How Does the Body of Christ Learn?

Sermon preached for First Presbyterian Church of New Haven on August 5, 2018

Texts
Romans 12:1-8 (read by liturgist, prior to sermon)
John 14:1-12 (read by preacher, with contextual introduction)

Our reading from the Gospel of John begins just after the friends have shared the meal that has become our Communion liturgy. Jesus is still comforting his disciples and preparing them for his departure. It’s the passage including the well-known words: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Before we read the rest of it together, there are two things I’m obliged to mention.[i]

Number 1: I would like to hold space for a moment for all those whose previous encounters with this text were not always life-giving. For some of us, those encounters took place in settings where the intent was to close Christians off from the rest of the world, or to invoke fear or conformity without any real space to breathe, without the encouragement to perceive a God that was not spoken at us. Breathe in a deep breath of new air… and let it out again. I am not suggesting that our reading today will heal every hurt, but I want to offer the assurance that today’s word is not one of condemnation. You and your whole self are welcome here today, and especially to the Communion table. Take the time to notice what you are feeling in your body as we read the text together, and do not let your heart be troubled if any of it is difficult to name.

Number 2: While I have a map of something I’d like us to explore, let’s not assume that a wandering mind is a bad thing. Preachers and teachers like me believe that sometimes a listener hears something worth hearing that isn’t said aloud. There are a lot of questions to ask of this text—and a lot of good things to wonder that have little to do with it. If at some point later on you’d like to talk more with me or Pastor J.C. or the church community about anything that bubbles up, anything in your mind or heart, we are here as spiritual companions to do that.

But while I was preparing this message, I received a prophetic word from my Dove chocolate wrapper. It said, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”[ii]




So this morning, at least out loud, we will focus.

I’d like to imagine what it may have felt like to Jesus to be reassuring these people who knew him in what was about to be their darkest hours without him—and what the story of this night means to a community now striving to teach and grow in Christian faith. How does the Body of Christ learn?

Let us hear from the 14th chapter of John, picking up shortly after the meal, and just a few chapters before Jesus’ death. Jesus is speaking:

14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 

⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

The Word of God for the people of God.

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Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, you infuse this space. You fill our lungs, whisper at our ears, and breathe life into our curiosities. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God. Let this preaching moment be one not only for our minds, but for our bodies and spirits; and not only for ourselves, but for the ongoing creation of our communities of faith, that we might live fully into your promises and purposes. Through our faith in Jesus Christ and Christ’s faith in us, we pray. Amen.

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“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says, and for some reason when I read it this time I hear a tinge of frustration in his voice as he searches for the Right Words, because how on earth is he going to capture the enormity of what he wants to tell them in the Right Words? He says, “Believe in God. Believe also in me.”

This word “believe” sometimes carries with it a bit of baggage. Now that so many teachers over time have understood it in a specific way, it may be even more difficult to hear it differently.

Years and years and years of hearing this text as though it were a battle cry or a command or an indictment of non-believers.

It was a comfort.[iii]

Some translations of this text go like this, “You believe in God. Believe also in me.” Or, in my best Frustrated Jesus voice, “Well, you believe in God, right? Yes? Okay! Build on that. Go from there.”

Frustrated, you see, not out of anger or impatience with his disciples but because time is short. A teacher who knows that the dismissal bell is about to chime. A man on death row having his last visit with his friends. He cares about the people listening to him and what they take with them from their time together.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

So Jesus leans on what he knows of his friends and the knowledge they already have. He’s not talking to people who haven’t met him yet. And he isn’t weighing for them the likelihood of whether or not God exists. The Gospel writer of John more than any other chose words to emphasize Jesus’ divine being, but is that all that Jesus himself is saying?

What does it mean to believe in someone you know?

[to J.C.] I believe in you, J.C. I believe you are the Pastor and Teaching Elder God has called to us, for such a time as this, to lead us in our hearing of the Word and our communing at the Table, in offering Sanctuary to our immigrant neighbors, in learning all the new ways we will be Christ’s hands and feet and ears in this world. I believe in you.

[to the congregation now] At any point of that did it sound like I was telling J.C. that I think she exists?

See, we do understand on a deep, resonant level this use of the word “believe,” but whenever we start using it for Jesus or God it can take on this whole other connotation. A purity test of opinion or a creed to affirm as though it’s little more to us than a passcode into heaven. And none of this is necessarily what Jesus is saying.

He’s saying to those with him, those who already know him, those for whom he has been an access point, that they can believe in him and who he is to them.

To Believe is to trust; to Believe is to sense — not necessarily that something is verifiable fact (maybe because it is still in progress) — but that it is the ongoing fulfillment of a promise, or something hoped-for, or something worth witnessing.

Truth itself, as in the line where Jesus says “I am the truth,” is not a static noun, the Fact we crave in the so-called age of ‘Fake News.’ Instead, it’s that ongoing process, the fulfilling of the promise. One author[iv] writes that it’s as though Jesus is saying, “I am the unforgetting.”

The Unforgetting; the very act of not-forgetting. The act of remembrance. Yes, our remembrance of God, and also God’s remembrance of us and promises made to us. That is the truth we trust in. That is the truth we teach.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

Every time we gather for worship or study with faith or care for our neighbors, we participate in the unforgetting. When we join together around the Communion table today we will share Jesus’ message, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Be part of the unforgetting.

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Right up there with the words “believe” and “truth,” do you know what my favorite phrase of this Gospel text is? It’s when Jesus tells the disciples, “but if you do not.” The full line is: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.”

By saying this, Jesus creates space for his disciples to breathe. To be unsure. To learn by some other means than the one he’s just presented. “If, after that explanation, it doesn’t make sense, then try this activity instead.” And then, like any good teacher, he provides the alternative that’s accessible in a different way. Witnessing the works themselves. And not only witnessing them but doing them.

He says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…”

People mixed up with Jesus are going to find themselves drawn to do some peculiar things, like sharing food with strangers. Proclaiming the sacredness of people the world degrades. Housing the guests that others build walls to keep away.  Singing in a crowd on a Sunday morning.

His death will shake them. His absence will test their faith. His resurrection and ascension will be an unforgetting that stays with them long after he’s gone.

And when he’s gone, they altogether will be the physical form of his Body on earth. Every time we gather as members of the Body of Christ, we are literally and figuratively “re-membering.” Resurrecting the Body in a living Church.

And the disciples will not know everything they need to know or do in an instant. They will lean, as even Jesus has, on discernment and prayer and the wisdom of the generations.

Then, to do the things that Jesus believes in them to do, they will need to trust their muscle memory. And to be able to trust their muscle memory, they will need to hone it. They will need to practice. Sometimes, the practice itself will be a comfort. During our confirmation class this past year, I was moved to hear how many of the youth talked about our traditions as a comfort to them—particularly the Doxology. The Sunday school children have said the same about lighting candles and the quiet of prayer.

And what does J.C. tell us in worship every week about passing the peace?

‘We practice this sign of peace here not so that we can keep it to ourselves, but so that we can take it with us out into the world.’

Practice. We don’t do this only for ourselves. We learn here how to greet our neighbors and reconcile with anyone estranged to us. And then we bring what we have learned, how we have been renewed and transformed, to those we meet. For non-believers, the Good News of this story is that they are not to be condemned for disbelief or belonging to another Body; they are to be invited as neighbors and friends of the resurrected Christ who lives on in a peace-filled people. Whether or not they ever sense themselves to be a part of this Christian Body, they will have occasions to know us. And if we study and practice well, we will be renewed and transformed into something worth trusting.

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In June, our Session voted for us to become a Sanctuary church, meaning we are prepared to open our doors to an immigrant or refugee and bear public witness if ever ICE tries to deport them before the person has the opportunity for legal defense. At three separate events before that decision, 70 people completed Sanctuary training here in this very room.

What did that training look like? We learned why the work mattered and what difference it could make to anyone we host. We voiced our concerns, reflecting on what troubled our hearts. We searched our faith tradition and our scriptures for guidance. Then we discerned together what kinds of practical help might be needed – a list of tasks that would be physically impossible for only one person to fulfill. We didn’t concern ourselves yet with who might have the gifts to do what. At that point it still wasn’t about each of us volunteering or being nominated to do a job. It was about saying, “What would it look like if ICE were to come to the door, looking for our guest? When one of us is responsible for hosting, what will they need to know? What should they do? When one of us is responsible for leading our crowd of witnesses in prayer and song to draw public attention to this injustice, what will they need to know? What should they do?” It would all be needed, if and when the time should come. And if we each did our best to prepare ourselves to do any role that might be needed, each of us would be ready to contribute anything. Together, we would be able to do everything.

And then we practiced it. We volunteered to “try on” a role and work together as one unit.

On the night that I was trained, Art had a chance to feel just how uncomfortable it might be to listen to an ICE agent on the other side of the door and practiced remaining steady under pressure.

Tim drew from his love of worship to lead the crowd of witnesses in singing, quickly recalling a song everyone could sing from memory.

One of the training instructors played a news reporter who was actually doing very little to help amplify our message and a whole lot more to get in the way of our witness. Sue, in a moment of outstanding inspiration, managed to distract her with food.

And we, a crowd with courage in our purpose and the confidence of prior instruction, answered J.C.’s call-and-response loud and clear.

All of this, you could say, was pretend. Imaginative play, not unlike the scripts that our children bring to life at church a few times a year. Our ideal situation, of course, is one where we never need to confront ICE agents in that context at all, and it’s possible that we will never need to.

But we are people of both prayer and preparation.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

It’s two chapters later, in John’s chapter 16, by the way, that Jesus and the disciples have an exchange that, to a teacher’s ear, sounds kind of like this: “Oh!!! We get it!” I mean, from some of the larger context it seems the disciples may only kind of get it, but still! They share a moment!

Back in chapter 14, the disciples are telling Jesus they don’t even know yet what he says they know. And unless they’re just stalling their teacher, they mean it. They need a new perspective. But by chapter 16, the disciples say to Jesus, “Now you are speaking plainly!”

And the Good News is this: Jesus teaches the Body in any way that will get us to those moments of assurance and understanding, no matter how much more there is for us to understand. Sometimes—sometimes he uses words.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

(1) By recognizing that troubled hearts can cloud our minds; by comforting our hearts enough that we are in a position to listen. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

(2) By building upon knowledge or resources we already have, and knowing that Jesus will always meet us first wherever we are. You believe in God, believe also in me.

(3) By trusting that Jesus himself is the ongoing fulfillment of his promises to his disciples, promises for abundant life and a directed path. I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

(4) By exploring alternate avenues of understanding, recognizing that a God who prepares a place for us would not prepare it somewhere inaccessible to us. But if you do not.

(5) By participating in the Unforgetting, in the remembrance, in the witness. Believe me because of the works themselves.

(6) And by receiving the Holy Spirit and entrusting her with opportunities to practice within us, honing the muscle memory of our embodied faith. The one who believes in me will do the works that I do, and greater works than these.

Creating a Christian community of faith like ours means we will recognize that not everyone will learn as we do, trust as we do, even believe as we do.

It means being patient and reflective, honoring one another’s wounds and giving those parts of the Body of Christ the care they need to heal before they can be asked to stretch, carry, lift, perceive, speak, sustain. Healing work is learning, too.

And creating a community of faith means humbly acknowledging that, no matter how much we may know alone, we must practice together. We promise to one another that we will show up – to share in our practicing whatever way we are able, so that the Body of Christ is wholly prepared to move as one.

And all the people of God said, “Amen.”

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[i] I learned the importance of such hospitality and embodied care from Heather Elkins, my professor for courses on the Church at Worship and Narrative Preaching; from Angella Son, my professor for Pastoral Care and a week-long intensive on the Spirituality of Joy; and from Lynne Westfield, my professor for Educational Ministries and a week-long intensive on the Holy Spirit, all at Drew Theological School (2010-2014).

[ii] Literally a Dove chocolate wrapper. First Presbyterian Church of New Haven (2018).

[iii] I draw mostly from ideas presented to me by Wesley Ariarajah in Interfaith Dialogue and Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre in New Testament at Drew Theological School (2010-2014) and Cameron Afzal in a course on the Gospel of John at Sarah Lawrence College (2009-2010), alongside other biblical and theological influences and meditation.

[iv] Author Stant Litore

Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning Is the Word

A dozen youth had the task of leading congregational worship from start to finish on Trinity Sunday, 2017. Themes of the day (aside from the obvious) were mystery, mish-mash, dialogue, creation, and creativity. One child served as a visual pastorist, i.e. pastor-artist, painting on a 20"x36" canvas we'd hung on the wall, and another as a vocal pastorist, singing a solo version of Holy, Holy, Holy. Everyone else was eager to read, pray, and speak. The kids delighted in their different ways of contributing.

Our opening and closing hymns were by Ruth Duck: Sacred the Body and Colorful Creator, while our hymn following the sermon was Thomas Troeger's Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud.

We also involved the congregation in a bit of music that tested our abilities of timing and communication: For a short Song of Praise, we sang the first verse of This Is the Day as a call-and-response, and for a song to prepare us to hear the scriptures, we sang Listen to the Word That God Has Spoken as a round - I think it's one of my new favorites. The lyrics were especially poignant for the day:

Listen to the Word that God has spoken;

Listen to the One who is close at hand;

Listen to the voice that began creation;

Listen even if you don't understand.

And the mish-mash of everyone's voices overlapping, singing the same parts at different times, had exactly the order-within-cacophony effect I was going for!

We had five readers share the whole of Genesis 1, which was in our lectionary for the morning - two alternating narrators, and three alternating voices of God. We also read the Psalm and Gospel, but focused most of the day on the Hebrew text.

Later, two youth shared a short sermon I prepared with them in mind. It's based largely on letters and conversations we shared together, and what we learned during our January Gender Series about always honoring someone's self-identification. The full text is below, and you can also hear them deliver the message here (5 min).

In the Beginning Is the Word

A: Tohu va bohu!

B: It sounds like a spell from Harry Potter –

A: -- or a sneeze --

B: -- but it’s actually a phrase used in the first Creation story in Genesis, and nowhere else in the Bible. Since it’s only used once, it’s hard to say exactly what this ancient Hebrew phrase means.

A: In this morning’s passage, it’s translated to “formless void,” as in, “…when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void.” And in some modern languages like German and Hungarian, it means “confusion or commotion.”

B: But judging by the sound of it, it’s a nonsense word. It just sounds funny. So another way of saying tohu va bohu in English is “mish-mash.” Imagine how much less formal Genesis would sound if it began with, “In the beginning… y’know, back when the world was just a mish-mash…”

A: We can easily imagine people gathering around a fire under a deep night sky, telling each other how they believed the world came to be.

B: Their words likely gave ancient communities a sense of shared history and peace about things that were unknown and mysterious to them.

A: Speaking of divine mysterious things: Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when we remember a core mystery of our faith.

B: If our church year were a novel, days like Easter and Pentecost would be plot points. They’re events when we celebrate certain things the Triune God does.

A: Trinity Sunday is more like a chance for a character study on who God is – who God has been revealed to be, all throughout the Story we’ve been telling and re-telling.

B: The Companion to the Book of Worship tells us that Trinity Sunday “celebrates the unfathomable mystery of God’s being as Holy Trinity. It is a day of adoration and praise of the one, eternal, incomprehensible God.”

A: It’s a day to remember that even what we cannot fathom is worth celebrating, and even what we cannot understand is worth receiving.

B: There are biblical passages like this morning’s Gospel text which directly name the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or similar names. But, for more reasons than we could discuss in a year, let alone in a morning, Genesis chapter 1 is a surprisingly good narrative to help us reflect on this mystery of faith.

A: The simplest reason being – because Creation doesn’t end with tohu va bohu.

B: And neither does God.

A: We can acknowledge that the fullness of God confuses us and is beyond our human understanding, while still recognizing the numerous ways that the Divine is revealed to us – through words or in spite of them.

B: It is both our responsibility and our pleasure to take great care to use language that is based on God’s self-revelation to us and to the keepers of Scripture, and not something we or our ancestors have forced without holy collaboration. The challenge is knowing the difference.

And as any cat owner can tell you – there’s a big difference between being put into a box and choosing to get in one yourself.

A: Though if the Trinity is as much God’s self-identity as we say it is, it figures that God would climb into a box as un-boxlike as the Trinity.

B: We’re about to sing a hymn written by Thomas Troeger, a graduate of Yale University ordained in both the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church.

A: The hymn is called “Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud” and explores an impressive collection of 40 names or images for God, every one of them in some way biblically based. You may also notice that the structure of the verses reminds you of the Trinity. Each group of images focuses on the various roles associated with one of the three.

B: It’s our hope that this hymn will express just how much possibility exists in co-creating with God in the midst of what may feel to us like mish-mash.

A: And we also hope that the refrain does justice to the Holy One who – forgive us for saying this so un-biblically – has out-catted the cats.

B: It seems that whenever we humans name something, we are either taming the unknown, or claiming it as newly familiar.

A: One suggests an act of control, the other an act of intimacy. But both intimacy and control are capable of misunderstanding the heart of whatever we name.

B: May this hymn, and all of today’s worship, help us to center ourselves in religious language that is creative and never coercive, intimate and never assuming, and rejoices in the ability to know something of the unknown.

Both: Amen.

Do Not Be Daunted

A sermon I wrote for four children, ages 13, 10, 10, and 8, to preach in worship at First Presbyterian Church of New Haven on December 18, 2016.

For context, much of the congregation had recently read the book Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire (compiled and partly written by Rick Ufford Chase). The Gospel reading of the morning was Matthew 1:18-25. Shortly after the reading, the children acted out a play which elaborated on the text, and the play led directly into the sermon. Find the scripture passage here.

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L: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.”
A: “Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.”
M: “You are not obligated to complete the work--”
R: “--but neither are you free to abandon it.” *

A: Did you know that Jesus was Jewish? This is something that surprised me when I first learned it. When we read our Bible as Christians, we don’t want to make it sound like God left the Jewish people or thought their faith was not good enough. Joseph and Mary were Jewish, too. That’s why in our play, Joseph makes a point of telling his sister that he still loves God and Torah, which is the Hebrew Law.

M: Later on in Matthew, Jesus even says that he has come to fulfill the Law, not to abolish it. Sometimes it isn’t really obvious, but most of the things that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus do are in light of their faith, not in spite of it. In today’s text, Joseph has a decision to make. What does the Law require of him?

L: “What does the Lord require of you? Do justice. Love kindness and mercy. Walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8. His faith would have taught him to honor both justice and mercy.

R: The Bible says Joseph planned to “dismiss Mary quietly.” We don’t know what really made him decide that, but we do know he didn’t want to hurt her or shame her. A public accusation would have done that. So why isn’t it good enough for Joseph not to hurt Mary? Isn’t that both justice and mercy? Why does he decide to stay with her, and what difference does it make?

M: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.”
R: “Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.”
L: “You are not obligated to complete the work--”
A: “--but neither are you free to abandon it.”

R: The Harper Collins Commentary tells us what it means for Joseph to be a righteous man. Besides valuing justice and mercy, Joseph is also “open to divine revelation that corrects his traditional way of thinking.” In other words, Joseph is open to God telling him something that Joseph wouldn’t recognize as holy without God’s help. This too is righteousness.

A: Joseph dreams that an angel tells him who Jesus will be and what his birth will mean. This is the Messiah the Jews have been waiting for. This is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

M: Faith does not only challenge us to be more just and more merciful. Faith challenges us to stay with God and the vulnerable people God loves.

L: When people are in danger or pushed to the edges of power, even if the threat doesn’t affect us directly, it still changes our lives. It must.

A: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.”
M: “Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.”
R: “You are not obligated to complete the work--”
L: “--but neither are you free to abandon it.”

R: Faith changes how we witness crisis and pain. The Global Bible Commentary tells us not to ignore the political implications here: “Having hope is a political act of resistance against death-wielding powers.” These powers might be government, economics, social norms, or religious convictions.

L: In our play, Joanna shows us what’s at stake for Mary. Mary agrees to help bring Jesus into the world, but even if she tells people the whole story, they might not believe her. Because of social and religious customs, acting on her hope could put her in danger.

M: Brian Merritt writes in Faithful Resistance that salvation is not something a person can own. Instead, “we understand salvation to be resistance that pushes … toward equality and compassion for all living creatures.”

A: Along with Joseph, we might also learn that there is more to loving people than sparing them from harm. Sometimes faithful resistance means being a friend or companion to someone other people wouldn’t blame you for ignoring.

L: Merritt writes, “This is why direct action and mutual aid are so central to our own spiritual growth. These actions put us at risk in ways similar to the constant condition of those who are oppressed. It may be our only opportunity to find Christ in this world.”

A: Remember, Joseph is not the Savior here. Jesus is.

R: And God’s salvation work will happen whether Joseph decides to participate or not.

M: But through the dream, God tells Joseph exactly what it is he has the chance to do. And just like with Mary, God already knows what Joseph’s answer is going to be.

R: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.”
L: “Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.”
A: “You are not obligated to complete the work--”
M: “--but neither are you free to abandon it.”

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*Citation: This quote, used here as a refrain, is commonly attributed to the Talmud and appears to paraphrase/be influenced by a few voices, such as Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

Your Mistake Is Not the Last Word on You

Before I preached this narrative sermon to my classmates, I read aloud from John 21:1-19 (NRSV), projected the image below, and lit one candle to bring into the chapel the faint but unmistakable scent of fire.

Your name is Peter.  You remember that night—the night that Jesus was arrested.  It was the night that you did that thing you said you would never do, became what you said you would never be.  How could you forget that?  You never will.

Over and over again the people asked, “Are you not Jesus’ disciple?” and over and over again you said, “I am not.”  Three times.  Three times, just like he said it would be.  And you didn’t just deny Jesus or that you knew who he was.  You denied who he said you were and what he called you to do.

Are you not Jesus’ disciple?

No. No, I am not.

When it happened, you were warming yourself by a charcoal fire.  The air is still thick with the smell of it, even when you aren’t by a fire, because you will never forget that scent.  It’s always been unmistakable, but now it’s the smell of the most humiliating moment of your life.  Every time you warm your hands you relive that shame a little bit more.

And where do you find yourself now but right here at another charcoal fire?  It’s the first time Jesus is sitting with you by a fire since the night you wrapped yourself in the protection of lies.

But that’s not what Jesus talks about.  “Come and have breakfast,” he says, and as he cooks the fish you breathe in the smell of sustenance and wonder if things between you will ever be what they once were, what they should have been.

Here you are sitting down to a feast like nothing has even changed between you.  You became what you swore you would never be and you two have never even talked about it and this silence is actually starting to weigh on you as much as the shame ever has and God—Are you ever going to talk about it?

Jesus breaks bread and gives it to you, and as you reach out to take it, you can still see the wounds in his wrists where they nailed him to the wood.  But the fish are hot and the bread is fresh and you are hungry.  So you let the whole meal go by in friendly conversation, and you don’t ask Jesus about the awful thing burned into your memory to this day.

But he knows, doesn’t he?

And after you’ve eaten together, he speaks.

Your name is Peter.  At least, it is to Jesus.  Isn’t it?

“Simon, Son of John,” he says.  It’s a little like when your mother used to scold you for teasing Andrew when you were kids.  Except there’s a look on Jesus’ face now, and even though all you can think about is the burning coals and the heat of shame, there’s this look on his face and you can’t describe it, but whatever it is means you’re not in trouble.

“Simon, Son of John,” he says, “do you love me more than these?”

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to feed his lambs.

Maybe some time passes. You can’t be sure how much, because all that matters is that Jesus turns to you again.

“Do you love me?” he says.

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to tend his sheep.

The next time he says it like he knows what hearing a question three times will mean to you.  He says, “Do you love me?”

Someday the story of this conversation is going to be written down in Greek, and many well-meaning preachers are going to focus on the use of different words for love—agape love, phileo love—and what they think those words mean.  Some will preach how this goes to show that, even now, you can’t get where Jesus is or where he wants you to be.

Poor Simon Peter, they’ll say, because they too will never forget the night you denied Jesus and everything you were supposed to be for him.  It will be easy for them to interpret the words to reflect what they already know about you: That you fall short and Jesus needs to meet you in your weakness.  They will shame you even in your redemption.

Maybe they wouldn’t preach it like that if they could hear what you hear.

You and Jesus don’t speak Greek.  You speak Aramaic, and what you hear is the very same question spoken three times.  What you hear is three opportunities to affirm your love and three instructions to cherish Jesus’ people the way you cherish him.  What you hear is Jesus calling you to be the disciple you were always meant to be.  What you hear is the emotion in his voice when his third question both breaks you open and restores you.  What you hear is the voice drowning out the crackle of fire.  What you hear is love.

Jesus calls you Simon, but you both know that you are and forever will be Peter.  You are the rock on which your beloved Jesus will build his church.  You are the one who will shepherd his flock.  You are the one who will speak to the Jews and the Gentiles.  You are the one who will die for them all—for Jesus, for his people.  You are the one who cherishes your friend no matter how ashamed you feel of your failure.

Peter, someday a Christian named C.S. Lewis will write about this kind of love between people who know each other the way you and Jesus do—that between friends, the question Do you love me? means, Do you see the same truth?  Do you care about the same truth?  Lewis won’t mention you or this conversation with your Lord, but if you could know what he would write, you might say, “Yes!  That’s what Jesus is asking of me.  Do we see the same truth?  Am I ready to care for his people as much as I care for him?  Am I ready to lay down my life?  Am I able to bear the name Disciple, to be the person Jesus made me and do what he called me to do?”

And Jesus thinks you are.  At Passover, you told him you wanted to follow him wherever he was going, but back then you weren’t ready.  Now, Jesus says, “Follow me.”  And you will.  The last word on you in this story is not your mistake.

And you don’t know this yet, Peter, but someday millions of Jesus’ people will put the ashes of burnt palms on their foreheads. Those sooty dark smudges will remind them that they are mortal and that they have fallen short of what Jesus has called them to be.  But there but for the grace of God, those ashes will mean so much more.  Through the ashes, anointed on each forehead in the form of a cross, Jesus will speak to their hearts: “My friend, do you love me?”

And if they can hear those words above the crackle of fire, and each and every reminder of fall and failure, then like you, Peter, the people you nourish and lead and all of their spiritual descendants—they too will know who they are and what they are meant to do . . .

If only they will hear love over the persistent whisper of shame.

Getting What We Deserve

A sermon I delivered in class this month, based upon Job 2:1-8 (NRSV). I preached off of notes and pictures rather than written text, so this is just an adaptation of that presentation.

I invite you to read Job 2:1-8 first, noting that the Hebrew for "(the) Satan" also translates to mean "the accuser."

By the time we catch up with Job in the beginning of Chapter 2, he's already lost his numerous sons and daughters and all of his livestock and property. Job was a well-respected man in his community, and having all of these things had helped to shape his high social status. They're the kinds of things that made other people in the community look at him and say, "That Job must have done something right to be so blessed."

And then, just when it looks like it can't get any worse, he even loses his very health.

For the people of Job's time and place, all of this loss indicates one thing: Job must have done something wrong and now he's getting what he deserves. People believed that God would dish out rewards and punishments, an idea well established in Deuteronomy, which the storytellers and early audiences would be thinking with here.

But for the life of him, Job can't figure out what he could have done to be suffering this series of unfortunate events. His friends use common sense and religious tradition to make their point, but in the face of all of this logic and theology, Job only knows that this doesn't line up with his own experience. He has to rethink what he and his community have believed about God.

This is what Job's integrity is really about - being authentic. Not just doing good things or praising God (and by Chapter 3 Job won't seem as patient as we might think); but also standing by what he knows to be true.

Even if we don't experience the same losses that Job does, we 21st century Christians have plenty of voices competing to explain suffering to us.

Some voices ask, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Some say, "You're too bad to be forgiven."

Some voices pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and then urge people to be stoic and to bear pain and hardship - even the kinds that humans cause one another - because somehow God derives glory from this.

Being apathetic or desensitized to pain is not the mark of strong faith. Seeking the power of God, even in the midst of human weakness and crisis, can be the mark of strong faith. Having the strength and compassion not to condemn someone for their own suffering can be the mark of strong faith.

Unfortunately, we - the church, the world - may have come up with even more ways to justify suffering than to alleviate it.

Over the course of history, religious peoples have:

...claimed that the pain of childbirth was inflicted on women because of Eve's part in the Fall,
...identified illness and disability with demon possession,
...blamed victims for bringing acts of violence upon themselves,
...speculated that AIDS arose to punish homosexuality,
...sanctioned genocide and slavery in the name of God,
...and - just like Job's friends - touted the adage that "you reap what you sow."

It's time to realize that suffering, like grace, is not so conditional. It's a realization we need to face for all of those people like Job whose hardships only become worse when accusations rain down on them.

Accusations.

And it's even more than that: it's important for everyone who has ever been told that they are "undeserving" in one way or another - too innocent to face pain, too guilty to find grace.

Because if we don't acknowledge that bad things can happen to people in spite of the good that they do, how can we ever accept the idea that grace can come to people in spite of their sins and mistakes? How can we accept forgiveness for what we ourselves have done?

Do you know that you are forgiven? For everything. No matter what.

We must believe that grace is just as real and unconditional as suffering is - and ultimately more triumphant.

The Gospel of Matthew says that God causes the sun "to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

So what's the point?

Maybe the point isn't our righteousness or whether or not we deserve what comes our way, but that God aches with human suffering, and rejoices when we find grace and hope in spite of it.

Follow Through

A meditation on Mark 1:14-20 that I prepared for a service at a nursing home (actually an abbreviated revision of a sermon I haven't preached yet).


Image Source

What if the disciples' initial decision to follow is important--the event that starts them on their journey--but what if there's even more to this? The story of "Jesus and his disciples" could have ended at any moment had the followers stopped following. (There seem to be a few close calls when the disciples are not having their finer moments.) But because they ultimately follow through, the Gospels don't end at Chapter One.

Sports folks! I know you're out there. In baseball, golf, tennis, what makes a good swing? Is it only the moment that you lift your hands, or the moment of impact, or is it also the follow-through?

What makes your friend your friend? Is it that day back in kindergarten (or college!) that you were both so nervous about not knowing anyone that you made a pact to stick together? Or is it every day of your friendship since then that you do stick by each other?

What makes your spouse your spouse? Is it only the signed marriage license from the state? Or is it every day that you keep the vows you made to each other? If you were a traditionalist on your wedding day, you may have vowed to love and cherish your partner. "Love" here is a verb, and like the verb "follow," it beckons a choice, a commitment.

We also practice commitment to our communities and neighbors, to our work, to our rest and our self-care, or in devoting our time or energy to something with meaning to us. When we offer this kind of dedication to Jesus, we are not just following, but we are following through.

One more thing to mention: Being a person of commitment doesn't mean that we won't also need to make difficult choices and sacrifices. There are going to be activities and relationships in our lives that, for whatever reason, we will need to let go. Sometimes Jesus will call, and Zebedee and the hired men will stay behind.

But we may be surprised to see who has been called to travel with us and who else we'll find along the way. We are called to love enemies and strangers. We are called to love the enemy or the stranger that our friend or our spouse or our ex has become to us. We are called to forgive and to accept forgiveness, to heal and to accept healing. And we are called to share God's message with other people; to encourage others to take a life-changing swing at life and then follow through.

Because when Jesus called people to follow him, he called them to journey with him. He vowed that he would shape them into new people living with a new purpose, for however long they committed to the process and to him.

And so, when we have decided to follow Jesus, to see what he will teach us about who we really are, it is a decision that we must make again and again: to follow through, every day.

Spiritual Complacency and Fear

Homily delivered at Kidlington Methodist Church, England, in November 2008, based upon 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30.

Granted, this was only the second homily I've ever delivered, and I still haven't studied sermonizing, so please try to forgive it its trespasses, but do feel absolutely welcome to offer criticism.

All images used (in blog post form only) link to their sources; no infringement intended. Please note: I do not necessarily agree with or affirm the content of the sites to which I have linked.

The hymn All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, cited below, had been sung earlier in the service. Also cited: The Screwtape Letters (novel) and V for Vendetta (film).

Why yes, Don Feder, I did refer positively to what you considered the "most explicitly anti-Christian movie to date" during a Christian worship service. But look on the bright side. At least Avatar (2009) hadn't come out yet.

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"Rise and Shine: Spiritual Complacency and Fear"

Wake up!

It's time to get ready! Brush your teeth. What do you mean your shirt and trousers are in that war zone? Find them! Hurry!

Have you done your homework?

Sound familiar? The parents, children, and university students are nodding.

In preparing and rousing the Thessalonians, Paul wrote:

"You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled" (1 Thess. 5.5-6).

Paul founded the Christian church of Thessalonica on his second missionary journey, and he was eager to know how the people were progressing in their new faith. One of their concerns was the second coming of Jesus, the Parousia, but Paul did not aim to overwhelm them with doctrine. Rather, 1 Thessalonians was primarily meant to encourage them. He even ended this section not only urging them to support one another, but commending them for having done so.

So on a topic that sometimes gets a bad rap in our present world – Judgment Day, the End Times, the Apocalypse – Paul wrote to tell them that the second coming was actually an inspiration and a comfort, a stimulus for Christians to serve God, an incentive to live holy lives. Paul blesses them:

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5.23).

He warns them that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5.2), but tells them that this will not surprise them because they are not of the darkness, but children of light. He adds:

"Since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet" (1 Thess. 5.8).

Such imagery gives us strength and hope; it reinforces to us that our faith will fortify us, that God will save us from peril. Yet there is temptation, even in a Christian life, to sleep, to fall into spiritual lethargy; to assume that our relationship with God is fine if we go through the motions. In his novel, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis shares with us the advice from a senior devil to a junior devil. The senior devil once says, 'Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep’ (Lewis, 40). The inaction and lethargy of God's people is where sin can thrive.

Matthew 25 tells of Jesus' Parable of the Talents, though for now I would venture to call it the Parable of the Timid Servant. A master, before going away, leaves talents – a unit of money – with each of three servants: to one, five talents; to another three talents; and to the last, one talent, each according to his ability. Now that isn't to say that the last servant is given nothing of value -

A single talent weighed in at 33 kg, or 73 lbs. For a visual reference, think of your average 10-year-old, or, barring that, 33 1kg packages of Miracle-Gro. We're speaking in terms of great potential all around. And for those of you inclined to maths, that means 165 packages of Miracle-Gro to your first servant there. That's a lot of plants.

So servants #1 and 2 each invest what they have and double it. But the third servant is paralyzed in fear of his master's return – so afraid of wrath and blame or even his own humble failure that he refrains from acting at all except to bury the talent in the ground (which may have worked more in his favor if the talent actually had been Miracle-Gro). When their master returns, he invites the first two servants to partake in the joy of their master, but he goes so far as to call the last servant "wicked." Clearly he is not being blamed simply for poor financial planning; his error was inaction, burying all he had away from the light.

God is not a conniving thief or malicious slave master wishing us despair and harm, but God's works and timing and demands are often unexpected; they often surprise us. God wants you, the entirety and whole of you – all you've been given and all you can do with it. When your soul enters heaven; when Jesus comes again; but also right now, in this moment, on this day. God wants you.


Remember, remember, the 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Day, just recently. Many of you may be well familiar with the story and film, "V for Vendetta." If you don't know it, suffice it to say that there is a beautiful line in the film delivered in a scene of courage, desperation and trial.


Evey (Natalie Portman) reads a moving letter in V for Vendetta (2006).

The speaker says: "I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottle Brook and she used to tell me that God was in the rain."

I myself vividly remember once walking with a friend through a light rainstorm in New York. The conversation turned to the extent that we minded the weather, and I expressed a vague feeling of it's-nice-but-I-don't-exactly-want-it-on-me. She was more optimistic about it than I, looking up for a moment to let the droplets seek refuge in the curves of her face. "'God is in the rain,'" she quoted.

Of course, we also once traipsed through the storm of the century that eventually flooded numerous towns in the area. Taking our typical route to church, we crossed a bridge over what was usually the most modest of streams and water was absolutely gushing below in great currents.

By the time we arrived, we were so drenched with God that at first I was reluctant to let my waterlogged shoes squeak down the aisle, let alone sit my soaked soul on the pew. That week, Sunday best was not a viable option. We were both layered in the most waterproof clothing we owned. Already two of my umbrellas had become casualties of other recent storms, and I had none to bring with me. We were dripping wet, and we were late for Mass. Two things I, as a Protestant, was not ready to see how the Roman Catholic Church would tolerate.

But no one so much as frowned at us. We attended the service, recognizing no one but joining in worship and the passing of the peace with people who'd had to journey through that same storm. Whether they came on foot or by car, many of them probably knew what it was to look out the window that day in a moment of "maybe we can catch the next one...?" and found themselves on the way there nonetheless.

Perhaps like the third servant, I too was so distracted by my own fear of being shunned for arriving in such horrendous shape that I never even thought about what it really took for each person to arrive there; what it meant that, whether out of obligation or personal will, they were able to do everything necessary to get there, and so had we. Maybe the point was not that we were soaking wet, that we had "weather on us" – but that, God being in all things and guiding our paths, we were so full of Spirit in that moment that we could wring it out, fill a bucket to share and still have plenty remaining.

Living a Christian life does not mean only believing that God's Spirit exists any more than living on Earth means believing in the concept of rain – that it comes from time to time and that, in some form or another, it will come again. To be a Christian, a child of light, is to let God drench you with the Holy Spirit inside and out, so that even if Jesus is not physically present on the earth, everything that his life, death and resurrection meant is still represented here in each one of us and all the greater in a fortified Christian community.

"He bids us build each other up" or, should we say, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing" (1 Thess. 5.11) – "And, gathered into one, to our high calling's glorious hope, we hand in hand go on. The gift which He on one bestows, we all delight to prove. The grace through every vessel flows, in purest streams of love" (All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, Charles Wesley, 1747).

You have the ability to invest time, resources, money, skills, talents – and the decisions about these things are important; they shouldn't be taken lightly and are best managed under God's direction. But looking further, what else might this parable mean for Christians, for children of light? What if we put ourselves in the place of that last servant, who also received something very valuable? What if we were to bury Truth, or our Christianity, our very spirituality, our relationship with Creator and Redeemer? Whether we are afraid of God, society, persecution, failure... none of these fears validate hiding our faith in God, our hope in Christ, our strength in the Spirit. If none of these things permeate our daily lives, we may as well bury our heads in the sand, too.

Should we not declare: "Lord, you have been our refuge; from one generation to another, before the mountains were born, or the earth and the world were brought to be; from eternity to eternity you are God" (Psalm 90.1-2)? Should we not find solace in the immensity and magnitude of our God? Should we not invest each bit of the dust from which we're made and bring something greater than ourselves to the world? "Our years pass away like a sigh" (Psalm 90.9) – should we not call upon our Lord: "Teach us so to number our days; that we may apply our hearts to wisdom" (Psalm 90.12)?

You have the power to demonstrate what it means to follow Christ; to exemplify that he lived and died that we might be better people and more complete souls; that Christ will come again and that, in trusting him, we do not need to fear; that the Day of the Lord will be beautiful: not merely a day to be judged but a day to witness justice. God will set all right.

But until that day, God is calling us to live as the children of light. We must not hold back in fear or complacency. Rise and shine. Let God surprise you with what you can do – with the Christian you can be – through the One who strengthens you (Phil. 4:13).