Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12
January 30, 2011
Israel’s relationship with God was fractured. The first five chapters of Micah are filled with a description of this state of affairs, and he was not telling the people anything they didn’t know…the world was broken, which for them was just the same thing as a broken relationship with Yahweh. And so the people were trying hard to bridge the chasm between themselves and their God; but they were – according to Micah – failing miserably in God’s eyes.
What were they trying? They were stepping up their worship – stepping up their religious practices – making their worship better because they thought that was a sign of their faith of their obedience to God. They were offering to God what they thought God wanted – they were exalting God with gifts. They were earnest – they were trying – they were doing what they knew to do…religious things, outward things, things that they thought made them look pious and devout. These are not bad people – these are our brothers and sisters…we are the newer versions of them. The equivalent today would be trying to have the most polished worship, the best music, the best preachers, the fanciest communion ware, giving the most money. Micah came to say, these things are not what matters to God.
Micah tells us God has a controversy with the people. There is a serious difference of opinion on what really matters in the life of faith, and God says it all boils down to this: The life of faith is doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God. That’s it, says God, that’s all I require. Everything else including worship and religious acts is empty if these three things are absent.
I have sympathy with the Israelites. I like concrete things to do in order to be “right with God.” Give me the assignment, and I’ll do it. Read the bible? Check. Pray every day? Check. Memorize John 3:16? Check. Go to church every week? Check. Take communion, be baptized, go to seminary, read Calvin, give money every month…check, check, check, check. I like religion because I get to feel like I’m a good person when I ‘practice’ religion. It’s a set of rules to follow and I’m a rule follower by nature. Surely, I think, when I follow the rules, I should be right with God.
Instead, God is weary of me; of my frantic attempts to do what I think is right. What God wants is nothing less than what God gives: justice, mercy, and humility. And these are much harder than following a bunch of religious rules. These are a way of life, a whole disposition toward the world and one another, a way of being human that includes attitudes as well as behaviors.
To understand what such a life looks like, with all due respect to Micah, I’m going to start by looking at the last of the three so called “requirements”: walking humbly with God. That is not an easy, clear, simple religious rule to follow. It is both an attitude and actions. It has to do with how we come before our God, and how we approach life and others, how we feel about ourselves, others. When the word “walking” is used in the bible, is about a way of life…it’s about a journey. This isn’t an instruction for what to do as a part of your religious check list; this is about who you are as a person in all of life.
So what does it mean to walk through this life as a humble person with our God? Interestingly – to me anyway - the word “humble” only occurs two times in the Hebrew bible. The other place we read about being humble is in Proverbs 11:2. It reads: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace; But wisdom comes to the humble.” This is kind of how proverbs works much of the time – there’s a two line, pithy saying it’s meant to contrast two things. Here the contrast is between pride and humility, and each comes with a predictable future. The positive claim is humbleness will yield wisdom. And to help us understand this further, the proverb gives us the antithesis: Pride will yield disgrace, or shame.
To walk humbly is the opposite of walking proudly, or – as one biblical scholar put it, “strutting.” Prideful strutting includes arrogance, self-sufficiency, autonomy, the need to occupy center stage. The one who struts sees the world in terms of him or herself. They are concerned with how others see them and treat them. In this way of being in the word, a lot of attention is paid to our self, to our appearance, to our presentation and our image. Walking humbly, in contrast to strutting, is to pay attention to the other.
Walking humbly means it doesn’t matter what people think of us, it matters how connected we are to others. It doesn’t matter if we are held in high esteem or seen as successful or good. It matters that we see and know and understand our fellow companions on the journey of life. Being humble means you have no expectations that you deserve more than another. It means seeing the world through the eyes of your neighbor, even the eyes of your enemy.
So proverbs helps us understand what it means to walk humbly – it means to not strut, it means to focus on the other. But that’s not all Micah says: Micah asks not just how we should walk, but with whom. We are to walk humbly with God. The imagery is that of direct and immediate companionship with God, who willingly walks with us on the path. The strutter has no companion. The humble one walks with others alongside God, who revealed divine humility by joining us on the journey as opposed to watching from afar. Or in Micah’s contrast, this is a divine being who chooses to care about others – about the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the imperfect, flawed, human beings – rather than demand from us extravagant exaltation. God does not sit back and wait for us to impress God, falling over ourselves to show how important and magnificent we think God is. Our God walks humbly with us, wanting only that we join along on the journey.
The surprise in all this is that what we find if we look closely at our traveling companion – God, who we know in the life of Jesus, this companion is not a holy God, “immortal, invisible, only wise.” Rather the one on the path with us takes the form of sister and brother, of widow and orphan, of sinner, of lame, leper, needy. In humbly walking with God and others, we are reminded of the linkage Jesus made about traveling with the least: Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. Our companion is none other than Yahweh – who is the least.
When we walk with God, humbly on the journey, we walk with the poor, and the outcast, and that shapes our lives in powerful ways. It changes our desires and our understanding of what God yearns for for humanity. This God who is our companion in the walk as the least among us is, according to the first two elements in Micah’s statement, the God of justice and kindness, and as we walk with God our lives take on the shape of justice and kindness.
Justice is connecting with and caring for the least – walking with them, caring for them, is the same as walking humbly with our God – the one known in the lowly life of Jesus. Jesus was justice and mercy in motion. And here’s where it gets hard. The justice and mercy of Jesus is shocking, counter-cultural, and offensive. When we walk with God and do justice and love mercy, we will not always be loved by the world.
The author of the gospel of Matthew has Jesus make this point quite strongly in the beatitudes we read this morning. Jesus reminds people that it is not the world’s opinion that matters, but God’s. Jesus points out that God does not see things the way the world does – God’s values are not the world’s values. There is a difference; a big difference, a surprising difference. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers and the ones who hunger and thirst for justice. These folks are not, to be sure, blessed or honored in the eyes of the world. Often these folks are seen as weak, naïve and misguided in a strutting world that relies on power and self interest in order to keep one’s identity in tact – in order to secure one’s place in the social system.
Think about just one parable that shows Jesus’ mercy and “justice”: The parable of the laborers in the vineyard. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sends them off to work. The landowner goes out a bit later that morning and sees others standing there who haven’t found work yet that day. He says to them, you come work for me and I will pay you what is right. Then he goes out at noon and at 3 o’clock and does the same for those who are still standing there without work. Finally, right before quittin’ time time he goes out and finds there are still some who were not hired by anyone else. He tells them to go and work in his vineyard too.
When the end of the work day arrives, the owner instructs the manager to “call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and going to the first.” Everyone received a full day’s wage. Everyone. They were all paid exactly the same amount; Those who worked for less than an hour and those who worked all day long. And when the ones who worked all day long complained about this, the only explanation was, “you were paid a fair wage – and in my house the last will be first.” This is not justice by most people’s standards. It’s not fair. But because of mercy – compassion for the least; those who were going to go home empty handed - this is justice by God’s standards.
When we walk humbly, when we live “other focused lives”, when God as known in Jesus is our companion, our justice and mercy will look crazy to the world. Our actions will shock, they will confound, they will offend, they will even anger others. Will Willamon, a United Methodist preacher, writes, “In requiring us to love mercy, God is demanding something odd and unnatural of us. [The famous philosopher Friedrich] Nietzsche,” Willimon reminds us, “hated Christianity in part for its ethic of mercy, its enfeebling solicitude for the weak and outcast, the diseased and crippled.” Jesus saw the marginalized not only as those to be pitied, but also as those to be cherished, served, and adored, honored, blessed. It confounded Nietzsche – he thought Christians were weak.
There was a controversy between God and the people. They were using the values of the dominant culture to try to solidify their relationship with God. They were trying to impress, to exalt, to show that they knew how different they were from the God who created them. They were trying to appease God by treating God as if the divine one needs to be worshiped and adored just like we want to be worshiped and adored.. But God doesn’t strut – God doesn’t need to be lavished with the kind of attention the Israelites were giving. God is other focused and was telling the Israelites that loving and worshiping God meant being other-focused as well. It meant loving the least, serving the lowly, honoring those our world despises and views with disgust.
God humbled God’s self by becoming one of us and walking the path alongside us. God became the living, breathing, embodiment of justice and mercy, and wants us to live and breathe justice and mercy with our lives. God came with values that upset the social order, that undermined traditional values, the challenged what people held most important: status, position in the social hierarchy, and power. And God asks no less of us. That is how we best worship God. What does God require of us? Only this: To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Turn
Matthew 4:12-23
January 23, 2011
Last week we read the story of how Andrew and his brother Simon Peter came to be disciples of Jesus. This week, we read the story of how Andrew and his brother Simon Peter came to be disciples of Jesus. But they are totally different stories, with different facts and different settings. This is, of course, because the author of the gospel of John and the author of the gospel of Matthew were trying to make different points about Jesus’ ministry and what it means to be a disciple. They focus on different things.
Last week we saw that Andrew followed Jesus because John the Baptist told him Jesus was the Lamb of God. And after staying with Jesus a few hours, Andrew went to his brother and said he had found the Messiah. I suggested that the author of John’s gospel invites the reader to ask what it takes for us to follow Jesus – to believe he is the Messiah.
This week, we look at Matthew and we find Andrew not with John the Baptist, but with his brother in a fishing boat. We could read Matthew’s account and decide to focus again on what it takes to follow Jesus. We could look at the disciples who left everything as soon as Jesus asked them to. We could ask how much we have to give up, how courageous we have to be. Jesus calls us to follow him and we, like the disciples, should drop everything and follow. And that’s not invalid. In fact, that’s largely how we do read this passage most of the time.
But, another way to approach it is to focus on Jesus – on the nature and power of Jesus’ ministry. In this way, we read it not so much as a story about how we “should” respond, or what we “should” do, but about who Jesus is – who God is – and why that is such good news. If we focus on Jesus, we see that in this passage he announces his public ministry. This will be his message, his mission, his life work according to Matthew. This is the most clear statement Matthew can make of what he believes God is up to in this world. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
“Repent!” “Repent!” We have all heard this from fire and brimstone preachers – either on TV, in the movies, on the street corner, or – notoriously – on college campuses. Repent so you can be saved by Jesus. And we know what this means: We are depraved individuals – sinners of all sorts – in need of salvation. We must confess our sins, repent of them, and turn toward God for forgiveness.
When Jesus utters these words, is he simply the original fire and brimstone, street corner preacher yelling at all the passersby, telling them they are sin-ridden and must repent to be saved? “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It almost comes off as a threat: Repent because God is near and is about to judge and condemn all those who don’t turn from their evil ways. “Let’s go folks! Wake up! Shape up! It’s judgment time.”
When we really look at what’s going on here, I don’t think Jesus’ words are even remotely harsh – no fire…not even an ember, no brimstone…not even toxic residue. Those fire and brimstone preachers stole that word – repent. They stole it and gave it their own meaning. There is nothing in this passage that would make us think repentance is about sin and depravity. In fact Matthew takes care to show us what he means by repentance by quoting the prophet Isaiah right before Jesus speaks these words.
The passage Matthew quotes from Isaiah is about people being oppressed under Assyrian rule. While the prophet makes it clear that this Assyrian rule is because of a broken covenant between God and Israel, most of the people affected weren’t the ones who broke the covenant. It was the kings and rulers who worshipped other gods, hoarded money for themselves, while ignoring the needs of the poor, the orphans, and the widows. The rulers and the elite were the ones who had broken the covenant, and now the poor and the orphans and the widows, along with all the other Israelites, were suffering because of it.
Repentance means “to turn”, and it does, in fact, mean to turn from one reality – a negative one – to another reality – a positive one. But look at this passage. There’s no sinning here. This is not about self abasement or depravity. When Matthew quotes Isaiah to set up Jesus’ ministry, we see that this is about people who live in darkness, largely not of their own making. To those living in “the shadow of death,” as Isaiah puts it, “repent” is the ultimate word of hope: Turn around. Look – there’s another possibility.
Isaiah was talking about those living in darkness in his day. Matthew is talking to those living in similar darkness in his day. One group that fit the bill in Matthew’s day was the fishermen. Fishermen then did not operate in a “free market” economy. The fishing industry was state regulated for the benefit of the elite. The elite were Greeks or Romans who had settled in Palestine following their military conquests, or they were Jews well-connected to King Herod and his sons. Everybody else was poor. Everybody else was poor. Not middle class, but poor. About 5% were elite, 95% were poor. No in between. And living in poverty was living in darkness.
Because of taxes, taxes, and more taxes, fishermen were at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, the main beneficiaries being Caesar, then Herod, then the major tax collectors. Fisherman were almost always in debt – vulnerable to all the consequences that brings including servitude and prison – and they were barely making enough day to day to live. It was hard, back-breaking, work with little or no pay off, literally. In thinking about what a life of darkness looks like, surely fishermen in 1st century Palestine can’t be far off the mark.
When Isaiah and Matthew speak of those living in darkness, they aren’t talking about sin – at least not in the fire and brimstone sense. The disciples weren’t doing anything wrong when Jesus came with his call to “repent!” They were just living crappy lives, spiritually deadening lives. Jesus’ words are spoken to those in darkness and as such it is good news. “Repent!” he says. Turn over here – here is a different world, here is light, here is the kingdom of heaven.
Repentance is for the oppressed, the people who have been conquered, or those at the bottom of economic ladders. It is for those being abused, forgotten, killed, victimized. What the fishermen did when they left to follow Jesus wasn’t necessarily some great, heroic act of faith. They responded to the power of light over the crippling, stifling, deadening darkness. The ministry of Jesus was to seek people out who needed something else because what they had was killing them. And that is the ministry of the living Christ today.
Darkness for the people in Isaiah’s time was Assyrian oppression. Darkness for the fisherman was working day in and day out for no economic gain and no purpose other than filling the coffers of those who controlled your life. And there is darkness today. Darkness for us takes many forms. It is depression, addiction, financial crisis, poverty, war; all of those things that weight us down. All of those things that suck the life right out of us. Jesus calls us out of that darkness.
And what is he calling us to? What does the realm of heaven look like? Maybe the place to start is with what it doesn’t look like – or at least didn’t look like for Andrew, Simon, James and John. And in truth, it really didn’t “look” much different from what they already saw around them, at least in a physical, material way.
The disciples’ lives were equally difficult before and after they joined Jesus in his ministry. They were subject to the same vulnerabilities – lack of resources, food, shelter, safety. Their lives were still under Roman rule – in fact before they joined Jesus they probably weren’t anywhere on the radar screen of the Romans, and now they were running around with a rabble rouser who was ticking off the guys with the guns (so to speak). The world before and the world after looked very much the same in many ways. Yet they were worlds apart.
One of the things we all experience in the depths of darkness is a lack of meaning or purpose. The disciples’ lives were consumed with survival, which only make sense. They didn’t know there could be anything else. They did what they needed to do to eat, feed their families, keep a roof over their head. But at the end of the day, there wasn’t much to show for all their work, and they knew they just had to get up again the next day and start all over again.
This lack of meaning or purpose resides in all kinds of situations where people live in darkness. When violence is all around, it’s hard to see any hope. When someone is depressed they can’t see any possibilities or a world beyond their darkness. When we are stricken with grief, we can lose all connection to the joys of life.
One of the biggest differences between the realm of darkness and the realm of heaven is the presence of meaning and purpose. Jesus doesn’t promise them riches, or a new political king, or the destruction of the tax collectors, or freedom from debt. Jesus promises them that they can both create and reside in the realm of heaven by doing exactly what our text says he set out to do right after the disciples joined him: “Jesus went throughout Galilee proclaiming the good news of the realm of God and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” Serving others, healing others, caring for the outcast, the marginalized, the destitute. This is what it means to live in the realm of heaven – and this is what gives us hope, purpose, and meaning.
The disciples must have found joy and meaning in serving others. They found joy in moving from fishing for fish to fishing for people; moving from a life about survival to a life about serving. That’s the power of Jesus’ ministry. That’s the light, the kingdom of heaven, the reality we can create and join that is so different from the reality in which we most commonly live. The truth and good news Jesus brings is that you can live in a death-dealing world and still have life and light. And you do that by giving life and light to others; by doing ministry with Jesus.
As individuals we put ourselves in the shoes of the disciples. We ask where are we broken? What is our darkness? How do we turn to see and live in the light? Maybe for you, like Andrew and Peter, your darkness is your job, your economic situation, a day to day life that is spiritually deadening. Maybe for you it is not your job but rather a relationship, or grief or loss, or it is an injustice you have experienced. Maybe for you darkness is the constant companionship of shame and fear, depression, loneliness, addiction. Anything that deprives your life of meaning, that leaves you wondering what the point is, that leaves you in despair.
Like the disciples, Jesus calls to us and says I can help you find hope. Follow me and I will show you how to live in such a way that even if your external reality doesn’t change, your whole life will be different. Jesus asks us to turn toward him, toward his way of life, his commitment to others and to the least among us, and in that way of life we will find light.
That’s what this passage might say to us as individuals. What does it say to us as a church? As the church – we put ourselves in the role of the light, because, at our best, we are the living, resurrected body of Jesus. The church is the kingdom of heaven, at least in part – in our own imperfect, human-laden ways. We are the light, we are the ones who should be calling to those living in the darkness, “Hey, look over here, turn around, there’s something better.”
Church, its worship and its ministries, is a space where we step out of what can be a death-dealing world. It’s joining the divine in worship and in serving others. It is where one can find meaning and purpose. For many of us, church is a kind of light in our darkness from time to time. For some it is the light of our life – giving meaning to everything we do from our job to raising children to choosing how to live and love. Church is not perfect. Sadly we can probably all name times it has failed us, caused us pain, brought more darkness than light. But at its best, church is supposed to be the visible manifestation of the kingdom of heaven Jesus proclaimed.
And we become that light by offering meaning and purpose to people’s lives. We become that light when we invite people to join us in healing and helping, in seeking out the lost and lonely, and living with different priorities and values than the death-dealing world around us. We become an alternative for people who are stuck in meaningless lives or are tired of the values of might makes right, more is better, and what’s mine is mine. We give hope when we work for peace and alleviate poverty. We offer light when we reach out to those usually forgotten or despised. The church can transform people’s lives – it can transform our own lives – by changing our entire world view and way of being.
As the church, as the living body of Jesus, we must call people to repent – to turn and look and see how light is possible in a dark world. We must find those living under the weight of darkness and invite them into a realm of hope and healing. We must find ministries and opportunities that serve others and seek out those most hurting. We must offer meaning and purpose by living from different values and with new priorities. Repent – look over here! Here’s something that will bring you life! Come, follow Jesus, and your life will never be the same. Amen.
January 23, 2011
Last week we read the story of how Andrew and his brother Simon Peter came to be disciples of Jesus. This week, we read the story of how Andrew and his brother Simon Peter came to be disciples of Jesus. But they are totally different stories, with different facts and different settings. This is, of course, because the author of the gospel of John and the author of the gospel of Matthew were trying to make different points about Jesus’ ministry and what it means to be a disciple. They focus on different things.
Last week we saw that Andrew followed Jesus because John the Baptist told him Jesus was the Lamb of God. And after staying with Jesus a few hours, Andrew went to his brother and said he had found the Messiah. I suggested that the author of John’s gospel invites the reader to ask what it takes for us to follow Jesus – to believe he is the Messiah.
This week, we look at Matthew and we find Andrew not with John the Baptist, but with his brother in a fishing boat. We could read Matthew’s account and decide to focus again on what it takes to follow Jesus. We could look at the disciples who left everything as soon as Jesus asked them to. We could ask how much we have to give up, how courageous we have to be. Jesus calls us to follow him and we, like the disciples, should drop everything and follow. And that’s not invalid. In fact, that’s largely how we do read this passage most of the time.
But, another way to approach it is to focus on Jesus – on the nature and power of Jesus’ ministry. In this way, we read it not so much as a story about how we “should” respond, or what we “should” do, but about who Jesus is – who God is – and why that is such good news. If we focus on Jesus, we see that in this passage he announces his public ministry. This will be his message, his mission, his life work according to Matthew. This is the most clear statement Matthew can make of what he believes God is up to in this world. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
“Repent!” “Repent!” We have all heard this from fire and brimstone preachers – either on TV, in the movies, on the street corner, or – notoriously – on college campuses. Repent so you can be saved by Jesus. And we know what this means: We are depraved individuals – sinners of all sorts – in need of salvation. We must confess our sins, repent of them, and turn toward God for forgiveness.
When Jesus utters these words, is he simply the original fire and brimstone, street corner preacher yelling at all the passersby, telling them they are sin-ridden and must repent to be saved? “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It almost comes off as a threat: Repent because God is near and is about to judge and condemn all those who don’t turn from their evil ways. “Let’s go folks! Wake up! Shape up! It’s judgment time.”
When we really look at what’s going on here, I don’t think Jesus’ words are even remotely harsh – no fire…not even an ember, no brimstone…not even toxic residue. Those fire and brimstone preachers stole that word – repent. They stole it and gave it their own meaning. There is nothing in this passage that would make us think repentance is about sin and depravity. In fact Matthew takes care to show us what he means by repentance by quoting the prophet Isaiah right before Jesus speaks these words.
The passage Matthew quotes from Isaiah is about people being oppressed under Assyrian rule. While the prophet makes it clear that this Assyrian rule is because of a broken covenant between God and Israel, most of the people affected weren’t the ones who broke the covenant. It was the kings and rulers who worshipped other gods, hoarded money for themselves, while ignoring the needs of the poor, the orphans, and the widows. The rulers and the elite were the ones who had broken the covenant, and now the poor and the orphans and the widows, along with all the other Israelites, were suffering because of it.
Repentance means “to turn”, and it does, in fact, mean to turn from one reality – a negative one – to another reality – a positive one. But look at this passage. There’s no sinning here. This is not about self abasement or depravity. When Matthew quotes Isaiah to set up Jesus’ ministry, we see that this is about people who live in darkness, largely not of their own making. To those living in “the shadow of death,” as Isaiah puts it, “repent” is the ultimate word of hope: Turn around. Look – there’s another possibility.
Isaiah was talking about those living in darkness in his day. Matthew is talking to those living in similar darkness in his day. One group that fit the bill in Matthew’s day was the fishermen. Fishermen then did not operate in a “free market” economy. The fishing industry was state regulated for the benefit of the elite. The elite were Greeks or Romans who had settled in Palestine following their military conquests, or they were Jews well-connected to King Herod and his sons. Everybody else was poor. Everybody else was poor. Not middle class, but poor. About 5% were elite, 95% were poor. No in between. And living in poverty was living in darkness.
Because of taxes, taxes, and more taxes, fishermen were at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, the main beneficiaries being Caesar, then Herod, then the major tax collectors. Fisherman were almost always in debt – vulnerable to all the consequences that brings including servitude and prison – and they were barely making enough day to day to live. It was hard, back-breaking, work with little or no pay off, literally. In thinking about what a life of darkness looks like, surely fishermen in 1st century Palestine can’t be far off the mark.
When Isaiah and Matthew speak of those living in darkness, they aren’t talking about sin – at least not in the fire and brimstone sense. The disciples weren’t doing anything wrong when Jesus came with his call to “repent!” They were just living crappy lives, spiritually deadening lives. Jesus’ words are spoken to those in darkness and as such it is good news. “Repent!” he says. Turn over here – here is a different world, here is light, here is the kingdom of heaven.
Repentance is for the oppressed, the people who have been conquered, or those at the bottom of economic ladders. It is for those being abused, forgotten, killed, victimized. What the fishermen did when they left to follow Jesus wasn’t necessarily some great, heroic act of faith. They responded to the power of light over the crippling, stifling, deadening darkness. The ministry of Jesus was to seek people out who needed something else because what they had was killing them. And that is the ministry of the living Christ today.
Darkness for the people in Isaiah’s time was Assyrian oppression. Darkness for the fisherman was working day in and day out for no economic gain and no purpose other than filling the coffers of those who controlled your life. And there is darkness today. Darkness for us takes many forms. It is depression, addiction, financial crisis, poverty, war; all of those things that weight us down. All of those things that suck the life right out of us. Jesus calls us out of that darkness.
And what is he calling us to? What does the realm of heaven look like? Maybe the place to start is with what it doesn’t look like – or at least didn’t look like for Andrew, Simon, James and John. And in truth, it really didn’t “look” much different from what they already saw around them, at least in a physical, material way.
The disciples’ lives were equally difficult before and after they joined Jesus in his ministry. They were subject to the same vulnerabilities – lack of resources, food, shelter, safety. Their lives were still under Roman rule – in fact before they joined Jesus they probably weren’t anywhere on the radar screen of the Romans, and now they were running around with a rabble rouser who was ticking off the guys with the guns (so to speak). The world before and the world after looked very much the same in many ways. Yet they were worlds apart.
One of the things we all experience in the depths of darkness is a lack of meaning or purpose. The disciples’ lives were consumed with survival, which only make sense. They didn’t know there could be anything else. They did what they needed to do to eat, feed their families, keep a roof over their head. But at the end of the day, there wasn’t much to show for all their work, and they knew they just had to get up again the next day and start all over again.
This lack of meaning or purpose resides in all kinds of situations where people live in darkness. When violence is all around, it’s hard to see any hope. When someone is depressed they can’t see any possibilities or a world beyond their darkness. When we are stricken with grief, we can lose all connection to the joys of life.
One of the biggest differences between the realm of darkness and the realm of heaven is the presence of meaning and purpose. Jesus doesn’t promise them riches, or a new political king, or the destruction of the tax collectors, or freedom from debt. Jesus promises them that they can both create and reside in the realm of heaven by doing exactly what our text says he set out to do right after the disciples joined him: “Jesus went throughout Galilee proclaiming the good news of the realm of God and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” Serving others, healing others, caring for the outcast, the marginalized, the destitute. This is what it means to live in the realm of heaven – and this is what gives us hope, purpose, and meaning.
The disciples must have found joy and meaning in serving others. They found joy in moving from fishing for fish to fishing for people; moving from a life about survival to a life about serving. That’s the power of Jesus’ ministry. That’s the light, the kingdom of heaven, the reality we can create and join that is so different from the reality in which we most commonly live. The truth and good news Jesus brings is that you can live in a death-dealing world and still have life and light. And you do that by giving life and light to others; by doing ministry with Jesus.
As individuals we put ourselves in the shoes of the disciples. We ask where are we broken? What is our darkness? How do we turn to see and live in the light? Maybe for you, like Andrew and Peter, your darkness is your job, your economic situation, a day to day life that is spiritually deadening. Maybe for you it is not your job but rather a relationship, or grief or loss, or it is an injustice you have experienced. Maybe for you darkness is the constant companionship of shame and fear, depression, loneliness, addiction. Anything that deprives your life of meaning, that leaves you wondering what the point is, that leaves you in despair.
Like the disciples, Jesus calls to us and says I can help you find hope. Follow me and I will show you how to live in such a way that even if your external reality doesn’t change, your whole life will be different. Jesus asks us to turn toward him, toward his way of life, his commitment to others and to the least among us, and in that way of life we will find light.
That’s what this passage might say to us as individuals. What does it say to us as a church? As the church – we put ourselves in the role of the light, because, at our best, we are the living, resurrected body of Jesus. The church is the kingdom of heaven, at least in part – in our own imperfect, human-laden ways. We are the light, we are the ones who should be calling to those living in the darkness, “Hey, look over here, turn around, there’s something better.”
Church, its worship and its ministries, is a space where we step out of what can be a death-dealing world. It’s joining the divine in worship and in serving others. It is where one can find meaning and purpose. For many of us, church is a kind of light in our darkness from time to time. For some it is the light of our life – giving meaning to everything we do from our job to raising children to choosing how to live and love. Church is not perfect. Sadly we can probably all name times it has failed us, caused us pain, brought more darkness than light. But at its best, church is supposed to be the visible manifestation of the kingdom of heaven Jesus proclaimed.
And we become that light by offering meaning and purpose to people’s lives. We become that light when we invite people to join us in healing and helping, in seeking out the lost and lonely, and living with different priorities and values than the death-dealing world around us. We become an alternative for people who are stuck in meaningless lives or are tired of the values of might makes right, more is better, and what’s mine is mine. We give hope when we work for peace and alleviate poverty. We offer light when we reach out to those usually forgotten or despised. The church can transform people’s lives – it can transform our own lives – by changing our entire world view and way of being.
As the church, as the living body of Jesus, we must call people to repent – to turn and look and see how light is possible in a dark world. We must find those living under the weight of darkness and invite them into a realm of hope and healing. We must find ministries and opportunities that serve others and seek out those most hurting. We must offer meaning and purpose by living from different values and with new priorities. Repent – look over here! Here’s something that will bring you life! Come, follow Jesus, and your life will never be the same. Amen.
Monday, January 17, 2011
What Would It Take?
John 1:29-42
January 16, 2011
We’re so used to this story and the words, “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” I think when we read this passage from John about the first disciples of Jesus, we no longer notice that the disciples are really quite crazy. There is so little about their actions and responses that makes sense to me, and the author of the gospel of John feels little need to help me out with that. In contrast to other parts of the gospel, here we get a dry, reporter-like version of what turns out to be this extraordinary moment in these disciples’ lives. Elsewhere, the author is happy to say things like, “They did this because they were afraid of being expelled from the synagogue.” Here, nothing. No explanations for actions. And frankly, I really want to know what on earth motivated the disciples in this case because it all seems a little crazy.
First, you have their response to John the Baptist. These two disciples believed the most extraordinary thing based merely on the words of John the Baptist – a questionable character to say the least...locusts, funny clothes and all. The author gives us no indication of why the disciples believed John when he said Jesus was the Lamb of God. They must have really trusted John! They knew the language he was using. They had been waiting for the Lamb of God – understood that to be a metaphor for the Messiah, so they were set to follow the Lamb of God when that person appeared. But really? All it took was for John the Baptist to say, “There he is.”? I wish I had that kind of power. I’m sure none of you would move a muscle if I said, “Hey, there’s a guy walking by in our parking lot. That’s the messiah. Go with him.”
Jesus himself was doing nothing – just walking along. According to the author, there was absolutely nothing impressive about him this day. The day before, John the Baptist witnessed the spirit descending on him like a dove, but only John was there for this awe-inspiring event in this gospel. For these two disciples, this was the first glimpse…a guy walking by. This is the first Jesus appears on the scene to the masses. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t appear to even stop, let alone do anything “Messiah-like”. Regardless, our eager disciples listened to John and followed Jesus.
Which leads to the second oddity in the disciples’ behavior: They are told this is the Lamb of God and because of presumably great trust in John the Baptist, they believe it. But then, they are about to speak their first words to him – the very one they have been waiting their whole lives for, and this is what they come up with: “Hey Rabbi, where you stayin’?” Maybe they were nervous and didn’t know what to say. Maybe it was the best they could come up in a star-struck state. Maybe they didn’t really believe John in the first place and were kind of skeptically checkin’ this guy out. Again, we don’t know. But surely this question – where you stayin’? – doesn’t quite seem worthy of this moment. And Jesus’ response isn’t much better, in my humble opinion. His first words in the gospel seem no more impressive at first glance. “Come and see.”
Finally, the most odd and extraordinary thing of all: After seeing where Jesus was staying, the disciples proclaimed – “This is the one – the Messiah for whom we have all been waiting.” That must have been one impressive house! Jews had been waiting for the Messiah for generations and generations, this would be the biggest moment of any Jew’s life, and the way the author of John tells it reads like a police blotter: no emotion, no motivations, no back story, just the facts…or so it seems.
We are thrown a bone in that the reporter tells us that when they went to where Jesus was staying, they remained there with him for a while. Maybe it’s that unaccounted for time that is the key. Maybe hidden in there is the amazing thing that happened to convince them. Maybe something Jesus did that day so affected them that they just knew in their hearts who he was. Again, our reporter doesn’t say what they saw, heard, or experienced while they were there – he just tells us the time of day, as if that is supposed to explain it all.
But maybe the sparseness of the account, along with some carefully chosen words, is what makes this passage so powerful to us today…because as so often is the case in this gospel, it’s not just about the disciples. This is about us, about our response to Jesus, about the claims we make and how we do or don’t follow the Lamb of God. It’s in what the author didn’t say that we find our own invitation to Come and See – our invitation to meet Jesus and be changed by that encounter. The author seems disinterested in what the disciples might have experienced in that house that led to such an amazing claim. But maybe what looks like disinterest is really an invitation to ask ourselves, “What would have had to happen in that house that day for us to proclaim Jesus as Messiah?” Or the more relevant question: “What does it take today?”
This invitation of Jesus to the disciples, “Come and see,” as so often is the case in this gospel, has a much deeper meaning than at first glance. Since it is the first thing Jesus utters in this gospel, we can assume it had the upmost importance for author of the gospel of John. It is an invitation – the invitation – to the disciples and all who would hear to have their eyes opened to the truth – “see” is meant in the sense of having insight, understanding. Those disciples “saw” something that day that changed their lives forever – they gained insight into who Jesus was, and by extension who God was. They decided from that moment onward to follow Jesus and invite others to do the same.
We don’t know what caused their transformation. But we can ask what it takes for us to decide to follow Jesus. Before we do, though, we have to stop and take a moment to think about what it means to “follow Jesus.” Obviously this is not easily answered. You could argue that figuring out what it means to follow Jesus is the entire task of faith. But, it is a question we ask – a question the earliest church was always asking. And as we do – as we ask what it means to follow Jesus – it’s always good to remind ourselves that we are human. At best we follow Jesus in some moments. Or, we follow Jesus as best we can always. Following Jesus does not always look pretty or perfect, just as it didn’t for the disciples. But it does mean committing to something – to someone – to a new way of looking at the world.
Remembering our humanity, we also acknowledge that we ask what it means to follow Jesus from our own unique contexts - from our place in the world, which is different from the disciples’ and different from each others’. It’s what makes the question so hard at times. Following Jesus doesn’t look the same for everyone because no matter what we are doing at any given point in our lives – no matter what our job, where we are living, who we are surrounded by – we can follow Jesus. Sometimes that means changing jobs, moving, or surrounding ourselves with different people. Sometimes it means radical shifts in thought and action. Most of the time it means living where we are, but differently. Doing our jobs differently, living in our communities differently, being in relationships differently – doing these things in ways that we believe reflect Jesus as best we can.
Following Jesus is about what or who we allow to form who we are and how we do things. Is it other people’s expectations, is it cultural values and norms, is it friends and family, or is it Jesus? This passage – Come and See – offers us the chance to decide who or what we will follow – who are what we will look to for our guidance, our worldview, our direction. Andrew proclaims Jesus is the Messiah. It’s a moment of ultimate commitment – saying this is the one who will shape everything I do, even if it’s hard or requires a lot of me. Which bring us back to our question: What happened to Andrew to evoke such a commitment – such a dramatic, life-changing response? And what does it take for us to do the same?
I think sometimes we come to church for the same reasons the disciples wanted to see where Jesus was staying. We’re looking for something that tells us this Jesus guy really is the one we’re looking for. We’re looking for something that tells us how to live and who to follow. Maybe we come here hoping to find whatever the disciples found that day in the house - proof of some sort that makes us stand up and say, “Ah ha! This is it! Here is the Messiah, and I am ready to change my life entirely to follow him.”
Is what you find here enough? When you go looking for Jesus – for proof – for evidence that Jesus really is God and the one you should shape your life around – do you find it? Is what you find here, or in your prayers, or in the bible, or in sermons or music enough?
The invitation to come and see wasn’t just an invitation to the house that day. It wasn’t just to come and see where he was staying. It was to come and remain with Jesus – to be with him. Remain is a another one of those key words in the gospel of John. The gospel doesn’t end here – with Andrew’s proclamation. In fact, even though Andrew and others would immediately claim Jesus was the Messiah – they also would learn they didn’t quite understand what that meant yet for their lives. They would have moments of doubt, moments of ignorance, moments of despair. Only eight verses later Jesus would say to Andrew, “you haven’t seen anything yet. Hang on, stay with me, you’re going to see so much more.” In other words, faith is a life-long process of remaining with Jesus and constantly shaping our lives around what we learn, see, experience and find.
I think there is enough about Jesus’ life – even if we only have a partial picture in our scriptures – that is compelling. And like the disciples eventually will, we get to see the whole of that life, not just Jesus walking by one day and a funny looking guy telling us he’s the one. We see how he changed people’s lives, offered hope, brought people back into community, loved so deeply he was willing to give his life for others.
And I think this is all more than just mere inspiration. Jesus is our best guess at what God would look like if God were a person, but God continues to live and impact our lives, change us, form us through worship, through community, through study and prayer. Like the disciples, when we seek God, meet God, remain with God for a while, something in us knows that this God we meet, who we best know through Jesus, is what we want to shape our lives around.
We remember the life of Jesus, but we also see places in this world now where God is active and we want to be a part of that activity. Places where people are being served, healed, loved, restored, and brought into community. These can be little things – little moments of feeling connected to who God is and what God is up to in this world. But these little moments can impact us in profound, sustainable ways. A Franciscan sister wrote an article about what things, as she puts it, “aid my commitment to ongoing conversion.” First she talks about communion, scripture, and parental wisdom. Then she writes, “A friend has on her answering machine: “Peace, my friends. Pray for peace and agitate for peace.” “Her words,” she writes, “energize me as I live this challenge.”
What does it take for you? What increases your commitment to ongoing conversion as a follower of Jesus? When you have an idea about what that is – if it is worship, or another person who inspires you, or a particular prayer, or music, or message on an answering machine, remember the words of the gospel of John: Remain there for a while. Sit with it, immerse yourself in it, allow your encounter with the divine to wash over you, enter you, encourage you. Too often we let those moments slip away, write them off or forget them when the daily-ness of life takes over again.
For some, the events of this last week have given pause. For some, the shootings have provided a chance to stop and reflect about what it means to be a follower of the God of nonviolence, of hope, and of unity. In the massive tragedy in Tucson, some have also found inspiration to live differently with those with whom we disagree. It will be easy to move past this, forget that feeling, and go back to business as usual. Let’s remain there a while. Let’s allow the spirit of unity that we find in such moments to really change us. Let’s come out of this experience as Andrew came out of the house and proclaim: I have found the Messiah – the one I am going to follow, give my life to, shape my life around.
We are invited by the divine all that time: “Come and see what I am doing in this world. Come and dwell in me as I move in this world for peace, love and justice. Come and find in me healing and hope. Come and stay with me until you are ready to give your life over to a new way of being in this world.” What would it take? Come and see. Amen.
January 16, 2011
We’re so used to this story and the words, “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” I think when we read this passage from John about the first disciples of Jesus, we no longer notice that the disciples are really quite crazy. There is so little about their actions and responses that makes sense to me, and the author of the gospel of John feels little need to help me out with that. In contrast to other parts of the gospel, here we get a dry, reporter-like version of what turns out to be this extraordinary moment in these disciples’ lives. Elsewhere, the author is happy to say things like, “They did this because they were afraid of being expelled from the synagogue.” Here, nothing. No explanations for actions. And frankly, I really want to know what on earth motivated the disciples in this case because it all seems a little crazy.
First, you have their response to John the Baptist. These two disciples believed the most extraordinary thing based merely on the words of John the Baptist – a questionable character to say the least...locusts, funny clothes and all. The author gives us no indication of why the disciples believed John when he said Jesus was the Lamb of God. They must have really trusted John! They knew the language he was using. They had been waiting for the Lamb of God – understood that to be a metaphor for the Messiah, so they were set to follow the Lamb of God when that person appeared. But really? All it took was for John the Baptist to say, “There he is.”? I wish I had that kind of power. I’m sure none of you would move a muscle if I said, “Hey, there’s a guy walking by in our parking lot. That’s the messiah. Go with him.”
Jesus himself was doing nothing – just walking along. According to the author, there was absolutely nothing impressive about him this day. The day before, John the Baptist witnessed the spirit descending on him like a dove, but only John was there for this awe-inspiring event in this gospel. For these two disciples, this was the first glimpse…a guy walking by. This is the first Jesus appears on the scene to the masses. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t appear to even stop, let alone do anything “Messiah-like”. Regardless, our eager disciples listened to John and followed Jesus.
Which leads to the second oddity in the disciples’ behavior: They are told this is the Lamb of God and because of presumably great trust in John the Baptist, they believe it. But then, they are about to speak their first words to him – the very one they have been waiting their whole lives for, and this is what they come up with: “Hey Rabbi, where you stayin’?” Maybe they were nervous and didn’t know what to say. Maybe it was the best they could come up in a star-struck state. Maybe they didn’t really believe John in the first place and were kind of skeptically checkin’ this guy out. Again, we don’t know. But surely this question – where you stayin’? – doesn’t quite seem worthy of this moment. And Jesus’ response isn’t much better, in my humble opinion. His first words in the gospel seem no more impressive at first glance. “Come and see.”
Finally, the most odd and extraordinary thing of all: After seeing where Jesus was staying, the disciples proclaimed – “This is the one – the Messiah for whom we have all been waiting.” That must have been one impressive house! Jews had been waiting for the Messiah for generations and generations, this would be the biggest moment of any Jew’s life, and the way the author of John tells it reads like a police blotter: no emotion, no motivations, no back story, just the facts…or so it seems.
We are thrown a bone in that the reporter tells us that when they went to where Jesus was staying, they remained there with him for a while. Maybe it’s that unaccounted for time that is the key. Maybe hidden in there is the amazing thing that happened to convince them. Maybe something Jesus did that day so affected them that they just knew in their hearts who he was. Again, our reporter doesn’t say what they saw, heard, or experienced while they were there – he just tells us the time of day, as if that is supposed to explain it all.
But maybe the sparseness of the account, along with some carefully chosen words, is what makes this passage so powerful to us today…because as so often is the case in this gospel, it’s not just about the disciples. This is about us, about our response to Jesus, about the claims we make and how we do or don’t follow the Lamb of God. It’s in what the author didn’t say that we find our own invitation to Come and See – our invitation to meet Jesus and be changed by that encounter. The author seems disinterested in what the disciples might have experienced in that house that led to such an amazing claim. But maybe what looks like disinterest is really an invitation to ask ourselves, “What would have had to happen in that house that day for us to proclaim Jesus as Messiah?” Or the more relevant question: “What does it take today?”
This invitation of Jesus to the disciples, “Come and see,” as so often is the case in this gospel, has a much deeper meaning than at first glance. Since it is the first thing Jesus utters in this gospel, we can assume it had the upmost importance for author of the gospel of John. It is an invitation – the invitation – to the disciples and all who would hear to have their eyes opened to the truth – “see” is meant in the sense of having insight, understanding. Those disciples “saw” something that day that changed their lives forever – they gained insight into who Jesus was, and by extension who God was. They decided from that moment onward to follow Jesus and invite others to do the same.
We don’t know what caused their transformation. But we can ask what it takes for us to decide to follow Jesus. Before we do, though, we have to stop and take a moment to think about what it means to “follow Jesus.” Obviously this is not easily answered. You could argue that figuring out what it means to follow Jesus is the entire task of faith. But, it is a question we ask – a question the earliest church was always asking. And as we do – as we ask what it means to follow Jesus – it’s always good to remind ourselves that we are human. At best we follow Jesus in some moments. Or, we follow Jesus as best we can always. Following Jesus does not always look pretty or perfect, just as it didn’t for the disciples. But it does mean committing to something – to someone – to a new way of looking at the world.
Remembering our humanity, we also acknowledge that we ask what it means to follow Jesus from our own unique contexts - from our place in the world, which is different from the disciples’ and different from each others’. It’s what makes the question so hard at times. Following Jesus doesn’t look the same for everyone because no matter what we are doing at any given point in our lives – no matter what our job, where we are living, who we are surrounded by – we can follow Jesus. Sometimes that means changing jobs, moving, or surrounding ourselves with different people. Sometimes it means radical shifts in thought and action. Most of the time it means living where we are, but differently. Doing our jobs differently, living in our communities differently, being in relationships differently – doing these things in ways that we believe reflect Jesus as best we can.
Following Jesus is about what or who we allow to form who we are and how we do things. Is it other people’s expectations, is it cultural values and norms, is it friends and family, or is it Jesus? This passage – Come and See – offers us the chance to decide who or what we will follow – who are what we will look to for our guidance, our worldview, our direction. Andrew proclaims Jesus is the Messiah. It’s a moment of ultimate commitment – saying this is the one who will shape everything I do, even if it’s hard or requires a lot of me. Which bring us back to our question: What happened to Andrew to evoke such a commitment – such a dramatic, life-changing response? And what does it take for us to do the same?
I think sometimes we come to church for the same reasons the disciples wanted to see where Jesus was staying. We’re looking for something that tells us this Jesus guy really is the one we’re looking for. We’re looking for something that tells us how to live and who to follow. Maybe we come here hoping to find whatever the disciples found that day in the house - proof of some sort that makes us stand up and say, “Ah ha! This is it! Here is the Messiah, and I am ready to change my life entirely to follow him.”
Is what you find here enough? When you go looking for Jesus – for proof – for evidence that Jesus really is God and the one you should shape your life around – do you find it? Is what you find here, or in your prayers, or in the bible, or in sermons or music enough?
The invitation to come and see wasn’t just an invitation to the house that day. It wasn’t just to come and see where he was staying. It was to come and remain with Jesus – to be with him. Remain is a another one of those key words in the gospel of John. The gospel doesn’t end here – with Andrew’s proclamation. In fact, even though Andrew and others would immediately claim Jesus was the Messiah – they also would learn they didn’t quite understand what that meant yet for their lives. They would have moments of doubt, moments of ignorance, moments of despair. Only eight verses later Jesus would say to Andrew, “you haven’t seen anything yet. Hang on, stay with me, you’re going to see so much more.” In other words, faith is a life-long process of remaining with Jesus and constantly shaping our lives around what we learn, see, experience and find.
I think there is enough about Jesus’ life – even if we only have a partial picture in our scriptures – that is compelling. And like the disciples eventually will, we get to see the whole of that life, not just Jesus walking by one day and a funny looking guy telling us he’s the one. We see how he changed people’s lives, offered hope, brought people back into community, loved so deeply he was willing to give his life for others.
And I think this is all more than just mere inspiration. Jesus is our best guess at what God would look like if God were a person, but God continues to live and impact our lives, change us, form us through worship, through community, through study and prayer. Like the disciples, when we seek God, meet God, remain with God for a while, something in us knows that this God we meet, who we best know through Jesus, is what we want to shape our lives around.
We remember the life of Jesus, but we also see places in this world now where God is active and we want to be a part of that activity. Places where people are being served, healed, loved, restored, and brought into community. These can be little things – little moments of feeling connected to who God is and what God is up to in this world. But these little moments can impact us in profound, sustainable ways. A Franciscan sister wrote an article about what things, as she puts it, “aid my commitment to ongoing conversion.” First she talks about communion, scripture, and parental wisdom. Then she writes, “A friend has on her answering machine: “Peace, my friends. Pray for peace and agitate for peace.” “Her words,” she writes, “energize me as I live this challenge.”
What does it take for you? What increases your commitment to ongoing conversion as a follower of Jesus? When you have an idea about what that is – if it is worship, or another person who inspires you, or a particular prayer, or music, or message on an answering machine, remember the words of the gospel of John: Remain there for a while. Sit with it, immerse yourself in it, allow your encounter with the divine to wash over you, enter you, encourage you. Too often we let those moments slip away, write them off or forget them when the daily-ness of life takes over again.
For some, the events of this last week have given pause. For some, the shootings have provided a chance to stop and reflect about what it means to be a follower of the God of nonviolence, of hope, and of unity. In the massive tragedy in Tucson, some have also found inspiration to live differently with those with whom we disagree. It will be easy to move past this, forget that feeling, and go back to business as usual. Let’s remain there a while. Let’s allow the spirit of unity that we find in such moments to really change us. Let’s come out of this experience as Andrew came out of the house and proclaim: I have found the Messiah – the one I am going to follow, give my life to, shape my life around.
We are invited by the divine all that time: “Come and see what I am doing in this world. Come and dwell in me as I move in this world for peace, love and justice. Come and find in me healing and hope. Come and stay with me until you are ready to give your life over to a new way of being in this world.” What would it take? Come and see. Amen.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Divine Drive for Unity
Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism of Our Lord Sunday: January 9, 2011
Baptism is a sacrament – a rite of the church – and it all stems back to the bible. We Christians base our practice of baptism on two things: Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the command at the end of the gospel of Matthew to go and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the triune God. From the very beginning, the church has taken this whole baptism thing pretty seriously.
In fact, for a long time, the church celebrated the baptism of Jesus with much greater fanfare than they did Christmas. It was a bigger deal because baptism is so central to the church’s understanding of what it means to be faithful, what it means to be a disciple, what it means to be people who worship the God that took on human flesh. But over the years I think we have lost that intense connection with baptism.
I’m guessing if asked, most of you would have a hard time saying exactly what your baptism means to you. I’m not going to ask, so don’t panic. But, based on casual conversations over many years, I think it’s hard for people to say what it means that they are baptized. It’s even hard for parents of newborns to say why they want their child baptized, even though they know it’s what they want. A part of us knows baptism is important in our faith tradition. It think for many of us it even feels important on an emotional and spiritual level, even if why it’s important is not always clear to us.
Partly this is the failing of the church – the church has not always done a good job of talking about baptism and its importance in our lives. But that’s only part of it. I think the truth is baptism defies exact explanation and so explaining exactly what it means is an impossible task. Knowing it’s important on an emotional and spiritual level without being able to articulate exactly why may, be perfectly fine where baptism is concerned. But each year, on this Sunday, we are afforded an opportunity to intentionally remember our baptisms and maybe gain a little insight as to what they might mean – at least in part. So we might as well take this opportunity for reflection. I mean, what can it hurt?
I’m going to suggest that one major themes of baptism is the divine drive for unity. However we understand the divine to be present in this world, moving in our midst, Christians throughout history have affirmed that the divine movement includes a movement toward unity, and baptism is one way they expressed this. In the ritual of baptism practiced by the earliest Christians, as well as the scriptures telling of Jesus’ baptism, we tell a story about a God who yearns for unity – and when we look at Matthew and Isaiah, I think we see this unity is comprised of three parts: First, God’s unity with us; second our unity with one another; and third our unity with the ministry and purposes of God in this world. In fact, all three of these are explicitly mentioned in our own baptismal liturgy, which is drawn from the earliest baptismal liturgies of the church.
Whenever we baptize someone in the church, our liturgy includes a statement on what we believe about baptism. This statement lays out these three aspects of unity found in the ritual of baptism. It begins, “In baptism God claims us…[by] uniting us with Jesus in [his life], death, and resurrection. In other words, the divine desire for unity with us is best shown in the incarnation, and it’s symbolized in the story of Jesus’ baptism. When John baptizes Jesus, Jesus – as a human manifestation of the divine – takes on the entire human condition.
The baptism of Jesus by John was a bit of an issue in the early church. You can tell by the squeamishness with which the story is told in all four gospels. Mark and Matthew relate the actual baptism in the passive voice, and put the focus squarely on the voice from heaven. Matthew adds to Mark the dialog in which John tries to talk Jesus out of being baptized by him. Luke says only that Jesus was baptized, but doesn't mention that it was John who did the baptism. The fourth gospel doesn't mention the baptism at all, only that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove.
These gospel writers believed baptism was for sinners and they really didn’t entertain the idea that Jesus was born a sinner in need of repentance just like everyone else. What was needed, they thought, was for John to be baptized by Jesus. Jesus asked to be baptized by John which was nothing less than God asking to be baptized by John – at least as the early Christians saw it. This upset their worldview and challenged their notions of God.
But still, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do tell the story of Jesus’ baptism – it was probably because they found something powerful and compelling in the baptism of Jesus, even if they didn’t know exactly why. Something about it resonated with what they knew of their own experience of Jesus. And I think it had to do with the profound unity they felt with Jesus, and through him, God.
This odd, disconcerting baptism was God's "full immersion" into the trials and tribulations of humankind. In solidarity with us, Jesus stands in line with sinners. God chooses unity with us instead of power over us. The baptism signals that Jesus' mission will not be punishment of sinners, but identification with sinners – identification with the fact that we live in a broken world in need of a God who understands and heals that brokenness. In Jesus God says, “Here I am – I’m with you…I am you.”
The baptism of Jesus is still, I think, an odd notion today that we at times try to explain away. We distance ourselves from Jesus and God by comparing our sinfulness and brokenness with divine perfection, just as John was doing with Jesus. We have no right to baptize Jesus with the same baptism we claim where we are cleansed of our sins. Yet we do, God says, because the divine is united with us and all that we experience. God enters fully into this broken world and thus needs what we need – yearns for what we yearn for. In baptism, we are united with God because in Jesus’ baptism, God chose to fully become one of us.
After proclaiming our unity with Christ in baptism, the liturgy goes on to say, “by water and the holy spirit we are made members of the church, the body of Christ.” To be clear, this does not mean members of a particular church… as in First Presbyterian Church, or St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, or St. Mary’s Catholic Church. We are made members of the church universal…members of the body of Christ – with all other Christians in this world. The water connects us intimately to God and then to one another in our common baptism.
In 1982, the World Council of Churches – a body that is constantly seeking unity of Christians across theological and denominational barriers – recognized the central role baptism could play in uniting us to one another. They drafted a beautiful document called, “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” in which they articulated a theology of baptism that could serve not just as common ground, but as the driving force for unity. They wrote in part,
“Our common baptism, which unites us to Christ in faith, is thus a basic bond of unity. We are one people and are called to confess and serve one [God] in each place and in all the world. The union with Christ which we share through baptism has important implications for Christian unity. When baptismal unity is realized in one holy, catholic, apostolic Church, a genuine Christian witness can be made to the healing and reconciling love of God. Therefore, our one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Of course the sad irony is that the sacrament of baptism itself has been a source of division between Christian people of different faith traditions. We exploit the differences in practice and understanding of baptism in order to claim we have the truth and others fall short: infant baptism versus believer’s baptism; immersion versus sprinkling; necessary for salvation versus symbolic of God’s saving grace. The World Council of Churches acknowledged this as well, and lamented the negative witness such division makes to our world. They wrote:
“The inability of the churches mutually to recognize their various practices of baptism as sharing in the one baptism, and their actual dividedness in spite of mutual baptismal recognition, have given dramatic visibility to the broken witness of the Church.”
Among a whole host of other divisions we Presbyterians experience with other Christians, our differences with the Catholic Church have played a starring role ever since the reformation. Often the way we deal with our differences has been a violation of the baptismal covenant far more than a model to the world of the unity we find because of our unity with the divine. This division has been expressed in large and small ways over the years…at times it is found in subtle prejudices we have about each other, or comments of disrespect for differing beliefs and practices. At times it has meant bloodshed and large-scale violence.
Through much of our history, Catholics and Presbyterians did not recognize each others’ baptisms as valid. Among other things, this meant that when someone would convert from one to the other, they had to be “re-baptized”. More disturbingly, inasmuch as baptism signifies ones’ entrance into the Body of Christ, we denied that the other was considered a part of Christ’s church because the baptism was not “real” or valid.
This changed somewhat around the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s, but it was only last month that our two denominations formally recognized each others’ baptism and wrote a joint document expressing in detail what this unity means in both theory and practice. Even if long overdue, this was a wonderful moment. One participant in the many years’ long conversation leading up to this agreement commented, “In the context of so much that divides us and upon which our churches may not agree, we remind ourselves that our fundamental unity begins and is rooted in our baptism.” In the document released last month, this ecumenical group wrote, “Christian baptism is a “basic bond of unity” that brings Christians “into union with Christ, with each other and with the Church of every time and place”. This “one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Baptism is a symbol of the divine drive for unity among each other, and this is a great example of the church finally participating in that divine drive.
Finally, our baptismal liturgy says that through the water and the spirit we are “joined to Christ’s ministry of love, peace, and justice.” The divine drive for unity does not end at unity with God and each other. Such unity implies a shared purpose in this world. God yearns to share with us the work of healing creation. And Matthew, drawing on the prophet Isaiah, paints this work in no uncertain terms. Later in the gospel, Matthew will quote today’s passage from Isaiah in order to describe what he believed Jesus’ life was about: Jesus came to proclaim justice to all nations…bring justice to this world…open the eyes of the blind, bring out prisoners from the dungeon. And because we are united to Jesus in our baptisms, we are united to this divine purpose as well.
When we are baptized, we are united to Jesus and all that he did. Not only does Jesus take on our lives, our trials and tribulations, but we take on his purpose – we dedicate ourselves to the divine hope for this world. Jesus announces this in response to John’s embarrassment about baptizing Jesus: Jesus says, “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness is the same word as “justice”. This baptism, Jesus tells John, is part of the plan of continuing God’s work for justice in the world. When Jesus is raised from the water, we are all raised with him, ready to embark on his ministry of healing, bringing good news to the poor, releasing captives. Baptism is our commissioning to a life of discipleship.
It may be hard to say what baptism means to us. Sacraments are kind of that way, really. They are meant to be meaningful, yet as symbols and rituals they speak truth beyond what we can verbalize. That is part of their power. They are gifts from God, not academic exercises. Yet in baptism, we see how driven God is toward unity. In baptism we are united with God, united with each other, and united with God’s purposes in this world. And this does not depend on whether we, as individuals, have been formally baptized. All of this was instituted at Jesus’ baptism for all of humanity. In actuality, this divine drive for unity has been present since the beginning of time – since all of creation was stamped with the divine imprint. Jesus is, for us, the most visible sign of this three-fold unity, and this unity holds for all of us, whether we have been baptized with water in a church or simply baptized through the waters in the womb at our birth. Baptism is a sign of something that is already true: God desires to be one with us, and desires our unity with each other and with God’s work for justice and peace in this world. Amen.
Baptism of Our Lord Sunday: January 9, 2011
Baptism is a sacrament – a rite of the church – and it all stems back to the bible. We Christians base our practice of baptism on two things: Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the command at the end of the gospel of Matthew to go and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the triune God. From the very beginning, the church has taken this whole baptism thing pretty seriously.
In fact, for a long time, the church celebrated the baptism of Jesus with much greater fanfare than they did Christmas. It was a bigger deal because baptism is so central to the church’s understanding of what it means to be faithful, what it means to be a disciple, what it means to be people who worship the God that took on human flesh. But over the years I think we have lost that intense connection with baptism.
I’m guessing if asked, most of you would have a hard time saying exactly what your baptism means to you. I’m not going to ask, so don’t panic. But, based on casual conversations over many years, I think it’s hard for people to say what it means that they are baptized. It’s even hard for parents of newborns to say why they want their child baptized, even though they know it’s what they want. A part of us knows baptism is important in our faith tradition. It think for many of us it even feels important on an emotional and spiritual level, even if why it’s important is not always clear to us.
Partly this is the failing of the church – the church has not always done a good job of talking about baptism and its importance in our lives. But that’s only part of it. I think the truth is baptism defies exact explanation and so explaining exactly what it means is an impossible task. Knowing it’s important on an emotional and spiritual level without being able to articulate exactly why may, be perfectly fine where baptism is concerned. But each year, on this Sunday, we are afforded an opportunity to intentionally remember our baptisms and maybe gain a little insight as to what they might mean – at least in part. So we might as well take this opportunity for reflection. I mean, what can it hurt?
I’m going to suggest that one major themes of baptism is the divine drive for unity. However we understand the divine to be present in this world, moving in our midst, Christians throughout history have affirmed that the divine movement includes a movement toward unity, and baptism is one way they expressed this. In the ritual of baptism practiced by the earliest Christians, as well as the scriptures telling of Jesus’ baptism, we tell a story about a God who yearns for unity – and when we look at Matthew and Isaiah, I think we see this unity is comprised of three parts: First, God’s unity with us; second our unity with one another; and third our unity with the ministry and purposes of God in this world. In fact, all three of these are explicitly mentioned in our own baptismal liturgy, which is drawn from the earliest baptismal liturgies of the church.
Whenever we baptize someone in the church, our liturgy includes a statement on what we believe about baptism. This statement lays out these three aspects of unity found in the ritual of baptism. It begins, “In baptism God claims us…[by] uniting us with Jesus in [his life], death, and resurrection. In other words, the divine desire for unity with us is best shown in the incarnation, and it’s symbolized in the story of Jesus’ baptism. When John baptizes Jesus, Jesus – as a human manifestation of the divine – takes on the entire human condition.
The baptism of Jesus by John was a bit of an issue in the early church. You can tell by the squeamishness with which the story is told in all four gospels. Mark and Matthew relate the actual baptism in the passive voice, and put the focus squarely on the voice from heaven. Matthew adds to Mark the dialog in which John tries to talk Jesus out of being baptized by him. Luke says only that Jesus was baptized, but doesn't mention that it was John who did the baptism. The fourth gospel doesn't mention the baptism at all, only that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove.
These gospel writers believed baptism was for sinners and they really didn’t entertain the idea that Jesus was born a sinner in need of repentance just like everyone else. What was needed, they thought, was for John to be baptized by Jesus. Jesus asked to be baptized by John which was nothing less than God asking to be baptized by John – at least as the early Christians saw it. This upset their worldview and challenged their notions of God.
But still, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do tell the story of Jesus’ baptism – it was probably because they found something powerful and compelling in the baptism of Jesus, even if they didn’t know exactly why. Something about it resonated with what they knew of their own experience of Jesus. And I think it had to do with the profound unity they felt with Jesus, and through him, God.
This odd, disconcerting baptism was God's "full immersion" into the trials and tribulations of humankind. In solidarity with us, Jesus stands in line with sinners. God chooses unity with us instead of power over us. The baptism signals that Jesus' mission will not be punishment of sinners, but identification with sinners – identification with the fact that we live in a broken world in need of a God who understands and heals that brokenness. In Jesus God says, “Here I am – I’m with you…I am you.”
The baptism of Jesus is still, I think, an odd notion today that we at times try to explain away. We distance ourselves from Jesus and God by comparing our sinfulness and brokenness with divine perfection, just as John was doing with Jesus. We have no right to baptize Jesus with the same baptism we claim where we are cleansed of our sins. Yet we do, God says, because the divine is united with us and all that we experience. God enters fully into this broken world and thus needs what we need – yearns for what we yearn for. In baptism, we are united with God because in Jesus’ baptism, God chose to fully become one of us.
After proclaiming our unity with Christ in baptism, the liturgy goes on to say, “by water and the holy spirit we are made members of the church, the body of Christ.” To be clear, this does not mean members of a particular church… as in First Presbyterian Church, or St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, or St. Mary’s Catholic Church. We are made members of the church universal…members of the body of Christ – with all other Christians in this world. The water connects us intimately to God and then to one another in our common baptism.
In 1982, the World Council of Churches – a body that is constantly seeking unity of Christians across theological and denominational barriers – recognized the central role baptism could play in uniting us to one another. They drafted a beautiful document called, “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” in which they articulated a theology of baptism that could serve not just as common ground, but as the driving force for unity. They wrote in part,
“Our common baptism, which unites us to Christ in faith, is thus a basic bond of unity. We are one people and are called to confess and serve one [God] in each place and in all the world. The union with Christ which we share through baptism has important implications for Christian unity. When baptismal unity is realized in one holy, catholic, apostolic Church, a genuine Christian witness can be made to the healing and reconciling love of God. Therefore, our one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Of course the sad irony is that the sacrament of baptism itself has been a source of division between Christian people of different faith traditions. We exploit the differences in practice and understanding of baptism in order to claim we have the truth and others fall short: infant baptism versus believer’s baptism; immersion versus sprinkling; necessary for salvation versus symbolic of God’s saving grace. The World Council of Churches acknowledged this as well, and lamented the negative witness such division makes to our world. They wrote:
“The inability of the churches mutually to recognize their various practices of baptism as sharing in the one baptism, and their actual dividedness in spite of mutual baptismal recognition, have given dramatic visibility to the broken witness of the Church.”
Among a whole host of other divisions we Presbyterians experience with other Christians, our differences with the Catholic Church have played a starring role ever since the reformation. Often the way we deal with our differences has been a violation of the baptismal covenant far more than a model to the world of the unity we find because of our unity with the divine. This division has been expressed in large and small ways over the years…at times it is found in subtle prejudices we have about each other, or comments of disrespect for differing beliefs and practices. At times it has meant bloodshed and large-scale violence.
Through much of our history, Catholics and Presbyterians did not recognize each others’ baptisms as valid. Among other things, this meant that when someone would convert from one to the other, they had to be “re-baptized”. More disturbingly, inasmuch as baptism signifies ones’ entrance into the Body of Christ, we denied that the other was considered a part of Christ’s church because the baptism was not “real” or valid.
This changed somewhat around the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s, but it was only last month that our two denominations formally recognized each others’ baptism and wrote a joint document expressing in detail what this unity means in both theory and practice. Even if long overdue, this was a wonderful moment. One participant in the many years’ long conversation leading up to this agreement commented, “In the context of so much that divides us and upon which our churches may not agree, we remind ourselves that our fundamental unity begins and is rooted in our baptism.” In the document released last month, this ecumenical group wrote, “Christian baptism is a “basic bond of unity” that brings Christians “into union with Christ, with each other and with the Church of every time and place”. This “one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Baptism is a symbol of the divine drive for unity among each other, and this is a great example of the church finally participating in that divine drive.
Finally, our baptismal liturgy says that through the water and the spirit we are “joined to Christ’s ministry of love, peace, and justice.” The divine drive for unity does not end at unity with God and each other. Such unity implies a shared purpose in this world. God yearns to share with us the work of healing creation. And Matthew, drawing on the prophet Isaiah, paints this work in no uncertain terms. Later in the gospel, Matthew will quote today’s passage from Isaiah in order to describe what he believed Jesus’ life was about: Jesus came to proclaim justice to all nations…bring justice to this world…open the eyes of the blind, bring out prisoners from the dungeon. And because we are united to Jesus in our baptisms, we are united to this divine purpose as well.
When we are baptized, we are united to Jesus and all that he did. Not only does Jesus take on our lives, our trials and tribulations, but we take on his purpose – we dedicate ourselves to the divine hope for this world. Jesus announces this in response to John’s embarrassment about baptizing Jesus: Jesus says, “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness is the same word as “justice”. This baptism, Jesus tells John, is part of the plan of continuing God’s work for justice in the world. When Jesus is raised from the water, we are all raised with him, ready to embark on his ministry of healing, bringing good news to the poor, releasing captives. Baptism is our commissioning to a life of discipleship.
It may be hard to say what baptism means to us. Sacraments are kind of that way, really. They are meant to be meaningful, yet as symbols and rituals they speak truth beyond what we can verbalize. That is part of their power. They are gifts from God, not academic exercises. Yet in baptism, we see how driven God is toward unity. In baptism we are united with God, united with each other, and united with God’s purposes in this world. And this does not depend on whether we, as individuals, have been formally baptized. All of this was instituted at Jesus’ baptism for all of humanity. In actuality, this divine drive for unity has been present since the beginning of time – since all of creation was stamped with the divine imprint. Jesus is, for us, the most visible sign of this three-fold unity, and this unity holds for all of us, whether we have been baptized with water in a church or simply baptized through the waters in the womb at our birth. Baptism is a sign of something that is already true: God desires to be one with us, and desires our unity with each other and with God’s work for justice and peace in this world. Amen.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Off By Six Miles
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany: January 2, 2011
So, here we are: Epiphany Sunday. This is one of those days in the church calendar when the lectionary texts are the same every year. Every year on Epiphany Sunday we read the story of the three magi from the gospel of Matthew, along with Isaiah 60 from the Hebrew Bible. Ever since the 4th century, maybe even earlier, most of the Christian church has celebrated Epiphany 6 – 12 days after Christmas. And they used the story of the magi coming from a distant and foreign land, bringing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh to honor the new born Jesus – the future ruler of the Jews. How obvious, then, for those in the 20th century who designed our lectionary to connect Matthew 2 with Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60 tells of a day when people from other nations shall come to Jerusalem in response to the God of Israel’s greatness bringing with them their gold and frankincense. Those lectionary folks are pretty clever.
Or are they? The story in Matthew talks of gold and frankincense and people coming from all over to worship God, like Isaiah, but when the magi show up at King Herod’s palace looking for this new baby king, and Herod seeks counsel from the biblical scholars of his day as to where this special baby was born, it is not Isaiah that the scholars quote. Not even close. Isaiah is a grand vision, of a great Jerusalem and a great God. Wealth, pomp, and glory; it’s the majestic story of Zion! Instead, when Herod asked the scholars where this new “ruler of the Jews” was to be born, they answered by quoting an entirely different prophet – a prophet not included in our lectionary text today or any other year at Epiphany. They told him, this new king of the Jews was born “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6‘You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” This is a quote from Micah (5:2), and when king Herod tells the magi of this, they realize that they are six miles off the mark.
Bethlehem is six miles south of Jerusalem. The magi had come to Jerusalem looking for this king, expecting the king to be there; maybe even in the palace itself, because Jerusalem was the center of hope and possibility and power: it was Zion and that was where any new king would rule. It was exactly the right place to go – the seat of power – to look for a new ruler; except it wasn’t – they were wrong. They were off by six miles; just six miles – but in theological terms, those six miles could not be more significant, not to mention difficult to traverse.
The story of Epiphany is the story of these two human communities: Jerusalem, with its great pretentions, and powerful rulers, and Bethlehem, with its modest promise of a ruler that would shepherd, not exercise power over, the people. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish power – Bethlehem was a place of hurting and humble people. After Christmas, Epiphany offers us a choice…a major life choice. We can choose a “return to normalcy” where we look to the seats of power and majesty for our salvation. Or we can choose an alternative that comes in innocence and a hope that confounds our usual expectations. We can receive life given in vulnerability.
What would it mean for us to travel that six miles like the magi so willing did? Where is our seat of power – our Jerusalem – and where can we find Bethlehem where God is intensely, personally active – and where God is calling us to go? Bethlehem may be thousands of miles from here – but like the six miles between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it may be right in our back yard and we just haven’t traveled the six blocks to find God at work there. There are multiple worlds right here in Grinnell, multiple realities, and they are as different from one another as Bethlehem was from Jerusalem. And though blocks apart, the psychic, theological distance between those worlds is both large and hard to travel.
One reason the six miles is hard to travel is that we may be getting bogus directions. We’re listening to Isaiah 60 with all its grand promises and a God who sets things right once the people remember their covenant and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We are often told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, make the right decisions, take responsibility for their lives. But that is a view from Jerusalem the world in which we move and the place we look to for our worldview most of the time.
We believe we know what the proper rules are – what is necessary to govern life in our country. When elections come around, every candidate is telling us how they can make life better for us and our family. The idea is that we decide which candidate really can make our lives better. And then we vote for them. We seek ways to restore Jerusalem to its former glory – economic prosperity and rising prices on Wall Street…because that’s what benefits us. But what about those living in Bethlehem; most of the time, when leaders in Jerusalem work to make life better, it’s for the elite and well connected.
Jews living under Herod’s rule had no say in who governed, yet they were subject to whatever Herod decided – and he really was not that magnanimous. Today in the United States there are no kings, but the poor lack lobbyists, and they generally don’t come out to vote because their lives are too chaotic and overwhelming. Yet decisions are made all the time that affect them – for some who live right on the line, one change in law in Washington can mean the difference between having enough for housing and food and not having what they need.
Think about it: We know it’s a full time job to keep track of what bills are before Congress and how they will affect our lives so that we can lobby for what we want. That’s why there are full time lobbyists. People are paid to do that on behalf of corporations and interest groups. And there’s nothing wrong with that. A democracy depends on everyone having a voice and offering their opinion about what is best for the country. Everyone…the rich, the corporations, the small businesses, the middle class, the poor. Ah, the poor..Who is watching out for the poor in the Bethlehem’s of this world? They are not a bloc of organized voters, they are not an interest group hiring lobbyists and staying on top of what happens in Washington, or their state or city for that matter. Their voice is absent. Yet they are subject to the whims of the rulers; who sometimes make life a little easier, and sometimes are like King Herod, living off the backs of the poor in order to better the lives of those who vote.
Our system – our worldview – is all based on looking to Jerusalem for our salvation. We believe we have power over our lives because we can vote and lobby and write and seek our own betterment. We believe – and perhaps rightly – that system can work for us and it’s ours to shape. But whether things are going well or horribly, our system will never protect the poor from the whims of government. For that, we need to turn to the God of Bethlehem. It’s easy for us to look to Jerusalem, to trust in the leaders who are, at least ostensibly, working in our interest. We’re comfortable there. What would it mean to make the six mile trek to Bethlehem to find God and learn a new system that protects those God most favors…the poor?
The magi come to this other world of Bethlehem where the poor and humble live, because this is where they are told the new ruler would be – the one who would replace the current leaders and systems of oppression. They come to give of themselves, and to pay homage. When they get there they see – they understand – God rules not like Herod, but rules through vulnerability and for the vulnerable. It is that God, that ruler, we are to look to for salvation, shalom – wholeness, restoration, justice and peace. They got it, and they are changed…no longer will they look to Herod for answers, only God-born-in-a-manger. They are changed.
We know this because when they go home the text is very careful to tell us they go home by a different road: They do not go through Jerusalem. They are done with Jerusalem. They are done with business as usual. They are ready to go to the margins of the world and be a part of God’s work. We have to go to Bethlehem to see for ourselves. We have to spend time in world unlike ours. We have to find those places that are not well served by Jerusalem and its rulers. We have to see what it means to be a child living in poverty, unable to change their situation; parents without work because the powerful were careless with ethics. We need to go spend time listening to families and seeing where they live. Then and there we will see God and understand how God responds to Jerusalem and its rulers. But we have to go – we have to go the six miles.
Some are called to relocate in Bethlehem, to relocate to those places where vulnerability reigns supreme and live and work there. But most, like the magi, are called to go to Bethlehem and then return home, but by a different route – changed by the trip to the whole new world six miles away. Many of us will continue to live right here in Grinnell. But from our current location, we can choose to be ruled by those in Jerusalem – who allow the poor to suffer and keep the vulnerable down, or by the God of Bethlehem who is with the poor and shepherding us to a new life.
What does this choice look like? If we are changed by our six mile journey and we choose the new way of life, how do we extricate ourselves from the world and power of Jerusalem in order to be a part of God’s work in the Bethlehem right in our own back yard? How do we, like the magi, move ourselves outside the reach of the King Herods of the day? I think the King Herods are more difficult to identify these days. Here in the United States it’s not some all powerful dictator who controls every aspect of our lives. But the kings are there – those things that not only control us, but those things and systems that keep the suffering suffering, and the powerful powerful. These kings are more subtle: like the king of needing to be accepted, or the king of money, or the king of perfectionism, or the king of violence. All of which can have the same daily power over us as King Herod had over the people of his time. But when we travel the six miles, when we see a God who works in ways so different from these other kings, when we see what allegiance to our kings is doing to other people, we see the choice and find the courage to reject our kings and accept the way of God born-in-Bethlehem.
I think if we travel the six miles, spend time with the poor…spend time in Bethlehem…it will compel us outside of ourselves – we will move out from under the things that rule us because we find life and hope in the God we meet at the manger. And once we have been there and decided to give over our lives and world riches to this new ruler, when we turn to come home, we will know a new way to live, a new way of being in this world. Amen.
Epiphany: January 2, 2011
So, here we are: Epiphany Sunday. This is one of those days in the church calendar when the lectionary texts are the same every year. Every year on Epiphany Sunday we read the story of the three magi from the gospel of Matthew, along with Isaiah 60 from the Hebrew Bible. Ever since the 4th century, maybe even earlier, most of the Christian church has celebrated Epiphany 6 – 12 days after Christmas. And they used the story of the magi coming from a distant and foreign land, bringing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh to honor the new born Jesus – the future ruler of the Jews. How obvious, then, for those in the 20th century who designed our lectionary to connect Matthew 2 with Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60 tells of a day when people from other nations shall come to Jerusalem in response to the God of Israel’s greatness bringing with them their gold and frankincense. Those lectionary folks are pretty clever.
Or are they? The story in Matthew talks of gold and frankincense and people coming from all over to worship God, like Isaiah, but when the magi show up at King Herod’s palace looking for this new baby king, and Herod seeks counsel from the biblical scholars of his day as to where this special baby was born, it is not Isaiah that the scholars quote. Not even close. Isaiah is a grand vision, of a great Jerusalem and a great God. Wealth, pomp, and glory; it’s the majestic story of Zion! Instead, when Herod asked the scholars where this new “ruler of the Jews” was to be born, they answered by quoting an entirely different prophet – a prophet not included in our lectionary text today or any other year at Epiphany. They told him, this new king of the Jews was born “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6‘You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” This is a quote from Micah (5:2), and when king Herod tells the magi of this, they realize that they are six miles off the mark.
Bethlehem is six miles south of Jerusalem. The magi had come to Jerusalem looking for this king, expecting the king to be there; maybe even in the palace itself, because Jerusalem was the center of hope and possibility and power: it was Zion and that was where any new king would rule. It was exactly the right place to go – the seat of power – to look for a new ruler; except it wasn’t – they were wrong. They were off by six miles; just six miles – but in theological terms, those six miles could not be more significant, not to mention difficult to traverse.
The story of Epiphany is the story of these two human communities: Jerusalem, with its great pretentions, and powerful rulers, and Bethlehem, with its modest promise of a ruler that would shepherd, not exercise power over, the people. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish power – Bethlehem was a place of hurting and humble people. After Christmas, Epiphany offers us a choice…a major life choice. We can choose a “return to normalcy” where we look to the seats of power and majesty for our salvation. Or we can choose an alternative that comes in innocence and a hope that confounds our usual expectations. We can receive life given in vulnerability.
What would it mean for us to travel that six miles like the magi so willing did? Where is our seat of power – our Jerusalem – and where can we find Bethlehem where God is intensely, personally active – and where God is calling us to go? Bethlehem may be thousands of miles from here – but like the six miles between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it may be right in our back yard and we just haven’t traveled the six blocks to find God at work there. There are multiple worlds right here in Grinnell, multiple realities, and they are as different from one another as Bethlehem was from Jerusalem. And though blocks apart, the psychic, theological distance between those worlds is both large and hard to travel.
One reason the six miles is hard to travel is that we may be getting bogus directions. We’re listening to Isaiah 60 with all its grand promises and a God who sets things right once the people remember their covenant and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We are often told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, make the right decisions, take responsibility for their lives. But that is a view from Jerusalem the world in which we move and the place we look to for our worldview most of the time.
We believe we know what the proper rules are – what is necessary to govern life in our country. When elections come around, every candidate is telling us how they can make life better for us and our family. The idea is that we decide which candidate really can make our lives better. And then we vote for them. We seek ways to restore Jerusalem to its former glory – economic prosperity and rising prices on Wall Street…because that’s what benefits us. But what about those living in Bethlehem; most of the time, when leaders in Jerusalem work to make life better, it’s for the elite and well connected.
Jews living under Herod’s rule had no say in who governed, yet they were subject to whatever Herod decided – and he really was not that magnanimous. Today in the United States there are no kings, but the poor lack lobbyists, and they generally don’t come out to vote because their lives are too chaotic and overwhelming. Yet decisions are made all the time that affect them – for some who live right on the line, one change in law in Washington can mean the difference between having enough for housing and food and not having what they need.
Think about it: We know it’s a full time job to keep track of what bills are before Congress and how they will affect our lives so that we can lobby for what we want. That’s why there are full time lobbyists. People are paid to do that on behalf of corporations and interest groups. And there’s nothing wrong with that. A democracy depends on everyone having a voice and offering their opinion about what is best for the country. Everyone…the rich, the corporations, the small businesses, the middle class, the poor. Ah, the poor..Who is watching out for the poor in the Bethlehem’s of this world? They are not a bloc of organized voters, they are not an interest group hiring lobbyists and staying on top of what happens in Washington, or their state or city for that matter. Their voice is absent. Yet they are subject to the whims of the rulers; who sometimes make life a little easier, and sometimes are like King Herod, living off the backs of the poor in order to better the lives of those who vote.
Our system – our worldview – is all based on looking to Jerusalem for our salvation. We believe we have power over our lives because we can vote and lobby and write and seek our own betterment. We believe – and perhaps rightly – that system can work for us and it’s ours to shape. But whether things are going well or horribly, our system will never protect the poor from the whims of government. For that, we need to turn to the God of Bethlehem. It’s easy for us to look to Jerusalem, to trust in the leaders who are, at least ostensibly, working in our interest. We’re comfortable there. What would it mean to make the six mile trek to Bethlehem to find God and learn a new system that protects those God most favors…the poor?
The magi come to this other world of Bethlehem where the poor and humble live, because this is where they are told the new ruler would be – the one who would replace the current leaders and systems of oppression. They come to give of themselves, and to pay homage. When they get there they see – they understand – God rules not like Herod, but rules through vulnerability and for the vulnerable. It is that God, that ruler, we are to look to for salvation, shalom – wholeness, restoration, justice and peace. They got it, and they are changed…no longer will they look to Herod for answers, only God-born-in-a-manger. They are changed.
We know this because when they go home the text is very careful to tell us they go home by a different road: They do not go through Jerusalem. They are done with Jerusalem. They are done with business as usual. They are ready to go to the margins of the world and be a part of God’s work. We have to go to Bethlehem to see for ourselves. We have to spend time in world unlike ours. We have to find those places that are not well served by Jerusalem and its rulers. We have to see what it means to be a child living in poverty, unable to change their situation; parents without work because the powerful were careless with ethics. We need to go spend time listening to families and seeing where they live. Then and there we will see God and understand how God responds to Jerusalem and its rulers. But we have to go – we have to go the six miles.
Some are called to relocate in Bethlehem, to relocate to those places where vulnerability reigns supreme and live and work there. But most, like the magi, are called to go to Bethlehem and then return home, but by a different route – changed by the trip to the whole new world six miles away. Many of us will continue to live right here in Grinnell. But from our current location, we can choose to be ruled by those in Jerusalem – who allow the poor to suffer and keep the vulnerable down, or by the God of Bethlehem who is with the poor and shepherding us to a new life.
What does this choice look like? If we are changed by our six mile journey and we choose the new way of life, how do we extricate ourselves from the world and power of Jerusalem in order to be a part of God’s work in the Bethlehem right in our own back yard? How do we, like the magi, move ourselves outside the reach of the King Herods of the day? I think the King Herods are more difficult to identify these days. Here in the United States it’s not some all powerful dictator who controls every aspect of our lives. But the kings are there – those things that not only control us, but those things and systems that keep the suffering suffering, and the powerful powerful. These kings are more subtle: like the king of needing to be accepted, or the king of money, or the king of perfectionism, or the king of violence. All of which can have the same daily power over us as King Herod had over the people of his time. But when we travel the six miles, when we see a God who works in ways so different from these other kings, when we see what allegiance to our kings is doing to other people, we see the choice and find the courage to reject our kings and accept the way of God born-in-Bethlehem.
I think if we travel the six miles, spend time with the poor…spend time in Bethlehem…it will compel us outside of ourselves – we will move out from under the things that rule us because we find life and hope in the God we meet at the manger. And once we have been there and decided to give over our lives and world riches to this new ruler, when we turn to come home, we will know a new way to live, a new way of being in this world. Amen.
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