Accidental and incidental reflections on scripture, church, women, parenthood, music, art, and other things that haven't occurred to me yet, but about which I'm sure I have opinions.
It's the last week of the semester here so I offer another very simple Friday Five in honor of the past, present, and eschatological dimensions of this powerful season of the church year....Please share five ways that God has come to you (your family or friends, your church or workplace, our world) in the past year, that God is coming to you right now, and/or that you are longing and looking for God to come.Marana tha! Come Lord Jesus!
1. In the past year, God has come to me most powerfully in, first, the quiet suggestion, and then the booming imperative, that it was time to come out to my congregation. I stood at the edge of a precipice, and God said, Leap! (The evolution of my thinking/ God's speaking to me can be found at my other blog, [un]closeted pastor, beginning in February. It was a Lent thing.).
2. If God said "Leap!", then my loved ones and congregation caught me, most profoundly. God came to me (and continues to come) in the affirmations and support I have received from nearly everyone in my congregation, and from all my friends, family and Beloved, without exception.
3. God comes to me in the early darkness of Advent. I have long loved this season, a whispered and candle-lit time in a minor key. It pulls me back to center, despite the crazy/busy nature of the way the world wants us to prepare for Christmas.
4. God comes to me in the reminders I receive daily that my work is not "all about me," but rather, like John the Baptist, a pointing upward. In reading the article about which I blogged here, I recognized a dangerous tendency in myself to assume total responsibility for the way things are going at church-- especially when they go awry. God comes as I am able to let go of that particular form or idolatry, and focus on the business of putting the Good News in front of my congregation.
5. God comes in relationships. Beloved, Petra, Larry, peacester, Little Mary... you know who you are. I am constantly amazed to see and experience the depths of love that are available to me. Thank you God.
This past week I had the opportunity to preach to a gathering of folks from my denomination. This is my offering.
~~~
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ~ Rev. 21:1-6
In Advent, we are reminded of what it is to live according to God’s time. I love God’s time, and I also fear it. According to God’s time, endings are also beginnings. The cone that fell lifeless to the forest floor reappears as a living and fragrant young pine. The triumph of Christ returning to judge and heal the world gives way to the flutter of angel wings outside a Nazorean girl’s bedroom window. God’s creation, called into being from the formless void, passes away, and behold: a new heaven and a new earth, all in God’s time. According to God, endings are beginnings.
In one sense, the Revelation to John is a book about endings. It reflects John’s attempt, as a pastor, to help his community to heal. The devastating loss of the Temple, the complete destruction of Jerusalem, the countless loved ones consumed by the relentless military might of Rome… all these losses and endings shocked Christian communities, broke Christian hearts. But each ending contained the seeds of a new beginning. Each moment of destruction was an opportunity for God to make a new creation.
We are intimately familiar with the landscape of endings and losses. Each person who settles in a pew or a chair on Sunday morning, no matter where your church, no matter what your statistics on attendance or growth… each one of us is an expert on change. We may have experienced the change that comes with dwindling attendance, as the community around the church changes, and people relocate, and the makeup of the congregation is altered. We may have experienced the change that occurs when a congregation begins to grow, or to attract a new demographic, and what was cozy and known becomes a little foreign, a little alien. We may have experienced change in familiar ways of worship along with changes in pastoral leadership. We may have experienced the loss of identity associated with a congregation finding a new vision for its communal life. None of these things is bad in and of itself… but each change reminds us of how elusive stability is, what an unlikely situation permanence is. Nothing is permanent. Every pastor is an interim. How do we find our bearings when it feels as if we are standing on the deck of a ship as it pitches and rolls?
We find our bearings, as did those early grieving Christians, in Jesus Christ. In our passage the voice of God thunders from the throne that is heaven: “The home of God is among mortals.” In Jesus Christ, in his advent, in his coming into our midst, God makes a home with us, a home that is utterly permanent. The Word became flesh and continues to dwell among us. God is not going anywhere that we are not. We cannot go anywhere that God is not, including, the Apostle’s creed reminds us, the very depths of hell.
In Jesus, God makes a home with us, a permanent dwelling. I’ve lived in my home for about 15 years. It’s a nice old house in My Town, built in 1905. I think it could use a paint job next spring. What I’d really like to do is remodel my kitchen. At the time I moved into the house I had lived in 10 different places over the course of about 15 years, and I had pretty much had it with moving. I am finished moving, I announced to anyone who would listen. I leave this house, when I leave it, feet first, in a box. That was my attitude. I was longing for permanence, and this home, I felt, was it, the place I would stay. When we call a place “home,” whether it is where we lay our bodies down to sleep at night or where we stand to sing songs of praise in the morning, it is our intention, most of the time, to make it our home forever, or at least the foreseeable future. That is what we mean when we call a place “home,” when we make it our dwelling.
In Jesus, God’s home is with us, God’s dwelling place. Those words, “home,” “dwelling,” they are meant to remind us that it is God intention to be with us, in our midst… because, remember, this promise is to a community, not to individuals. God will be with us, not just me.It turns out, though, if we peek behind the English translation and look at the original language, we find that that word that is translated “home” or “dwelling” sounds startlingly impermanent. The word, rather than evoking something like my house—something of wood or brick or concrete—actually means something more like a tent or a tabernacle, movable dwelling. The King James Version has it exactly right in this case: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. God doesn’t come among us intending to take up residence in a Temple or even the most beautiful or functional church building, something nailed down to the ground that can only be moved by being destroyed. That’s not what God does. God pitches a tent with us and among us. The tent of God is among mortals. The Word became flesh and pitched a tent in our midst.
We love and worship and pray to a God whose commitment to us and love for us is so fervent, he is willing to rough it with us, just in case we do what we always seem to do: make changes, pull up stakes, make a move. Tomorrow we might decide that we don’t really need this church building any more, we’d be just fine nesting in with our neighbors. That’s fine. God will be there, with us. Tomorrow we might decide our church was meant to serve the homeless and so we want to convert our sanctuary into a dormitory and worship out in the tool shed. That’s fine. God’s tent is movable; God will be there. Tomorrow we might realize we need a huge and fabulous new structure to make room for the thousand people who flock to our worship services each weekend. That’s fine. God is tabernacled with us. God is Ruth to our Naomi: wherever we go, God will go.
In Advent, we are reminded what it is to live according to God’s time. According to God’s time, endings are also beginnings. The cone that fell lifeless to the forest floor reappears as a living and fragrant young pine. The triumph of Christ returning to judge and heal the world gives way to the flutter of angel wings outside a Nazorean girl’s bedroom window. The relentless march of the darkness yields to a burst of light as the Son of God returns, and look: a new heaven and a new earth. And through it all, God is with us. Immanuel. God is with us. Wiping away every tear. God is with us. And thanks be to God. Amen.
This is a re-purposing of a sermon I wrote six years ago, in my first call as an interim associate pastor.
~~~
When we think of “preparing” for Christmas, I wonder how many of us share the kinds of traditions embraced by Luther and Nora Krank, the lead characters in John Grisham’s little novel Skipping Christmas. Faced with an emotionally difficult holiday the Kranks reconsider their Christmas traditions, which have, in the past, included the following: decorating the house with a 7-foot tall plastic Frosty the Snowman; sending out about 100 Christmas cards; hosting an elaborate party; and buying gifts for friends, family and acquaintances alike to the tune of more than $6000. When all that is accomplished, the Kranks are ready for Christmas!
Even those of us who are committed to honoring the spiritual significance of Christmas have to be honest with ourselves. Christmas does, at times, seem to be all about the cards, gifts, parties, decorations, and social obligations. But as the couple in the novel discovers, the holiday season can seem particularly hollow if all we have to sustain us in the face of sadness or transition is the triumph of the perfectly catered cocktail hour or the elegantly turned out tree.
Scripture has very different ideas of “preparing” for Christmas. An orgy of spending and eating, getting and having, is simply not an adequate context for such an event. As one writer has described it: “…you cannot just walk into such a blaze of glory without preparation… you must creep up to it, think about it, count the days, watch the signs, and prepare.”[i]
How do we do it? How do we enter into this Advent season? In the face of real lives, real situations that fly in the face of the jolly, jolly “Ho Ho Ho” of it all, how do we even begin to think about the meaning of Advent? The natural world prompts us toward a kind of preparation that flies in the face of what we have been schooled to participate in. One writer describes the way in which nature and scripture come into alignment at this time of the year:
It is Advent and, along with nature, we are a people waiting. Far out of the south, the winter light comes thin and milky. The days grow shorter and colder and the nights long. Try as we may, we cannot fully dismiss the fundamental feelings that lie deep at our roots, a mixture of feelings dark and sweet. Will the sun, the source of our life, ever return? Has the great light abandoned us? We are anxious from the separation and feel an obscure guilt. We know there are vague disharmonies that keep us at odds. But our longing for union is passionate. This year we want our Christmas to be different.[ii]
I want to suggest something that might sound a little scandalous to us. I want to suggest that the best way to prepare for Christmas may be not to prepare. The best way to ready ourselves for Christmas may be to let God make us ready.
Listen again to the words of the prophet Malachi: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple… but who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:1a, 2-4)
This is a time of preparation—but what a preparation! The refiner’s fire! You know, not one person I’ve talked to this week, myself included, is interested in being refined—being put into the fire by God or by life’s circumstances. And yet, we know, we all have times in our lives when that seems to be precisely what God has in store for us. Our feet are to the fire, or we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire—the heat is on! If we can’t stand the heat, we are told, get out of the kitchen—but life isn’t really like that, is it? When we are in the fire it never has to do with choices we would make in a perfect world. It always has to do with the messy reality of life as fragile, fallible people living among other fragile, fallible people. People hurt us, and we hurt them. We are faced with irreconcilable choices that we don’t want to make. We take the heat for something we didn’t do, or for something we did do—I don’t know which of those is worse. We experience a loss, a death—whether the death of a loved one or the death of hope itself. We are a people in the fire.
And we have a choice, when we are in the fire. We have a choice as to whether or not we will allow God to use that time as a preparation. We have a choice as to whether we will allow God to use fire-time to do a new thing, to make a new space in our hearts, to show us new vistas as yet unimagined.
A group of women in a bible study were looking at this verse from Malachi, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver” (Malachi 3:3), and they wondered what on earth it could mean. One of them decided to find out about the process of refining and purifying silver, and promised to report back to the women in the Bible Study at their next meeting.
That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn’t mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities…
She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, “How do you know when the silver is fully refined?” He smiled at her and answered, “Oh, that’s easy—when I see my image in it.”[iii]
If God is the refiner, and we ourselves are the silver, we can trust in a few things about this fiery process of preparation we are going through. First, we can trust that, like the good silversmith, God doesn’t throw us in the fire and abandon us to our own devices. God holds us while we are in the fire. God watches us while we are in the fire. God hovers nearby, unwilling to let us be destroyed by the inferno. We are precious in God’s sight, far more precious than silver or gold, and it is God’s hope and intention that we emerge from the fire, not just unscathed, but unbound.
Second, when God’s gaze upon us is returned by an image of God’s own self—when God can see the divine image in the creatures over whom God is hovering—God knows that we are becoming the people God wants us to be.
At the same time we are preparing for the popular cultural festival that is “Christmas” we Christians are also preparing for our encounter with the blaze of glory that is Christ’s Advent among us. If the prophet’s image of meeting the refiner is still daunting—if, like me, you are still squirming at the thought of time in the fire—remember this: We can rest assured that the One who loves us when other loves fail, the One who is with us even when we feel lost and alone, the One in whose image we are made, will prepare us for that meeting, face to face. Amen.
I came across this article at Theolog, the blog of the Christian Century. It is titled "Salvation By Pastor Alone."
Whoo boy. Have I known churches like this. And they are not necessarily churches full of "bad people", per se. But they are, in my opinion, churches practicing a form of idolatry, and they can be churches totally unwilling to take responsibility for working out their own salvation with fear and trembling, for taking on the ministry of the gospel. Which, last I heard, is not the sole responsibility of the person who is getting a paycheck out of all this.
Churches that do this can get into some disturbing patterns, including dissatisfaction with pastor after pastor as no one fulfills their fantasy. Or, they can actually become vampire-like, in the way they consume the pastor who is simply trying faithfully to place the gospel before them.
I've known these churches. I do not believe St. Sociable is such a church, though I remember what someone on the search committee said: "We just know that everyone will love your sermons so much it will just fill up the church." Um, not so much, at least, not so far. And even though I recognize the pitfalls in this kind of thinking, I think it takes superhuman acts of will and faith to avoid falling right into the kind of trap of believing it's all "my responsibility."
I preached this morning with half a voice, owing to a nasty sinus infection taking out my vocal chords. I love Advent! The church looked so beautiful, with the greens hung and the Advent wreath.
Blessings to all in this holy season!
~~~
In 1947 a group of nuclear scientists at the University of Chicago created something they called the Doomsday Clock. In the wake of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these scientists felt the world had entered a new era, an era when one could reliably deduce that the world itself was at risk of being destroyed. So they took the face of a clock and put hands on it representing the time “11:53 PM”; seven minutes to midnight, symbolic of the dangerous nearness of catastrophic global destruction.
In the years since the creation of the clock, the time has been moved back and forth, according to, not only the level of nuclear proliferation, but also according to threats to the environment, such as global warming. In 1984, in the midst of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, the time moved all the way to 11:57: three minutes to midnight. In 1991, when those same two superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the time was turned all the way back to 11:43. As of today, it is 11:55. Five minutes to midnight. The nuclear scientists at the University of Chicago want us to know that, as they read the signs, the end is near, too near for comfort.
I’ve known about the Doomsday Clock for some time. Years, probably. And, honestly, it has never caused me to lose even a moment of sleep. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, in every single generation for the past 2000 years, the end of the world has been predicted. So, perhaps I am jaded by the knowledge that, despite all the dire predictions, no one has been right so far. Or, it may be a particular defect of my character, but I just can’t get too excited about things that are so utterly out of my control as the end of the world as we know it. (I do like that R. E. M. song.) Sometimes we need to hear the same message, from another source, before we are able to really absorb it, to take it seriously. This week someone said “the end is near” in such a way that I actually heard it. It was a minister, Brian Stoffregen, someone whose work I read regularly as I prepare my sermons. He is not a crazy, fringy person. He is a very level-headed guy, middle of the road, entirely orthodox in his interpretation of scripture. He said, “We need to consider ourselves as living in the ‘end times’ now; although it would appear that life on the planet will get worse before the end comes.” For some reason, Brian’s quiet sentence got to me in the way the vivid and scary imagery of the Doomsday Clock did not.
I think this kind of disconnect is going on in our passage from Luke this morning. Jesus is talking about big signs, scary signs…signs in the sun, moon and stars, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime signs. And at the same time he is talking about quiet signs, signs that are easily observed, if our eyes are open to them, in the most ordinary events taking place around us. When we are talking about end times, ultimate things, we need to be careful how we perceive and interpret each of these.
It is a new church year now, and so we say goodbye to the Gospel of Mark and hello to the Gospel of Luke. I love how the gospels tell the same essential story, but with the differences that come from the personalities of the authors, and the concerns of the early church communities they served. Mark’s gospel begins when Jesus is a man, and John the Baptist announces the coming kingdom of God. Luke’s gospel begins with the conception of John the Baptist, when Jesus just a glimmer in the Holy Spirit’s eye. Where Mark is lean and spare, Luke is expansive and poetic. Where Mark’s Jesus was somewhat of a loner, Luke’s Jesus will be spending a lot of time at dinner parties… a lot of time. But we are not introduced to the gospel of Luke from the beginning just yet. Every year the lectionary does this strange thing: it starts at the beginning by starting at the end. We begin our church year, and our observance of Advent, by focusing on end times, apocalypse.
It is the last week of Jesus’ life. He has made his way into Jerusalem surrounded by adoring crowds of followers. He has taken up a spot in the Temple and he has been teaching there. At one point, he overhears a conversation about the beauty of the Temple, its ornate stonework and lovely appointments. He remarks, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” [Luke 21:6]. This is a completely shocking statement… like someone saying, “The day will come when the beautiful church you love, the place where you go to find the presence of God, will just be a pile of rubble.” After Jesus’ listeners get their bearings, someone manages to ask Jesus a question. “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” [21:7]
Here are the signs, Jesus says. And the first things he mentions, in the verses before our reading begins, have to do with human activities—wars, insurrections, nation against nation, king against king. Persecution. Arrest. Scary stuff. Scary stuff that had already come to pass, in the First Roman-Jewish War, by the time the words of this gospel were committed to papyrus. Scary stuff, but the kinds of things people might have an idea they could influence or control. You say there will be war? How can we avoid it? What do our leaders have to know?
But at the beginning of our passage, Jesus moves on to talk about other kinds of signs, and these are the kinds of things that are truly out of our sphere of influence. We cannot hope to stop the stars moving in their courses. We cannot relight the sun if it should go out. We cannot stop the cycles of the moon, any more than the ancients could (although I understand we recently shot a missile at it. Yikes! What was that all about?).
And Jesus knows that these are the things of nightmares. He knows the visions he is describing are terrifying. The final image he throws into the mix is the vision of “the Son of Man, the Human One, coming in a cloud, with power and great glory.” And then Jesus says something curious. He says, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” [21:27-28]
This is a shift in tone. Jesus has been describing frightening signs of change. But instead of telling us to get into the bomb shelters, or to duck and cover, or even to run right into the nearest church or synagogue, he says, stand up. Lift up your heads. This is when you can expect good things to begin happening again. In the face of what is stomach-churningly scary, Jesus offers words of comfort. That is what this passage is about. It is a passage meant to comfort those who hear it.
These words are part of what is called the “Apocalyptic discourse” in the gospel of Luke, a moment when Jesus’ words address a coming apocalypse. There is a particular, popular meaning that has been assigned to the word “apocalypse.” Because of years of one kind of interpretation getting a lot of airplay, most of us hear “apocalypse” or “apocalyptic,” and we hear something that feels designed to scare the daylights out of us: the word is overlaid with a thick coating of fear. But in its original meaning, the word means something rather simple: uncovering. That’s all. If you think about it, that’s what the word “revelation” means… that something is being revealed, uncovered. And it is clear from Jesus’ use of the word that what is being uncovered, what is being revealed is, in the end, something to give us great hope, and not fear. What is being uncovered is the Son of Man, the Human One. It is Jesus.
If it is Jesus who is being revealed, Jesus who is coming in power and glory, we have nothing to fear. That’s because, if it’s Jesus, it’s not the destruction of the world, but the healing of the world that is at hand. If there’s anything we know about Jesus, it’s that he is all about healing. Speaking for myself, that is something I would welcome. And I suspect I’m not alone in that. I suspect, for most of us, the healing presence of Jesus would be most welcome.
Jesus speaks of a time when the world is plunged into fear, and he urges us to not cower but to lift our heads, because the healing of the world will be at hand. Perhaps we need to lift our heads so that we can see what’s going on with the fig tree.
For people in ancient Palestine—or modern day Palestine, for that matter—the fig tree would be a very familiar sight, and one that would resonate with them emotionally. The fig tree, with its succulent fruit, is a symbol for well-being, for plenty. The prophet Isaiah lifts up the image of each son or daughter of Israel eating from their own vine and sitting peacefully under a fig tree, contented and unafraid. Jesus points out to his listeners the signs given by the fig tree… how it sprouts leaves, which can be taken as a sure sign of a very welcome change, the summer, the harvest, the delicious fruit that is promised.
For many of us, healing would be a welcome change. As we walk together into this season of Advent I invite you to reflect on the ways in which you would welcome the healing of Jesus. Do you desire the healing of a relationship? Do you crave the healing of your body? Do you long for the healing of the world, from violence, from every kind of hatred and prejudice, from every kind of horror and hurt? Do you hope for the healing of your hemorrhaging checking account, or your employment, or even your relationships with co-workers? Do you mourn a loss so deep you doubt there is any healing possible? Lift up your heads, Jesus says. Look at the fig tree. Look around you to see the signs… possibly infinitesimally small and modest, but there nevertheless… see the signs of change. Look for the figs… small but sweet, bite-sized pieces of grace. See the signs that your healing is begun, even in the very act of your longing for it. See the signs that Jesus’ presence is being uncovered for us, day by day, week by week, with the lighting of each candle. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Sources:
Brian Stoffregen,“Luke 21:25-36, 1st Sunday in Advent, Year C,” in Brian C. Stoffregen Exegetical Notes at CrossMarks Christmas Resources, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke21x25.htm.
Jan. L. Richardson, “Advent 1: Practicing the Apocalypse,” in The Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas, http://theadventdoor.com/.
About 388 years ago a large and motley group consisting of Plymouth colonists and Native Americans of the Wampanoag peoples, gathered together around tables. These tables groaned beneath the weight of a feast of waterfowl, cod, wild turkeys, eel, venison, pumpkins, Indian corn, onions, chestnuts and things we probably can’t even imagine. These people gathered to give thanks for a harvest—certainly not for the first time in human history, and not even for the first time on what would eventually be known as American soil. Nevertheless, their Thanksgiving gathering became iconic: it is the one we recall when we gather around our own groaning boards. And it is good for us to remember, on this day when our observance of Thanksgiving converges with that of the Reign of Christ, that the reason for the feast had to do with a particular group of people resenting the intrusion of a king in their lives.
The Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were convinced that the Protestant Reformation had not gone far enough. Because they did not wish to be a part of a church that was far removed from their understanding of scripture, they became religious separatists, and because of their separatist views they attracted the wrath of King James I, and because they attracted his wrath, they found themselves, eventually, eating venison and eel on a very stony patch of beach on what would eventually be known as Cape Cod.
About 388 years ago, a group of people said, “Thanks be to God, we are rid of that king.”
The American psyche is no more comfortable at the thought of bowing to royalty today than our forbears were 388 years ago. Just this week our president was chastised in some quarters because he bowed deeply to the Emperor of Japan on a visit to that country. The word “groveling” was used. The argument was, Americans, especially American presidents, should not go around bowing to foreign rulers, foreign kings. We, as a nation, are so over kings.
About 1981 years ago, a motley group of people gathered around a table in Bethany, a village on the south-eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about a mile and a half from Jerusalem. This table was in the home of one Simon the Leper, but Jesus knew lots of people in Bethany, including his friend Lazarus, and his sisters, Martha and Mary. Perhaps they were there. The table was groaning with… we know not what. Felafel? Fish? Figs? Hummus and pita bread? Wine, of course. And the motley group gathered, two days before the Passover. Perhaps it was a reunion… Jesus had just returned to Jerusalem, after a long journey with his friends. Perhaps he was giving thanks for the presence of those he loved around him in the midst of what he knew to be the last week of his life.
As they sat at table—really, the idea that they “sat” is anachronistic; they would have reclined around the table, a low table, supported by cushions and rugs on the floor. As they reclined, then, a woman approached the table with an alabaster jar filled with costly perfume, oil of nard. Alabaster is a white material, a kind of stone, translucent when cut into thin sheets. It was highly valued in Jesus’ day as a material for perfume jars; one of the original meanings of the word may have been “vessel of the goddess.”
A woman approached Jesus, carrying an alabaster jar. We don’t know who the woman was, though Mary of Bethany is a good candidate. In another story, in the gospel of John, she is the woman with the oil of nard. The woman did not uncork the jar, or remove a wax seal. Rather, she broke the precious jar so that the even more precious oil might flow out of it and onto Jesus’ head. And by that bold and audacious action, the woman—whoever she was—sparked a debate among the dinner guests.
The intention of the woman was unmistakable. Everyone seated at that table would have understood anointing with oil as a sign that Jesus was being recognized as a king. But, curiously, those gathered that night were silent on that topic. No one said, “Hey, why did you just anoint Jesus king?” Instead, a debate ensued on the proper use of resources in providing assistance to those living in poverty.
A woman boldly walked up to Jesus and anointed him king. But that action made the dinner guests of Simon the Leper almost as uncomfortable as our president’s bow to Emperor Akihito made the folks at Fox News. Who wants a king? Who needs a king? In particular, who wants to bow to a king, to kneel before a king? Don’t we have more dignity than that? Aren’t we freer than that?
Mark’s gospel warns us from the very first chapter, with John the Baptist’s ecstatic proclamation: “The kingdom of God is at hand.” And he is talking about Jesus. There is something about Jesus that is going to usher in the very reign of God on earth. Jesus is the king he is talking about.
But what an odd king, what a peculiar king. A king who hangs around with a ragtag group of friends… fisherfolk, tax collectors. A king who breaks all the religious taboos by touching women and children as he heals them. A king who would eat dinner in the house of a leper, for heaven’s sake… and we know all about lepers and the chart of “Who’s Who” in ancient Palestine. Lepers aren’t even on the chart. What an odd king Jesus is.
There are all kinds of monarchies, all kinds of governments in which royalty figures, so coming up with hard and fast rules is a challenge. But there are a few things we can say about kings with some confidence. First, kings usually acquire that title by inheritance. In order to be king, your father must be king, or, as in the case of our friends across the pond, your mother. You are born into a family of royalty, and you are prepared your whole life for your rule.
Again… Jesus is so peculiar, when we hold this lens up to him. As Mark begins to tell the story of the good news, there is Jesus, coming up out of the water, the heavens being torn apart, the voice coming down from the clouds, “You are my Son, the Beloved…” There is no finer pedigree. But still… as our mothers used to say when they were mad at us for not closing the door behind us, he was born in a barn. He was born to parents of modest means at best. He was raised to be a son of the Law. All the preparation he needed to become king, Jesus must have acquired at his father’s side in his woodshop, or at the rabbi’s feet studying Torah, or somewhere deep inside where he communed with the Spirit of God.
The other thing we can say about kings is that they are in some way symbolic of their kingdom. “L’etat, c’est moi,” said Louis XIV. “I AM the state.” This has caused kings no end of problems as their personal lives have clashed with their public role as stand-in for their countries. When John yelled, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” he meant to let everyone know that Jesus was both king and prime exemplar of all that kingdom stood for.
Jesus is such a strange and unexpected king. A king who welcomes children rather than letting his lieutenants shoo them away. A king who hosts large picnics on a shoestring budget. A king who is willing to die an ignominious death out of his love for his people.
This is the aspect of his kingship Jesus seized upon at that table at Simon the Leper’s house. When wagging tongues complained about the waste of that alabaster jar of oil, Jesus admonished them. Don’t pretend, my friends, that this one flask of perfume will solve the problem of poverty in this or any day. Don’t pretend that you are not called upon to work for the poor every day, but today you are using it as a distraction. This good woman has perfumed me, anointed me for my death. And wherever the good news is told, she will be a part of the story. Wherever the good news is shared, people will give thanks for her, for her prophetic action.
At the heart of our faith is a king who doesn’t look particularly kingly according to the expectations of either his world or ours. And yet, he pushes us to ponder what his kingship could mean for our world, if we were to really let loose his reign. One writer puts it this way:
In its simplest terms, the kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not. Imagine if God ruled the nations, and not Obama, Medvedev, Kim Jong-il, Mugabe, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Every aspect of personal and communal life would experience a radical reversal. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless—peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclusion, etc. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being.[i]
Shalom. Well-being. Peace. If every person who bowed their head over a meal this week—whether they sit at a table alone, or with one other person, or in a room crammed full with extra chairs and tables to accommodate the extended family—if every one of us could recognize within us God’s desire for shalom, peace, and well-being for our world—well, that would be quite a Thanksgiving. That is the Thanksgiving Christ our King wants for us, and with us, and in us. That is Thanksgiving as a call to action, to service of our brothers and sisters in the name of our servant Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i]Daniel Clendenin, “Can a Good Christian Be a Good Citizen? The Reign of Christ the King,” in The Journey With Jesus: Notes to Myself, Essay November 16, 2009. http://www.journeywithjesus.net.
It’s Friday afternoon, time for me to start writing my sermon (past time, really… I’ve been noodling around on Facebook just a little too long). I’ve had my lunch, the dishes are done, there is coffee percolating on the stove (yes, I percolate my coffee at home… real cowboy coffee, my brother calls it). Time to write. Except, it occurs to me: I should take time to pray before I write. My sermon will undoubtedly be enriched if I pray first—open myself to the Spirit. And then I think: hey, I think I know how I’ll start the sermon… that crucial opening paragraph! And so… prayer averted. I sit down to the computer and start typing.
And there you have it, my friends, the true and unvarnished report on the state of your pastor’s prayer life. Why is it so hard sometimes, to simply sit down and … pray? We promise ourselves (and God) we will do it… sometimes we even manage to keep that promise for a little while. But the first errant thought, the first opportunity for distraction and diversion, and our promises evaporate. Unless… we are in one of those life situations that takes us to the extremes. You know the ones I mean. The extremes of joy or sorrow. The extremes of hope or despair. The extremes of reaching out in love or striking out in anger. For some reason, the every day, workaday practice of prayer feels not nearly so doable as the “Help me Lord, I’m hanging on by my fingernails” kind of prayer, or the “Hallelujah, praise the Lord!” kind of prayer. It has been said that we can basically boil down all prayer to “Thank you” and “Help.” We tend to get very, very good at praying when the prayer is “Help.”
Hannah is a woman living in one of those extremes, a time of extreme pain and distress. When we meet Hannah, her whole identity is swallowed up in her problem, her symptom. She “has no children,” in contrast with her husband’s other wife Peninnah, who has children in abundance. It’s hard to overstate the catastrophe, the sheer scandal that infertility is assumed to be in biblical literature. Fertility is always seen as a sign of divine favor—God, smiling down upon you. Infertility, predictably, is seen as a sign of divine judgment—God, closing the womb. Hannah is suffering as a result of her identity as a woman with no children: her rival taunts her, she weeps. Hannah has the love of her husband, Elkanah, but she is too miserable to eat the double portion he gives her. Elkanah, in a misguided effort to cheer her up, says just the wrong thing. “Hannah… Am I not more to you than ten sons?” he says. When, of course, the right thing to say would have been, “Hannah, you are more to me than ten sons.”
At this point in the story of salvation, there are many holy places, not just one, and so the whole family of Elkanah and Hannah and Penninah and all the kids go to the temple at Shiloh for their annual time of worship and sacrifice. And after the meal she cannot eat, Hannah rises and goes into the temple, and “presents herself to the Lord.” She “pours out her soul before the Lord.” If we could be flies on the wall of the temple… I wonder what the outpouring of that soul sounded like?
O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help. like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. [Selah] You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. ~Psalm 88:1-9
There’s no emotion we can feel that we can’t find in the psalms. That is a portion of Psalm 88. It is probably the saddest, most hopeless psalm in the entire psalter. It ends as it begins, in unrelieved darkness.
I think it is an incredibly honest prayer. I suspect the outpouring of Hannah’s soul is something like this, the prayer she prays while weeping bitterly, so distraught and out of control that Eli the priest comes to believe she is drunk. Hannah presents herself before the Lord, and prays an honest prayer out of the deepest places of distress in her heart.
In some ways, this kind of prayer is the easy kind. The times when we say “help,” from the gut, with all our might, and we really mean it. When I think back on the various stages and seasons of my life, I know I prayed the best when things were hardest and scariest. And, by the “best,” I don’t mean high quality poetic prayers in Elizabethan English or even biblical Hebrew. By the “best”, I mean, most consistently. By the “best”, I mean, most honestly. By the “best”, I mean that, at those times, my prayer life was my relationship, my connection with God.
Prayer is a relationship. And all relationships thrive on consistency and honesty. It can be a simple thing to be honest when you are pain, terrified, desperate. Honesty can be… more complicated at other times. I am wondering what kind of prayer I might have prayed if I had sat down to pray before beginning my sermon:
“Well, here I am, God. Sort of perfunctorily checking in with you, in case you have anything good for me.” Yikes. That makes me cringe. That doesn’t feel very comfortable or comforting. I’ve prayed other uncomfortable prayers in my life, too. And I’ve encouraged others to pray uncomfortably. I encourage us all to pray uncomfortably.
I encourage us to say to God those things we think we cannot say to God, even things we don’t want to take up God’s time with. Things like,
Are you really there?
I don’t have time for this.
I’m so tired I could cry.
I’m so sad I could die.
I don’t know how to do this praying thing.
Let’s remind ourselves of something: God already knows it all anyway. God is already there, waiting for us to be willing to join in the conversation God has already begun with us. So, if God already knows it all—the anger, or the ennui, or the confusion, or the irritation, or the questioning—if God already knows it all, we have nothing to fear in articulating it. We have nothing to fear in pouring out the not terribly pious, not terribly articulate content of our souls. We have nothing to fear except this: being in a real, live, fully connected relationship with God. God is already speaking. In honest prayer we have an opportunity to turn a monologue into a relationship.
There is a story of a man who really had some struggles, much like Jim, whom I talked about last week. This man was deep in addiction, and his addiction had led to things like drunk driving arrests and jail time and abandoning his family and finally, under threat of real hard time in prison, rehab. When he came out of rehab, he felt fragile, like a newborn baby with the cold wind swirling all around him. Some of his old friends—the ones with whom he had indulged in his addiction—were having a party, right next door. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to call one of his new clean and sober friends for support, but couldn’t get through to them. Finally, he went home and went in his bedroom, and closed the door, and sat on his bed shaking. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, Buddy, I guess it’s just you and me.” And that prayer—that honest, inarticulate, heartfelt prayer—changed everything. He says, “Believe it or not, it worked: those simple little words worked. Something happened: a little peace came over me.”
Hannah presented herself to the Lord. She in agony, and she prayed and wept bitterly. She was honest. She poured out her soul. She engaged in real conversation with God, a prayer from the heart. And, like her, when we are in agony, or like the man who was trying not to act on his addiction, when we are really frightened, those prayers can just roll out of us, just flow, and our pleas for “Help” fly into the heavens, weightless, direct to God.
The challenge for us is to learn to present ourselves to the Lord, to pour out our souls, in other kinds of situations as well. To present ourselves to God when we’re bored, or just tired, or when we don’t really feel like praying because we aren’t sure we will get anything back, get anything out of it. The challenge for us is to engage in the conversation when fifteen thousand other things are screaming for our attention—that little bit of work we want to finish, the laundry, the latest episode of “Glee.” The challenge for us is to engage in honest prayer when we don’t even know what we want to say, but we do it anyway, because that’s what you do when you’re in a relationship.
It has been said that prayer doesn’t change God, but it does change us. That is the promise of prayer: transformation. The answer to Hannah’s prayer is powerful and dramatic: God sends her the son she is longing for, and we have already prayed together her psalm of joy. For many of us, much of the time, we do not experience such dramatic answers to our prayer. Or, we experience what feels like a painful, wrenching “No.” But let’s not forget: for Hannah, the transformation comes before God’s “Yes.” She is able to return to her family and eat her dinner for the first time…. not at the guarantee of “yes,” but at the moment of pouring out her soul. We pray. Yes, we pray for that “yes,” but more than that, we pray to be in relationship with the One who created us, the One who redeemed us, the One who sustains us. God wants to be in relationship with us, in the heights of our joys, and in the depths of our sorrows, and in the mundane, Friday afternoon trying to get some work done times. God wants to be in relationship with us, whether our prayer is “Thank you,” or “Help,” or even just “Hi there.” God wants to be in relationship with us, and that is where we will find the transformation we really need. Thanks be to God. Amen.
I am going to tell you a true story. It is about a man named Jim. That’s his real name, and I’m using it because, once upon a time, he gave me permission to tell his story.
I met Jim… I’m not exactly sure where. But at a certain time in my life—say, 15 years ago, he was sort of everywhere. When I looked out my window, there would be Jim, rolling his shopping cart down my street, and coming up on my porch to pick up a bag I had left there for him.
Jim was a small guy, perhaps in his sixties when we met, but he looked much, much older. He was wiry, and sort of bent over, and he didn’t have a lot of his original teeth left. He had a pack a day habit… these really nasty little cigars; I couldn’t stand the smell of them. I’m not sure whether it was the smoking that aged Jim or the drinking. Jim had a long career of hard drinking; but that was behind him now. When I knew him he was in recovery, a stalwart of the Thursday 8 PM AA meeting. He was so proud of his recovery. First he counted the days, then the months, and then the years. I was invited to go to the meetings in which Jim received his 10 year, his 11 year and his 12 year medallions.
When I first knew Jim, he was walking around the neighborhood, miles and miles of walking each day, to pick up cans and bottles, both those he’d pick out of the garbage or recycling, and those he’d get off the porches of friends who had saved them for him. I was in the latter category. For a long time… I’m not sure how many years… all my returnable bottles and cans went to Jim. It was convenient for me… no hauling them to the grocery store… and it was money Jim lived on. He was on disability because of his health, and he got a Social Security check every month. But the thing that allowed Jim to live in his little apartment on Main Street was collecting bottles and cans.
Jim kept track of his bottles and cans the way he kept track of his sobriety. Every once in a while, he’d give me a call, and ask me to drive him and a whole car load of returnables to the redemption center, and so I’d go, and we’d load them in the back of my car. Not everyone rinses out cans and bottles, especially the students at the frat houses who just put their stuff on the street. So inevitably my car would end up smelling like a brewery. It struck me as odd, maybe even tempting fate just a tiny bit, that Jim lived off beer bottles and cans. You know, given that beer almost killed him, and that he spent his days working very hard not to touch the stuff, to stay sober. But that smell never seemed to bother him… maybe the cigars had killed his sense of smell, I don’t know. But Jim, when we were driving to the redemption center, would say, “Well, last year I got all the way to $1800. It was a slow summer for some reason, I’m only at $1200 and it’s already Labor Day. But I think I can make it this year, if the kids have as many parties as they did last fall.”
To tell you the truth, I didn’t always look forward to Jim’s and my jaunts to the redemption center. I would get a message from Jim on my answering machine, and I’d think, Oh great, just what I need this week. I hated that smell in my car. And my kids were young, so I had to make sure someone was available to watch them, because I had a station wagon and we’d have to put the seat down. So I couldn’t bring them with me. It was kind of a pain in the neck sometimes. But then I’d be with Jim, driving to the redemption center, and, you know, he had this incredible optimism about him. I’d watch him walk, see how hard it was for him… I think his joints were painful, and he had emphysema… did I mention that? So… he’d get winded just going up a little set of three steps. So here was this guy… living alone in a tiny little apartment, living off social security and his can and bottle money, physically in pain a lot of the time… and he just was one of the most grateful people I’d ever known.
That was it. Jim was grateful. He was sober. He had that to be grateful about. He was able to not drink, one day at a time, as he often reminded me. And… in his recovery, he’d become interested in genealogy, so he spent a lot of time calling people, churches, cemeteries, trying to track down his ancestors. I think he had fully fleshed out family trees going back into the 16th century. He was so excited about his family history, and grateful for it. Sure, he was in a lot of pain, but he could still walk. He was grateful for that. And he loved those dreadful smelly little cigars. They just pleased him to no end. Jim was grateful.
Jim was a churchgoing man. That’s the other place I saw him. I was a director of Youth Ministries and Christian Education for a local Church, and Jim was a member. So I would see Jim there. Occasionally I’d hear his shopping cart squeaking down the hallway, and I’d know Jim was in the building. Jim could talk about his faith; he was an unusual person in that respect. He believed that God, working through AA, had saved his life. And he was grateful.
One fall the youth group decided to do a fundraiser. They wanted to buy gifts for the women and children who find themselves at Local Shelter over Christmas. As you may know, Local is a place for people who have experienced domestic violence, and who need a safe place. I don’t remember who thought of this as a mission project, but the kids were pretty pumped. This seemed like a worthwhile cause to them. They really wanted to help.
One of them got the idea to do a bottle and can drive, and the others all concurred that this would be a great, and relatively easy, fundraising project. All they’d need to do would be to remind the people at church to save bottles and cans for them, and then they’d bring them in, and, voila, easy money.
When you’re a youth leader, you really want to let the kids lead when they are excited about an idea. They really were excited about this idea, so I encouraged them. Sure! Absolutely. We can do this. And so the bulletin announcements were written, the signs were made… the word went out. We were collecting bottles and cans.
And, of course, I felt a little funny about this, as far as Jim was concerned. I was worried. Would we be cutting into Jim’s income? I knew he depended on his bottle and can money. I made a mental note to hold some of our family’s returnables aside for Jim…. maybe we could even try to drink some extra diet soda over the next month. I worried about the next time I would see Jim. Would he be upset? Would he be hurt? I didn’t look forward to our next encounter.
I was in my office one grey November day. I hadn’t seen Jim since the bottle and can drive had begun, but it was going well; I had an appointment to meet a youth group member and his mom to take two carloads to the supermarket to be redeemed. I don’t remember what I was working at, but I probably was on my computer. Then, I heard it: the familiar squeak of Jim’s shopping cart wheels coming down the hallway. I took a deep breath. I dreaded this meeting.
I stood up and poked my head out of my office door. “Hi,” he said. He had a raspy voice, a real smoker’s voice. “Can we talk? In private?”
“Sure Jim,” I said. “Do you want to come into my office?” Jim nodded, and he wheeled his cart just outside my door. He ambled in sort of slowly—he always moved slowly—and he let himself down in a chair while I closed the door.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this bottle drive, Jim,” I said. That was narrowly true. I’d had a sense I should talk to him. But, in my dread about hurt feelings and so forth, I’d not really made any effort to make it happen.
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Jim said. He reached into the pocket of his big parka— it was really too big for him. He pulled out a wet, folded up, wrinkled $20 bill.
I looked at him, blankly.
“This is for the bottle drive. I want you to put this towards whatever the kids make.” Then he paused. “I don’t want them to know it’s from me.”
It took me a moment to re-orient myself from the conversation I’d been anticipating. For some reason, the first words out of my mouth were, “Jim, you don’t need to do this.”
He looked at me, hard. “Oh yes I do,” he said. He paused again. “It should be a lot more, but this is all I can manage at the moment.”
I did a quick calculation. $20.00. That’s four hundred cans. I had some vivid mental snapshots of Jim walking slowly down a street in my neighborhood, of Jim climbing three stairs somewhere to retrieve a bag, of Jim excited and adding up the numbers as we drove to the redemption center. I knew exactly what those bottles and cans cost him.
“Jim,” I began, but I never finished.
“I have not always been the person I should have been, especially when I was drinking, especially where women are concerned. Just know that…” another pause… “I need to do this.”
His voice brightened up as he rose to leave my office. “Have a nice day!” he said. When Jim said that, he said it without a hint of sarcasm. He meant it.
He took hold of his cart, and I listened as its squeaky wheels rolled down the carpeted hallway.
