “God is the God of the living, not the dead.” He says it in response to the Sadducee’s question about resurrection, but Jesus knew that question was not sincere – it was meant to discredit him.
So his answer is not a defense of the doctrine the of the resurrection. What he is really saying is that when we do the same, when we are tempted to discredit, rationalize, twist and soften in order to avoid the radical message his life brings, we should remember that we are created to be drawn into life, not perpetuate systems of death.
I’m really not the Sadducee. The Sadducee isn’t a real person – it’s a caricature in Luke. I can identify with the temptations and the inclinations of the caricature, and at times my life is driven by those temptations and inclinations. But at my core – at your core – because we are made in the image of the God of the living, we are all drawn to participate in a world that is life-giving to everyone. The barriers and challenges to that are many. Comfort is one of the biggest barriers at times. Denial is one of the biggest barriers at times. But take courage: Take courage in the fact that when we follow that pull toward life, we will find more life, more joy, more freedom than we have now. Probably not more comfort or security or social acceptance. But those are not life-producing on their own, not in the sense of life that Jesus talks about.
I think it’s our very nature. We are drawn to life – we are drawn to God as the life-force. It’s actually a movement built into creation itself, and I think we all have moments of feeling a part of this. I think this is what keeps us connected to church – those moments when we realize we are part of something larger than ourselves…maybe even a part of building a future we can only imagine in prophetic terms and will never see. I don’t think we come to learn what to believe about resurrection, or the second coming, or creeds and doctrines. I think we come because we do see the dead and desecrated places in our world and that we know there is a way to bring life to these places.
It can be easier to talk about the doctrine – to discredit outmoded, archaic ways of thinking, but I think we want to change our lives and so we seek a God not of dead doctrines but of living waters. I think we know there is something more to life than just being comfortable, or even being happy, because we know deep down how connected we are with all of creation, and that our true life is found when all flourish. There’s nothing compelling in getting the religion test right….naming all of the books of the bible or reciting the Nicene creed or having proper progressive theology.
What’s compelling is to be with people who seek ways to foster life in the world, who seek a God that moves and loves and years for the wholeness of creation, to participate with a Divine presence that wants more than what the world can give…I think that’s compelling. I think that can break through any tendencies we have to be the Sadducee. And we have that here – not perfectly, not all the time, but this is a place of the living. This is a place where people’s faiths are alive and so God is moving in our worship and our ministries and our lives. And that’s inspiring. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
For All the Saints
Ephesians 1:11-23
All Saints Day: October 31, 2010
How many times do the authors of our scriptures list names, give genealogies, and remind people of faith of their ancestors? The lectionary often graciously leaves them out so poor, unsuspecting liturgists don’t have to read them, but there are tons of verses, even chapters full of hard to pronounce names. Over and over the bible reminds the reader that we are connected to all the ancestors of our faith. We are to remember on whose shoulders we stand. We are to remember who they were, what they did, and why it was important. We are to remember the unique things about them. Why list them if each name is not supposed to evoke something in the listener? The lists of names are important.
Even Jesus – even Jesus stands on the shoulders of those who went before him. The very first words of Matthew’s gospel – of his testimony to the good news – are: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of Abraham and David.” Then it goes on to list (for 16 verses!) the names of Jesus’ faith ancestors. For Matthew, the good news of Jesus begins with those on whose shoulders Jesus stood. He did not appear in a vacuum, he was born into a family and a faith community that had been shaped by people for hundreds of generations. And for Matthew, clearly Jesus was going to be shaped by them as well.
Remembering on whose shoulders we stand: not a minor thing in our faith.
Why is this so important to the biblical writers? Why is it important to us? Because in God we are one; fully connected to each other, the living, the dead and the generations to come. When we forget this, we become less than whole – as individuals and the community. Without each other, we are incomplete. Each person reveals in their lives some of who God is and what God is doing in the world. Each person has one piece of the puzzle. Each person contributes to the world in unique ways and if that’s missing, something is lacking.
For this reason, death threatens wholeness. When someone passes on, if the unique thing about them is forgotten, there is something lacking in the world because of that loss. The first step in keeping that piece of the puzzle intact is to remember – to remember what their piece was.
Paul, throughout his letters, uses the image of the Body of Christ, and I think it is a really helpful one. He talks about the church being the body of Christ. It’s a powerful, provocative image. Listen to what the author of Ephesians says at the end of our passage this morning: “The Church, which is Christ’s body, is the fullness of Christ who fills everything.” That’s an incredibly bold claim: The church is the fullness of Christ – the Church is the living Christ. We’re not just “like” Christ, we are Christ when we are the church – when we are the whole body; when each of the pieces are present.
And in this body, Paul says, each has a part…each one of us has a way that we reveal Christ/God. Some are hands because they reveal how God heals; some are feet, revealing how God walks with us during difficult times; some are eyes, showing us how God looks on us with compassion. The list goes on and on – it is infinite, in fact. Something about each living creature gives us a unique window to God.
And so, when someone dies, that window disappears. Or to use Paul’s metaphor, that part of the body is lost; it breaks off. And if there were no resurrection, the body would just progressively diminish over time. God would be less and less evident in this world – we would know less and less of God. But there is resurrection. The community – the church – is always resurrecting the body – the body is regenerating itself. How does it do this? The community’s job is to identify what part is lost when someone dies and then regenerate that piece by remembering, emulating and filling in. The community figures out how to keep that key, unique thing about someone alive.
In short, the community’s job is nothing less than participating in the resurrection. We regenerate the body by first remembering, again and again, those people we know who have died – remembering what piece they were. Then, through our actions and lives, we try to carry on that life so that through us, they remain a part of the body of Christ. The body is rebuilt when we, as the community, remember on whose shoulders we stand.
Jesus is of course the quintessential example of this for Christians. He was a unique revelation of God. We are to constantly remember what he did and who he was – as best as we can piece that together – so that even though he died, what he did, who he was, the truth he spoke might live on in our actions. But we are all made in God’s image, and so it is true for each person who dies. We are to remember them and carry on those parts of their lives that reflected God’s image.
The author of Ephesians knew this. It’s helpful to know that he was writing to non-Jewish followers of Jesus: Gentiles. And they were far from Jerusalem, in geography and culture – Jerusalem: the locus of the birthplace of Christianity. Given this distance, at best they were forgetting, or at worst consciously dismissing, the church’s Jewish-Christian roots. They were distancing themselves from their spiritual forebears, the first generation Jewish-Christian believers, and from their roots, the Hebrew Scriptures. The author is teaching these gentiles about the central importance of the church’s foundation, which is not only Jesus but also the prophets and apostles and all of the Jewish faithful.
Very early on in Ephesians, the author reminds the people on whose shoulders they stand, beginning with Jesus: “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance,” he says. Jesus revealed something unique of God, and it did not die with him, because through the resurrection we are inheritors of who he was – we stand firmly on his shoulders and continue to reveal the God he showed us; through our actions and our words.
But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. All the people who came after Jesus and before us were keeping the body alive. They stood on Jesus’ shoulders, and Jesus stood on the shoulders of all those who revealed God before him: prophets, kings; wandering Arameans. All of these people – all of the faithful throughout history – they are the saints. And remembering the saints has been an important part of the church’s practices since the beginning of Christianity. Remembering – re-membering – putting the body back together over and over – is the resurrection.
We are all saints in some way. We sometimes think of saints as perfect; but that’s not what the early Christians meant. Saints were simply the faithful – the followers. And they were plenty imperfect. When the author of Ephesians says, “I have heard of your love of the saints,” he means, in part, those wonderful disciples who messed up SO many times when they were with Jesus. Those disciples who deserted Jesus in the end.
We are not perfect: not every part of our lives reveals the goodness of God. We are, as so many have pointed out, both saint and sinner. But isn’t this what we want; someone recently said to me, “it’s better to have a mix of saint and sinner than 10 saints and 10 sinners.” I rejoice in the fact that when I meet someone and look for God in them, I’m guaranteed to find something. Remembering the Saints, listing the names, describing the genealogy is remembering the faithful parts of the lives of those on whose shoulders we stand. Remembering their unique “thing” – their unique way of living out God’s call – no matter how imperfect they were.
One of my saints is my grandmother. And here’s the thing about my grandmother: She was no saint! She taught me most swear words that I know – she was an alcoholic – she smoked. She was not a saint – except she is, to me. Her life changed mine – period. And there were things about her – unique things I have found in no one else – that helped me understand God’s compassion and the joy of creation. Nanny not only loved me, she made me feel like no matter what I thought about myself, no matter what others thought about me, I was a good person. Nanny was also hilarious. She LOVED to laugh – and as a serious little kid, her laughter and humor saved me sometimes. When I was feeling rejected by my peers, I would go to her house and we would play cards until the wee hours of the morning, laughing so hard that at least once the neighbor called the police to complain. She taught me nothing less than the spiritual importance of joy in our lives.
When I remember her – which I always do at times like this – it reminds me of what I want to pass on to Lydia of her. She is one of my saints, and I feel some responsibility for keeping her spirit alive, for keeping her as a part of the body of Christ, because the body of Christ needs her spirit of love and humor. Without it, we will be diminished. I believe that.
Who is your saint? What is it about them that you can’t let die – for your sake and for the sake of the body of Christ? What did they and their life reveal about God that you wouldn’t have seen elsewhere? How can you pass that on? How can you make your life a reflection of those saintly aspects of their life?
With that person’s name in your mind and heart, if you feel moved you may come forward during this time of silence, light a candle and place it in one of the trays of sand.
All Saints Day: October 31, 2010
How many times do the authors of our scriptures list names, give genealogies, and remind people of faith of their ancestors? The lectionary often graciously leaves them out so poor, unsuspecting liturgists don’t have to read them, but there are tons of verses, even chapters full of hard to pronounce names. Over and over the bible reminds the reader that we are connected to all the ancestors of our faith. We are to remember on whose shoulders we stand. We are to remember who they were, what they did, and why it was important. We are to remember the unique things about them. Why list them if each name is not supposed to evoke something in the listener? The lists of names are important.
Even Jesus – even Jesus stands on the shoulders of those who went before him. The very first words of Matthew’s gospel – of his testimony to the good news – are: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of Abraham and David.” Then it goes on to list (for 16 verses!) the names of Jesus’ faith ancestors. For Matthew, the good news of Jesus begins with those on whose shoulders Jesus stood. He did not appear in a vacuum, he was born into a family and a faith community that had been shaped by people for hundreds of generations. And for Matthew, clearly Jesus was going to be shaped by them as well.
Remembering on whose shoulders we stand: not a minor thing in our faith.
Why is this so important to the biblical writers? Why is it important to us? Because in God we are one; fully connected to each other, the living, the dead and the generations to come. When we forget this, we become less than whole – as individuals and the community. Without each other, we are incomplete. Each person reveals in their lives some of who God is and what God is doing in the world. Each person has one piece of the puzzle. Each person contributes to the world in unique ways and if that’s missing, something is lacking.
For this reason, death threatens wholeness. When someone passes on, if the unique thing about them is forgotten, there is something lacking in the world because of that loss. The first step in keeping that piece of the puzzle intact is to remember – to remember what their piece was.
Paul, throughout his letters, uses the image of the Body of Christ, and I think it is a really helpful one. He talks about the church being the body of Christ. It’s a powerful, provocative image. Listen to what the author of Ephesians says at the end of our passage this morning: “The Church, which is Christ’s body, is the fullness of Christ who fills everything.” That’s an incredibly bold claim: The church is the fullness of Christ – the Church is the living Christ. We’re not just “like” Christ, we are Christ when we are the church – when we are the whole body; when each of the pieces are present.
And in this body, Paul says, each has a part…each one of us has a way that we reveal Christ/God. Some are hands because they reveal how God heals; some are feet, revealing how God walks with us during difficult times; some are eyes, showing us how God looks on us with compassion. The list goes on and on – it is infinite, in fact. Something about each living creature gives us a unique window to God.
And so, when someone dies, that window disappears. Or to use Paul’s metaphor, that part of the body is lost; it breaks off. And if there were no resurrection, the body would just progressively diminish over time. God would be less and less evident in this world – we would know less and less of God. But there is resurrection. The community – the church – is always resurrecting the body – the body is regenerating itself. How does it do this? The community’s job is to identify what part is lost when someone dies and then regenerate that piece by remembering, emulating and filling in. The community figures out how to keep that key, unique thing about someone alive.
In short, the community’s job is nothing less than participating in the resurrection. We regenerate the body by first remembering, again and again, those people we know who have died – remembering what piece they were. Then, through our actions and lives, we try to carry on that life so that through us, they remain a part of the body of Christ. The body is rebuilt when we, as the community, remember on whose shoulders we stand.
Jesus is of course the quintessential example of this for Christians. He was a unique revelation of God. We are to constantly remember what he did and who he was – as best as we can piece that together – so that even though he died, what he did, who he was, the truth he spoke might live on in our actions. But we are all made in God’s image, and so it is true for each person who dies. We are to remember them and carry on those parts of their lives that reflected God’s image.
The author of Ephesians knew this. It’s helpful to know that he was writing to non-Jewish followers of Jesus: Gentiles. And they were far from Jerusalem, in geography and culture – Jerusalem: the locus of the birthplace of Christianity. Given this distance, at best they were forgetting, or at worst consciously dismissing, the church’s Jewish-Christian roots. They were distancing themselves from their spiritual forebears, the first generation Jewish-Christian believers, and from their roots, the Hebrew Scriptures. The author is teaching these gentiles about the central importance of the church’s foundation, which is not only Jesus but also the prophets and apostles and all of the Jewish faithful.
Very early on in Ephesians, the author reminds the people on whose shoulders they stand, beginning with Jesus: “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance,” he says. Jesus revealed something unique of God, and it did not die with him, because through the resurrection we are inheritors of who he was – we stand firmly on his shoulders and continue to reveal the God he showed us; through our actions and our words.
But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. All the people who came after Jesus and before us were keeping the body alive. They stood on Jesus’ shoulders, and Jesus stood on the shoulders of all those who revealed God before him: prophets, kings; wandering Arameans. All of these people – all of the faithful throughout history – they are the saints. And remembering the saints has been an important part of the church’s practices since the beginning of Christianity. Remembering – re-membering – putting the body back together over and over – is the resurrection.
We are all saints in some way. We sometimes think of saints as perfect; but that’s not what the early Christians meant. Saints were simply the faithful – the followers. And they were plenty imperfect. When the author of Ephesians says, “I have heard of your love of the saints,” he means, in part, those wonderful disciples who messed up SO many times when they were with Jesus. Those disciples who deserted Jesus in the end.
We are not perfect: not every part of our lives reveals the goodness of God. We are, as so many have pointed out, both saint and sinner. But isn’t this what we want; someone recently said to me, “it’s better to have a mix of saint and sinner than 10 saints and 10 sinners.” I rejoice in the fact that when I meet someone and look for God in them, I’m guaranteed to find something. Remembering the Saints, listing the names, describing the genealogy is remembering the faithful parts of the lives of those on whose shoulders we stand. Remembering their unique “thing” – their unique way of living out God’s call – no matter how imperfect they were.
One of my saints is my grandmother. And here’s the thing about my grandmother: She was no saint! She taught me most swear words that I know – she was an alcoholic – she smoked. She was not a saint – except she is, to me. Her life changed mine – period. And there were things about her – unique things I have found in no one else – that helped me understand God’s compassion and the joy of creation. Nanny not only loved me, she made me feel like no matter what I thought about myself, no matter what others thought about me, I was a good person. Nanny was also hilarious. She LOVED to laugh – and as a serious little kid, her laughter and humor saved me sometimes. When I was feeling rejected by my peers, I would go to her house and we would play cards until the wee hours of the morning, laughing so hard that at least once the neighbor called the police to complain. She taught me nothing less than the spiritual importance of joy in our lives.
When I remember her – which I always do at times like this – it reminds me of what I want to pass on to Lydia of her. She is one of my saints, and I feel some responsibility for keeping her spirit alive, for keeping her as a part of the body of Christ, because the body of Christ needs her spirit of love and humor. Without it, we will be diminished. I believe that.
Who is your saint? What is it about them that you can’t let die – for your sake and for the sake of the body of Christ? What did they and their life reveal about God that you wouldn’t have seen elsewhere? How can you pass that on? How can you make your life a reflection of those saintly aspects of their life?
With that person’s name in your mind and heart, if you feel moved you may come forward during this time of silence, light a candle and place it in one of the trays of sand.
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