“This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Can you keep a secret? I know that’s a curious question to begin a sermon with… but my husband—and maybe me too—could get in trouble for this story. Jonathan is a Lutheran pastor, and his office is near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A couple of years ago, he was invited for the first time to celebrate one of their midweek Noon Eucharists in a chapel. He was very excited… I’ve never gotten to celebrate the Eucharist in a cathedral, so it was a great moment for clerical matrimonial one-upsmanship. He arrived early, found the sacristy, got on his vestments, headed out to the chapel, and waited until the appointed hour. No one was there. So he started the service… reading the lessons… preaching the sermon… it being the Cathedral, some tourists wandered in and out. A few were present at the Peace and he chatted with them and invited them to stay for the Eucharist but they declined.
And now he was faced with a difficult choice. We obviously do not say private masses in the Episcopal Church… or the Lutheran Church. The correct thing to do was to stop praying and leave. But as Jonathan put it, he was all dressed up, and a Gothic Cathedral feels medieval enough that you can do medieval things… so he continued the service, confident in being surrounded by the Communion of Saints, that in the words of tonight’s gospel, “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” so he was not actually alone.
When he broke the bread, and it came time to distribute communion, he went to the altar rail and imagined giving communion to his mother, who died over 30 years ago. What was not possible in real life, and what would not have been possible if other living persons had been present, became possible in the leisure of solitary openness to the Spirit. He gave communion to Walter Bouman, his mentor and seminary professor. To Gerald Youngquist, the pastor of his adolescence and young adulthood who formed his identity as a Lutheran. To grandparents and great grandparents he’d never met; to icons of the church in centuries past. All were around the table in the Cathedral that day. A communion with the communion of saints.
Jesus says in the Gospel today that those who eat of this bread will live forever and have eternal life. And I think in general we emphasize that on the funeral/All Saints Day side of liturgy and less so on the Eucharistic side of liturgy. But it’s here, too. Why are we eating this bread and drinking this wine? Well, we do this for a host of reasons—but today it is particularly present for me in this idea of the food that sustains us beyond the grave and keeps us connected with all the other people who have feasted at God’s altar.
When we die, we do not lose our place at this table. We just move to the other side of it. We do not dine here alone this evening. I pray that the communion of saints can be viscerally present with us even when we’re with others—we don’t have to say a private mass to know that Jesus has called many to the banquet table ahead of us. Who do you know—who do you miss—who will be communing with us today? A parent? A friend? A spouse? A child?
Sometime after Jonathan had this experience I told the story during a sermon at Epiphany and wondered who I might encounter at the table that day. I figured it would probably be some of the people I’d buried in my years there; or maybe family members.
But what happened shocked me. Unbidden, when I celebrated the Eucharist at 8:30 that morning, I thought of Lot Jones, the founding rector of the Church of the Epiphany in 1833, and all the other old dead white guys who were clergy at Epiphany whose pictures hang on the wall of our office. And I felt like I could feel their hands on my shoulders, pressing down, in a line behind me. It was a sort of mystical experience—not what I’m used to, but very powerful. There they were—supporting me in my priesthood, celebrating the Eucharist with me in a very real way. It was one of the foundational experiences that really got me to consider if I was being called to stay at Epiphany as their Rector—because here were all these guys who—I’m sure—would never have even dreamed that their beloved church could be led by a woman when they were bound by time and place; but here they were, unbound by time and place, united through the sacrament, and those prejudices and particularities had fallen away so that they could stand with their hands on my shoulders.
The sacrament can cut though those prejudices and particularities. I remember being at a Roman Catholic funeral a few years ago for my Deacon’s partner. I hemmed and hawed over whether to wear a collar—because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to take communion. But if I didn’t, I felt like I wouldn’t fully be supporting my deacon as his priest. So I wore it. When it came time for the invitation to communion, the Catholic priest got up and said that he knew that Joe really belonged to two churches, and that there were Episcopalians in the congregation that day, and he wanted to tell us all that we were invited to the table. I leaned over to my rector—who was wearing a tie—and said, “Did I just get invited to communion?” “Yes,” he said. “then I guess I’d better go,” I finished. Time and space and human rules fall away in the blessedness of the sacrament. A sentiment beautifully captured in Madeline L’Engle’s poem, At Communion:
Whether I kneel or stand or sit in prayer
I am not caught in time nor held in space,
But, thrust beyond this posture, I am where
Time and eternity are face to face.
Where crossbar and upright hold the One
In agony and in all Loves embrace
The power in helplessness which was begun
When all the brilliance of the flaming sun
Contained itself in the small confines of a child
Now comes to me in this strange action done
In mystery. Break time, break space, O wild
And lovely power. Break me: thus am I dead,
Am resurrected now in wine and bread.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
From Suffering to Hope
Last summer while I was visiting my parents in California we took a trip to Sequoia National Park, one of my favorite places in the world. It’s always good to stand next to one of the largest living things on earth—the sequoia trees—and feel awe and remind yourself how small you are. It brings to mind the verses from the Psalm today, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out? You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor.”
But in addition to their size, one of the other interesting tidbits about sequoias is that in most cases, there needs to be a forest fire for their seeds to germinate. The heat opens the seed pods and releases the seeds, and also clears out the low brush that would shade and choke sequoia saplings. No fire, no new baby sequoias. And the sequoia trees themselves are well protected from fire—their bark may be scarred, but they continue to grow, and grow; the oldest sequoia living today is something like 2500 years old.
I have been soaking in the portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard today. Two sentences that encapsulate so much rich theology. Justified by faith, peace with God, grace. And then the second sentence, which is particularly resonant with me this week: “…knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Suffering is only the beginning of the cycle. It’s hard when you’re in the midst of suffering to believe that anything good can come out of it. And yet, as Paul says, suffering produces endurance. And that’s where this verse gets particularly interesting to me; because I think often we might just give up at endurance. “Oh good. My suffering was not for naught. I have endured.” But if we just stop there, we miss out—because endurance produces character. Again, we might give up with that. Character sounds pretty good after you’ve been through suffering and endurance. “Look at my scars—they make me interesting. I’ve got character.” But the challenge and blessing of following Christ is that character then produces hope—perhaps not in such a linear progression but there’s hope at the end. And hope—God’s hope--does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
The fire releases the sequoia seeds and clears the ground for them to grow. And when the best thinking in forestry was to put out forest fires instead of letting them burn, the sequoias in California didn’t reproduce enough. By trying to protect them from what was perceived as suffering, they couldn’t complete their life cycle.
Where do we try to save ourselves suffering and prevent the passage through suffering to the other side? Because that’s part of Paul’s message today, too: without suffering, we do not get to hope. He was writing to a community that was suffering persecution and rejection, and didn’t want them to play it safe. He didn’t want them to back off from their beliefs, from their faith, from their community to make it more palatable to others so that they’d be safe. If they were forced to suffer so be it—because in that suffering a door opened that led through endurance and character to ultimate hope. Which doesn’t mean that Paul is asking the Christians in Rome to seek suffering but he is promising the possibility of redemption for that suffering, and pointing the way through the suffering to the other side. There is rarely a direct line from suffering to hope; but you can get there at the end.
What is our hope as Christians? The Gospels and Jesus don’t say a whole lot about hope. Paul does. A lot. Paul’s answer in this passage—which is pretty consistent throughout his letters—is that our hope is sharing the glory of God. Hope is union with God, eternal life, resurrection, participating in glory; hope is not giving in to the despair that comes with living the injustice and violence and grief of the world.
A little bit later in Romans, Paul writes: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:24-27)
We hope for things unseen. Hope is not coveting someone else’s happiness, or having ambition for someone else’s life. Hope is trusting that God’s desire for us, which we cannot see, is fulfilling and radiant. When we are suffering—or enduring—hope can very much be a thing unseen. But that’s where our faith, that God—not us—has put in our hearts comes in. We have faith that hope will come, and that hope will be enough.
Now what does all that say about the Trinity, since this is Trinity Sunday? A popular picture on Facebook this week said, “To avoid preaching heresy on Trinity Sunday, say nothing and just show pictures of cute kittens.” Tempting. There’s also a cartoon video of St. Patrick using every “bad” metaphor for the Trinity that preachers use; including a number that I’ve used here, like a shamrock, water-ice-and-steam, and even (I haven’t used this one, but I wish I had) Voltron—the 5 lions combine to make the single Voltron robot.
But…. these passages from Romans contain a lot of activity on God’s part, beginning with, “We are justified by faith.” For Martin Luther, faith is God’s work, not ours. It is God who puts faith in our hearts, God who justifies via that faith. It is then Jesus who intercedes for us and brings us to peace with God, and who give us access to God’s grace. And it is the Holy Spirit who is pouring love into our hearts. In the later Romans passage, it is the Holy spirit who is interceding on our behalf to God the Father, the Holy spirit who has those “sighs too deep for words” that cause God the Father to look into our hearts and know us. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all working together in different ways for us, interacting with us and with each other, extending themselves back and forth.
It is in the fullness of the Trinity that I find hope. God is not just up there and distant; God is not just right here by our side and in our hearts. God is dynamic and moving, passionately loving to us and to the 3 person of the Trinity. With such a loving God and, frankly, busy God, how could we not have hope?
Toward the end of Romans, Paul writes this beautiful verse as a blessing: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13) Amen.
But in addition to their size, one of the other interesting tidbits about sequoias is that in most cases, there needs to be a forest fire for their seeds to germinate. The heat opens the seed pods and releases the seeds, and also clears out the low brush that would shade and choke sequoia saplings. No fire, no new baby sequoias. And the sequoia trees themselves are well protected from fire—their bark may be scarred, but they continue to grow, and grow; the oldest sequoia living today is something like 2500 years old.
I have been soaking in the portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard today. Two sentences that encapsulate so much rich theology. Justified by faith, peace with God, grace. And then the second sentence, which is particularly resonant with me this week: “…knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Suffering is only the beginning of the cycle. It’s hard when you’re in the midst of suffering to believe that anything good can come out of it. And yet, as Paul says, suffering produces endurance. And that’s where this verse gets particularly interesting to me; because I think often we might just give up at endurance. “Oh good. My suffering was not for naught. I have endured.” But if we just stop there, we miss out—because endurance produces character. Again, we might give up with that. Character sounds pretty good after you’ve been through suffering and endurance. “Look at my scars—they make me interesting. I’ve got character.” But the challenge and blessing of following Christ is that character then produces hope—perhaps not in such a linear progression but there’s hope at the end. And hope—God’s hope--does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
The fire releases the sequoia seeds and clears the ground for them to grow. And when the best thinking in forestry was to put out forest fires instead of letting them burn, the sequoias in California didn’t reproduce enough. By trying to protect them from what was perceived as suffering, they couldn’t complete their life cycle.
Where do we try to save ourselves suffering and prevent the passage through suffering to the other side? Because that’s part of Paul’s message today, too: without suffering, we do not get to hope. He was writing to a community that was suffering persecution and rejection, and didn’t want them to play it safe. He didn’t want them to back off from their beliefs, from their faith, from their community to make it more palatable to others so that they’d be safe. If they were forced to suffer so be it—because in that suffering a door opened that led through endurance and character to ultimate hope. Which doesn’t mean that Paul is asking the Christians in Rome to seek suffering but he is promising the possibility of redemption for that suffering, and pointing the way through the suffering to the other side. There is rarely a direct line from suffering to hope; but you can get there at the end.
What is our hope as Christians? The Gospels and Jesus don’t say a whole lot about hope. Paul does. A lot. Paul’s answer in this passage—which is pretty consistent throughout his letters—is that our hope is sharing the glory of God. Hope is union with God, eternal life, resurrection, participating in glory; hope is not giving in to the despair that comes with living the injustice and violence and grief of the world.
A little bit later in Romans, Paul writes: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:24-27)
We hope for things unseen. Hope is not coveting someone else’s happiness, or having ambition for someone else’s life. Hope is trusting that God’s desire for us, which we cannot see, is fulfilling and radiant. When we are suffering—or enduring—hope can very much be a thing unseen. But that’s where our faith, that God—not us—has put in our hearts comes in. We have faith that hope will come, and that hope will be enough.
Now what does all that say about the Trinity, since this is Trinity Sunday? A popular picture on Facebook this week said, “To avoid preaching heresy on Trinity Sunday, say nothing and just show pictures of cute kittens.” Tempting. There’s also a cartoon video of St. Patrick using every “bad” metaphor for the Trinity that preachers use; including a number that I’ve used here, like a shamrock, water-ice-and-steam, and even (I haven’t used this one, but I wish I had) Voltron—the 5 lions combine to make the single Voltron robot.
But…. these passages from Romans contain a lot of activity on God’s part, beginning with, “We are justified by faith.” For Martin Luther, faith is God’s work, not ours. It is God who puts faith in our hearts, God who justifies via that faith. It is then Jesus who intercedes for us and brings us to peace with God, and who give us access to God’s grace. And it is the Holy Spirit who is pouring love into our hearts. In the later Romans passage, it is the Holy spirit who is interceding on our behalf to God the Father, the Holy spirit who has those “sighs too deep for words” that cause God the Father to look into our hearts and know us. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all working together in different ways for us, interacting with us and with each other, extending themselves back and forth.
It is in the fullness of the Trinity that I find hope. God is not just up there and distant; God is not just right here by our side and in our hearts. God is dynamic and moving, passionately loving to us and to the 3 person of the Trinity. With such a loving God and, frankly, busy God, how could we not have hope?
Toward the end of Romans, Paul writes this beautiful verse as a blessing: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13) Amen.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
The Motherhood of God
My favorite Andrew Mullins mistake was several years ago, when he was reading the blessing from the altar. It was the one that has the phrase, “and the Holy Spirit, who broods over the world as a mother over her children,” but he paused before that last word, “children.” It was clear he couldn’t quite make out what it said on the page… and so Andrew said, “and the Holy Spirit, who broods over the world as a mother over her… chickens…” instead. I nearly lost it—and so did some of you.
It’s Mother’s Day. And I want to celebrate and contemplate the Motherhood of God. We are God’s children—not God’s chickens—today and every day. The choir is singing an anthem with a text by Julian of Norwich this morning that begins like this: “As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother.” Blessed Julian was in no way a radical feminist—she was a late 14th Century anchorite who had a series of showings, or revelations, while mortally ill. When she recovered, they were written down, and are now known as the “Revelations of Divine Love.” In them she repeatedly experienced God—especially Jesus—as a mother. “To the quality of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom, and knowledge — and this is God.” There is no gender issue for Julian—if God or Jesus possesses the qualities that she perceives as being maternal, then Jesus can be our mother. A mother is a role—not inherently gender specific—that resides in the qualities of love, wisdom, and knowledge.
A mother is someone who gives birth to something. I know how painful Mother’s Day was for me when I was trying—and failing—to get pregnant; and I know that for people who have complicated relationships with their own mothers, or are grieving their loss, this can be a hard day. But I’d like to universalize motherhood a little bit—because all of us know what it’s like to give birth metaphorically to something. We all know what it’s like—I hope—to breathe life into an idea or a vocation or a project. We know that satisfaction—that nervousness—that passion and joy that imbue pouring yourself out so that something else can have a life of its own beyond yourself. We know what it is to be frustrated when the things that we have given birth to do not do what we want them to do. We know what it is to love something—or someone—and then wisely guide it, and share our knowledge with it so that it can flourish independent of us.
That’s what Jesus does for us. Jesus is the one who gives us life. Jesus is the one who encourages and chastens and nurtures and steps back and dances the dance of motherhood in guiding us towards divine perfection and relationship. Jesus give us instruction and then freedom… celebrating when we take steps forward, comforting us when we fall down, getting piqued when we err spectacularly, and always, always inviting us into further maturity with him.
No matter how old we are, or how spiritual, we are all still children of God, with much to learn. And we belong to God in as real a way as we belong to our biological parents. We have an inheritance from God—an inheritance of eternal life, but also an inheritance of the Gospel that we must uphold in the face of the hostility and cynicism and violence of the world. Even if we are not fully mature, we grow in faith so that we can, in turn, pass that inheritance on to others. It’s like we are the middle generation—Jesus mothers us, and then we, in turn, give birth to another generation of the Word out in the world.
So the call this day is to be mothers. Whether you are young, old, male, female, whatever—Jesus has given you a spiritual Word to bring forth and nurture into the world. What will it be? Think about, pray about, search your heart about what piece of the gospel it is that you can give birth to, and raise up, and send off so that it can do its work while you look on proudly. Have a Mother’s Day.
The motherhood of God is linked to the Ascension, which we’re observing today, because in its own way, the Ascension is that most maternal of acts: it is Jesus saying, “It’s time to get out of the nest. I’ve taught you all you need to know—you’re on your own. I’ll still be watching you, and I’ll send help. But I won’t be there every day in the same way. You’re all grown up.” In each one of the stories of the ascension we hear this morning, Jesus summarizes his teaching and what the apostles are supposed to do next, and then lets them go by ascending. In his own way, he’s affirming those three qualities of motherhood that Julian identified: love, wisdom, and knowledge. He loves them, he has wisdom that says it will be OK if he leaves, and he has imparted the knowledge that they need to be people of faith.
And he knows he needs to leave so that they will do it. The disciples spend most of the Gospel getting the answers to Jesus’ questions wrong—even in the very moment of the Acts ascension story, they are STILL bungling the message and have to be corrected by Jesus and the angels. He is sending the Holy Spirit to help continue to guide them—and us—now that he will not be physically present, but his love continues, his wisdom lives on, and the knowledge he has passed on endures even to this day. Those apostles can then turn into mothers of the Gospel—mothers like a lot of us: imperfect, overburdened, well-meaning—who somehow, despite their personal frailties, give birth to something greater than they themselves could have imagined. Their child, if you will, is the church, and here we are, building it up, nurturing it, and trying to give it the legs to walk into the second half of the 21st Century. Let us cheer its steps, comfort it when it falls down, and both receive and pass on its wisdom, informed by what we experience and we know. So happy Mother’s Day to all of us.
It’s Mother’s Day. And I want to celebrate and contemplate the Motherhood of God. We are God’s children—not God’s chickens—today and every day. The choir is singing an anthem with a text by Julian of Norwich this morning that begins like this: “As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother.” Blessed Julian was in no way a radical feminist—she was a late 14th Century anchorite who had a series of showings, or revelations, while mortally ill. When she recovered, they were written down, and are now known as the “Revelations of Divine Love.” In them she repeatedly experienced God—especially Jesus—as a mother. “To the quality of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom, and knowledge — and this is God.” There is no gender issue for Julian—if God or Jesus possesses the qualities that she perceives as being maternal, then Jesus can be our mother. A mother is a role—not inherently gender specific—that resides in the qualities of love, wisdom, and knowledge.
A mother is someone who gives birth to something. I know how painful Mother’s Day was for me when I was trying—and failing—to get pregnant; and I know that for people who have complicated relationships with their own mothers, or are grieving their loss, this can be a hard day. But I’d like to universalize motherhood a little bit—because all of us know what it’s like to give birth metaphorically to something. We all know what it’s like—I hope—to breathe life into an idea or a vocation or a project. We know that satisfaction—that nervousness—that passion and joy that imbue pouring yourself out so that something else can have a life of its own beyond yourself. We know what it is to be frustrated when the things that we have given birth to do not do what we want them to do. We know what it is to love something—or someone—and then wisely guide it, and share our knowledge with it so that it can flourish independent of us.
That’s what Jesus does for us. Jesus is the one who gives us life. Jesus is the one who encourages and chastens and nurtures and steps back and dances the dance of motherhood in guiding us towards divine perfection and relationship. Jesus give us instruction and then freedom… celebrating when we take steps forward, comforting us when we fall down, getting piqued when we err spectacularly, and always, always inviting us into further maturity with him.
No matter how old we are, or how spiritual, we are all still children of God, with much to learn. And we belong to God in as real a way as we belong to our biological parents. We have an inheritance from God—an inheritance of eternal life, but also an inheritance of the Gospel that we must uphold in the face of the hostility and cynicism and violence of the world. Even if we are not fully mature, we grow in faith so that we can, in turn, pass that inheritance on to others. It’s like we are the middle generation—Jesus mothers us, and then we, in turn, give birth to another generation of the Word out in the world.
So the call this day is to be mothers. Whether you are young, old, male, female, whatever—Jesus has given you a spiritual Word to bring forth and nurture into the world. What will it be? Think about, pray about, search your heart about what piece of the gospel it is that you can give birth to, and raise up, and send off so that it can do its work while you look on proudly. Have a Mother’s Day.
The motherhood of God is linked to the Ascension, which we’re observing today, because in its own way, the Ascension is that most maternal of acts: it is Jesus saying, “It’s time to get out of the nest. I’ve taught you all you need to know—you’re on your own. I’ll still be watching you, and I’ll send help. But I won’t be there every day in the same way. You’re all grown up.” In each one of the stories of the ascension we hear this morning, Jesus summarizes his teaching and what the apostles are supposed to do next, and then lets them go by ascending. In his own way, he’s affirming those three qualities of motherhood that Julian identified: love, wisdom, and knowledge. He loves them, he has wisdom that says it will be OK if he leaves, and he has imparted the knowledge that they need to be people of faith.
And he knows he needs to leave so that they will do it. The disciples spend most of the Gospel getting the answers to Jesus’ questions wrong—even in the very moment of the Acts ascension story, they are STILL bungling the message and have to be corrected by Jesus and the angels. He is sending the Holy Spirit to help continue to guide them—and us—now that he will not be physically present, but his love continues, his wisdom lives on, and the knowledge he has passed on endures even to this day. Those apostles can then turn into mothers of the Gospel—mothers like a lot of us: imperfect, overburdened, well-meaning—who somehow, despite their personal frailties, give birth to something greater than they themselves could have imagined. Their child, if you will, is the church, and here we are, building it up, nurturing it, and trying to give it the legs to walk into the second half of the 21st Century. Let us cheer its steps, comfort it when it falls down, and both receive and pass on its wisdom, informed by what we experience and we know. So happy Mother’s Day to all of us.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Lydia's Invitation
Preached on May 5, 2013 at the Church of the Epiphany
My senior year in college, I was pretty convinced I wanted to be a priest, and so I took two Religious studies courses each semester at Yale. The most transformative of those was one on Early Christianity, taught by Bentley Layton, a specialist in Gnostic Gospels. I loved reading the extra-canonical texts—the Gospels of Mary and Thomas and James and hearing a different tradition of stories than the ones I had grown up on. I especially relished the images of women leaders in the early church—because in the few Sunday School classes I went to (usually I ditched Sunday School to sing in the choir) all the stories seemed to be about men. And I bought into the idea that according to the Bible, women were supposed to be subordinate to men, at least in the church—and we didn’t have any women clergy at St. Francis to break me out of that during much of my childhood. There was always a second narrative from my mother about how women in the church were just as capable as men, and that when “men” was used in the Prayer Book, it was a gender-neutral term for all people. But the Biblical stuff was hard to wrap my mind around.
But what Professor Layton also pointed out was that there are—if you look at them—phenomenal examples of women leaders in the church in the canonical scriptures. And we get perhaps the best example of those today in the reading from Acts: Lydia.
Lydia, we are told, is a God-fearer—that means she is a Gentile, not a Jew, but a Gentile who worshipped with Jews, and believed in the one God, even though she didn’t fully convert and follow the law. She has gathered with a group of mostly women outside the walls of Philippi to pray and worship, and Paul has come to that group of women to share the good news about Jesus. She is a householder, a dealer in purple cloth, and from Thyatira, although she clearly has a house outside the walls of Philippi as well. Thyatira is in Asia Minor, and Philippi is in Macedonia, so her business has taken her a long way. Lydia is a fairly upper class woman, independent, not unlike many of the people in this room right now.
And the Lord opens her heart to hear what Paul has to say.
That’s one of the things I love about Lydia—I picture her strong, confident, independent… well dressed in purple… and yet you can see in her story some kind of interesting spiritual journey. Why is this Gentile woman praying with Jews? What about her worship of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses was unsatisfying? What kind of hole did she feel she had in her heart that started to be fulfilled when she met a community that worshipped only one God, and followed some perplexing laws to govern daily life. And what kind of community did she find among this group of women who come together to pray; it sounds so very modern: “the Ladies Prayer Group will meet near the river on Thursdays at 8am.” She must have been seeking something, and then Paul arrives and she finds what she’s been looking for all along.
The note about having her whole household baptized is a little shocking to us. God opens her heart, and then all her household—so any children, servants, extended family, or slaves—are brought along with her. My sense of independence and autonomy gets a little squeamish with that sentence… why should anyone else have to convert to Christianity just because Lydia does? We are so biased toward the individual today—and for some good reasons. But there’s also something compelling about a household being a unit—a “we” instead of a collection of “I”s. The Lord opens Lydia’s heart… and maybe through that, the hearts of the rest of her household are opened as well. What happens to one, happens to all. That’s surely a much more idealistic and romantic view of 1st Century household politics than the reality—but I think it’s good to suspend our 21st Century American notions of idealism to open ourselves to the story. From the moment Lydia believes in Jesus, she is an evangelist and a leader who knows the Gospel has enough value to make it worth sharing with the people she knows and loves.
So Lydia’s heart is opened, she receives the Gospel, is baptized, and then she opens her home. “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home,” Luke records her saying, and you also get the sense that it took some effort to get Paul and his companions to stay, with the final comment: “And she prevailed upon us.” Lydia understands that it is in the day to day fellowship of Christians that her life will be formed, and she also understands that the life of an itinerant preacher like Paul needs the support of people like her.
Lydia is the icon of hospitality for Christians. She opens her home and it quickly gets risky—Paul is arrested, then miraculously freed from prison, and then comes back to stay with her. But she’s on her way, and whatever she was part of in building the church in Philippi, it had an effect: all the people Paul names in his letter to the Philippians are women (though Lydia herself is not one of them). Wow.
That’s why Lydia’s the patron of a relatively new “dinner church” in Brooklyn. St. Lydia’s is an experimental group of 20 somethings that offers radical hospitality to their congregation. As their website puts it: “Our congregation is looking for an experience of the Holy that is strong enough to lean on, deep enough to question, and challenging enough to change us.” They describe three pillars of their life together: Sharing the Meal; Telling Our Story; Working Together.
I really like their idea of community: shared around the table, so that communion with your neighbor and communion with God is fully integrated; a community that is comfortable sharing their personal and spiritual stories with one another; and a community that expects is members to work—where everyone shares in the responsibility, even if it’s their first time there.
St. Lydia’s was founded by Pastor Emily Scott in 2008, and is thriving enough that they are adding a Monday evening meal and service to their current Sunday schedule; I’m never able to go on Sundays because of our 6pm service, but I would love to find a Monday to attend with some people from Epiphany in late May or June.
How can we be Lydias at Epiphany? How can we show incredible hospitality, and build a community that has enough convictions to bring in our friends and families to grow the church? What else can we do to open our hearts to God’s word—even if we’re strong and independent and business-saavy? She has good news for us—what can we learn?
One of the things the Vestry will be considering at our upcoming retreat later this month is how to reach out to more people and grow this congregation. There was an interesting blog post I saw this weekend titled “We will no longer be a welcoming church” by a Lutheran pastor in Colorado. At first, I was shocked—what could this possibly mean? But upon reading it, what the pastor was doing was distinguishing between being a welcoming church and being an inviting church. As he pointed out, being a welcoming church is passive—we can have great greeters, and a fantastic coffee hour and a really easy to read bulletin—but that only works if a newcomer happens to wander in the door. He is working with his congregation—which sounds not too different from ours—on becoming an inviting church. Being an inviting church is active—and Lydia is a great role model for being an inviting church. She invites Paul into her home and doesn’t take no for an answer. I want Epiphany to be an inviting church like Lydia—where we know that the Gospel has such value that it is worth sharing, worth inviting with everyone we know.
My senior year in college, I was pretty convinced I wanted to be a priest, and so I took two Religious studies courses each semester at Yale. The most transformative of those was one on Early Christianity, taught by Bentley Layton, a specialist in Gnostic Gospels. I loved reading the extra-canonical texts—the Gospels of Mary and Thomas and James and hearing a different tradition of stories than the ones I had grown up on. I especially relished the images of women leaders in the early church—because in the few Sunday School classes I went to (usually I ditched Sunday School to sing in the choir) all the stories seemed to be about men. And I bought into the idea that according to the Bible, women were supposed to be subordinate to men, at least in the church—and we didn’t have any women clergy at St. Francis to break me out of that during much of my childhood. There was always a second narrative from my mother about how women in the church were just as capable as men, and that when “men” was used in the Prayer Book, it was a gender-neutral term for all people. But the Biblical stuff was hard to wrap my mind around.
But what Professor Layton also pointed out was that there are—if you look at them—phenomenal examples of women leaders in the church in the canonical scriptures. And we get perhaps the best example of those today in the reading from Acts: Lydia.
Lydia, we are told, is a God-fearer—that means she is a Gentile, not a Jew, but a Gentile who worshipped with Jews, and believed in the one God, even though she didn’t fully convert and follow the law. She has gathered with a group of mostly women outside the walls of Philippi to pray and worship, and Paul has come to that group of women to share the good news about Jesus. She is a householder, a dealer in purple cloth, and from Thyatira, although she clearly has a house outside the walls of Philippi as well. Thyatira is in Asia Minor, and Philippi is in Macedonia, so her business has taken her a long way. Lydia is a fairly upper class woman, independent, not unlike many of the people in this room right now.
And the Lord opens her heart to hear what Paul has to say.
That’s one of the things I love about Lydia—I picture her strong, confident, independent… well dressed in purple… and yet you can see in her story some kind of interesting spiritual journey. Why is this Gentile woman praying with Jews? What about her worship of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses was unsatisfying? What kind of hole did she feel she had in her heart that started to be fulfilled when she met a community that worshipped only one God, and followed some perplexing laws to govern daily life. And what kind of community did she find among this group of women who come together to pray; it sounds so very modern: “the Ladies Prayer Group will meet near the river on Thursdays at 8am.” She must have been seeking something, and then Paul arrives and she finds what she’s been looking for all along.
The note about having her whole household baptized is a little shocking to us. God opens her heart, and then all her household—so any children, servants, extended family, or slaves—are brought along with her. My sense of independence and autonomy gets a little squeamish with that sentence… why should anyone else have to convert to Christianity just because Lydia does? We are so biased toward the individual today—and for some good reasons. But there’s also something compelling about a household being a unit—a “we” instead of a collection of “I”s. The Lord opens Lydia’s heart… and maybe through that, the hearts of the rest of her household are opened as well. What happens to one, happens to all. That’s surely a much more idealistic and romantic view of 1st Century household politics than the reality—but I think it’s good to suspend our 21st Century American notions of idealism to open ourselves to the story. From the moment Lydia believes in Jesus, she is an evangelist and a leader who knows the Gospel has enough value to make it worth sharing with the people she knows and loves.
So Lydia’s heart is opened, she receives the Gospel, is baptized, and then she opens her home. “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home,” Luke records her saying, and you also get the sense that it took some effort to get Paul and his companions to stay, with the final comment: “And she prevailed upon us.” Lydia understands that it is in the day to day fellowship of Christians that her life will be formed, and she also understands that the life of an itinerant preacher like Paul needs the support of people like her.
Lydia is the icon of hospitality for Christians. She opens her home and it quickly gets risky—Paul is arrested, then miraculously freed from prison, and then comes back to stay with her. But she’s on her way, and whatever she was part of in building the church in Philippi, it had an effect: all the people Paul names in his letter to the Philippians are women (though Lydia herself is not one of them). Wow.
That’s why Lydia’s the patron of a relatively new “dinner church” in Brooklyn. St. Lydia’s is an experimental group of 20 somethings that offers radical hospitality to their congregation. As their website puts it: “Our congregation is looking for an experience of the Holy that is strong enough to lean on, deep enough to question, and challenging enough to change us.” They describe three pillars of their life together: Sharing the Meal; Telling Our Story; Working Together.
I really like their idea of community: shared around the table, so that communion with your neighbor and communion with God is fully integrated; a community that is comfortable sharing their personal and spiritual stories with one another; and a community that expects is members to work—where everyone shares in the responsibility, even if it’s their first time there.
St. Lydia’s was founded by Pastor Emily Scott in 2008, and is thriving enough that they are adding a Monday evening meal and service to their current Sunday schedule; I’m never able to go on Sundays because of our 6pm service, but I would love to find a Monday to attend with some people from Epiphany in late May or June.
How can we be Lydias at Epiphany? How can we show incredible hospitality, and build a community that has enough convictions to bring in our friends and families to grow the church? What else can we do to open our hearts to God’s word—even if we’re strong and independent and business-saavy? She has good news for us—what can we learn?
One of the things the Vestry will be considering at our upcoming retreat later this month is how to reach out to more people and grow this congregation. There was an interesting blog post I saw this weekend titled “We will no longer be a welcoming church” by a Lutheran pastor in Colorado. At first, I was shocked—what could this possibly mean? But upon reading it, what the pastor was doing was distinguishing between being a welcoming church and being an inviting church. As he pointed out, being a welcoming church is passive—we can have great greeters, and a fantastic coffee hour and a really easy to read bulletin—but that only works if a newcomer happens to wander in the door. He is working with his congregation—which sounds not too different from ours—on becoming an inviting church. Being an inviting church is active—and Lydia is a great role model for being an inviting church. She invites Paul into her home and doesn’t take no for an answer. I want Epiphany to be an inviting church like Lydia—where we know that the Gospel has such value that it is worth sharing, worth inviting with everyone we know.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Lamb Power
Monday night I cooked a stew in my pressure cooker. Jonathan and Nathan and I enjoyed it; though I was distracted with the news from Boston, and worrying about a childhood friend who had been running her first marathon—and as it turned out, her dad was critically injured, and he’s one of the people we will be praying for by name today. So when I found out on Tuesday that the explosives had been in pressure cookers, I kept thinking back to that dinner. I was shocked that I have the tools—or at least one of the tools—to create mayhem, havoc, and violence sitting on a shelf in my kitchen.
It got me thinking about the inherent ambiguity of things. The pressure cooker can be a wonderful tool for getting a delicious dinner on the table quickly. Or it can be the container for something violent and horrific. Thinking of the explosion in West, Texas—fertilizer is so important for our agriculture, but potentially so very dangerous in the wrong hands or in an accident.
The Bible’s like that, too, which is also scary. In one person’s hands the Bible is the foundation of love and justice and mercy—and in another’s hands it can be the starting place for hatred, violence and self-righteousness. There’s probably no book of the Bible that is more apt for that ambiguity than Revelation, which we heard from today.
I’ve been re-reading a book by the Lutheran scholar and theologian, Barbara Rossing, this week, called The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. A lot of it focuses on de-bunking the idea of the Rapture, especially as told through the Left Behind series of novels. But the second half focuses on a good and holy and hopeful reading of Revelation, and I know that for me, this week, I need to hear good and holy and hopeful news.
“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Today is often referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because every year we hear a passage from John’s Gospel about Jesus being a shepherd to us. But as today’s text from Revelation reminds, us, Jesus is also—metaphorically—a lamb. The image of Jesus the Lamb on the heavenly throne begins earlier in Revelation with the description that it is “standing as if it had been slaughtered.” So from the very beginning, we are reminded that it is the slaughtered lamb, the crucified Christ, who is reigning, not a powerful predator. And Jesus is capable—paradoxically—of being both the lamb and the shepherd at the same time, as the elder in Revelation proclaims today. And I think it’s Jesus as Lamb that has the good news for us today, in the wake of the headlines this week as well as in our personal and professional lives.
The Greek word for Revelation, apocalypse, means the lifting of a veil. What Revelation gives us today is the tiny glimpse of the heavenly court surrounding the Lamb of God. Rossing refers to it as a “salvation interlude” between the opening of the first six seals and the seventh seal. Each of the seals that are opened represent one of the trials that Rome unleashed on humanity—war, injustice, death, persecution, and fear—and there is a lot of anticipation about what could be coming next. Rossing writes, “The salvation interlude of chapter 7 reminds us that at those moments when judgment threatens most to overpower us the Lamb still breaks into our world with God’s unexpected grace and love.” (TRE, 130)
You see, it’s precisely the darkness of Revelation means that it can speak to times like this week: it does not minimize the trials of life and death, but it also give us the brightness of hope. And so here we rest in this salvation interlude: a multitude that no one can number being comforted by the Lamb, no longer experiencing hunger or thirst, or needing to weep. What peace. That is what the Lamb promises to those who have come through the great ordeal. It’s not more ordeals—it is total comfort, total rest, total peace. The Lamb is ultimately victorious, and those who are with the Lamb are ultimately safe—that is the promise of Revelation. Penultimately we are not safe—are still mortal and frail and the Earth is not yet governed by justice and peace—but our final safety and rest is secured by the power of the Lamb.
That power of the Lamb on the throne in Revelation is set as the antithesis of the power of the beast—the symbol of Rome. The Beast tries to conquer through violence; the lamb conquers through its own blood. The blood of Revelation is the Lamb’s own blood—not anyone else’s blood. According to Rossing, God’s people are to conquer “by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.” In fact, the only violent image of Jesus in Revelation is to fight with a sword that comes from his mouth—the sword of true speech; the sword of words, not violence.
Rossing continues, “Revelation is more a book about terror defeated than terror inflicted.” (TRE, 119) and “The lamb and his followers conquer only by their testimony and faithfulness—not by making war or killing. War is something done against God’s people by evil beasts and by Rome, not something that God’s saints or the Lamb practice in this book.” (TRE, 121) It takes an educated reading of Revelation to get to this conclusion. If you pick up a Biblical text and read Revelation, it is wild and violent and frightening and confusing—what does it all mean? You have to make the effort to learn about the world that St. John the Divine, the author, inhabited, and the violence that he and other Christians faced. They were being persecuted—and Rome was too effective a government to openly speak against. So Rome is called Babylon, and referred to as “the beast” and its sins are laid out in creative language of horsemen and plagues and battles. Which is to say, the dark parts of Revelation are a description of how things were, not how things are going to be. The way things were sounds pretty familiar to us this week. Senseless violence against innocents. Disasters that feel like God’s judgment to the people afflicted. Members of government more attached to their own political future than the welfare of the people they govern.
But the other, more hopeful parts of this week are mirrored in Revelation, too: a multitude, too many to count, who desire peace and safety. That’s part of the news this week, too. Bravery, compassion, selfless dedication to your neighbor, even—uncharacteristically for our society today—patience with shutting down everything in a major city for 24 hours when the suspects were being hunted. There is holiness in the first responders and citizens who ran towards the aftermath of explosions in Boston rather than away; holiness in the first responders and civilians who tried to put out a fire in Texas and lost their lives. Holiness in the crowds cheering their policemen and law enforcement officials in gratitude at their success in finding and apprehending the men responsible for the Boston bombings.
And those hopeful parts help give us guidance on how to be children of the Lamb, and not give in to the temptation to be children of the beast. To be always on the side of comfort, shelter, justice, and non-violence. To be shepherds, not predators. To take the tools that we have and use—the Bible, a pressure-cooker, fertilizer, and on and on—and use them for the benefit of others; for the expansion of Love into the world.
Worship--what we're doing right now, today--is our “salvation interlude.” It’s that pause between the chaos of the 24 hour news cycle and the overwhelming needs of the world when we can sit at the feet of the lamb and be comforted, inspired, and reminded that the Lamb has already been victorious. Pain and suffering are real, but our salvation is assured, and what is left to us is to proclaim the Word of God by our lives and actions; to adhere ourselves to the power of the Lamb rather than the power of the Beast.
We read this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans on Tuesday at our prayer service for Boston. I can’t think of a better concluding sentiment today. Paul writes: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) Amen.
It got me thinking about the inherent ambiguity of things. The pressure cooker can be a wonderful tool for getting a delicious dinner on the table quickly. Or it can be the container for something violent and horrific. Thinking of the explosion in West, Texas—fertilizer is so important for our agriculture, but potentially so very dangerous in the wrong hands or in an accident.
The Bible’s like that, too, which is also scary. In one person’s hands the Bible is the foundation of love and justice and mercy—and in another’s hands it can be the starting place for hatred, violence and self-righteousness. There’s probably no book of the Bible that is more apt for that ambiguity than Revelation, which we heard from today.
I’ve been re-reading a book by the Lutheran scholar and theologian, Barbara Rossing, this week, called The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. A lot of it focuses on de-bunking the idea of the Rapture, especially as told through the Left Behind series of novels. But the second half focuses on a good and holy and hopeful reading of Revelation, and I know that for me, this week, I need to hear good and holy and hopeful news.
“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Today is often referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because every year we hear a passage from John’s Gospel about Jesus being a shepherd to us. But as today’s text from Revelation reminds, us, Jesus is also—metaphorically—a lamb. The image of Jesus the Lamb on the heavenly throne begins earlier in Revelation with the description that it is “standing as if it had been slaughtered.” So from the very beginning, we are reminded that it is the slaughtered lamb, the crucified Christ, who is reigning, not a powerful predator. And Jesus is capable—paradoxically—of being both the lamb and the shepherd at the same time, as the elder in Revelation proclaims today. And I think it’s Jesus as Lamb that has the good news for us today, in the wake of the headlines this week as well as in our personal and professional lives.
The Greek word for Revelation, apocalypse, means the lifting of a veil. What Revelation gives us today is the tiny glimpse of the heavenly court surrounding the Lamb of God. Rossing refers to it as a “salvation interlude” between the opening of the first six seals and the seventh seal. Each of the seals that are opened represent one of the trials that Rome unleashed on humanity—war, injustice, death, persecution, and fear—and there is a lot of anticipation about what could be coming next. Rossing writes, “The salvation interlude of chapter 7 reminds us that at those moments when judgment threatens most to overpower us the Lamb still breaks into our world with God’s unexpected grace and love.” (TRE, 130)
You see, it’s precisely the darkness of Revelation means that it can speak to times like this week: it does not minimize the trials of life and death, but it also give us the brightness of hope. And so here we rest in this salvation interlude: a multitude that no one can number being comforted by the Lamb, no longer experiencing hunger or thirst, or needing to weep. What peace. That is what the Lamb promises to those who have come through the great ordeal. It’s not more ordeals—it is total comfort, total rest, total peace. The Lamb is ultimately victorious, and those who are with the Lamb are ultimately safe—that is the promise of Revelation. Penultimately we are not safe—are still mortal and frail and the Earth is not yet governed by justice and peace—but our final safety and rest is secured by the power of the Lamb.
That power of the Lamb on the throne in Revelation is set as the antithesis of the power of the beast—the symbol of Rome. The Beast tries to conquer through violence; the lamb conquers through its own blood. The blood of Revelation is the Lamb’s own blood—not anyone else’s blood. According to Rossing, God’s people are to conquer “by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.” In fact, the only violent image of Jesus in Revelation is to fight with a sword that comes from his mouth—the sword of true speech; the sword of words, not violence.
Rossing continues, “Revelation is more a book about terror defeated than terror inflicted.” (TRE, 119) and “The lamb and his followers conquer only by their testimony and faithfulness—not by making war or killing. War is something done against God’s people by evil beasts and by Rome, not something that God’s saints or the Lamb practice in this book.” (TRE, 121) It takes an educated reading of Revelation to get to this conclusion. If you pick up a Biblical text and read Revelation, it is wild and violent and frightening and confusing—what does it all mean? You have to make the effort to learn about the world that St. John the Divine, the author, inhabited, and the violence that he and other Christians faced. They were being persecuted—and Rome was too effective a government to openly speak against. So Rome is called Babylon, and referred to as “the beast” and its sins are laid out in creative language of horsemen and plagues and battles. Which is to say, the dark parts of Revelation are a description of how things were, not how things are going to be. The way things were sounds pretty familiar to us this week. Senseless violence against innocents. Disasters that feel like God’s judgment to the people afflicted. Members of government more attached to their own political future than the welfare of the people they govern.
But the other, more hopeful parts of this week are mirrored in Revelation, too: a multitude, too many to count, who desire peace and safety. That’s part of the news this week, too. Bravery, compassion, selfless dedication to your neighbor, even—uncharacteristically for our society today—patience with shutting down everything in a major city for 24 hours when the suspects were being hunted. There is holiness in the first responders and citizens who ran towards the aftermath of explosions in Boston rather than away; holiness in the first responders and civilians who tried to put out a fire in Texas and lost their lives. Holiness in the crowds cheering their policemen and law enforcement officials in gratitude at their success in finding and apprehending the men responsible for the Boston bombings.
And those hopeful parts help give us guidance on how to be children of the Lamb, and not give in to the temptation to be children of the beast. To be always on the side of comfort, shelter, justice, and non-violence. To be shepherds, not predators. To take the tools that we have and use—the Bible, a pressure-cooker, fertilizer, and on and on—and use them for the benefit of others; for the expansion of Love into the world.
Worship--what we're doing right now, today--is our “salvation interlude.” It’s that pause between the chaos of the 24 hour news cycle and the overwhelming needs of the world when we can sit at the feet of the lamb and be comforted, inspired, and reminded that the Lamb has already been victorious. Pain and suffering are real, but our salvation is assured, and what is left to us is to proclaim the Word of God by our lives and actions; to adhere ourselves to the power of the Lamb rather than the power of the Beast.
We read this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans on Tuesday at our prayer service for Boston. I can’t think of a better concluding sentiment today. Paul writes: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) Amen.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
"You have to let me lead."
Preached on April 14, 2013 at the Church of the Epiphany, NYC
What was Peter doing when he met Jesus? Fishing. Along with many of the other disciples. Jesus came to the Sea of Galilee, and said “Follow me” and they left their nets and boats behind and followed him.
Today at the end of the Gospel of John, after the resurrection appearances, what are Peter and the disciples trying to do? They’re trying to fish, right back at the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. They go back to what they know, only it doesn’t work out the way it used to. They can’t catch a single fish anymore on their own.
One way of interpreting this would be to say that we can’t go backwards. We can try—and nostalgia is a powerful, powerful draw. I want things back the way they were—I want my nets and my boat back. But the disciples are not the same people they were before they met Jesus. They have been changed. They are no longer fishermen for fish—they are fishing for people. And they need Jesus to lead them.
When Jesus does arrive, he doesn’t just do the fish miracle and prove that he’s fully real by eating the fish and bread, and send them back to their boats. Resurrection transformation is not about just being better at what we are already doing. Jesus reorients them as to how they’re supposed to live and what they’re supposed to do now that he has been raised—and it’s not to go back on the water. Simon Peter led the disciples to the boats. Now Jesus is going to lead them somewhere else.
Jesus begins with the wonderful dialogue with Peter. “Peter, do you love me?” Now Greek, which is the language of the New Testament, has three words for love. There’s eros, which means erotic love; philo which means brotherly love or fondness, and agape, which is the self-emptying sacrificial love that Jesus has for us. At Bible and Brewskis this week, we wondered if it was like the fact that there are 50 words for snow in Eskimo… the things you have the most familiarity with have the most subtlety in vocabulary. You would think we would have more than one word for love in English, but I guess the English didn’t know as much about love as the Greeks, so we have to know the story behind our translation today.
So Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you agape me more than these?” the first time, and Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I philo you.” Jesus tries again, “Simon, son of John, do you agape me?” Peter responds again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I philo you.” The third time, Jesus changes what he says: “Simon, son of John, do you philo me?” It’s almost like Jesus is lowering the bar to accommodate Peter so that what Jesus asks of Peter is something Peter can handle. Peter can do this. Peter can love Jesus like a brother. And he can feed the sheep. Loving Jesus is about turning that love around and offering it to others. Also, Jesus shows the development of these disciples, referring to them as “children” when they are on the boat and then focusing Peter’s attention to what will happen when he is “old”—mature—he will lose his independence and be led where he does not wish to go. Being a child in faith means you set your own course. Being mature means you let Jesus set your course. Jesus closes with the simple distillation of all of this: “Follow me.”
Last Sunday Jonathan and I worshipped at a megachurch in Phoenix with my cousins. It was a much better experience than I’d been fearing, and the pastor was starting a preaching series on “What is a Christian?” I was a little worried when he began to preach on that topic—suspecting that whatever definition he gave would be one that was aiming at excluding, say, me, from being a Christian. But the way he finally defined it was this: A Christian is someone who follows Jesus. And I thought that was pretty good. It wasn’t based in baptism, or in a few test beliefs, or in how often you go to church. As the pastor put it amusingly: going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sleeping in a garage makes you a car. Being a Christian is about a direction and attitude toward Jesus. Jesus is the one I follow. If you can say—and do—that, then you’re a Christian.
The only problem is that following is hard. At least for some of us. We learn from a young age that we are supposed to lead, not follow.
Two months ago at the Priests’ Conference, we had an evening with—of all things—a
DJ and dancing. Now I can dance, but I’ve never taking enough lessons at partner dancing to really get it, but I can fake it pretty well. Or so I thought. A friend who’s a good ole’ boy from South Carolina started dancing the Carolina Shag with me, and I kept messing it up. “Jennifer, you have to let me lead,” he finally said. “I know, I know. I’m not very good at that.”
I hear Jesus saying that too, sometimes. “Jennifer, you have to let me lead.”
I like being in control. Following means we are vulnerable. Which is why both the Acts lesson and the Gospel today really challenge me. Saul is not in control when he is blinded on the road to Damascus. Ananias is not in control when he is instructed to go to Saul and heal him. The disciples are not in control when they go back to fishing. And Jesus is very clear with Peter in their dialogue that Peter will not be in control—he will be led places he does not want to go. “Peter, you have to let me lead.”
Letting Jesus lead does not mean being passive. Ananias is not passive—letting God lead means he goes to Saul and risks a lot; his standing in the community, perhaps even his life. He brings Saul into the Christian community, helps him learn about Jesus in ways Saul had never heard when he was persecuting Christians. Ananias is a leader precisely because he follows Jesus and lets God lead. The same is true of Saul. He leads the church into the Gentile world, because he follows Jesus and lets God lead. Peter will preach the gospel and be the “rock” of the church because he finally learns how to follow Jesus and let God lead. Letting Jesus lead is part of loving Jesus with that selfless, agape love—the one that truly allows us to feed the sheep, and to be fed because we’re still sheep too.
We need to let God lead. Can I trust God to let God lead? There’s no better way to say this for me than in the beautiful hymn Precious Lord, take my hand. Especially because it hints so well at that final journey that Jesus alludes to with Peter—the path we are most afraid to take, but the one that we will all inevitably be led down, no matter how much we fight.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When my way grows drear
Precious Lord linger near
When my life is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When the darkness appears
And the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
Listen here to the sermon and the singing!
What was Peter doing when he met Jesus? Fishing. Along with many of the other disciples. Jesus came to the Sea of Galilee, and said “Follow me” and they left their nets and boats behind and followed him.
Today at the end of the Gospel of John, after the resurrection appearances, what are Peter and the disciples trying to do? They’re trying to fish, right back at the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. They go back to what they know, only it doesn’t work out the way it used to. They can’t catch a single fish anymore on their own.
One way of interpreting this would be to say that we can’t go backwards. We can try—and nostalgia is a powerful, powerful draw. I want things back the way they were—I want my nets and my boat back. But the disciples are not the same people they were before they met Jesus. They have been changed. They are no longer fishermen for fish—they are fishing for people. And they need Jesus to lead them.
When Jesus does arrive, he doesn’t just do the fish miracle and prove that he’s fully real by eating the fish and bread, and send them back to their boats. Resurrection transformation is not about just being better at what we are already doing. Jesus reorients them as to how they’re supposed to live and what they’re supposed to do now that he has been raised—and it’s not to go back on the water. Simon Peter led the disciples to the boats. Now Jesus is going to lead them somewhere else.
Jesus begins with the wonderful dialogue with Peter. “Peter, do you love me?” Now Greek, which is the language of the New Testament, has three words for love. There’s eros, which means erotic love; philo which means brotherly love or fondness, and agape, which is the self-emptying sacrificial love that Jesus has for us. At Bible and Brewskis this week, we wondered if it was like the fact that there are 50 words for snow in Eskimo… the things you have the most familiarity with have the most subtlety in vocabulary. You would think we would have more than one word for love in English, but I guess the English didn’t know as much about love as the Greeks, so we have to know the story behind our translation today.
So Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you agape me more than these?” the first time, and Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I philo you.” Jesus tries again, “Simon, son of John, do you agape me?” Peter responds again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I philo you.” The third time, Jesus changes what he says: “Simon, son of John, do you philo me?” It’s almost like Jesus is lowering the bar to accommodate Peter so that what Jesus asks of Peter is something Peter can handle. Peter can do this. Peter can love Jesus like a brother. And he can feed the sheep. Loving Jesus is about turning that love around and offering it to others. Also, Jesus shows the development of these disciples, referring to them as “children” when they are on the boat and then focusing Peter’s attention to what will happen when he is “old”—mature—he will lose his independence and be led where he does not wish to go. Being a child in faith means you set your own course. Being mature means you let Jesus set your course. Jesus closes with the simple distillation of all of this: “Follow me.”
Last Sunday Jonathan and I worshipped at a megachurch in Phoenix with my cousins. It was a much better experience than I’d been fearing, and the pastor was starting a preaching series on “What is a Christian?” I was a little worried when he began to preach on that topic—suspecting that whatever definition he gave would be one that was aiming at excluding, say, me, from being a Christian. But the way he finally defined it was this: A Christian is someone who follows Jesus. And I thought that was pretty good. It wasn’t based in baptism, or in a few test beliefs, or in how often you go to church. As the pastor put it amusingly: going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sleeping in a garage makes you a car. Being a Christian is about a direction and attitude toward Jesus. Jesus is the one I follow. If you can say—and do—that, then you’re a Christian.
The only problem is that following is hard. At least for some of us. We learn from a young age that we are supposed to lead, not follow.
Two months ago at the Priests’ Conference, we had an evening with—of all things—a
DJ and dancing. Now I can dance, but I’ve never taking enough lessons at partner dancing to really get it, but I can fake it pretty well. Or so I thought. A friend who’s a good ole’ boy from South Carolina started dancing the Carolina Shag with me, and I kept messing it up. “Jennifer, you have to let me lead,” he finally said. “I know, I know. I’m not very good at that.”
I hear Jesus saying that too, sometimes. “Jennifer, you have to let me lead.”
I like being in control. Following means we are vulnerable. Which is why both the Acts lesson and the Gospel today really challenge me. Saul is not in control when he is blinded on the road to Damascus. Ananias is not in control when he is instructed to go to Saul and heal him. The disciples are not in control when they go back to fishing. And Jesus is very clear with Peter in their dialogue that Peter will not be in control—he will be led places he does not want to go. “Peter, you have to let me lead.”
Letting Jesus lead does not mean being passive. Ananias is not passive—letting God lead means he goes to Saul and risks a lot; his standing in the community, perhaps even his life. He brings Saul into the Christian community, helps him learn about Jesus in ways Saul had never heard when he was persecuting Christians. Ananias is a leader precisely because he follows Jesus and lets God lead. The same is true of Saul. He leads the church into the Gentile world, because he follows Jesus and lets God lead. Peter will preach the gospel and be the “rock” of the church because he finally learns how to follow Jesus and let God lead. Letting Jesus lead is part of loving Jesus with that selfless, agape love—the one that truly allows us to feed the sheep, and to be fed because we’re still sheep too.
We need to let God lead. Can I trust God to let God lead? There’s no better way to say this for me than in the beautiful hymn Precious Lord, take my hand. Especially because it hints so well at that final journey that Jesus alludes to with Peter—the path we are most afraid to take, but the one that we will all inevitably be led down, no matter how much we fight.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When my way grows drear
Precious Lord linger near
When my life is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When the darkness appears
And the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
Listen here to the sermon and the singing!
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Easter: The Deepest Mystery
The women who go to the tomb at dawn on Easter morning are not seeking resurrection. They are doing the age-old work of being women: preparing a body for a proper burial, one final act of love for a friend, a way of being faithful to the memory of the teacher and leader.
So ritual is what brings the women to the tomb that morning. Love is what brings them to the tomb that morning. Faithfulness is what brings them to the tomb that morning.
And it is those things—ritual, love, and faithfulness—that put them in the position to discover that Jesus has been raised. Had they not had those things—ritual, love and faithfulness—would the message to go to Galilee have ever been heard?
It is no coincidence to me that simple and humble loving actions are what put these women in the position of seeing the angels and becoming the first evangelists for the resurrection. God’s grace is always there; we are the ones who are either open and available to that grace, or not. If we give in to despair after the cross, we may never know that Easter is possible.
And those three things that brought the women to the tomb—ritual, love and faithfulness—may be similar to what has brought us here today. The ritual of Easter Sunday—you go to church, even if you don’t do so the rest of the year. We seek the ritual of the story, the music, the prayers, the communion with one another and God. Even the ritual of the Easter egg hunt. Ritual has brought us here today.
Love has brought some of us here today. Love of a family member who wants us to be here; love for this church, this community; love of God; love of Jesus.
And faithfulness has brought some of us here today. Faithfulness to the Gospel; to seeing Jesus through these three days we have just completed; faithfulness to loved ones who passed on their faith to us.
So now that we’re here, what surprising message are we available to hear?
When I was reading through the scripture lessons for the day, I saw that the last verse of the 1 Corinthians reading was “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” I usually try not to think of death as an enemy; it is natural, it is universal, and I believe that the death-denying-ness of our culture is dangerous because it doesn’t allow us to die well and with dignity. But this verse resonated with me, partly because it harkens to me of the Easter promise that death “has no more dominion over us,” but also because I knew I’d seen it recently in connection with some popular culture icon—I just couldn’t remember where. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Where had I seen that? Google came to my rescue. It’s the verse that’s engraved on Harry Potter’s parents’ tombstone in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book in the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter is very much about resurrection—about how offering yourself freely to death vanquishes evil and death and causes the triumph of love and life.
English children’s literature is very much about resurrection; The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is probably an even better example of how “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” than Harry Potter is. Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure, has been sacrificed on the Stone Table by the White Witch. Susan and Lucy are mourning when they hear a loud crack as the Stone Table shatters and Aslan’s body is gone.
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself….
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means, said Aslan, “That though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”
And with that, Aslan takes the girls on his back and goes to the witch’s palace, where she has turned all sorts of good creatures into statues, and one by one Aslan breathes on them and they come back to life, and together they go and vanquish evil and the witch once and for all. Death has been destroyed; life will prevail.
I don’t usually like using words like “magic” to describe the Gospel; Jesus’ resurrection is not a magic trick. Resurrection is not a fairy tale; it is not magic; it is not fiction; it is not an “idle tale” as the male disciples believe when they hear the women. It is real. Hear Paul’s confidence in his letter to the Corinthians today, “…in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” We really will be raised with him. Those aren’t just words we say to sound nice, a cold comfort in the shadow of death. But C.S. Lewis’ idea of “deeper magic” as a stand-in for what I might call “deeper mystery” works for me. What we are celebrating today is the deepest of mysteries.
Because we don’t understand entirely what happened at that tomb in today’s Gospel. It is a deep mystery. And we don’t understand entirely how that triumph over death has released us from death, too; how it is that to paraphrase C.S. Lewis’ words from the novel, “Death will start working backwards” for us as well as for Jesus. The world is not comfortable with mystery today—we would prefer certainty. But certainty is the root of fundamentalism. Mystery is the root of compassion; of discovery; of creativity. Certainty can keep us hiding out after the cross, because Jesus is dead and there’s nothing more to say about that. Mystery is what allows us to go to the tomb, even if we’re not sure what we’ll find there.
So if you didn’t come here today seeking resurrection, that’s fine. We aren’t always seeking resurrection. The women certainly weren’t on their Easter morning. They did not even know that resurrection was something they could hope for. Sometimes we cannot even imagine what resurrection would look like for us. But God can. God’s imagination is greater than ours. We each have an empty tomb inside of us where God has raised something that was once dead and is now alive. So let us rejoice and be glad—as the choir already sang from Psalm 118, “The Lord’s right hand has triumphed; God’s right hand has raised me. The Lord’s right hand has triumphed; I shall not die, I shall live and recount God’s deeds!”
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