Michal: Glimpses of Grace; Sermon on 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-23

I suppose at some point in their lives, many little girls—at least, little girls in the United States whose families have some disposable income—have been caught up in the “princess” phenomenon: the idea that, if I were just a princess, oh how wonderful my life would be! The thought is wrapped up in very specific visual formulae—the princess gown, the tiara. And with it comes the kind of social event that every girl either dreads or longs for: the royal ball, the royal wedding, where, as princess, she gets to be the focus of much adoring attention.

The desire is not to be queen, mind you—a woman with some power of her own, at least symbolically—but a princess. The daughter of a king or queen, a girl whose power is by association, and whose power lies, at least as the story goes, in her beauty, and usually her goodness, and, of course, her desirability.

A few years ago Peggy Orenstein wrote an article about the princess phenomenon as it has been sweeping our culture for about the past ten years. She writes,

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with “Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her “princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, “I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?” She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother. “Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?” My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?” [1]

That little girl could easily have been me. I was raised lovingly reading and re-reading the stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I became obsessed, for a time, with getting my mother to try to style my hair like Leslie Ann Warren’s up-do in the televised version of “Cinderella.” Add to that the fact that I knew that I was adopted, and you have the makings of a full-on fantasy life that includes my having actually been born a princess. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with princesses?

That would be a great question to ask Michal, who, in our passage is referred to repeatedly as the “daughter of Saul,” though she is also the wife of David. What’s wrong with being a princess? In Michal’s case, what is wrong probably has something to do with the other characters in your story. In Michal’s case, what is wrong is this: she has been caught up in the struggle for power between Saul and David.

There is something about David that is just so compelling. He is a figure who will forever be larger than life, because of the number and nature of the stories that have been preserved about him in scripture. A few weeks ago we heard the wonderful tale of the prophet Samuel looking over the sons of Jesse, one by one, until he said, “No, none of these will do.” And finally, the boy David is brought in from the pasture where he has been tending the sheep… “Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome,” the passage tells us. Prince Charming himself! Samuel falls in love with him, just as, apparently, the Lord has, and promptly pours a flask of oil over his head, anointing him king over all Israel.

The problem is, there is already a king, previously anointed, and his name is Saul. But he has lost favor with the Lord, and that is why Samuel has been sent in search of another. From this point, it’s game on for David and Saul. And Michal finds herself in the middle.

After David’s spectacular victory over Goliath, the Philistine, his popularity soars among the people, and Saul gets an idea. His daughter is in love with David, just like everyone else. Saul makes David an offer: he can have Michal’s hand in marriage if he will pay a particularly grisly and over-the-top bride price: one hundred Philistine foreskins. Saul, of course, has no intention of seeing this come to pass: the idea behind the plan is that David will be killed before he can perform any such feat.

But this is David. He manages to acquire the foreskins—in fact, he acquires two hundred of them—and, thus, he acquires the bride. And, as a princess, Michal helps to secure David’s claim to the throne in human eyes (though we know that, since it is already God’s will, the eyes of the people are just icing on the cake). Saul, seeing that his plan has massively backfired, sends assassins to David’s house to finish the job. Michal, still in love with her husband, helps David to escape by planting an idol in his bed and claiming he is ill to fool the somewhat dimwitted assassins, while letting David down through a window to escape to his freedom.

While David is off navigating the final coup against Saul, the elder king takes his daughter—perhaps as punishment for her role in securing David’s escape?—and gives her to another man, Paltiel, to be his wife. The text is silent as to what transpires between Michal and Paltiel. After the death of Saul, David has already acquired two more wives, each of them politically advantageous in her own way. But Michal is a politically necessary wife for David, helping to prove his claim to the throne. And so he sends for her. As she is taken away, there is a heartrending scene in which Paltiel follows her, weeping, until he is chastised and sent home by one of David’s lackeys. In Paltiel, at least, Michal has found someone who actually loves her. But David needs her, for his own purposes, and so he takes her.

This is the background to today’s passage, in which we see the triumphant David dancing with all his might in the presence of the Lord, as he brings the Ark of the Covenant into his city. Michal, the daughter of Saul, taken by force from the only man who has loved her for the purposes of political expediency, sees her husband the king dancing nearly naked in front of all the people. She witnesses what must be described as David’s unfettered joy in the service of the God who has put him in power. She is, perhaps understandably, less than enthusiastic.

What’s wrong with being a princess? Perhaps Michal’s story is a painful illustration of what is wrong when your story is not your own, but is told in the service of another story. What’s wrong with Michal’s story is that it is not her story, but David’s. I cringe at verse 23. After giving us David’s rather petulant response to Michal, that hey, you may not like my naked dancing, but I bet all the serving girls do—we read Michal’s post-script: “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.” Because, that’s what you get when you are an ancillary character in someone else’s story, and you complain, however obliquely, about the person who has treated you as no more than property.

The story of Michal is preserved for us, and that, in itself, constitutes a kind of good news, on at least two levels. First, we can read the story of Michal with eyes and hearts that have been informed by a kind of evolving ethic of human relations, and we have scripture to thank for that ethic. The same scripture that elevates David to be the greatest king of Israel (despite his often abysmal track-record with women, his abuses of power, and other foibles) has spoken to us of the great dignity imparted to us as men and women by our creator. “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Even as we read of David’s harsh use of Michal, we have a point of reference that tells us that no one made in God’s image should be subjected to that kind of treatment. Even as we read the story of David, we can choose to shift our perspective, and read it as the story of Michal. Sometimes the most powerful thing about a terrible story is that we try never to forget it. Sometimes our memory is our most potent weapon against repeating the outrages of the past.

The other glimpse of grace we can find in Michal’s story is… David’s story. David is courageous, and faithful, and devoted to Yahweh. And he is brutal, and ruthless, and conniving. He exemplifies the great glory and the great brokenness that lie at the heart of humanity. John Calvin called that brokenness “total depravity.” He recognized that, when push comes to shove, we human beings will act in selfish ways, even in ways that separate us from the love of God.

And yet, in the end, the moral of David’s story is that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God. In our reading from Ephesians, we are told that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” Our chosenness is another essential principle of Calvin’s understanding of our relationship with God. Like David, we have been chosen by God to be in relationship with the divine. But note—holy and blameless in love. In other words, God’s love for us does not depend on our perfection, thank God. It does not depend on our being good, on our doing good, though—of course, good can and should be the fruit of our relationship with God, our response. No. Our relationship with God depends on one thing and one thing alone: Grace. God’s love for us, despite everything. God’s love for our fully glorious and broken selves. The good news in this story is the recognition that God’s grace is far bigger than our brokenness, and that we can depend on that grace to see us through.

What’s wrong with being a princess? Perhaps the heart of the matter is this: our story must be fully our own. Our relationship with God must be fully our own. Our dancing before God , our pouring out of our sorrows before God must be our own. We cannot live out anyone else’s life of holiness but our own, the one we have been given, the one that is the truest expression of our glorious, and broken, and very real connection with the source of our being. David and Michal are not so different, really—Michal who risks her reputation by helping the man she loves to escape, David who risks his reputation by dancing with abandon before God. What I would have wished for Michal in her life would have been a sense that it was God who ultimately owns her, and not one of the men between whom she was shuffled time and again. What I would have wished for her—and perhaps she did come to know this in time, in the silence after her story ends—would be a sense of that overwhelming grace of God that transcends our actions and the ways in which we are acted upon. We are not our own, Calvin says, but “we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal.”

With tenderness towards this unhappy princess, we close the book on her story.

~~~

[1] Peggy Orenstein, “What’s the Matter With Cinderella?”, New York Times Magazine, December 24, 2006.

Peril on the Sea: Sermon on Mark 4:35-41

Because it is summer
and because I have recently been to my dad’s house at the shore
and because I grew up not just by the water but, essentially, in it,
and because I still define myself by my complete and utter love for the sea,
it’s important that I remind myself that this is not a story about the sea as I like to think about it:

a place for recreation, for vacation
a place for hanging out with friends and family
a place for joy, abandon, refreshment and sensual delight.
a—let’s face it—somewhat tame thing that bears little or no resemblance to what is meant when we speak of “peril on the sea.”

This story from Mark’s gospel bears no resemblance to all my instinctual understanding of the sea. Instead, Mark speaks of a place:

that is seen as a workplace—a dangerous one—for the fishing families who live on its shores.
that is capricious and terrifying: because it is large and shallow, the Sea of Galilee is prone to sudden and violent storms when the winds rise up, storms which disappear just as quickly when the winds die down.
that evokes, for the ancient people who inhabit Galilee, even more ancient creation stories in which the world arises out of chaos. The sea represents that chaos: powerful, primordial, untamable.

The sea as Mark sees it, as Jesus and his friends experience it, is not your typical summer vacation spot.
It is a force of almost supernatural magnitude.
It is something to be reckoned with.

Jesus and his friends are tired from a day of teaching.
In other words, it has not been a day of miracles—no demons have been cast out, no blind men have received back their sight, no little girls have been raised from the dead.
It’s more like… a day at the office. A fairly ordinary day.

But Jesus seems to have out-of-the ordinary plans for his friends.
At the end of a long day, everyone exhausted from rubbing elbows with the crowds, and pitching their voices loud enough to be heard a good distance away, and even just standing a long time, Jesus doesn’t say, Hey, let’s go get a burger.

He doesn’t say, Man, I am so beat… let’s go back to Peter’s house to catch up on our sleep.

He doesn’t even say, Where are some wounded and hurting people that I may heal them?

He says, Let us go across to the other side.

The other side of the sea, that is. The wild, capricious, untamable, terrifying sea.

Let us go out of the Jewish Palestinian world of Capernaum, the place where everybody knows our names, and across to the other side… the side where the Gerasenes live, the non-Jewish world, where there are no synagogues, but where there may well be, and probably are, people to be taught and healed just as well as here at home.

Let’s go across to the other side, Jesus says, and see what we can do there.

But Jesus decides to let his friends steer the boat. He curls up and falls asleep.

Years ago I attended Chautauqua Days at Local Church, on a sweltering hot day in the middle of the summer.

It was a wonderful summer fair modeled on the great institute of learning and faith in Chautauqua, NY.

At one point I wandered into the church, really, to get out of the heat. As I walked down the center aisle I realized I was looking at a really unusual communion table… the entire thing was carved in the shape of a boat, and reclining, taking up about the bottom third, was Jesus, asleep.

It was beautiful. It took my breath away. But it also disturbed me.

There is something that seems wrong about the idea of Jesus being asleep.

How does that psalm go?

The one who keeps you will not slumber.
The one who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:3-4)

That’s how I prefer to think of Jesus. That’s how I prefer to think of God… not slumbering, not asleep on the job…

What if I really need Jesus and he’s… asleep?

This was a very real issue for those who first heard the gospel of Mark.

Remember, those who first heard this story preached as gospel, as good news, were living in that strange time after Jesus was out of their sight.

He had risen, yes.

He had given them instructions for how to live in his absence, yes.

But then… he had gone away, out of their sight. He might as well have been somewhere taking a nap, for all they knew.

What if we really need Jesus, and we just can’t seem to find him? What if it seems as if he’s not there? Or, worse, as if he’s asleep on the job?

Look up. Look up at the magnificent ceiling of this church.

The first time I ever saw this ceiling was on a September evening in 2003.

I came to St. Sociable so that our local governing body could examine me, so that the leaders of our church in this area could determine if they felt my understanding of our Christian faith was something that could be shared.

Could I teach the faith?

I walked into this sanctuary on a very warm September evening, and I looked up at the ceiling, what is called in church terms, the nave. Nave, as in navy. Nave, because it is traditional for the ceiling of a church to look very much like the bottom of a ship.

The church is a boat, it is a ship. And we are all in this boat together. The question for us is, do we still believe Jesus is in the boat with us?

That was the question for Jesus’ friends. If Jesus was asleep—if he was, in a sense, checked out—was he still in some way truly with them? Could they depend on his presence and his power?

You have Mark’s answer.

Mark says, yes.

The church is a ship, and it is moving as the wind directs it—the Holy Wind, Holy Spirit.

Even if it seems to have blown off course—which sometimes, it seems to do—we can trust that the Holy Wind will blow it back in the direction true which God intends for it.

The church is a ship, and we are all in it together.

The primordial, powerful, chaos that seems to reign all around us?

Jesus is still with us, in the ship.

The terrifying storms that blow up, as they so often do?

Jesus is still with us. We are not alone.

Even the workaday grind… the nets we cast and the cargo we haul and the dirt we have to wash off ourselves at the end of the day?

Jesus is there. Jesus is still with us.

In work and in rest. In recreation and in refreshment. In calm and in storm. In peril and in safety. At mealtime and at bedtime. In working week and in Sunday rest.

Jesus is there. Jesus is still with us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

~~~

The image above is "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee" by Dutch master Rembrandt Van Rijn. It was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. It has never been recovered.

The Outcast: A Sermon on Mark 5:21-43

A few minutes before services started this morning I had a call from my dad, that he'd been in the hospital all night and wasn't sure what was wrong with him. My dad's 87 years old, lives alone. I'm on my way to his house now (250 miles away).

This made the sermon a little more difficult to preach.

Prayers, please.

Oh, and Petra and I sang the verses to "Orphan Girl" together. She's a good one.

~~~

I am an orphan on God's highway
But I'll share my troubles if you go my way
I have no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl…

Have you ever had the experience of feeling entirely, thoroughly… alone? Cut off. Isolated. Outcast. As if no one else on God’s green earth could possibly begin to understand who you were and what you were going through. As if the rest of the world passing by constituted another world, really. The world where people sat together and talked intimately, and understood each other. The world where people touched one another on the arm as they spoke. The world where people embraced one another spontaneously when someone was sad, or glad, or relieved. When we feel alone, it can be as if we were looking through a thick wall of glass upon that other world, one utterly foreign to the world we are in.

What was that time for you? Was it a time when the world shifted beneath your feet and you learned that the rock-solid job was in reality perched on shifting sand? Was it a time when that loss caused you to question your abilities, your vocation, your sense of what you were meant to do in the world, who you were meant to be in the world? Or, was there a sense of being alone during the break-down and break-up of a long term relationship, a friendship, a marriage? Was it a time when you experienced the devastating loss of someone you loved… parent, partner, sibling, spouse, child? Or, perhaps, a moment when a doctor turned to you with a grim face to deliver bad news?

When we experience a trauma or a loss, it is a profoundly isolating experience. We feel cut off. We feel outcast, as if we might never again be able to swim to the shore of normalcy. And even if there are people we love standing by, unless the loss is theirs, unless they are undergoing the same trauma… it can feel almost impossible for them to reach us. And everything they say can seem wrong, especially if they try to interpret God for us. Kind and loving people of faith, when they tell us why God let this or that happen… well, it’s hard for us to experience it as kind and loving. I used to say, “I can’t imagine what you are going through,” until a friend snapped back, “Try.” She’d lost her son. Trauma, loss… they isolate us. They orphan us. They make us feel as if we’ll never make the connection again.

I have had friendships pure and golden
But the ties of kinship I have not known them
I know no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl

The woman at the heart of today’s gospel encounter with Jesus is just such an isolated and outcast person, only her outcast state goes beyond her feelings and extends to the community’s treatment of her. She is a nameless and faceless person, known to us only by a kind of thumbnail sketch: we know just four things about her:

• We know that she’s been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years.
• We know that she has gone to physician after physician looking for a cure.
• We know that, not only has she not been cured, she has grown worse.
• And we know that not only has she grown worse, she has spent all her money on this fruitless pursuit: everything she has is gone.

Those are the facts the gospel passage shares with us. There are more things you should know about her, though. You have heard what the cost was to her medically, and financially. But there is another cost to her socially and religiously, as outlined in Leviticus. It is the cost of being ritually unclean for many, many years. A woman with a hemorrhage would be considered unclean—as would every bed she lay upon, every thing she touched, every person she touched.
[Lev. 19:25-27]

Because of her physical condition, the prevailing religious mores of the day would demand that the woman be left completely alone. Cut off. Isolated. Outcast. Other people would know to avoid contact with her. Anyone who wanted to be part of normal community life—to go to the market, or the waterfront, or to the Temple—would be forced to shun her presence. She has probably lost her family, and most likely lives alone, so that no one else need be exposed to the risk of being, as she is, permanently ritually unclean.

We have encountered situations like this before in the gospel of Mark. Remember the man who had leprosy, who was every bit as outcast as this woman. You may remember that Jesus was moved with both compassion for that man’s plight and anger at the injustice that excluded him from being a part of God’s family.

There’s one more thing you should know about the woman with the hemorrhage. She has not given up. She is still determined to find healing for herself.

But when He calls me I will be able
To meet my family at God's table
I'll meet my mother my father
My sister my brother
No more an orphan girl

So, here comes Jesus. He is in the midst of a great crowd… people are pressing in on him from every side. And he is hurrying, we must believe, with a distraught (and very wealthy and powerful) man to the bedside of that man’s daughter, who lies at the brink of death. The nameless woman who has been suffering for twelve years gets the idea that if she can only touch Jesus’ clothes, she will be healed. And… we have to confess, that sounds an awful lot like magical thinking, using Jesus as a sort of talisman. If we are honest with ourselves, we engage in that kind of behavior all the time. We have rituals ranging from saying a prayer before taking a test, to the wearing of lucky socks for the bowling tournament, to brides wearing “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” Human beings impart quasi-magical powers to physical objects all the time, whether we admit it or not.

So touch Jesus’ clothing she does. And sure enough, power flows from him… the Greek word for that power is dynamin… the same word from which we get dynamite. Explosive power! That dynamic power flows from Jesus, and he knows it, and he stops and looks around the crowd and says, “Who touched me?” Which elicits a response from the disciples along the lines of “You have got to be kidding.” And, you know, the woman knows right away she has been healed… she can feel it in her body, just as Jesus can feel that power has gone out from his. But Jesus is not willing to simply make someone well. Jesus is not willing to simply let the power flow out from him—good and dynamic and healing as that power might be. Jesus is not content to merely solve a problem. Jesus wants an encounter with a person.

And encounter her he does. And what does he say to her? He says, “daughter.” To the woman whose family has fled, he says, “daughter.” To the woman who is alone, cut off, isolated, outcast… he says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” And with those words, Jesus accomplishes the truly explosive healing: the work of restoring her to community, to family. Someone who has been excluded, who has been languishing on the outside, for twelve long years, has a family once more.

And so it is for us. Do we want God to heal us of our diseases? Of course we do. No one wants the return of the tumor, the terrible pain, the grave infirmity. Of course we want the healing of our many varieties of real heartbreak and loss. Jesus offers us that, and much more. He offers us an open door into that world where people sit together and talk intimately and understand each other. He offers us a world where people touch one another on the arm as they speak, where they embrace one another spontaneously when someone is sad, or glad, or relieved. Jesus offers us the beloved community, the family of God.

The beloved community gathered, first, around the preaching and healing Jesus, and then, around the risen Christ. It is the foundation of the beloved community that there is room at the table. It is the foundation of the beloved community that no one is to be alone, cut off, isolated, or outcast. Each one of us is “daughter.” Each one is “son.” Each one is “sister, or “brother.” Each one is “friend.” Each one is “beloved.” No more orphan boys or girls, but each of us is kin to Jesus, who touches us with dynamic power and welcomes us in.

Blessed Savior make me willing
And walk beside me until I'm with them
Be my mother my father
My sister my brother
I am an orphan girl

Like a Weed: A Sermon on Mark 4:26-34

A few years ago I served on an arts committee with A.. She’s a professor at Excellent Local University, and during the time we worked together, she felt it was the right time to buy a house. She looked and looked, and finally found the perfect place, nestled on a hillside in NearTown, with a little creek running by and a stand of pine trees. The house was not too big, it was not too small, it was cozy. It was comfortable. It was just right.

When A. moved in she noticed another stand of something that looked like bamboo running alongside the creek. It was picturesque, and A., a first time homeowner, had visions of it imparting a kind of serenity to her surroundings. She liked it. She liked it until the day, late the next spring, when it started growing through the baseboards of her bedroom.

A. had encountered Japanese knotweed, which some have called “killer bamboo.” She didn’t know it at the time, but this is an invasive species that gives new and richer meaning to the word “tenacious.” A. embarked on a plan of trying to control it. She dug it out. It grew back. She invested in environmentally friendly methods of trying to control it. They had no effect whatsoever. She invested in environmentally nightmarish chemicals. The pretty “bamboo” continued its incessant, unending program of growing in through the cracks that had now formed in the foundation of A.'s home, sometimes appearing inside the walls of her house in the morning, like an scary new species from a science fiction film. A.’s last attempt to control the bamboo involved pouring acid on it. The leaves shrunk and withered, and for a time the weed receded. Within a month it was back with a vengeance.

How shall we envision the kingdom of God? Jesus asks in this morning’s scripture. By what parable shall we present it? And he answers himself: it is like a mustard seed. A mustard seed is tiny. It might even be the tiniest seed, he says. But when it grows—watch out. It’s big. Bigger than you thought it would be. It’s a shrub, though, so… it’s not as big as, say, a California redwood, or even the pine trees in Angela’s backyard. So maybe the point is not that it’s big. So then… what is the point?

Jesus was always speaking in parables, according to the gospel of Mark. And it’s good for us to recognize that parables are an extremely complex and sophisticated mode of communication. When Jesus speaks in parables, we often find ourselves wanting to turn them into allegories, stories in which all the characters signify someone or something else, and if we can just plug in the correct identities, then we can understand the story. For example, the prodigal son is the sinful, ungrateful human being, the loving father is God, and the older brother… well, is he Satan? Or another jealous human being? At any rate, we tend to want parables to be neat little life-lessons that have an easily decodable answer. In other words, we want parables to be something they’re not.

Parables are most often brief sayings or stories that raise more questions than they answer. They take familiar items and characters and situations, and tell us something about them that, usually, turns our customary way of thinking on its head. One writer puts it this way:

In the preaching of Jesus, parables were not vivid decorations of a moralistic point but were disturbing stories that threatened the hearer's secure mythological world -- the world of assumptions by which we habitually live, the unnoticed framework of our thinking within which we interpret other data.[i]

In the very earliest stories about Jesus, parables go unexplained. Jesus simply floats them out there, to rise or to fall on ears that are, or are not, able to hear and comprehend. We wish it weren’t so. We wish we could understand each and every one with absolute clarity. We want them to make sense.

We are not alone in that. The gospel writers are just as frustrated with Jesus’ parables as we are! They bend over backwards to provide us with interpretations, to minimize the confusion, and to give us those neat little life-lessons we are craving.

Take the parable of the mustard seed. The most common interpretation of this is influenced by the way Matthew tells the parable: he says, though it’s the smallest of seeds, it grows into a tree, and the birds of the air can nest in its branches. This is a very appealing image for the Jewish community Matthew was preaching to. It evokes a beloved vision used by the prophets to describe Israel, the great and majestic cedars of Lebanon.

I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind. ~ Ezekiel 17:22-23

This would have real appeal for the hometown crowd! This is an image of the work the Messiah will do! The cedars of Lebanon would grow to a height of a hundred feet or more, and they would, in effect, provide a home for all who would care to nest in them. This is an image of how God intends to care for God’s people. We can easily imagine this as a wonderful vision of the kingdom of God.

But Jesus isn’t talking about a giant cedar. In Mark’s version, the earliest version of this parable that has been preserved for us, Jesus isn’t even talking about a tree. The kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that grows into a great… shrub! Well, frankly, that’s kind of disappointing. Doesn’t it even sound like Jesus might, in some way, be teasing his listeners, poking fun at the image of the cedars of Lebanon?[ii] Maybe we need to step back a bit to define our terms. What exactly does Jesus mean by the “kingdom of God,” anyway?

Remember: the kingdom of God always carries with it a paradoxical sense of here/ not here, already/ not quite, accomplished/ coming. That helps when we consider the mistake we often make in thinking about the kingdom of God. We tend to think of a “kingdom” as an “area,” a place. And the Greek word that is translated kingdom, basilea, can mean that. But it can also mean “power” or “authority.” In other words, it may be more helpful, in understanding just what Jesus is talking about, to think about the “kingdom of God” as “the power of God,” or “God’s rule.”

With what can we compare God’s rule? What parable shall we use for the power of God? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. Mark 4:30-32

Here’s the thing about the mustard shrub. It’s not that big-- a large one might grow to be 10 feet, tops. But it is tenacious. Stop thinking oak, pine, redwood or cedar. Think, instead, kudzu, dandelions. Think, instead, Japanese knotweed. In the gardening practices of the ancient Jewish world, the mustard plant was considered a weed. It was to be avoided. It was never sown in a garden, because it would quickly take over every bit of space that was available, crowding out all the other vegetables and flowers. It was like Japanese knotweed, which, I’ve learned, can take root if even one tiny tendril of it remains alive in tons of landfill.

With what can we compare the power of God? The power of God is something that starts out small. It may even look picturesque when you first encounter it. And it is, truly, beautiful. But watch out. It’s tenacious. It can’t be stopped. The tiniest slip of it, one little seed, one small tendril can take hold and take over.

And… we’re not necessarily going to like it. It’s going to disrupt our pleasant and cozy places. It’s going to make us uncomfortable. It might even crack the foundations of the things we think we treasure most… our homes, our institutions, our churches. The power of God is wild, and untamable, and uncontrollable. We will wake up in the morning and find that it has made its way into the comfort of our homes. We will probably be distressed, we will probably be freaked out, we will probably want to find some way to fix it or modify it or eradicate it. But it is the power of God, and so it cannot be fixed or modified or eradicated.

In his book, Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne writes, “Mustard must be crushed, ground, broken for its power to be released.” Who does that remind you of? Sounds a little bit like Jesus. Claiborne goes on, “This is the crazy mystery that we celebrate, a Christ whose body is torn apart and whose blood is spilled like the grains and grapes of the [communion meal] that gives us life. Mustard was also known for healing, and was rubbed on the chest to help with breathing, sort of like Vicks vapor rub. Mustard, a wild contagion of a weed, a healing balm, a sign of upside down power—official sponsor of the Jesus revolution.”[iii]

With what shall we compare the power of God? It is a wild contagion. It is a healing balm. It is something that starts out so small we can barely see it. It is something that grows and moves without pause or hesitation. With what shall we compare the power of God? It is something that may crack the foundations of the things we rely upon, maybe even cause cracks in our own hearts. It is something that, in the end, will provide us shelter… perhaps not the kind of shelter we envisioned, but shelter nonetheless. The wild, unruly, untamable, healing, growing, moving power of God. It is here. It is not here. It is already. It is not quite. It is accomplished. It is coming. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[i] Eugene Boring, “Matthew: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 19__) 299.
[ii] Brian Stoffregan, CrossMarks, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark4x26.htm.
[iii] Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus for President (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing/ The Little Way, 2008), 104-105.

Spirit, Flesh and Bone: A Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Many thanks to Rachel Barenblat, aka the Velveteen Rabbi, for her kind permission to quote from her blogpost "Standing Again at Sinai."

~~~

When I was in college I discovered the slightly illicit delights of the all-nighter. This usually had to do with studying, of course, for some enormous, life-or-death exam for which I had not really cracked the books just yet. It also usually had to do with friendship—camaraderie, the “we’re all in this together” feeling students have when their backs are to the academic wall. It’s late May, and a lot of our high school students certainly know what I’m talking about, and I’m guessing our college students have pretty fresh memories of the same.

I spent one particularly memorable all-nighter with Jean, one of my junior year roommates. Jean was studying French, I was studying math, and I decided to add to the ambience of the whole experience by baking a loaf of whole-wheat bread, a skill I’d just learned. Also, a good way to procrastinate—kneading the dough has therapeutic value as a stress-reliever, and the anticipation of a delicious treat adds to the festive mood. As we worked and chatted (quietly, so as not to awaken our other roommates) the smell of the bread began to fill the kitchen. I later wrote,

“I breakfasted with Jean at 3 AM.
We dipped hot bread in metaphors and honey.
I’ve had a vision! someone said…
the reflexive verbs are little ferrymen…”[i]

And that’s what all-nighters are like: Work, sweet food, sweeter conversation, and sometimes, visions.

I read a lot of writing by other ministers and religious professional on the web. One of my favorites is a web log called “The Velveteen Rabbi.” It’s written by a rabbinical student named Rachel Barenblat. This week Rachel posted an account of how she observed the Jewish festival of Shavuot. Shavuot, which always takes place fifty days after Passover, celebrates the giving of the Torah—the law—by God on Mount Sinai. Rachel wrote,

My shul [that is, her congregation] and the shul up the road joined forces again to spend Shavuot together, singing and noshing and learning well into the night…

Our studies wrapped up around 3ish, [3 AM, that is!] and by the time we were through with our brief closing ceremony (passing the Torah from person to person, each cradling her for a time, and then reciting a [blessing] to seal our study) it was 3:30. [Then Rachel describes driving to another home, where participants talked about the journey from Passover to Shavuot, and then listened to a folk tale.] And by the time that ended, the sky was lightening and it was dawn.

It's been years since I've actually stayed up all night on Shavuot; I expect I'll regret it later today, at least physically. But there is something amazing and unique about the feeling of learning Torah all night, opening myself to the insights which arise in new ways in the dark, especially knowing that so many others around the world were doing the very same thing. [Joyous festival], everyone—I hope your holiday is sweet.[ii]

Rachel passed a traditional Shavuot. The customary way to observe this festival is to stay up all night studying the Torah and eating: a religious and spiritual all-nighter! The food usually consists of dairy-based desserts such as cheesecake, since the celebration includes joyful reminders of the land of Israel, a “land flowing with milk and honey.”

I have to say, this sounds like my kind of celebration: The bible, something delicious, and a conversation that goes well into the night. Sounds heavenly. One other thing I should tell you about Shavuot. Its name in Greek is “Pentecost.” This is the festival the friends and followers of Jesus—as well as Jews from all over the known world—were celebrating when the Spirit came down.

“When the day of Pentecost had come,” our reading from the Acts of the Apostles begins, “they were all together in one place.” Of course they were. They were celebrating, as the good Jews they were, the fact that God had given them the sublimely sweet gift of God’s word. They had probably stayed up all night. There are 50 days from Passover to Shavuot, and there are 50 days from Easter to the Christian Pentecost. So, I imagine their study of Torah had greater urgency and relevance than, perhaps, ever before. I imagine they searched the scriptures diligently to help them to understand what exactly was going on… who Jesus was, and how he was related to the word of God as they had received it. What an all-nighter that must have been. We see the end-result:

First there was the wind… the rush of violent wind, which filled the place where their studies, their Torah-all-nighter had taken place. Maybe a wind that blew around the last bits of sweet cake and cream. Wind—like the wind that the prophet Ezekiel prophesied to at God’s command. Wind, like that wind that came upon those formerly dry bones and literally blew life back into them. Wind that bridged the gap between spirit and flesh.

And then fire—“tongues” of fire appearing on each head. Fire, like the fire of the bush that was burned and yet not consumed… remember, how that fire told Moses he was standing on holy ground. Fire, like the presence of God in the wilderness…remember, how God went before the people in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.

Wind, and then fire, and then… words. Not just any words, but words spoken in every language of every person that had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot. Words that broke down barriers of language and custom. All this, the morning after the all-night study session, in which they were opening themselves, as Rachel put it, to the insights which arise in new ways in the dark.

What an intriguing concept: “Insights which arise in new ways in the dark.” There is something especially compelling about the idea of studying all night, or talking all night. I recently heard this, about the 19th century French novelist, Honore de Balzac: “He liked to eat a light meal at 5 or 6 p.m., then sleep until midnight, and then get up and write all night and day while drinking cup after cup of strong black coffee.”[iii]

Of course, there are other kinds of darkness besides the darkness of 3 AM. The darkness described by the prophet Ezekiel in our reading this morning is the darkness of people who feel utterly disconnected from any sense of God’s love and care for them. These people, exiles in Babylon during the 6th century BCE, have lost their homes, their leaders, and their place of worship, the Temple. The Temple is an especially grievous loss, because the people of Israel experienced it as housing the very presence of God in their midst. So their words are especially haunting: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” These are people lost in a spiritual darkness.

Yet, in the midst of this psychic and spiritual wasteland, this literal graveyard of the people’s hopes, one man is pulling an all-nighter, listening for a word from God’s holy spirit, and like so many other students before and after him, he too receives a vision:

Thus says the Lord God: “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord. (Ezekiel 37:12b,14)

For the ones who are willing to keep their eyes and their hearts and their ears open to God’s word in the darkness, the power of God is ready to be made manifest. For Ezekiel and the exiles, that power is seen in a vision of resurrection—dry bones covered with flesh and given the breath of life once again. These wanderers in the darkness of exile learn by this breathtaking and breath-giving vision that God has spoken, and God will act. For the friends and followers of Jesus, perhaps living in the darkness of uncertainty about life without Jesus physically in their midst, the power of God is made manifest by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Shavuot, Pentecost. God gives the Word, and God gives the Spirit. They emerge, perhaps, from the darkness of a long night of wrestling with scripture in hopes it will give them a blessing, with eyes and hearts and ears ready to be blasted open with wind and fire and words.

And what about us? How do we prepare ourselves for the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in our midst? I guess there are worse things than spending a night—all night—studying, praying, eating, and waiting for the movement of the Spirit. Especially when we do it together. It’s the all-nighters that we spend alone that are the tough ones—the nights when sleep won’t come, and it’s not because our minds and hearts are engaged in consuming the sweetness of God’s word, but because we are chewing the bitter cud of anxiety or regret. Those are the all-nighters I can do without, thanks.

No, I like the way it happens in the reading from Acts: “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.” And—for those of us who are not really night owls but who are more like larks—it was 9 in the morning. Perhaps some early birds had joined them in time for the swooping down of the dove. Perhaps night owls and early birds can manage to find time together for work, sweet food, sweeter conversation, and maybe even visions.

It is time for us to dream together, here at St. Sociable. The members of the church council have been working diligently together—we haven’t quite gone all night, though at the end of some meetings we may feel as if we had. We are preparing ourselves for congregational conversations, beginning with the one we will have next Sunday, when we can continue the process of dreaming together the future of ministry in this place. Take heart: this is not a life-or-death exam; and we are indeed all in this together; and I guarantee you that every single one of us is committed to what is best for this church. “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” says the Lord, “and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Let’s share our visions and dreams together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[i] A fragment of a poem written long ago (!)… circa 1981.
[ii] Rachel Barenblat, “Standing Again at Sinai,” The Velveteen Rabbi, May 29, 2009. http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2009/05/standing-again-at-sinai.html.
[iii] The Writer’s Almanac, May 20, 2009. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/05/20.

Signs of Life: Sermon on Mark 16:15-20

This week, prompted by this passage from the gospel of Mark, I watched a short film called “Homecoming,” about one of a handful of churches in the United States where snake handling is practiced as a part of worship.

It wasn’t what I thought it would be.

The first thing that appeared on screen was a series of black and white still photographs of a small town in West Virginia… coal country, nestled in the Appalachian mountains. These were followed by scenes from a small town church, with candid shots of worshipers raising their hands in prayer, and the voice over of a preacher with a strong Southern drawl, urging them trust in the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us. “Doesn’t God mean what he says?” he yelled. And then the film began, and the music started. The description of it read “a rocking hybrid of blues infused gospel.” To me, it sounded like early Elvis—those jangly guitars, driving bass and quick percussive drums. The people were dancing… the words “whirling dervishes” comes to mind, and they spun and swayed to the house band. One man twirled all the way down the aisle and nearly out the door, spinning towards blinding sunshine until gentle hands from other congregants reached out to guide him back.

And then they finally appeared: the snakes. One man held an enormous cluster of them… rattlesnakes, copperheads, all sorts of venomous varieties. The snakes seemed to be frozen in a kind of trance of their own. The men danced with the snakes, draped them around their necks like some kind of grotesque jewelry. But always, at the same time, the ecstatic dancing to the rockabilly music. Dancing with snakes! The lead singer would issue a call and the dancing congregation would join in the refrain: “What’d you think about Jesus?” “He’s alright.”

I’d imagined something else entirely: a darkened room, candles lit, an intensity of silence, and one by one, people carefully, gingerly picking up the rattlers as everyone looked on with bated breath. Instead, the mood was more of a rave. It was a dance party. Instead of fear there was a sense of gleeful abandon. Instead of the dark and silence, there was the effusive music, laugher and song. It wasn’t what I thought it would be at all.

Beneath the video—I watched it on YouTube, on the internet—there were viewers’ comments. There were certainly some scathing remarks, mocking the participants. One viewer suggested the snakes were not really dangerous. Another had low marks for Christians generally. But one person wrote, “Man… That is some good music! A fine example of collective effervescence!” And another, rather plaintively, commented simply: “They got something that I wish I had.”

We are at the very end of Mark’s gospel, reading one of the lectionary passages offered for this Sunday. This is a Sunday when we are standing on the bridge between the seasons of Easter and Pentecost. You may be interested to know that this passage was not a part of the gospel of Mark originally. Everything following the account of the women at the tomb on Easter morning is a late addition to the gospel: that’s the scholarly consensus. So what we’re reading now is someone’s attempt to finish the story. Jesus has risen from the grave, but it doesn’t end there. He is giving his followers some last minute instructions.

The first thing Jesus tells them is something we are very familiar with. You may have heard these words referred to as the Great Commission. Jesus says, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” Jesus’ final instructions begin with the idea that his friends and followers should share the good news they have received with the whole world—not even just the whole human world, but the whole of creation, the cosmos. All beings, all things. The good news applies globally.

After instructions about baptism, Jesus advises his disciples on how to recognize the marks of the true church, the authentic fellowship of believers. And this is where the passage gets a little strange. Jesus names the following signs of his life, present among the believers: “… by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

We are people of the book. We take very seriously the words of scripture, especially as they help to illumine the Word made flesh. But even as we receive the book, we receive interpretive tools to help us to understand it. So, we have some choices we can make in reading a passage like this. We have at least three options before us. We could read this passage and decide that we need to send our Sexton out in their pick-up trucks to bring us back some snakes so that we can get to it. Or, we could read this passage and wonder if there might be a deeper meaning to these words of Jesus, one that is more universally applicable to our understanding the signs of Jesus’ life among us. Or, we could let the passage question us, probe us, as we struggle with the question, “What are the signs of Jesus’ life today? What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? What are the things we think would be the essentials to any place, any fellowship that calls itself a gathering of Christians?

I’m going to opt for the middle way. As to my first idea, I think we just might lose our Sexton if we sent him off on such a safari. As to my third, I think those are questions we might all take with us as we leave today. I’m going for the middle route. How might we understand these words of Jesus in a way that makes them more applicable for today?

“By using my name they will cast out demons.” We’ve talked a lot about demons this spring… they have popped up consistently in the gospel of Mark. One of the signs of Jesus’ power is that the demons that possess people are afraid of him, and recognize his authority… and his goodness. And let’s not forget one of the ways in which demons did their damage was by forcing people out of community, breaking their relationships with others, rendering them untouchable.

What does it mean for a 21st century Christian to be a part of a church that casts out demons? One way of understanding demons is to think of them more broadly as those things that possess or control us. Understood in that way, they might be actual forces of evil… I do not deny its existence, or downplay its power. Or, our demons might be the addictions that have us by the throat… those items or activities that we cannot seem to live without, that make life bearable, that we think we must have in order to get through the day, whether we’re talking about alcohol or drugs (legal or illegal), or the urge to purchase, or the urge to dominate or control other people. Or, our demons may be emotions that overwhelm us. Some live with the demon of regret, others the demon of resentment. When Jesus lives in us the stranglehold of demons is lessened. When we are part of a community that shares life in Christ, one of the signs of his life is that we are open to him casting those demons out. One of the blessings of the demons being expelled is that the community becomes richer, deeper and more real.

“They will speak in new tongues.” For the early church one of the signs of the power and life of Christ in their midst was the ability to communicate across boundaries of language and custom. A week from now, on Pentecost Sunday, that will be the focus of one of the most dramatic readings we hear all year. One of the signs of our life in Christ is that we will be open to new ways of communicating with one another. There may be no hotter topic in church circles than this: how do we communicate effectively across boundaries of language and custom? But instead of being 1st century Palestinian Jews trying to communicate with Medes and Parthians and citizens of Mesopotamia and Cyrene, we are 21st century church people in Endicott trying to communicate with people who Twitter and who blog and who update their Facebook status, and who wouldn’t dream of missing the latest episodes of “American Idol” or “24”… but don’t seem to have much interest in prioritizing our particular Sunday morning shindig. How do we speak in new tongues? How do we share the good news in a new language? If we are living in Christ, if we have Jesus’ life in us, we will be working like crazy to figure this one out.

“They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.” You may already have figured this out, but this is the verse from today’s reading that grabbed my attention in the first place. But how do we understand these words in our context? Clearly, there are those in our day and age who still interpret them literally. You too can YouTube it and see them for yourselves. For us, I think there are other ways to understand this concept. It might have to do with dealing with difficult or dangerous people, places or things. How do you “handle” the snakes in your lives… the people who, if they bit you with their anger or their malice, you’d be afraid you might not recover? In the video, the preacher says, “If a rattler bites you, you have 45 minutes to live without medical attention… unless God takes over.” I’d say that’s a pretty good description of what it can be like if someone truly tries to harm us. We may have 45 minutes, or a day, or a week…. but unless we allow God to take over, we will soon be, spiritually speaking, in critical condition.

“If they lay their hands on the sick, they will recover.” The last sign of life Jesus identifies is a continuation of his ministry of healing. Mark’s gospel is filled with stories of Jesus healing people, and by so doing, restoring them to the community they had lost because of their illness. The true church, the place in which the life of Christ is lived, will be a place where his healing continues, and where community is restored to those who have been on the outside.

Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation, says Jesus, and these signs will accompany those who believe. As I read this passage, one theme runs through these signs of Jesus’ life in the new community he shaped. They are all about healing and wholeness. They are all about the freedom that comes when your life is centered, not around yourself, but around sharing the healing power of God in Jesus Christ. They are about both individual healing and the healing of relationships… making us stronger, more whole, both in ourselves and for one another. Healing not only our own hurts, but those things that keep us isolated from a hurting world.

I keep coming back to that viewer who commented on the film: “They got something that I wish I had.” That is a sign of life for Christians as well. When we, in our fellowship—in the ways we are together and the ways we are for the community outside these walls, in the ways we sing and pray and listen and speak—when we inspire that kind of wistful longing… we know we have something here. “And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” May it be so, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Love, Love, Love, Love: Sermon on John 15:9-17

Crossposted at my other blog. Um, yeah....been meaning to mention it.

It's been a big week here at St. Sociable. I love these people so much...

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I sometimes wonder, if someone had a lot of time on their hands and decided to search through all the sermons I’ve ever preached in order to count how many times the word “love” appears… how many would that be? I’d bet that would be a lot. I say “love” a lot in my preaching. In fact, I have a sense that “love” may just be the word I use the most in my preaching because “love” captures my understanding of the Good News. The Good News is this: God loves us. God loves us, each and every one of us, wildly and extravagantly. God is love.

Our reading from John’s gospel this morning picks up precisely where last week’s reading left off. In fact, I had a brief moment when I seriously considered titling this sermon, “Abiding, Part II.” Or “Abiding, The Sequel.” But when the love angle caught my eye, it captured my imagination. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” So, Love it was.

Love. Is there any word that is more casually tossed around in the English language? Think of all the ways you can say you love someone or something. I love my spouse, I love my children. I love that movie! I love Jesus. I love chocolate chip cookies, and that first cup of coffee in the morning, and Oriental chicken salads. I love my friends. I love my church family. I love the people I work with. I love you. How many kinds of love do you suppose I’ve just named?

C. S. Lewis, one of the great popular Christian thinkers and writers of the 20th century, described love exhaustively in his book, The Four Loves.

The first love Lewis describes is affection. He says that this is the kind of love we seem to have in common with the animal world, and anyone who has a pet knows: we can feel their affection. We love them, and they love us! And they show love for each other. Affection is the kind of love parents have for their children, and children for parents. It is a kind of love that arises naturally, probably out of a biological imperative to keep the species thriving. It is a kind of need-love and giving-love, all wrapped up into one. The parent gives to the child, and needs to give to the child. The child needs the parent’s giving, and the child’s need is a kind of gift to the parent.

Our love for God is need-love—why else would we always be calling God “Father?” God is all fullness, and by comparison, we are all need. We need God’s love the way we need air in our lungs and blood in our veins and food in our stomachs. It is very like the affection of parents and children.

Next Lewis describes friendship, and he comments on how little respect it gets in literature and entertainment. He wrote his book in 1960, and I think there have been a lot of “buddy” films since then, for men and for women. Still, think of the famous pairings: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, even, for some of us, Nick and Norah Charles. But who ever thinks of David and Jonathan, or Elizabeth and Charlotte? Friendship is not a result of a need-relationship, like affection. And that is precisely why, in the ancient world, friendship was valued more highly than other loves. Because friendship is freely chosen, because we are not compelled into it by our own emotional or physical needs, it was considered the kind of love that elevated human beings into the realm of the angels.

Of course, the word love is associated most frequently, in our culture, with romantic love, or what Lewis calls Eros. As he puts it, it is the kind of love lovers are “in.” Which gives us some sense of what Eros is like: it possesses us, it claims us, it feels bigger than we are. Think of Romeo’s words as he gazes up at the balcony: “What light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” These aren’t the words of someone who is merely attracted to someone. Romeo’s love has taken possession of his soul. Lewis doesn’t want us to simply reduce Eros to sexuality, either. Sexuality is a part of Eros, but not the totality. Rather, Eros is a kind of complete delight in someone, what he calls “a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality.” That is the kind of love lovers are in.

Finally, we come to Lewis’ fourth love: he calls it “charity.” I think we tend to associate “charity” with “charitable giving” (or receiving). It has even taken on a slightly negative connotation… no one wants to be on the receiving end of charity. But that’s not what he’s talking about.

The love Lewis describes is what the biblical writers call Agape. This is the love Jesus is taking about in today’s passage when he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” And, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” What kind of love is this? This is the same kind of love we talk about when we say, “God is love.” The love Jesus is talking about is the kind that gives of itself completely and utterly. It’s the kind of love that gives up all the power in the universe to become a puny, relatively power-less human being. For those fans of “Grey’s Anatomy” who happened to catch this week’s season finale, it’s the kind of love that lays down its life so that someone else can live.

When Jesus is telling us to love one another, he isn’t talking about having affection for one another—though we may have that. He isn’t talking about being in love with one another—though we may, joyfully, find ourselves in that condition. He isn’t even talking about having true and deep friendships with one another—though we may be lucky enough to have those. He is talking about a love that transcends all the other loves, because it is ready to give of itself totally, wildly and extravagantly, without hope or expectation of receiving anything at all in return. It is ready to give even at the risk of its own life, its own welfare. That is agape-love. That is God-love. And that is what we are called to, as followers of Jesus. “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Now, I realize: there is nothing like setting a standard of behavior that is completely and utterly unattainable to get folks bummed out in the middle of a sermon.

Where do we begin? I have what may seem like a somewhat radical suggestion. Why not begin by doing absolutely nothing? Why not begin, not by trying to figure out how to achieve the impossible, matching the crazy, all-out giving-love of God in Jesus Christ. Why not begin, instead, by receiving it, by letting it seep in, sink down, flood into our hearts, souls and bodies. Why not begin by trying to understand that the Good News really applies to us? Why not begin by seeing what it feels like to abide in God’s love?

I have some recent experience in this area. At the beginning of Lent I decided to take on a daily practice of prayer and scripture reading—understand, this is something I always aspire to do, but there’s something about Lent that gives us just the gentlest of shoves in the direction we always mean to go but never quite get around to. And so I began getting up an hour earlier than before, and reading scripture and praying. And the epistle for Ash Wednesday read, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” [2 Corinthians 5:2] As I read those words, something inside me awakened and stretched and opened its eyes to the possibility that it just might be time for me to trust in those words, that now is the acceptable time. It just might be time to see what it felt like to abide in that love. And with that little kernel of hope—that I might be able to abide in God’s love—I began to make plans to share the fullness of who I am with you.

And so today you know a little bit more about your pastor than you did last week. And today I feel so very blessed to be able to say that I know even more about the love of God than I did last week. I know that the love of God shines through your faces and echoes in your words. I know that the love of God bridges barriers we may have thought were insurmountable. I know that the love of God lets itself be heard in phone calls, and read in emails, and seen in face-to-face visits, and held in bunches of flowers and hand-carved crosses.

And I also know this: the love of God does not guarantee there will be no difficult times, but it does promise to abide through those times. The love of God does not eliminate the need for painful or hard conversations, but it does promise to abide in the midst of those conversations. The love of God does not take away our racing hearts when we finally have to speak our truth, but it does promise to abide, giving us whatever it is we need to let those words be spoken. The love of God abides, and abides, and abides.

Near the end of our gospel passage, Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” For the past twenty months, I believe God has chosen to bring us together as pastor and congregation, to do God’s work—to bear, as Jesus says, “fruit that will last”, or as our mission statement says, “to serve our Lord, our congregation, our community, and our world.” God chose us. God’s love abides with us. And I believe that God has work for us to do together, before God sends us on our separate ways. But the first thing I believe God wants is for us to know—to comprehend—that wild and extravagant love God has for us. That giving-love. That God-love. That love in which we can abide, in which we can trust, and in which we can take risks, together. Thanks be to God. Amen.