Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18
On the Friday after Thanksgiving one year, I was getting desperate to come up with an idea for Sunday’s children’s sermon. A children’s sermon is where the congregation gets to watch the pastor try to explain the lessons in words a child can understand. It was the first Sunday in Advent, so I found a large empty box, wrapped it in Christmas paper, and placed it on the chancel. On Sunday I talked to the children about what it is like to wait to open gifts at Christmas, and that Advent is a time of waiting.
That worked so well that I kept the box there on the second Sunday of Advent. By the third Sunday of Advent even the adults were asking, “What’s in the box?” The week before Christmas Mary said, “You’re running out of Advent and you still don’t know what to put in the box, do you? Here’s an idea, call Lamb’s Farm and get a lamb for Christmas Sunday. Most of these children have never even been to the zoo. A lamb would be a surprise worth waiting for and it could teach about Advent and Christmas.” I told her that would never work, but on the following Saturday the senior Deacon of the church and I were in my Ford Pinto station wagon driving back from Lamb’s farm.
We’ve all seen pictures of Jesus holding a little lamb in his arms. What you have to understand about this story is that lambs are born in February or March. By Christmas they can weigh nearly 200 pounds. I was driving, the senior Deacon was sitting in the passenger seat, and the lamb was standing up in the back with her head about here, which made her first “bahhhh” a surprise. Cars passed us and the passengers thought we were quite a sight.
When the children opened the box on Christmas Sunday, it was full of little bags of Purina Lamb Chow. That confused them until Mary walked in leading the lamb. It was worth the wait like Advent, and the lamb was a real hit at the children’s Christmas party after the service. As for me, I got a taste of what it is like to care for sheep, if only for a day and a night.
When I read today’s Gospel my first thought was to remember the way the lamb reacted when she saw our dog. The dog was a shepherd but looked like a wolf, at least that’s what the lamb thought. The lamb immediately put me between her and the dog. If the dog was here, the lamb would be here. If the dog was there, the lamb would be there. The dog thought the whole thing was great fun, but the lamb was pretty serious about it. Eventually the two of them got used to each other, but it took me awhile to get out of the middle.
Maybe the hired hand knew how the sheep would react when they saw a wolf, and that is why he ran away. In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not a shepherd, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf seizes the sheep and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.”
We can imagine the event that led Jesus to make up this parable. A shepherd and a hired hand are out in the field. A pack of wolves appears and the hired hand runs away, but the shepherd stands his ground.
In all of the parables Jesus puts two things next to each other so that comparing them we can meet the living, mysterious, God. There is the prodigal Son and the older son. There is the good Samaritan and the passers-by. Today there is the Good Shepherd and the hired hand.
Jesus is not criticizing hired laborers or people who work for wages. We can only see the world through our own eyes, and the hired hand sees the sheep as his job. His top priority is to put together enough income to feed his family. He will do his job, but the sheep are not his first concern, and he’s unlikely to take great risks to protect them. If the hired hand sees a pack of wolves coming, and knows the sheep will instinctively get behind him, his first thought will be about his family. If he loses this job as a result, he will hire on to another shepherd.
The shepherd has a different motive. The sheep belong to him. They are his livelihood and he is theirs. The sheep know his voice and follow him, and he will put his life on the line to protect them. If the shepherd sees a pack of wolves coming, the words of the 23rd Psalm, which we sang today, will come true: “your rod and staff – they comfort me.” The shepherd will pick up his staff which has a crook at one end and a rod of iron at the other and he will put himself between the wolves and the sheep.
Maybe you read in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago about 56 churches in Roseland whose pastors and members have vowed to walk the streets of their neighborhood every night from 9pm to 2am from now until October to stop the violence. Members of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church sang, “I am on the Battlefield for My Lord,” and the Pastor, a Rev. Cusick, was asked, “Isn’t your congregation in harm’s way if you do this?” He said, “When people are out in the streets, when their pastors are out, they don’t shoot. They stand down. We want to give them a peaceful way to stand down.” Hearing that story don’t you picture of a shepherd standing between the wolves and the sheep?
If there is a single message God wants us to hear from all of our lessons this morning it is this: The Risen Christ turns hired hands into shepherds. Beyond the parable in this morning’s Gospel we hear that in the promise of the resurrection, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, lays down his life for us.
The second lesson is from the first letter of John: The same person who wrote the Gospel, and it’s almost as if he is continuing his train of thought from this morning’s Gospel: “Jesus laid down his life for us, so we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” He’s not expecting us to become martyrs here. If he was he would have used different words in the original language. He does mean to say that Christian love is costly and risky. Listen again to the example he gives: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Christian love is costly. Christian love is risky. It costs us to give our money, and we take the risk of not having enough. It costs us to give our time, and we risk that important things will not be finished. When someone has done us wrong and we have every right to retaliate but we don’t, we take the risk that we will lose face. When we go out of our way for the well being of someone else, we lay down our lives and follow the Good Shepherd, who lay down his life for us.
The Risen Christ turns hired hands into shepherds. You can also see this in our first lesson, which is part of the same story Pastor Monte talked about in last week’s sermon. Not long ago, Peter acted like a hired hand, but just look at him today. Before the same authorities who condemned Jesus, Peter says, “let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that a man was healed by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead.”
Today is the Fourth Sunday in the season of Easter, a season when we say the words, “Christ is Risen” a lot. We may mean different things when we say these words. We may mean the resurrection of the body – that Thomas really did have the opportunity to “place his fingers in the nail holes,” and that there are realities our scientific world view cannot explain. We may mean these words in a spiritual sense: That Jesus is a living, loving presence with individual believers today. We may mean that Jesus lives through the community gathered in his name. But the best evidence of the Resurrection are the everyday acts of love as followers of the Good Shepherd lay down their lives for others, because the Good Shepherd lay down his life for us. The Risen Christ turns hired hands into shepherds, proclaiming to an unbelieving world that Christ the Lord is Risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Amen.
Ed. Sermon Preached by Rev. Dr. David Henry
SERMONS BLOG
HIRED HANDS AND SHEPHERDS
Encircled and Embraced In Christ Jesus
Easter 3B-12
April 22, 2012
One of the best things about being a parent of small children is that moment when your child climbs into your lap and melts into your arms. It could be because they’re tired, or cold or even sad. It could be because you’re reading a story, watching television or just talking.
Whatever the reason, I find that it’s a sacred, surprising moment of intimacy and honor for me. For one thing, I seldom seem to know when it will happen before it does. Yesterday, Leah nearly knocked me over as I was kneeling down to tie her baseball cleats and she climbed up on my knee.
It’s a profound honor to be that one to encircle their little bodies with a warm sheltering love and say better than words can ever say, ‘Yes everything’s okay. I got you.’ It’s a sacred moment when I become vaguely aware of the awesome responsibility and trust God has placed in my hands and arms. This how we live out the baptismal covenant to love God and neighbor. This is how we become the Body of Christ alive in the world. This is how we make a difference today in Christ’s name we hope is carried forward for a lifetime –as in a whole other lifetime of a child. This is how we become living sign of God’s grace. We give ourselves, our bodies, our hands, our voice, our energy and whatever else we may have over in loving service to God in Christ’s name. Person to person, to person we give and receive grace. Holding one another in our arms we hear something deep within ourselves saying: ‘I am with you just as Christ is with you, wherever you go and for all your days may you believe and know you are a beloved child of God.’ Everything’s okay. I got you.
Today we again heard Jesus say, “Peace be with you.” Here, in the resurrection God was saying that the earth still matters, you and I matter, that love and justice matter, that humanity, in all its ambiguity and complexity, is still fearfully and wonderfully God-made. Although you have undertaken to make war against God with the ingenious evil of the cross and the destructive power of death, by that very same cross, God now shows us how to love and through the cross extends an invitation to enter with Jesus into the undying life of God as full partners sowing seeds of grace in the world. But the disciples react with shock and amazement as if they were seeing a ghost. The transition from discipleship to apostleship took a little time.
According to Luke’s re-counting of the church’s first hours Easter Sunday was a busy day. First, the women discover the empty tomb. They saw two angels who tell them Jesus has been raised. When they tell the disciples; Peter goes to check it out for himself, yet none but the women believe.
Later that day, Jesus accompanies two other disciples who are headed home from Jerusalem despite hearing what the women had said. In their grief and sense of failure Jesus comes to walk beside them on the road to Emmaus. Yet they don’t recognize him by his appearance; until he broke the bread with them at suppertime. Just as suddenly as they realize that it was Jesus, he disappears. So, immediately they journey back to Jerusalem, and discovered that Jesus had also appeared to Peter, convincing them all that Jesus was indeed alive! It’s at that very moment, Luke says, while they were still talking about all of this, that Jesus appeared and said “Peace be with you.” After presenting them with evidence that he had been physically raised, Jesus commissioned them and after forty days ascended into heaven. (R. Alan Culpepper, NIB, p. 752-3)
According to Luke, Jesus kept this up for forty days. Slowly, surely, Jesus taught the disciples to look for him, to expect him, to wait for encounter with him in all kinds of new ways such as in the burning of their hearts, or pages of scripture, or in the breaking of the bread, or where ever two or three of them had gathered in Christ’s name, or in the face and voice of a stranger. Jesus opened their eyes. Jesus opened their fisted minds. The whole point of Jesus’ physical presence with the disciples was not to prove a point about his earthly body, but about ours. Jesus taught them that together, they were now Christ’s body. They were Christ’s hands and voice. We do God’s work with our hands.
We become filled with the power of the Holy Spirit as we enter into the life of Christ Jesus. Now we have strength to endure the struggle, now we have dignity to overcome any insult, now we have courage even in the face of death because our lives are encircled by the life of God. We are joined together in the embrace of God. We are molded into one with God, part of each other and part of the undying life. Now we are workers with God bringing in the kingdom here on earth as in heaven whenever we dry a tear, comfort those who mourn, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, stand with victims of injustice, or hold a little child in our arms.
Jesus was teaching the disciples to look for him in their hearts, among one another, among strangers. The physical presence of Christ was being transferred from the body of Jesus to the Body of Christ—literally enveloping, encircling all who call upon the name of Jesus.
We can see just how profound this transformation was by comparing what we read about Peter in our gospel and what we heard about him from the book of Acts. Peter heals the crippled man in the name of Jesus. Once he was afraid to tell anyone he knew Jesus. Now, he boldly calls him the ‘author of life’. All of us find new strength, new purpose, new life in the undying life of Christ Jesus. Everything’s okay. I’ve got you. You are a child of God.
The ancient Celtic practice of the caim, or encircling prayer, is a beautiful testament to the blessing and invitation of the resurrection to enter into the shelter God’s grace in Jesus Christ. To awaken to God’s presence before they traveled or as they faced any challenge, they drew a circle around themselves and say a prayer in Jesus’ name. Like the embrace between parent and child, it’s meant to remind us that wherever we are, God’s wise, healing and protective presence is with us. Christ is alive, transforming souls and cells and offering protection from harm, whenever the name of Jesus is invoked.
As Kari and I leave Chicago for travel in Europe beginning this Thursday, the practice of the caim, or encircling prayer provides the comfort in the knowledge that no matter what happens, nothing can remove us from embrace of God. As we journey with Christ, I pray also that my mind and my eyes may be open both to see Christ and receive Christ among the people we meet and the places we visit. As we at Immanuel enter into prayerful deliberation about how best to invest the resources of the Lois Kransz estate leading up to the special congregational meeting called for May 13th, I pray the Celtic caim may help us speak our conscience even as we strive to listen to those with whom we disagree, trusting that God is with us in this decision.
Casting a caim is simple. You draw an invisible circle around yourself. The ancient Celts did it with their right index finger by extending their arm towards the ground and turning clockwise. As you do this you seek to be aware that you are safe and encompassed by the love of God: that you are encircled, enfolded and protected.
There are many examples of such prayers. You can make up one of your own. I like one attributed to St. Patrick:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity.
Everything’s okay. I’ve got you. You are a child of God, members of a royal priesthood, heirs of the kingdom—the body of the living Christ alive and at work in God. Amen.
Be Thou My Vision
Easter 2B-12
April 15, 2012
I don’t know whether you know it or not but I have two younger sisters who are twins. Growing up, nobody could tell them apart—except for me, my mom and—most of the time-my dad. Twins, as you may know, often develop a private language. They compete for everything. I think my sisters were constantly in a race to determine who could be first to claim a particular character trait. Yvonne had long hair, so Michaele had to have short hair. Michaele was into sports, so Yvonne played the violin.
Scripture says that Thomas had a twin too. In fact, in the bible, Thomas is called ‘the twin’ and not Thomas the doubter. Our gospel never uses the word doubt –not once. Jesus does not chastise or judge Thomas for asking tough questions. Instead, we are invited to wonder about Thomas’ brother or sister. Trouble is, the bible doesn’t tell us anything about this mysterious sibling. But I have a hunch.
The Presbyterian preacher and theologian Frederick Buechner has written he’s pretty sure that he himself is “the other twin.” Now, I wonder if I am. After all, Thomas appears to be just like one of us. He wants to know what really happened. Thomas seems to have very modern sensibilities. He will not be carried away by “appearances.” He is the skeptic, who will only believe the testimony of his senses.
Thomas’ words to the disciples are emphatic: “Unless I see on his hands the very mark of the nails and put my finger right into the very mark of the nails, and put my hand right into the very (part of the) side, I will never, never believe.” (V. 25, literal translation)
Today’s scripture is John’s invitation to place ourselves with Thomas among the first disciples. After all, many of us could be doppelgangers for Thomas. We might as well be twins. Like Thomas, we proudly privilege the vision of our eyes, over the vision of our heart. Yet there are times, scripture cautions, when that bias keeps us from seeing the whole truth.
My eyes tell me that I am never doing enough. My eyes weigh up the needs of our community and against the small resources we can muster and lead me to feel overwhelmed. My eyes count the empty spaces among the pews, take note of my increasingly gray hair, or catalogue all of your idiosyncrasies shortcomings (at least as I perceive them) and you know what? Pretty quickly, God has completely left the picture. I notice that suddenly, I am alone with my worries and anxieties and it’s as if my petty concerns have expanded to become the whole wide world. Like Thomas, we become locked in a world without Easter, without the risen Christ.
According to Buechner, our eyes only see the “facts”, while faith instructs us also to take in the vision our hearts in order to see the whole “truth” –the facts plus the promises of God. Only a week ago, we walked with Jesus through the Three Days. At the great vigil we accompanied Jesus from death into life. Each of us became witnesses of the resurrection to roll away the stone of our fears and anxieties.
We are not alone. Our meager strengths are joined and multiplied with those of countless others in Christ. Our brief span of days is joined with the endless life of God. The Holy Spirit is with us and among us my brothers and sisters. Despite our shortcomings, the grace of God abounds.
John’s gospel invites us enter into the story of the first disciples, as though it were our own story. Christ is risen! [He is risen, Alleluia!] Yet on that first Sunday, the disciples were still lost in fear and confusion, hidden behind locked doors in a house somewhere in the middle of Jerusalem.
For them, hours passed like days, filled with brooding, worry and self-doubt. The dark little room where the disciples were hiding became as dark and lifeless as the grave. Huddled together, paralyzed in their inactivity, they were as good as dead already—just waiting around for Temple police to come along and make it official.
Then suddenly, unbelievably, in the midst of a living death, the disciples came to life again. They were filled not only with life, but with joy. They possessed a confidence that made them truly bold. They no longer feared death. They had a powerful kind of vision that came from both their hearts and their eyes. They could see now with their hearts they were part of the life of God and each other. They could see now with their eyes how much work still needed to be done. They could understand, now, that they shared in this fellowship and this work with God and one another and they were filled with joy.
The locked door of their tomb burst open. They returned to the streets. They entered the Temple teaching in Jesus’ name. They sparked a movement that traveled by ship, on horseback, on foot and by word of mouth throughout the ancient world. They entered into communion with God and into compassionate, just community among themselves and their neighbors.
It is significant for us that Thomas fell to his knees before the risen Christ and confesses “My Lord and my God” apparently without plunging his hands into Jesus’ side. Thomas, the modern skeptic, the one who demands to see and touch; the one who had the opportunity to do both, in a single moment discovered it was not actually necessary to touch in order to believe.
Thomas went from seeing with his eyes only, to perceiving also with his heart. After a period of doubt and disbelief following the execution of Jesus, and despite threats from the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus’ followers became convinced that “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 2:32, 4:20). The first disciples discovered what Jesus had been trying to tell them all along, they were a part of the undying life of God through faith in Christ Jesus—and so are you and me.
The unschooled and ordinary followers of Jesus were not much to look at, but that didn’t matter. The first Christians broke down social barriers. They disregarded religious taboos that separated people as ritually clean and unclean, worthy and unworthy, respectable and disrespectable. Their strength—and ours—is in the Lord. They proclaimed their message with courage and boldness. They no longer saw themselves as the world saw them. Instead, they exchanged their narrow personal perception with the vision of Christ, a way of seeing that combines the heart and eyes:
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was with them all. There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need (Acts 4:32–35). (Daniel Clendenin)
We could be twins with Thomas. Turns out, that’s not only an indictment. It’s also a promise. Thomas’ story and that of the first disciples is our story. The joy and promise of their lives has become our inheritance. Christ our vision, Christ our heart, our hands, our voices—our eyes. Christ our light and our life, Christ our strength and our hope is here again among us today. The doors to our deathly fears are broken open. “Peace be with you” Jesus says. “As the father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). The Holy Spirit is upon you to love and serve the Lord. Amen.
The Beginning of the Good News
Easter B-12
April 8, 2012
Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia). Today’s gospel has put us in a bind. It’s Easter Sunday and here we have the only resurrection story in the Bible where Jesus never actually makes an appearance. If that were not enough, the women disciples utterly fail. They are seized with terror and amazement. They run away and say nothing to anyone because they are too afraid. And so, today, we are left to celebrate Easter with a resurrection story without Jesus that ends in failure.
To be honest, Mark’s gospel has been a source of embarrassment to Christians throughout the centuries. Our bible contains two alternative endings that represent the attempt of later writers to remedy the problem. But today we are left to make sense of the gospel Mark actually wrote. The very last word in Mark’s gospel—the word that lingers in the air as the gospel is finished—is the word ‘phobos’ –or fear. Makes you wonder how we all got here doesn’t it? Lord knows.
Lord knows why you’re here, could it be because the Lord called you?
One of the great privileges about standing in the pulpit, or behind the altar, or at the baptismal font is that every Sunday, I can look out and see you. I can almost take attendance from up here –except I’ve noticed that some of you have started to move around –carrying forward a faith practice we began last year in that 21 week period we called, Opened by Grace. Having the honor to stand here and to be your pastor, I not only see you, but mostly, I know your name. I know your story. I know a little bit about how you got here.
I know some of you walked. Some rode your bike, some lucky ones rode in a stroller, some drove, others took the bus. At least one person arrived by electric scooter.
Lord knows how we got here. Some of you came through those doors when your spouse left, or when the kids came, after a lay off, or a chronic illness. Some of you arrived after your church closed or after they kicked you out. Some of you are here because this is where your parents brought you. This is the place you were baptized, confirmed, and married. Many of you share this place with loved ones now gone and buried. The Lord knows why you’re here. The Lord called you.
I still remember the day I came to Immanuel back in 2003 before I was called to be your pastor. After 15 years of marriage, I was going through a divorce. I didn’t have any place to live until pastor Goldstein, who I barely knew, invited me to stay with him in the parsonage. I remember how ashamed I felt to be a divorced pastor in those days. I remember how conflicted I felt as a father. My son was only two years old and already, I felt like I’d failed.
I sat right back there. As worship began I remember feeling joy and relief like a shipwreck survivor might feel at waking up on the shore and realizing he was still alive. God’s love is so bright it exposes all our flaws. The weight of God’s truth breaks through the half-truths, the-should-be, could-be’s of our life to make room for God’s grace. For some of us, unfortunately, that means our lives will be broken all to pieces. The good news is that God is with us to help put the pieces back together again.
The Lord knows why you’re here. The Lord knows where and how you’re broken. The Lord knows about your fears, your bad habits, your disappointments, your limitations and your exhaustion. God knows your only human. God wants you anyway. As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards,not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise…if we are to boast, we boast in the Lord. (I Cor. 1: 26-27a; 31)
(Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, alleluia.) The meaning of the resurrection is not limited to Christ. It begins here. It begins anew each day, starting with us. A new life in Christ awaits us. It is a life lived in community with each other and in communion with God filled with joy and thanksgiving because the truth is we could not reach this place by ourselves. It is a life that goes beyond today and stretches into forever. It is a life bigger than our selves. It is a life filled with urgency and purpose, creativity and beauty, laughter and joy. It is a life of compassion for the stranger, forgiveness for those who have wronged us, and justice for the oppressed beginning with ourselves.
The empty tomb of Mark’s gospel proclaims the promise of new life and the command to follow the one who is always ahead of us. The angel said to the woman, “He is not here! But go, and tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (Mark 16:6b-7).
When I think about my own life, it makes sense to me that none of what the angel said made sense to them. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome quietly went to Jesus that first Sunday morning to anoint a corpse, not to witness a resurrection. They were preoccupied, not with hopeful anticipation, but with their worries about who would roll away the heavy stone. They seem to have all but forgotten, or at least to have discounted, what Jesus had told them: “After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Mark 14:28).
Sometimes we can be too focused on our own anxiety and frustrations to understand. We can be like those who hear but do not listen –those who see but do not comprehend. The heavy stone of our own fear seals us in the tomb though we have heard the message again and again: (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!)
Mark’s gospel comes to an abrupt and disappointing end as the women fled the tomb, seized by terror, amazement, and fear. All the people who should have known better, can’t be counted on.
Yet, there is one other person who has seen and heard everything Jesus said and did. One other witness who heard Jesus’ predictions and watched them come true—one other who listened to the amazing news at the empty tomb and heard the order to go and tell. The point of Mark’s gospel and it’s strange ending is that witness of the resurrection is you and me.
Mark’s open-ended gospel threatens to end in failure, precisely to make the point that the burden of responsibility for telling the good news about Jesus is squarely on our shoulders. How did we get here? Today’s gospel promises that God meets us at the point of the brokenness of our lives. God knows we are only human. God wants each of us anyway. We may not always see it, may not always understand it, but God is with us. (David Lose)
You’re here because God loves you. You’re here because the Lord called you. It’s the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ—it starts with you and me.
Maundy Thursday and Three Days
Pastor Larry Kamphausen of Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler and the Community of the Holy Trinity preached at the Maundy Thursday Service last night for the Three Days.
The sermon can be found here
What Can One Person Do?
Passion Sunday B-12
April 1, 2012
We arrived by bus in Jerusalem at 3:00 am. Bone tired and surprised, we stumbled through the Old City carrying our own luggage. My own bag weighed 70 pounds. A street sign posted on the wall of the narrow alleyway read Via Dolorosa, The Way of Grief. We were retracing the path Christ walked to the cross, in reverse.
I could not walk without being sensitive to that time, 2,000 years ago, when Christ stumbled exhaustedly along the same route carrying with him the burden of human folly.
We were thirty college kids traveling abroad in 1984. Our destination was the Ecce Homo Hospice, stage one in the Stations of the Cross—a convent, turned Guest House built atop the Roman garrison where Pilate held Jesus for questioning. The next day I learned the ruins of that fortress had been excavated from beneath the foundation. One of the nuns led us down a narrow stairway into the old structure.
There, enormous tunnels stretched out in different directions beneath the Old City. They served as cisterns that still gather a knee deep, year-round supply of rainwater; and as quick response routes for Roman soldiers to rapidly arrive at the western wall of the Temple, or at one of the gates of the Old City whenever there was trouble.
I remember sitting upon original paving stones of the Roman garrison that still bear the markings of bored Roman soldiers, etched in the floor which they used to play some sort of game to pass the time. I don’t know—to cast lots? I got a sense of just how awesome and sophisticated the powers arrayed against Jesus had been, and just how hopeless it all must have seemed for Jesus to oppose them. What could one man, one person, do that could possibly make any difference? Cynicism and despair are the traveling companions of hopelessness.
Sometimes, like the disciples, we can be taken in by the grandeur of wealth and power, who with a mixture of awe and pride remarked to Jesus ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ (Mark 13.1). But we all know, don’t we that even such a grand, modern city as our own, will immediately turn a cold shoulder the very moment you run out of money. If you don’t think so, try figuring out where to sleep, what to eat, how to clean up, stay warm, and be safe when all you have is $5 in your pocket.
The problems Jesus faced are still with us today—except it’s not Caesar anymore but big money that’s king. Big money buys our political candidates. Big money runs the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Big money determines what legislation makes it out of committee in Washington. Big money decides what you and your kids watch on T.V. Big money knows that fear and polarization is good for business.
Big money doesn’t care how many poor kids kill each other—since 2008 more than 600 children have died due to gun violence in Chicago alone. Big money doesn’t care that the State budget is broke, our schools are underfunded, or roads and bridges need repair. Big money is interested in just one thing: more big money. Big money wants a tax break.
It’s appalling when one of the most profitable corporations in Chicago and the nation, for example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which made nearly $2 billion dollars in profits in 2011, is awarded $77 million dollars in tax breaks from the State of Illinois. They even got $15 million in TIF economic development funds to renovate their bathrooms –which they only relinquished after widely publicized protest by community members. What ever happened to corporate citizenship?
I tell you, there are days when I watch the news and I am filled with despair and resignation. What can one can person do? What can any of us do to make a difference?
I am struck that Jesus walked straight into it. Jesus all but placed himself in the hands of the powerful people who wanted him dead. He waited for them in a deserted place, the Garden of Gethsemane—to give them a chance to arrest him by stealth. When they couldn’t find sufficient evidence to convict him, Jesus testified against himself.
The contrast between the power of Jesus and the power of Imperial Rome couldn’t be more striking. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan suggest that there were actually two parades into the Holy City that day. As Jesus approached from the Mount of Olives and rode across the Kidron Valley on a borrowed colt from the east, another procession would have clogged the streets and drawn large crowds entering the gates of Jerusalem from the west. It was like the Chicago Air and Water Show-only less patriotic and more sinister.
The Roman governor Pontius Pilate rode with all the pomp and trappings of Imperial power. Brigades of well-armed soldiers in brightly colored uniforms would have marched in carefully choreographed precision. Centurions mounted on horseback would have paraded past the people in a show of force aimed at reminding everyone who was in control leading up to the Jewish celebration of the Passover.
By contrast, Jesus’ triumphal entry included peasants and beggars announcing the coming of the kingdom of God and the beginning of new egalitarian community. It was a counter-cultural, counter-imperial parade. You and I are part of it.
What can one person do? Today Jesus has show us that power of grace is like water against stone. Stone may seem impervious, but in time water always wins. How can one person make a difference? Jesus showed us that we are never alone. God is loose in the world and acts with us. The curtain in the temple 60 feet tall, 30 feet wide and four inches thick that separated God from the people in the ancient temple in Jerusalem was torn from top to bottom upon Jesus’ death.
The barrier between life and death is broken. ‘The Incarnation of the Son of God, has shown us there is no one on earth in whom we should not be prepared to see, in mystery, the presence of Christ.’ (New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton) The power of God is indeed with us, to reclaim and redeem the whole world.
In The Cross of Christ
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 25, 2012
Spring has sprung in Chicago. Nearly overnight everywhere are flowering trees, budding leaves, and greening grass. The city is recast with the vibrant colors of living things. Nature is a natural at proclaiming the Christian gospel: goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death. (ELW 721)
On the day my father died the sky was blue, the forest was flourishing, the smell of pine scented the air. It was the end of June. The natural world was in full bloom while my mind and heart had no room for anything but thoughts of death. The natural world can be all up in your face with the power of life.
When you lose a loved one, death feels like the end of life. Spring reminds us that just the opposite is true—life follows death. Spring is a time when “the frosts are past, the storms are gone, / And backward life at last comes on.” (The Revival, Henry Vaughan,1621–1695) This “backward” life-from-death in nature contradicts our normal expectations. It’s true in nature and even more true of God’s grace.
God the creator and sustainer has left clues as to her identity and character all around us—for everyone to see—and indeed, God has gone even a step further. Today’s beautiful word from the prophet Jeremiah assures us that the still speaking God is also deep within our hearts. God has written you a love letter—as between a husband and a wife—where you will be sure to find it. The Ten Commandments were etched upon stone. But God’s word is written deep inside, on the very hearts of all the people (Jeremiah 31:33).
The message about God’s love and grace resounds throughout creation and echoes up from deep within all living things. The signal is made stronger as we join together. Back when I was in fourth grade my class mates and I noticed it was nearly impossible to walk across the carpet in the library of Robeson elementary school in Champaign, Illinois without getting a shock of static electricity. Joining hands produced an even bigger shock –which we thought was quite funny, but also clearly painful to the unfortunate recipient.
God’s grace is like that –not painful—but made brighter, more visible in community. Love may start deep inside, but it is impossible for it to exist in isolation. God is love and love must be expressed in relationships and communities. To live in God is to love. “To love, one must risk belonging.” (Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion, p. 206).
The bible is a reliable witness of the loving God precisely because it represents the combined testimony of human encounter with God from countless faithful lives. Scripture joins words, stories, poems, and songs about life in God from generations of people. Scripture took root in the very place it first became possible—in the place where the human transition from bands of hunter-gatherers to agricultural-based communities began in the ancient Near East. In these days of electronic wizardry, we forget culture and especially the written word represent an important form of high technology too. The sacred stories passed from generation to generation were already a thousand years old by the time they were first written down—probably sometime in the days of king David. It would be another thousand years in the making before the arrival of Jesus.
Just as a radio telescope allows us to see farther than would otherwise be humanly possible into the far distant universe, sacred scriptures pick up, amplify and transmit God’s grace between peoples and generations that would otherwise be impossible to articulate. In the pages of scripture, we come to recognize the God whom we already subconsciously knew all the days of our life through encounter in the world and within our hearts, but could not name for ourselves.
Here’s where we get ready to enter into John’s gospel. John and the other authors of the New Testament are convinced that the gospel of love God already revealed in nature and from deep within every human heart, and so powerfully in scripture, was now decisively re-presented in the life and ministry of Christ Jesus and especially the way of the life-giving cross. In Christ, we now hear more clearly how much God loves us. In Christ, we now see more completely how God intends for us to live. Now we more easily understand where God is at work in the world.
Jesus said, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). The new life John’s gospel promises has meaning-overtones of “soul” or “self” or “center of personal identity,” It is about the way that our personhood is diminished by self-centeredness and enlarged by self-offering of our time, talents and treasures to something bigger than ourselves.
John’s gospel amplifies this message with an example from the natural world: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This saying of Jesus was so central to his mission and message that it occurs in all four gospels (and twice in Luke). It is the life-giving way of the cross.
A seed sown in soil does not literally die when germinates; but it does become something other than a seed, as the new plant begins to take form, the husk is burst, and the stored nutrients become part of the growing plant’s body. The seed must cease to be a seed in order to become a plant; ceasing to be one thing in order to bear fruit as a new thing is a kind of death and resurrection, a perishing and re-formation as a new creation in God. (Paul Nancarrow)
As we join together in the Body of Christ, the signal of God’s self-revelation is strengthened. The husk of our old life is split open and God-given spiritual gifts stored within us become the nutrients for the growing life of Christ alive and at work to heal and restore the world. In Christ, with our hands and voices, we do God’s work. In Christ, we live in confidence that we also receive Christ through the hands and voices of outsiders, strangers, non-Christians, and especially the poor.
The cross makes it plain. This is what God’s revelation has all been leading up to. Whatever preaches Christ and his life-giving way of the cross is the gospel whether it comes from a friend, a Hollywood movie, a secular book, or a non-Christian. Whatever does not preach Christ and the cross is not the gospel whether is comes from the bible itself, Christian tradition, the pope, or your pastor. (Adapted from Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian)
Through the cross, we recognize God at work in faithful interfaith conversations like the one that took place at Immanuel last Sunday.
Through the cross, we recognize the Holy Spirit as people throughout Edgewater plan to meet tomorrow night with Senn High School principal Susan Loften to talk about how together they can once again make Senn the first choice for educating our children.
Through the cross, we celebrate the powerful role of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube to topple dictators and focus the attention of people across our nation upon victims of injustice such as Trayvon Martin, the 17 year-old youth pursued and killed for wearing a hoody and being black.
Through the cross, we see God at work in you, Immanuel, as you read the bible, gather for worship, prepare a meal, visit a hospital room, counsel a co-worker, listen to a neighbor, or become personally involved in doing God’s work –loving and healing the world—one person, one house, one neighborhood, one community at a time.
Through the cross, we hear God say again, be not afraid. God is with us the Body of Christ, the church. God is also in each and every human being ever born. God is in all things. God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). As Christians, we enter into the mystery of God’s life as we enter into communion with Christ and as we align our lives with God’s vision for the world. This vision of justice and peace is not externally imposed but emerges out of the depths of our spirit.
Good Guys and Bad Guys
Lent 4B-12
Back when I was ten, I remember running around my old neighborhood for hours and hours—especially on long warm afternoons following school once daylight savings time finally arrived. We played cops and robbers—or, sometimes we’d switch it up and play cowboys and Indians. Spying, shooting, fighting, and killing seemed perfectly natural, even wholesome—as long as it was the good guys verses the bad guys.
After all, these were the types of stories we were raised on. The triumph of good over evil in 30 to 120 minutes is practically a trademark of American media. Nearly every television show and movie followed this tried and true formula to box office success. Good always wins out in the end. It’s easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It’s a time-honored formula for lots of guilt-free violence and mayhem.
Of course, there are exceptions. They really stand out. Crash was the Academy Award’s Best Film of 2005. The movie began with a car accident that symbolizes the random “collisions” of urban people happening everyday as they go about their ordinary lives.
The movie follows a whole set of characters linked together through incidental encounters of language, work, dress, music, marriage and family that trigger outbursts of rage, as well as acts of extraordinary bravery and courage. The difference is that once the movie ends, you feel there is good reason to like and to loathe each character. The director Paul Haggis knows that in the real world, people are not entirely good or bad. They’re an unpredictable mixture of both. (Daniel Clendenin, My Journey with Jesus)
Movies like Crash make the case for the well-worn assertion of basic Lutheran theology: we are simultaneously saints and sinners. Period. In John’s gospel, we heard Jesus describe the human struggle between light and darkness, spiritual life and death, salvation and condemnation, belief and unbelief. Jesus shines a bright light on how we sometimes not only do evil, but we even love our evil deeds. No human heart is immune from committing deeds of darkness. As Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, the Christian idea of sin is its most empirical of all doctrines.
After ten years of imprisonment, then twenty years of banishment to Europe as well as (of all places) Vermont, Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously concluded: “When I lay there on rotting prison straw…it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an un-uprooted small corner of evil.” (The Gulag Archipelago, Part IV, Chapter 1)
Yet, the truth about human nature turns out to be not nearly so gratifying as the old Hollywood trope about there only being two kinds of people—good guys and bad guys. The truth is more complicated. We are more complicated. Yet God loves us anyway.
The amazing thing is that God so loved the world—not the world as we wish it could be in Hollywood movies; not even the world as God created it to be—but the whole world just as it is—that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16).
God loves the world despite its long history of moral monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and petty thugs like Joseph Koni. God loves the world just as it is chronicled in the daily news: loaded with senseless violence in Syria or Afghanistan; driven by bottomless greed on Wall Street, distracted by the extreme narcissism of former Governors, and countless garden-variety struggles of sickness, death, divorce, drugs, and consumerism. God loves you and me despite our faults.
God has seen into the depths of the wonder and mystery of who you were created to be. In Christ Jesus God opens the way to deeper communion with God and one another. It turns out, the search for wholeness and the search for God are facets of the same thing. ‘Dwell in me as I already dwell in you.’ God says. ‘Believe in me, and I will reckon your faith as righteousness.’
In our second reading, Paul told the Ephesians that we do this by faith alone, apart from any human merit. We do this, despite being both good and bad. Luther compared faith to “the beggar’s empty hand” that reaches out to receive a gift.
Accepting that we are accepted, just as we are and right where we are, by God whose love far exceeds human failure, our Lenten sorrow anticipates Easter joy. Divine consolation begins with human confession. (Daniel Clendenin)
In the typical Hollywood movie, the fate of the world hangs in the balance of an epic battle in which the good guys kill all the bad guys. The gospels reveal a far different plan. The whole world is saved—indeed it is saved already, in God’s loving embrace of all people—people who are both good and bad, who have found a new life and a new identity in God.
We practice our faith in daily life, knowing that this practice cannot make us perfect. Yet we do so in order to stay rooted in God. The stewardship of our time, talents and money says a whole lot about in what or in whom we ultimately place our trust.
Scripture holds out the wisdom and promise of the practice of tithing—giving one tenth of our time, talents and money to God. There are 168 hours in every week. Subtract time for eating and sleeping and you’re left with about 100 hours. What do you think would happen if you intentionally spent 10 of those hours each week with God? How might your life be changed—your values, your priorities, or your sense of self worth? Could you spend as much as 90 minutes each day doing something to deepen relationship with God like reading the scripture, doing service, attending to your physical health, or learning to make choices that align with your spiritual priorities at work, at the grocery store, as well as with friends and family? How might the Holy Spirit begin to work in you?
Of course, this is also that time of year when each of us is called to consider how well our financial giving fits with our faith as well. In my own experience, tithing has made me more aware and emotionally connected to Immanuel’s mission and ministry. Immanuel is blessed with reserves. These resources provide a firm foundation for us in a challenging urban climate for the church. Yet, it is your generosity that gives life to the mission of Immanuel today.
God is at work in and through you Immanuel. God has blessed the work of our flawed and finite hands to improve the lives of children and youth throughout Edgewater. Many of you know about our commitment to after school and tutoring ministries for neighborhood youth. I could tell you many stories about seemingly random people I meet throughout the community who tell me how much it meant to them when they were young to come to Immanuel and play basketball or get help in learning. But today, I’d like to tell you about our play group ministry administered for more than 25 years by our Parish Nurse, Michelle Knapp.
Every week, nearly 100 families bring their toddlers to Immanuel to play, sing, do a craft and have a snack. Parents and caregivers come to do something constructive for their children, but they receive much more. They come through the front door as strangers, over time, they become friends, allies and neighbors. The entire neighborhood of Edgewater is much more tightly woven together in mutual bonds of trust, respect and love because of this one program.
One example, today, there is an email bulletin board of more than 600 families called Ruth’s list. It grew from Immanuel’s playgroups. Families share advice, exchange clothing and household goods, and discuss community issues. Their interpersonal connections and trust have lead many of them to wonder how to make Senn High School the neighborhood school of choice for all our children. This is not something any of them could do on their own. But working together, it is within their reach.
This is how God works through Immanuel as you and I find ourselves in God. We become more together in Christ than any of us could be alone by ourselves. Although no one is purely good but God, God works through our hands to build up lives and restore justice.
Others might condemn you, but God does not. God longs to breathe life into our dead lungs and to shine light into our darkness. Jesus compares this to a new birth. Just as every person has experienced an earthly birth of human origin, he invites us to experience a spiritual birth of divine origin.
Listen, God is Calling
Lent 3B-12
The psalmist writes; O God, “7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in [the place of the dead], you are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” (Psalm 139: 7-10)
This reassuring and hopeful passage tells us what we already know. God is with us always wherever we go. That is, we know this, but many of us, it seems, don’t believe it. Not really.
Lutheran pastor and bible scholar David Lose (working preacher.org), asks people about this all the time. He asks them, ‘Where is God? Where do you expect to meet God, to experience God, to participate with God in God’s ongoing work?’ Think about it for a moment, how would you answer that question?
According to Lose, the answers people give him are pretty consistent. Number one, most people believe they’re leading their most Christian lives when they’re at church or doing church-related things. The next place is when they’re “helping people,” whether through their work, volunteering, or more informally. But, many people say, most of the “regular” work they do throughout the week doesn’t seem particularly connected to their faith.
Second, people typically understand “living your faith in daily life” to mean “sharing their faith,” or “witnessing” and almost immediately after naming it this way they feel guilty because they don’t do this as much as they believe they should. The second most common way of understanding living your faith is in terms of character and ethics — doing a good job, being an honest person, etc. Very few people can imagine that they are living their faith in the regular and mundane activities of work, school, family life, etc.
The third thing Lose says people tell him is that the clearest mark of being a Christian is going to church. Sunday, in short, is the highpoint of the Christian life. Again, volunteering and helping others comes in second. Most of the rest of our lives — including how we spend our money and time –doesn’t seem to connect clearly to our faith in any meaningful way.
Many people have a hard time imagining that what they spend most of their time doing in the world “counts” as a call. That is, they believe that most of their lives — at home, school, work, volunteering, civic responsibilities, etc. — aren’t particularly worthy of God’s attention or the church’s. That makes it hard to justify giving one hour during the most unscheduled part of the week to something that hardly impacts the other 167 hours of the week.
Which brings us to today’s Gospel reading. It’s all about where God is. We know this story — it’s in all four gospels. Jesus overturns tables in the Temple and drives out the moneychangers with words and whips of cords. Yet, here in the gospel of John, there’s an added twist. Jesus doesn’t denounce the Temple as a “den of robbers” — or accuse the moneychangers of defrauding the poor — rather, he says “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up”(2:19). The point is that the Temple became obsolete now that Jesus has come.
The Word that was with God and is God took on flesh to makes the invisible God known. Jesus has come onto the scene precisely to reveal God. As Jesus will say to the Samaritan woman two chapters later, “the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (4:21). Why, because God’s holy name no longer dwells in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem (eg, 1 Kings 8:13); but now dwells among us (John 1:14). It is a living dwelling-place, built of living stones (1 Peter 2:5), that goes with us as we move about in the world. God no longer waits for us in the Temple but is always with us, incarnate among the people.
Which means — you guessed it — we don’t have to come to church to experience God. In fact, our church can’t contain God any more than the ancient Temple in Jerusalem did.
Why, then, come to church? Because here at worship we hear God’s Word proclaimed in a way that helps us see and experience God in all the other hours in our week. We come to learn ways to see God everywhere, not because church is the only place where God is.
Where ever you go God is there. Love is there. Wisdom and the communion of saints, is there. Your brothers and sisters in faith are there as living stones fit together with you as members of the Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God alive, at work, and at play in the world.
Of all people, we Lutherans should understand this. We have a theology of vocation—that all Christians are called by virtue of their Baptism to participate in God’s work to care for all creation. The secular world is also God’s world and is a worthy realm of service to God insofar as we serve God’s people whom Jesus has taught us are our neighbors.
We pray, that God’s will be done, God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. How is this going to happen without teachers, engineers, journalists, doctors, farmers, manufacturers, lawyers, politicians, parents, judges, contractors, carpenters…you name it.
Luther’s theology of vocation is rooted in God’s ongoing work as creator and sustainer. God didn’t create the world and walk away. God’s creative work continues through your hands, your voice, your imagination, and your labor. (The Work of a Christian: Vocation in Lutheran Perspective, Kathryn Kleinhans, Word & World Volume 25, Number 4 Fall 2005)
Here in worship, God’s saving grace is conveyed through water, wine, and bread, likewise out in the world God’s providential care arises through tangible means, through the earthly vocations of real everyday people.
Each of us has many vocations. Each of us may have a plurality of callings. According to Luther, the arenas of worldly activity in which we find ourselves are not mutually exclusive: you can be a parent, an employer or an employee, a citizen, and a member of the Christian community simultaneously.
Discerning your Christian vocation doesn’t have to be hard or mysterious. We serve God wherever we find ourselves. We don’t move farther away from God or closer to God depending on the choices we make; rather the Christian’s task is to discern God’s will and to try to act responsibly in each specific role or situation. We do what’s called for whether it’s to wipe a tear, write an algorithm, balance a spreadsheet, clean a building, or build a water treatment plant. We try our best to do whatever is needed with excellence.
Luther’s theology of vocation is partly what explains the existence of so many Lutheran schools and colleges. Our forebears understood that a good liberal education is an essential ingredient to loving God by serving others intelligently and well.
Our scripture today reminds us that we love and serve a God at loose in the world. God is always out ahead of us, working to bless, save, and love this world—and is beckoning us to join the Spirit in this holy venture now. Our church, from this point of view, must be a training ground for our life in the world. Church must be a way station to find rest and nourishment before going back to the main mission. Church is a place to help us focus with clarity upon our vocation and to discern where and to what and to whom God is calling us. Instead of coming to church to encounter God, how might we here gathered at church help one another see again what God might be up to in our daily lives and at work?
What we do here is like a dress rehearsal. The routines we carry on throughout the week of prayer, meditation, or service are what we do to practice our faith. The things you and I accomplish through our diverse Christian vocation(s) are what truly matter. These are the things we do that put a smile on God’s face. This is your true calling: that compassion, justice, and the bounty of the earth be made tangible and real through the work of your hands for all those who need it. May God be praised. May God’s kingdom come. May God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Get Behind Me
Lent 2B-12
I give thanks for the Apostle Peter. Somehow whenever he puts his best foot forward it winds up squarely in his mouth. He has just been the first to identify Jesus as the Messiah, in the verses immediately proceeding today’s gospel. Jesus gave him a new name Petros –the rock– upon whom the church will be founded. Jesus said he will give him the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16:18-19). Yet in the very next moment, Peter becomes an obstacle to Jesus’ mission and an object for Jesus’ scorn.
Let’s rewind the gospel for a moment, to imagine with the help of the Lutheran poet and author, Walter Wangerin, how this exchange between Jesus, Peter and the disciples might have unfolded.
[Jesus] said, “things are going to change now.” He heaved a sigh. We all were moving with him toward [a] little spring of water. He said, “I have to go to Jerusalem. When I get there, I will suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes. I’m telling you now so that you need not be surprised when it happens. It will happen.”
Jesus knelt down by the spring, cold from the earth. He made a cup of his hands and scooped water. Just before he started to drink, he said, “I will be killed in Jerusalem, and on the third day be raised….”
But I, Peter… said the most natural thing there was to say. My feelings were hurt by Jesus’ words. Be killed? Was this the gloomy thing he’d been thinking about all the time?
I grabbed his wrist and shouted, “No!” The water splashed from his hands. “No, God won’t allow it!” I cried. On account of my feelings, I was gripping him with all my strength. But he started to pry my fingers from his wrist….
I blustered on. Surely he knew that I was arguing out of love for him! “O Lord,” I said, “this can never happen to you!”
He was standing. Holding me at the forearm, his eyes like white hammers. No smile, no pride any more: anger! He said to me, “Get behind me Satan.” Ah, my heart failed….He did to me what he said to me: he began to drag me bodily away from his face, pushing me back behind him. He said, “You are a hindrance to me. You care for the things of this world more than the things of God!” He let me go. I was suddenly so week that I slumped down to the ground. (Walter Wangerin, The Book of God, pps. 706-707)
Peter stands before us today as a dreadful and powerful example. The good are more dangerous to the gospel than the bad. Good people like Peter and the disciples, God-fearing people like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes and Chief Priest offer the greatest obstacle to Jesus, whereas the so-called bad people –the lepers, the gentiles, the tax collectors, prostitutes and thieves, embrace him. The higher our stake in the religious game, the more difficult it becomes for us to take Jesus as he is and not how we want him to be. Peter could confess Jesus was the Messiah in one moment, and become a stumbling block and a temptation to him the very next moment.
The example of Peter invites us as church people to ask ourselves how we are standing in Christ’s way –rather than walking in Christ’s Way?
Fifty years ago, Immanuel had more than a thousand members. Thanks be to God. Those were high water mark years for church attendance across denominations all across America. Yet, according to sociological data from that time, more than half of Americans admitted that their commitment to religion had no impact on their political or business practices (Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion, p. 44). A person could be a highly committed Christian on one hand and a dedicated materialistic hedonist on the other.
Indeed, this fact is echoed in what demographers tell us about the children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomers. Unlike the Boomers, young people today are not instinctively rebellious. There is no generation gap. Yes, they believe, God exists. God wants us to be fair and feel good about ourselves, but God doesn’t need to be very involved in our lives unless we need God’s help to resolve some particular problem. Be nice, be happy and God will see you in heaven when you die. Demographers coined the phrase, Moralistic, Theistic, Deism or MTD for short (Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005) by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton). This is the gospel American Christians have lived by for a half-century or more, but it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just be good, and be happy –isn’t this what our parents told us –and what we’ve told our children as they graduated from school and headed off into adult life? Yet if our covenant with God merely to be nice and be happy, young people are smart enough to have realized realized, you don’t need to go to church to do that.
The widespread perception is that the church is for crabby self-righteous people anyway. 9/11 proved that religious fanatics are dangerous. The pedophilia scandals have proved that religious people can be just as corrupt and self-serving as anyone else. Young people reject Christian conservatives for being too narrow minded, and Christian progressives for being too boring –not radical enough.
Like Peter, today’s good upstanding religious people are standing in Jesus’ way rather than walking in it. It’s time for us to return to the tried and true. It’s time to get out of the way and follow Jesus. We can take heart from today’s gospel. Peter’s blunder—his many shortcomings—were not enough to disqualify him from serving Jesus. Neither will our collective, multi-generational shortcomings, in repentance and faith, disqualify us from being part of the renewal and reformation of Christ’s church in our own day. Be assured, the Holy Spirit is cleaning house with one great sweep of her glorious hand.
The Way of Christ is the Way of the Cross. Despite what we have been told, the Way of the Cross is not the very same thing as the American Way. Jesus’ dream of the coming of the kingdom of God is not the very same thing as the American dream. Christ’s Way is radically inclusive. No one is excluded whether they are good or bad, regardless of gender, race, or even religious backgrounds. Christians don’t own a patent on the Way of the Cross –yet they are blessed to share its story with the world. The common denominator of all those who walk in the way of the cross is faith –faith in the power of forgiveness; faith in the power of love; faith in the promise new life; faith in the power of the new life offered to us and all people in Christ to renew and to heal the whole world.
“Take up your cross”, Jesus said, “Follow me” (Mark 8:34). Part of the problem in our failure to understand Jesus invitation has been confusion about the meaning of the cross. In truth, it hasn’t been that long (just a few decades) that Ash Wednesday, Lenten disciplines, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil returned to our worship life. Perhaps that’s why we still seem to operate with a one-dimensional understanding of the cross –the cross as emblem of Jesus’ suffering; the cross as sign of our guilt and the human capacity for violence. If all we have is a Good Friday cross, then it’s no wonder we tend to miss what’s most important in what follows at The Vigil, Easter, and resurrection. Jesus’ cross is not a sign of death but of life.
The cross stands as a trail marker for a new way of life, impossible for us except as we follow Christ in faith. In Christ we have become a new creation. In scripture, the new life in God is often marked with a new name, literally a new identity. Simon Peter became Petros. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Saul became Paul. For centuries, Christians too honored this tradition with new names given in baptism.
We are no longer acolytes of a moralistic, materialistic, therapeutic deism, or a distant indifferent God, we are living agents of the in-breaking of God’s peaceable kingdom. No longer members of team Immanuel –no longer servants of a particular institution—we are members of the body of Christ through the mutual indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We begin in repentance and faith by acknowledging that this is not our grandparent’s gospel. This is not our parent’s cross. This is not the gospel of MTD common among young people today. It wasn’t Peter’s or the disciple’s either. But in truth, it never was theirs to begin with. Good people its time once again to get out of the Way, and to walk in Christ’s Way. It’s time to help and encourage one another to walk in the Way marked by the cross, following Christ Jesus. It is time for us to follow Christ’s Cross –Christ’s Way –the Way to a new life, a new name, a new-ancient way of life marked by forgiveness, hospitality and justice.