Uh Oh: Sermon on Matthew 5:21-37

A friend of mine who is a pastor tells the following story about an experience she had in college. It seems there was someone in her dorm who was prone to taking other people’s food from the refrigerator. She writes,

“I would go out on a date on Friday night and have a fabulous meal. I would carefully eat only half of my entree, so that I could enjoy the rest of it the next day for lunch. But when I would open up the door to the fridge anticipating the content of that doggy bag, the leftovers would be gone, along with anything else that might have been edible in the icebox. Then much drama would ensue.

“Until one particular morning.

“I woke up,” she writes, “went into the kitchen to fetch some milk for my coffee, and I gasped. Someone had taped a sign to the refrigerator. In bold red letters, it said: “If your hand causes you to sin, CUT IT OFF.” Then, carefully taped to the sign was a fierce serrated-edge knife.”

Did I mention my friend went to a Bible college? [1]

And there we have it: real-life application of a literal reading of some verses from this morning’s gospel passage. Three weeks ago I eagerly, almost ecstatically made a commitment to myself and to you that we would spend the next six weeks, right up until Lent, immersing ourselves in the Sermon on the Mount. We would swim in it! We would let it seep into our souls! How on earth, in all my excitement, did I manage to completely forget about this passage? This passage, which, when I turned to it on Monday morning, made me say, “Uh oh.” As Monday turned to Tuesday, and Tuesday turned to Wednesday, and Wednesday turned to Thursday, I kept going back to the passage to make sure it really said all these incredibly difficult, depressing, and downright nasty things. Maybe, I thought, it would be ok to skip Matthew—just this week. Maybe, I thought, I could preach on the Deuteronomy passage, and call it a palate cleanser. Like sherbet!

But I made a commitment. We made a commitment! We are going to stay with Jesus, up on this mountain, and hear everything he has to say to us. Not only that, we are going to trust Jesus. We are going to trust that he has Good News for us, today as well as every other day.

So let’s listen in. Jesus is talking, remember, to his friends and followers—the disciples are a little core group he has around him, but the crowds are following too. So, although his words are directed at those close to him, many more than that are listening.

“You have heard it said.” We can divide this passage into three parts. Each of these parts begins with those words: You have heard it said. It might be good, at the outset, to pay attention to who, exactly, was doing the speaking in that case—we have heard it said where? By whom? Well, those who normally went about reminding people of all the rules and regulations they had to follow were the religious leaders of the community, in Jesus’ case, the scribes and the Pharisees. Pharisees, in particular, were very concerned with correct observance of the law. Pharisees tended to be the face of religious law-enforcement in the community. That phrase, “You have heard it said,” implies strongly, “by the scribes and Pharisees.”

I want to remind us here that Matthew is our most Jewish gospel; it is the gospel most likely written by a Jew and for a Jewish community. So, to think that what happens in this passage is somehow Jesus attacking Judaism—well, that’s absolutely not the case. This isn’t a rejection by Jesus of his heritage. Quite the opposite. This is a full-throated engagement of Jesus with his heritage. This is a family conversation—and you know how lively family conversations can be! This is Jesus, adding his wisdom to the wisdom of the ages.

And Jesus appears to out-legalize the legalists. First, the law against murder. Jesus says, You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’… But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, if you insult a brother or sister, even if you say ‘You fool,’ to a brother or sister, you will be judged! [Matthew 5:21-22]. Jesus shocks his audience with this. His words absolutely fly in the face of what they’ve been taught. There is no prohibition in the Hebrew Scriptures against anger. In fact, many characters in the bible become angry, often righteously so. God is angry once or twice, as I recall. So what is Jesus doing, exactly? Why is he making such shocking statements?

Second, the law against adultery and divorce. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” [Matthew 5:27-28]. Everyone above a certain age remembers when President Jimmy Carter famously said, in an interview, that he had committed adultery in his heart. He took a lot of ribbing for that—the late night talk shows had a field day. But he was trying to speak very earnestly about what his faith had taught him, how it influenced his understanding of his own actions and reactions.

The third portion treats the taking of oaths, which is nowhere regarded as a sin in scripture. In fact, oaths are required in certain circumstances—entering into covenants, for example. This takes us closer to the truth of what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is pushing us, pushing us to the place where we all are likely to throw our hands up in despair, and say, “Who can do this? Who can uphold these standards?” And, of course, the answer is, No one. Not one of us. It’s impossible.

What we have to understand here is that, in the midst of this family conversation, Jesus is using humor—a very Middle-Eastern brand of humor—to make two very serious points. [2] The first point he’s making is that the law is an impossible taskmaster. None of us is capable of complete and utter fidelity to it without the grace of God. And this is the Good News—we have that grace. We have that unexpected, revolutionary love of God. We have it, no matter who we are or what we have done. We have the love of God, through no power of our own, not because of who we are but because of who God is. And we have God to help us with our heart.

Which brings me to the second point I believe Jesus is trying to make. Sin—all sin—starts as an inclination of the heart. We don’t generally get to the point of committing murder, or adultery, without first experiencing a long and meandering journey of the heart from peace to violence, or contentment to restlessness. Jesus is saying, Pay attention to your heart. Don’t let what starts as, perhaps even understandable anger, or disappointment in your spouse, take you to the place of actions that will cause harm. We have seen an astounding increase in what are being called “emotional affairs,” made far easier by the social networking opportunities we all have on Facebook, text-messaging, Twitter. I don’t think anyone can deny the power of these technologies: if they can be harnessed to overturn a government, you can bet they have the power wreak havoc in our committed relationships. And it all goes back to the heart.

I think Jesus is asking, How is your heart? That’s where it all begins. We open our hearts to a relationship with God, we allow that grace to pour in and saturate our lives, and at the same time we invite God to search us and know us and heal us.

It’s not always easy for us to know what is going on with our hearts. A friend once told me the story of the first time she fell in love. She said, for the longest time, whenever she saw that certain someone, it was as if there was static in her head—noise, like a badly tuned or out of distance radio station. And then one night as she was falling asleep, she saw the face of her beloved, and realized what her feelings were. And suddenly she felt a great silence, still and deep and beautiful.

One way we can learn what is going on in our hearts is by the practice of silent prayer or meditation. I have noticed that if I take a period of time each day to simply sit in silence in the presence of God… whatever it is I have on my heart will rise to the surface, and make itself known to me. And to God, of course. Sometimes this feels risky—we’re not sure we’re ready for that level of intimacy. But God knows us better than we know ourselves. What is revealed to us was revealed to God the moment we were a twinkle in the Divine eye.

At the end of this passage, Jesus is speaking of swearing oaths. He says,

Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ~ Matthew 5:34B-36

This is the God who loves us and asks, like a shy suitor, for our love in return, the One whose throne is heaven, and whose footstool is the earth. This is the God who, in Jesus, wants to know, “How is your heart?” and promises to help and heal us, no matter what the answer is to that probing question. This is the God whose grace is the answer to our deepest questions. Thanks be to God. Amen.

~~~

[1] Carol Howard Merritt, “Cut it Out: What Do These Difficult Teachings Mean?” on TheHardestQuestion.org, http://thehardestquestion.org/yeara/epiphany6gospel/.
[2] Peter Woods, “The Law of Love or the Love of Law?” at I Am Listening, http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-law-of-love-or-the-love-of-law/.

Who and What You Are: Sermon on Matthew 5:13-16

I feel confident you all remember Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker? Think heavy, heavy mascara and the spectacular public crash and burn of a television ministry, followed by a jail term. At least, that’s what most of us are most likely to remember. There was more to the Bakkers, of course, than extramarital affairs, financial shenanigans and drug overdoses. The “Praise the Lord” television ministry was a pioneer of its genre, at one point spawning a bible-based theme park while being broadcast into more than thirteen million homes. At the height of their ministry, the Bakkers closed each show with the utterly true and encouraging Good News, “God loves you. He really, really does.”

Still, crash and burn the family did, and standing very close to the flames was a little boy in a suit named Jamie. His birth had been announced to the “Praise the Lord” audience eleven years earlier via the words “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” flashing on television screens in the middle of one of his father’s sermons. Jamie, or Jay, as he is known now, had a front row seat for the good, the bad and the ugly things his parents endured as their lives were unraveling. And at that point in his life, the message that “God loves you” was a difficult one to swallow. At a very early age he turned to dependable comforts of wine coolers and cigarettes to distract him from the pain all around him and inside him. By age eighteen, in his own words, he was a raging alcoholic, and he was through with church and God.

But you know how these things go. God wasn’t through with Jay. And God spoke to Jay through the voice of a close friend, D. E.. Jay lived with D. E. and his family through some of the worst of his alcoholism, during which time D. E. would follow him to bars, sipping seltzer, and making sure Jay got home safely. D. E. didn’t try to change Jay. He simply repeated one message to him over and over. God loves you. He really, really does. It doesn’t matter that you drink. It doesn’t matter that you don’t go to church. It doesn’t matter that you think you’ve had it with God. God loves you. Rinse and repeat.

Through the patient ministry of this friend, Jay underwent, over time, what he calls a “grace evolution.” He came to see and understand and even believe what D. E. was saying. At D. E.’s urging, Jay started reading the bible. Only after a more or less steady diet of Galatians and Romans over an extended period of time did Jay actually succeed at getting sober. And ever since, this heavily tattooed and pierced young man has been on a mission, and that mission, in a nutshell, is to spread the word about grace. The truth, that God loves you, just as you are. God really, really does.

This message, I believe, is at the deep heart of our gospel reading today. We are in our second Sunday of immersion in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, and almost by definition, we are reading words that are incredibly familiar to us. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” The first of these sayings requires a little more parsing than the second. Salt was an incredibly important commodity in ancient times, as it is in modern. Salt was an essential preservative for meats—some credit salt with making settled societies possible. Once people didn’t have to hunt for their meat daily, they could stay in one place. Salt was so precious the ancient Egyptians used it as a funeral offering on behalf of the dead. In the Japanese religion Shinto salt is used for ritual purification. Perhaps most important for us, as we read this very Jewish gospel, salt came to symbolize the covenant between God and the people Israel. Salt means wit or humor. Salt indicates anything that gives life flavor or zest. Salt, despite our anxiety about sodium levels in our diets, has a wholly good meaning for us in this reading.

You are the salt of the earth. You have wit. You have flavor. You are a participant in God’s covenant with God’s beloved people. God loves you. God really, really does. You are the light of the earth. People will look at you and understand that God loves them too.


Jesus is giving the law here, and yet, once again, he is not telling us what to do, exactly—at least at the beginning. Jesus it not saying, “Be salt. Be salty!” Jesus is not saying, “Try to be light—you can do it!” Jesus is talking to us about who and what we are already. Jesus is simply telling us the truth about our natures. Just the facts, ma’am. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. In fact, Jesus is warning us against losing those attributes that make us who and what we are—you are salt already, don’t lose that saltiness! You are light already, don’t hide the radiance of your glow! God loves you. God really, really does.

Now, am I suggesting to you that Jesus has no opinions at all as to how we should behave, what we should do? Of course not! Jesus has strong opinions on that. A grace-filled life should reflect the kingdom of heaven’s core values. Of course. But: even if it doesn’t, that does not change this central fact, that God loves us. Each and every one of us, in our flawed and struggling and incomplete states. God loves us, as we flail about in addiction to booze or drugs or pornography or food. God loves us, as we wake up each day hoping to do better, or even hoping it will all go away. God loves us, whether we look like the disciple who gets an A-plus or the one who is tagging along at the back of the pack.

Jay Bakker said in an interview this week, “Just accept that you are accepted and let it transform you.” God loves us, period. Who and what we are. He really, really does. And the day we know that, the day that reality sinks deep down into our bones and starts to sing in our sinews, is the day we truly become salt and light for this beautiful and broken world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

~~~

(1) Jay Bakker with Martin Edlund, Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society (New York: Faith Words, 2011).

A New Moses: Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12

The Academy Award Nominees were announced this week, always a highlight at my house. In 1952 a special Academy Award was given to director Akira Kurasawa’s 1950 film “Rashomon.” “Rashomon” told a tragic tale, the story of a rape and murder, from the perspectives of four characters. The stories they tell are vastly different from one another, and so throughout the filming the actors kept approaching Kurosawa and asking him “What is the truth?” And he wouldn’t answer. He wasn’t interested in limiting the truth to one viewpoint. He was more interested in the interplay of multiple realities. “Rashomon” today is regarded, not only as Kurosawa’s masterpiece, but a masterpiece of cinema.

The scriptures we read contain not one but four different versions of the Good News, the gospel, the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. We can read the story of Jesus through the eyes of the authors of Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John. And while it is true that there is some similarity and overlap in the storytelling, especially in Matthew, Mark and Luke, each evangelist has a distinct point of view, a unique take on the life of Jesus.

It makes sense. The gospels are a little like “Rashomon.” Each evangelist is a kind of witness from a different angle, of the life of Jesus. None of them was an eyewitness, though—the gospels were written anywhere from forty to seventy years after Jesus’ crucifixion—and, in a sense, that gave each of them the freedom to tailor the story of Jesus to the audience they were trying to reach, the people to whom they wanted to impart the Good News.

Take Matthew. Matthew is our gospel this year, the one we will be most deeply immersed in, since this year A of the three-year lectionary cycle. Scholars just about universally agree that Matthew’s viewpoint is a distinctly Jewish one. Of all the evangelists, Matthew is the most at ease describing the customs of first century Palestinian Jews, such as the particulars of Temple worship. In fact, some scholars believe that this gospel may originally have circulated in Hebrew or Aramaic the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples. And one of the great themes of Matthew’s gospel, a theme that would speak directly to the hearts of his Jewish audience, a theme he develops in many different ways, is this: Jesus is the new Moses.

Moses was the central figure of the Torah, the first five books of the bible. An ancient tradition even taught that Moses was the author of those books. It was Moses who was called by God to lead God’s people out of slavery. It was Moses who bargained with the Pharaoh, calling down God’s plagues when the monarch resisted. It was Moses who received the instructions about the Passover and imparted them to the people. It was Moses who led the people across the Sea of Reeds, and on their forty-year wilderness sojourn. Moses was there for all the seminal events of the people of Israel, the events that determined and shaped Jewish identity forever. It was Moses who mediated God’s will and God’s presence and God’s law to the people.

Matthew goes to great lengths to show us how Jesus is the new Moses. He starts with Jesus’ birth story, in which an evil king seeks to kill Jesus while still a baby—just like Pharaoh tried to kill the Hebrew children when Moses was a baby. Jesus spends, not forty years, but forty days in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. And, beginning in chapter five of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus climbs a mountain, just like Moses climbs Mount Sinai, and gives the law—a new law—to the people.

Chapters five through seven of Matthew’s gospel are known as “the Sermon on the Mount,” and it’s hard to overestimate the impact of the words we find there. More than one Christian theologian has called the sermon the Magna Carta—the Great Charter—of Christianity. These are among the most familiar words Jesus spoke. They are quoted and quoted and, yes, misquoted everywhere from serious literature to pop culture. And we have a unique opportunity to immerse ourselves in the Sermon on the Mount over the course of the next five weeks, so I think we should take it, let it soak into our ears and our hearts, or, as the Book of Common Prayer so beautifully says, “read, mark and inwardly digest” it.

So here we are at the opening of chapter 5. Jesus has only recently begun his ministry. He has called some disciples to come and follow, and he has begun his work of showing what the kingdom of heaven looks like, by teaching, preaching and healing. Jesus becomes aware that there is a crowd following him, and so he climbs a mountain—to get away from them? Perhaps. But remember: we are reading Matthew. Jesus climbs this mountain because Moses climbed Mount Sinai. Jesus climbs this mountain because what he is about to say—what we’ll be reading over the next five weeks—is every bit as important as the law that God gave Moses.

Here is the beginning of what Jesus says:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. ~Matthew 5:3-12

This passage contains what Christians call “the beatitudes,” a word that simply means, “blessings.” The first four beatitudes—the ones concerning the poor or poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—those four sayings refer to things that are absolutely out of our control. If we are poor or our spirits are impoverished; if we are mourning a great sorrow; if we are better described as a doormat than as a captain of industry; if our hearts and our bodies cry out to God for justice that has been denied—these are all conditions of living in a fallen world. These are things that have happened to us, not necessarily through any fault of our own. Jesus is giving the “law,” and the first remarkable thing about it is that it starts by describing people whose human condition is difficult, painful, unfair. And it assures us that, though the world may not see or value who they are, God most certainly does.

A word about the kingdom of heaven starts to whisper in the background, a word behind the words: that word is grace. This new “law” is not about how we can earn God’s favor; it’s about God’s favor being bestowed where it is least expected. It is an entirely counterintuitive, unexpected take on what it means to be one of God’s people.

The second four beatitudes—the ones about being merciful, about being pure in heart, about making peace, and about enduring persecution for the sake of the kingdom—these beatitudes are about things that are within our power to choose. We can choose to show mercy, to forgive. We can choose to discipline ourselves to be single-hearted about the gospel. We can choose to make peace rather than sustaining or supporting violence and strife. We can choose to stand up for what is right even when it draws fire. And these things are all things we do, as opposed to things we are. But listen to this: these four beatitudes describe the ways in which we can stand up for, stand on the side of, stand in solidarity with the kinds of people described in the first four beatitudes. “In other words the people whom Jesus declares blessed in 5:7-10 are those who help to bring to reality the blessings promised to others in 5:3-6.” (1)

Jesus climbs a mountain, and commences teaching exactly what this kingdom of heaven looks like—and it turns out not to be some other-worldly reward, far off above the clouds. It turns out to be a place of balancing of the scales and wrongs set right that can happen beginning right here and right now. But these reversals require something of us: they require that we see one another—that we look around us carefully to see where the injustice is, where the poverty is, where the sorrow is. We can’t participate in God’s gracious rule if we are oblivious to suffering.

For most of his adult life, Mahatma Gandhi, the great political and spiritual leader who pioneered the ethic of nonviolent resistance, read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount every morning. He was convinced that it contained a truth more powerful than the empire that occupied his native India. He was convinced that it contained a truth more powerful than the enmity that divided Hindus and Muslims. This practitioner of Hinduism spent his life seeking to put Jesus' teachings into practice for the sake of peace. Today is the anniversary of his assassination in 1948. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (2)

The new Moses is giving a new law from his perch on the mountain. His friends and followers are waiting for the rest of his words with bated breath. And the first word he gives, is one of both comfort and challenge. Comfort to those whose lives are landscapes of suffering. And challenge to those of us who just might have the wherewithal to do something about that. Every single one of us falls into one of those categories. Every single one of us has a place in God’s scheme of grace. Every single one of us can find our blessedness, can live under the gracious rule of God. Thanks be to God. Amen

(1) Mark Allan Powell, God With Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew’s Gospel (Fortress 1995), 130.
(2) CommonPrayer.net.

Image: Sermon on the Mount by Laura James.

Sermon Draft: On the Move, Matthew 4:12-25

We are an incredibly mobile society. The Census Bureau estimates that the average American will move about 14 times in a lifetime—a figure I personally am just one dwelling shy of reaching. My time in the places I’ve lived reads like a reverse bell curve. The first seventeen of my life were spent in the apartment over my parents’ liquor store, the home of my childhood. After that, there are about sixteen years of almost continuous movement. I went away to college and lived in a different room or apartment each year for four years. After graduation I lived in apartments that lasted, in order, one year, six months, 2-1/2 years, and one year. As a young mother I lived in a house for three years, then, upon moving to the B. area, another apartment for four years. Finally, in 1994 I moved into my home on My Avenue, a place I have lived for almost 17 years, the home I hope to stay in for many years to come.

According to the Census Bureau, I am fairly typical. This is the way for Americans, ever since the Second World War seemed to give permission for individuals and families to move in search of greener pastures and better jobs. By way of contrast, the average Canadian citizen moves ten times in a lifetime, the average Brit, five times, and the average Japanese citizen, just four moves over the course of a life.

Of course, if 14 moves is the American average, that means there are many people who move less than that as well as many who move even more. About 40 million Americans move once or more each year, and most of those moves are related to job losses or changes. The most geographically stable Americans, the ones who move the least, are working class individuals and families with good, salable skills and union affiliations. But for the most part, we Americans are very much on the move.

Jesus, too, is on the move, from the very beginning of the gospel of Matthew. As a small child he is forced to move by the contract King Herod has put out on him. Like Moses, he finds himself sojourning in Egypt, where he remains until his parents discern, with the help of a dream, that it is safe to return to Galilee. However, there is still enough danger in Bethlehem that they choose to settle in Nazareth instead, where Jesus is raised to adulthood and learns a trade. Finally, when the moment is right, Jesus goes out to the Jordan to be commissioned for his work by both John the Baptist and God. Perhaps by our 21st century American standards, this is not a lot of movement. For a Palestinian Jew of the first century, though, Jesus is most decidedly on the move.

Our gospel lesson this morning begins with the information that John has been arrested. This is alarming news for those of us following Jesus’ life story thus far. Remember, just a couple of weeks ago, Jesus was baptized by John. That means, in terms of the world of Jewish rabbis, that Jesus became a follower of John. Jesus took on John’s yoke. Now, with reference to farm life and animal husbandry, a yoke is a wooden beam designed to sit across the necks of animals, often oxen, to allow them to pull a load. In terms of the tradition of rabbis and their students, teachers of the law and those who sought to be like them, the yoke was the particular teaching of the rabbi. The student usually prepared to take on the yoke by years of study—even today most students in modern Yeshivas memorize the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, and that’s just the beginning of their study. The sheer enormity of the task helps to make sense of the use of that term “yoke.” Jesus has taken on John’s yoke. But now John has been arrested. It stands to reason that John’s followers are in danger. And so once again, Jesus is on the move.

Jesus makes Capernaum his home base, the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, the prophecy tells us, home to the Gentiles. And we have to pay attention to something Matthew has been hammering home since the very beginning of this gospel: Jesus is making his “home,” such as it is, among outsiders. All Jesus’ wandering, all his travel to and from Egypt, the visit of the Magi, those Gentile star-gazers—an image begins to develop here of someone who is not interested in settling down where it is easy or comfortable. An image comes into focus of someone who is not only on the move, but who is taking his stand with those outside the comfort of his immediate community, as well as those who are under the thumb of the Roman Empire.

Case in point: these fishermen. It’s easy to have an image of the lives of Peter and Andrew and John and James before Jesus comes along—a rustic, homey image of men doing good honest labor in the bosom of their families. And while that all may be true, something else is going on here as well, something about the Roman Empire and its habit of squeezing every drop of lifeblood out of the peasant classes. Did you know that, in the ancient world, fishing was under the control of the empire and its surrogates? These men did not work for themselves. They were employees, either of the royal family or wealthy landlords. They were paid either with cash or with fish after they turned over their catch to their employers. And before they could even drop a net into the sea of Galilee, fishermen paid a tax in order to be permitted to fish—a tax on their catch of as much as 40%. As one of my favorite bible commentators says, “…Jesus calling fishermen is more than just calling them away from their families. It also involves a break from the ‘powers that be’—the wealthy and or the government—and into a new power: the reign of heaven.”

In the aftermath of John’s arrest, Jesus does not do the safe thing. Quite the opposite. Jesus does the risky thing. He tweaks the powers-that-be by disrupting the food-supply chain in this small way, by calling these four men to come and follow.

Jesus is not interested in doing the safe thing. He is not interested in doing the comfortable thing. He is not interested in doing whatever he’s doing in a familiar hometown. He is on the move with something far more compelling: that yoke, that teaching he picked up from John the Baptist. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

We hear the word, “repent,” and I imagine we all have strong associations with it. Personally, I have a mental image of a street preacher I saw once in Times Square, and he was everything you’d imagine—a disheveled fellow with a kind of crazed look in his eyes. A yeller. He attracted more catcalls than disciples. And I think that has to do with what he seemed to mean by “repent.” It seemed to have something to do with trying to convince all those thousands of people who were hurrying by to get theater tickets or to find the Hard Rock Café or the M & M store that they were bad. His message seemed to be, Repent, because you are not a good person.

That’s not really true to the original meaning of the word, though. “Repent” translates a Greek word, metanoia, that means, simply, turn around. Turn around, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Turn around, I have something amazing to show you. Turn around, the neat stuff is over here. Turn around, don’t you want to have a look at this? Turn around.

Jesus and John both want to show people the kingdom of heaven. And we learn, by the end of the passage, just what the kingdom of heaven looks like. We learn, because Jesus shows us—he lives out the kingdom right in front of us. We read, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23). This is what the kingdom of heaven looks like, and it has four components.

The kingdom of heaven involves teaching. Jesus goes into the synagogues of Galilee to teach about the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven involves proclaiming the good news—it’s near! It’s here!

The kingdom of heaven involves healing—every disease and sickness, Matthew tells us.

That makes three components. The fourth? Movement. Jesus is on the move. He is going throughout Galilee to teach and proclaim and heal. He is not sitting in one place. He is not waiting for the people to hear about him from their neighbors—though, boy, by the end of our passage, his fame is spreading. But that is only happening because Jesus and his friends and followers are out and about, among the people, talking to them, listening to them, and taking their pain and their problems seriously.

I can’t help believing there is something very important for us here, for our ministry as a church. And that something is this: to be followers of Jesus, to have opportunities to say to people, “Hey, turn around and look at this!”, we have to get up and get out and be on the move. It is not enough to say, “We have this great church and this wonderful ministry, and it would be so great if people came and joined us.” All of which, by the way, is absolutely true—we do have a great church filled with great people and a great ministry. But if Jesus is our model, if we take seriously that his call to us is “ Follow me,” then I think one of the places we have to follow him is out the doors of our sanctuary and into the community. That is not to say that we don’t want to engage in a ministry of teaching and proclamation and healing right here. Of course we do. But my guess is that if Jesus were to walk the streets of OurTown looking for the least and the lost, we wouldn’t find him here. We would find him where people are hurting… maybe the hospital or the nursing home, maybe the dive bars, maybe at the Women's Shelter, maybe at our own table over coffee. But wherever Jesus would be, that is where we are called to be, too.

Theologian Henri Nouwen said, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” That is our call, to be the person who is willing to share in another’s pain. And that is something we can do anywhere, and when we are doing it we are showing what the kingdom of heaven looks like. Jesus is on the move, sharing the kingdom of heaven. The question is, are we on the move with him? May it be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's Arrow: Sermon on Isaiah 49:1-7

Christmas is finally over. Even our sanctuary bears witness to that fact. Still. Indulge me for one brief moment, a Christmas Eve image. It is nearly midnight as we reach what is always, to me, the high point of our service. The sanctuary is lit almost entirely by the candles held in the hands of each worshiper. The echoes of that most beloved Christmas carol are still ringing in our ears. It is at this moment that we hear these words from the gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ~John 1:1-4

At that moment, we turn from the infant in the cradle to give our worship to the mighty God who came among us as that baby. We read these words together, in the candle-glow, and our hearts grow still and silent as the night: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Word: this is one of our most holy names for Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Beloved Child of God. Christ is the Word of God. And, as John tells us, Christ the Word was present with God in the act of creation—all things came into being through the Word, just as it is written in the book of Genesis. God speaks, and worlds are created. As Jewish scholar, Susannah Heschel, wrote this week, words do in fact create worlds. [1]

It has been a week of soul-searching. In the aftermath of last Saturday’s terrible shooting in Tucson, which left six dead and thirteen more injured, we have been asking ourselves questions, but they all boil down to a single question—the same question that grips our hearts, always, at such moments of tragedy: Why? Why did it happen? And, the corollary, what could have been done to prevent it?

It is utterly human to want answers at a time like this. It is completely normal that we should seek to know, to reckon, to understand. Only, sometimes, the answers are not so readily available. Sometimes there is not one answer, though one answer appeals to us mightily. Sometimes we are left with our questions, and with the feeling that the world is a frightening, random, fundamentally mysterious place, untamable and unknowable.

Still, I do believe that one very good thing may have emerged from last Saturday’s horror. This week we witnessed a growing consensus that our national political discourse, the way in which we talk to one another, has grown so vitriolic, so hateful, that it repulses most of us. We want a change. This is, in my mind, a very good thing. It is the recognition that words do create worlds, and we want to be very intentional about the worlds created by our words.

What worlds shall we create? What shall we do with this powerful tool each of us has, the ability to speak? In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet is grappling with just this question. He recognizes that God has called him to do something. In fact, God’s call has been present with him his whole life—from the time he was in his mother’s womb. And God has equipped him as well—God has given him gifts for service. God has given him a particular ability with words—“[God] made me a polished arrow,” he says, “in his quiver he hid me away.” In other words, God gave the prophet the ability to send out words that hit their mark, find their target. But we also notice, the prophet doesn’t seem satisfied with his work. “I have labored in vain,” he says. “I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” These are words that sound close to despair.

It is not always easy to figure out where God is calling you, or just what it is that God wants you to do. That is especially true when you have had the experience of feeling that your work has been ineffective, or worse. In the case of the prophet, the work he believes he has been called to do is to unify, bring together the people of Israel, who have been dispersed throughout the world in the time of exile. Can you imagine? Makes me want to say I will never complain about any aspect of any job description ever again. Unify my people! Oh, ok God. I’ll get right on that.

Most of us, thanks be to God, are not called upon to achieve such enormous objectives. Most of us, thanks be to God, are given calls which are more along the lines of, “Pray this morning!” Or, “Don’t have that fight with your spouse/ mother/ child!” Or even, “Write that report/newsletter article/ sermon!” Calls we can certainly neglect or ignore—calls that are not necessarily easy. But calls that don’t leave us drenched in perspiration every time we contemplate them, either.

But the call to God’s arrow seems to grow in size, not diminish. “It is too light a thing,” says God, “that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

God is calling this servant to go beyond the narrow confines of partisan concerns. God is calling this servant to make his constituency a very, very broad one—instead of the people of Israel, the whole world. Instead of the tribes of Jacob, all the ends of the earth.

Here’s the funny thing about this passage. It is not clear just who or what this servant of God’s is, this prophet. Scholars note that, at times, it seems to be a single individual. In which case, we are back to totally overwhelming and impossible job descriptions that would make most people want to run screaming into the night. On the other hand, if the “prophet” described here is a collective, if it is more than one person, if it is the whole people of Israel—as some readers believe—then that instruction to reach all the ends of the earth still looks daunting. But now it is a shared burden. Now it is the work of, not just one soul, but a community.

Words create worlds. And words create communities as well. And the good news about our call, yours and mine, is that it is both individual and collective. It is both private and personal—a call to be a deacon, say, or to be a caring parent, or to show Christ’s love in the workplace. But it is also collective, communal—remember, we talked about it last week. Our call as a community is to shine forth the Light of the world, so that it can be seen by all people. Now, I’m not going to pretend that isn’t a daunting call. It is a big task. But it is a task we are called to fulfill together. Together, we can do such a thing. Together, we can let the light of God’s love reach to the ends of the earth. It starts with our words.

This week our president spoke these words: “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” [2] He not only issued this call to the American people; he also demonstrated, in the very words he was speaking, how to do that. He taught by example. He acted, in this way, as God’s arrow for this particular moment in time, the aftermath of a tragedy. He sent out powerful words, words capable of creating new worlds of hope and healing. He behaved very much in the manner of another of God’s arrows, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At a time when our country was torn apart by the painful issues of segregation and discrimination, he sent out powerful words that are still resonating with us today.

King had strong opinions on the necessity of well-chosen and well-timed words. And he was passionate about exactly what the content of those words should be. He said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” We must be sure that the words we use are words that heal, and not words that wound.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

Words create worlds. We are privileged and blessed with the gift of our words, and called to be God’s arrow in the way we use and direct them. What worlds shall we create with our words? Hopefully, worlds of hope and not despair; worlds where the Light shines in the darkness; and worlds where healing can, at last, take place. Thanks be to God. Amen.


~~~


[1] Susannah Heschel, “Sarah Palin Cries ‘Blood Libel’: Can Words Harm Us?”, Religion Dispatches, January 12, 2011 (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/4040/palin_cries_‘blood_libel’%3A_can_words_harm_us/).
[2] Barack Obama, “Obama’s Remarks in Tucson,” New York Times, January 12, 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/politics/13obama-text.html?ref=us).

Gifted: Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12 and Matthew 3:13-17

Our service this morning offers us a bridge between the Christmas season and what comes next—Epiphany, the Light of the world shining forth so that it can be seen by all people, and the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. Our readings this morning span nearly three decades. The events of Epiphany, the visit of the magi and the presentation of their gifts, probably occur about two years after the birth of Jesus. Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan takes place when he is about thirty years old. This morning, in all sorts of ways, we are taking the large view—the expansive, panoramic view. This is a big picture kind of morning.

But that’s not to say we can’t focus in on some of the details. Just for fun, let’s play a game. The story just read by our liturgist is so familiar. But how many of the details do we really know? For instance, how many kings came to pay homage to Jesus? Well, none. Jesus’ visitors are called magi, and one writer describes them as “magicians, astronomers, star-gazers, pseudo-scientists, fortune-tellers, horoscope fanatics.” In other words, they are not representatives of other states or countries, with diplomatic credentials. They’re spiritual quacks, really, they’re the wrong race and the wrong religion, and the fact that they are the heroes in Matthew’s very Jewish story is a kind of a scandal.

OK, we know there were no kings. So how many magi were there? Well, the text doesn’t tell us. The word is plural, so there are at least two. But there could be more. Nine, ten. We’ve settled on the number “three” because there are three gifts. And we might be right about that. Maybe there were three. And what are their names? Well, the bible doesn’t give us any names. A tradition that popped up about 500 years after the birth of Jesus names them Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar. But we really don’t know their names.

And about those gifts. Much has been made of the symbolic nature of the gifts of the magi. Gold, because Jesus is a king. Frankincense, a kind of incense, because Jesus is God. And myrrh, an ointment often used in preparing bodies for burial, because Jesus is the Lamb of God, who will be sacrificed. For those of us familiar with the items ordinarily brought to baby showers—and we had one here, not too long ago—well, the gifts seem kind of odd to us.

But here’s a surprise. The holy family could, in fact, put the gifts of the magi to good, practical use. Especially given that Jesus and his parents are about to become refugees. Gold, of course, could be used to finance the trip—gold was an easily tradable form of currency. In fact, all three of the gifts were usable for trade, and could have kept the wandering family fed and housed. Frankincense has properties that help to fight infection, boost the immune system, and reduce inflammation. It was a great addition to the medicine cabinet or first aid kit. And myrrh, an ointment, was regularly used (by those who could afford it) for all kinds of skin conditions. Yes, including diaper rash. So these highly symbolic gifts turn out to be incredibly practical as well. Because, let’s face it—the big picture, in this case, the Epiphany, the Light of the world shining forth so that it can be seen by all people, pretty much depends on small-picture details such as getting Jesus safely to Egypt and back again, seeing him grow to adulthood.

And we see him as an adult, in another “big-picture, but look at those details” kind of moment. The Big Story here is this: Jesus, at his baptism, evokes comment from God: a voice from heaven, proclaiming, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” But the details are fascinating. In the ancient world to be baptized by someone was to become a follower of that person. The people whom John baptized became his disciples. John, in this encounter with Jesus, says no, I won’t do it. In fact, the Greek verb tense indicates that this was an ongoing argument between the men, as in “I’ve come to be baptized.” “I won’t do it.” “But I want you to baptize me.” “But I won’t do it.”

John feels inadequate to the task. John feels that the roles are reversed, skewed, that Jesus should be baptizing him. He finally accepts Jesus’ argument that in this baptism, John and Jesus together would be fulfilling righteousness. This was a slam-dunk argument. Righteousness was something that would be prized by all observant Jews, a baseline for morality and integrity and right relationship with God. So John relents. And God rejoices.

I wonder whether our nominating committee had any conversations like that this year? “We would like you to be an elder.” “No, I won’t.” “But we would really like you to be an elder.” “No, I can’t.” “But we think you would make a great elder.” “No, I wouldn’t.” I’m not going to lie to you: everyone who serves—whether as a deacon, or as a minister of Word and Sacrament, or as an elder—needs to have certain gifts. Well, really, they need to have one gift—the one gift without which none of our service would be possible. That gift is baptism. By virtue of our baptism, God calls us—each and every one of us—into the ministry of the church. It’s that simple and that terrifying.

Oh, we need other gifts as well. But here’s the beauty of the situation: we need your specific gifts, R and H and D and K and J and P. We need the gifts you know you have—your analytical mind, say, or your love for events. But we also need the gifts you don’t even know you have yet—like your hunger for a prayer life, your kinship with others who suffer and sorrow. Your individual gifts are the details. The gift of your baptism is the panoramic view. It is the first and most essential piece of equipment for service to God’s people. The rest will unfold, in God’s good time.

Our service this morning bridges one season in the life of the church with what comes next. We say goodbye and thank you to those who have served as deacons and elders at the same time we ordain and install those who will serve this year and beyond. For each of us, the baptism we have received, the mark of water and the Holy Spirit, is the bridge to our service of God’s people. And what is our ministry, really? The basic, real, unabridged definition of ministry? We are called, every one of us, to shine forth the Light of the world, so that it can be seen by all people. We are called to show the world the love of God in Jesus Christ. And we are called to do it together. It’s that simple and that exhilarating. Thanks be to God. Amen.

~~~~~

Sources:

Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.1-12, Epiphany of Our Lord-Year A,” at Crossmarks Christian Resources (http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x1.htm).

Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 3.13-17, Baptism of Our Lord-Year A,” at Crossmarks Christian Resources (http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x13.htm).

Our Wandering Savior: Sermon on Matthew 2:13-23

It always comes as a shock, doesn’t it? The letdown after Christmas. Suddenly, you feel as if the sound of one more Christmas carol just might drive you bonkers. The idea of returning to the store to exchange something that was the wrong size or the wrong color or just plain wrong is about as appealing as stale cookies. Everything builds and builds to the day of Christmas—and the peace on earth and goodwill towards all is fleeting at best. The Irish performers “The Chieftains” have a song about this very phenomenon—the evaporation of peace and goodwill on December 26. The song is called “The Saint Stephen’s Day Murders.”

And so we come to it: the dark side of Christmas. And make no mistake, there is indeed a dark side to this holiday, and every three years the lectionary provides us with a reading that is a glass of ice water in our faces to remind us of the reality that sweeps in as a result of the birth we have just celebrated. The reality is death, stark, unlovely and violent.

We are going out of order with our story, because the events described in today’s reading take place after the visit of the travelers from the East—variously called magi, kings, philosophers, wise men or astronomers—a reading we will not hear in church for another week or so. You will remember that these traveling astronomers learned from their charting of the stars that a king was to be born in or around Jerusalem, and they came inquiring of Herod the king where that child might be, so that they might pay him homage. That was their deadly mistake, inquiring of Herod.

Here are some of the things we know about this King Herod, not to be confused with Herod Antipas, one of his sons, who later sees to the killing of John the Baptist. This Herod was known as Herod the Great—a title he, perhaps, gave himself, since his brutal regime did not inspire love in his people. He was King of the Jews, but not a Jewish King—he was an Edomite, installed as king over the Jews by Rome; he was a puppet king, a client king. As long as he did Rome’s bidding, he was able to retain a certain amount of power. That power included the ability to put to death anyone who threatened his claim to the throne.

Here are just a couple of instances in which Herod used that power. First, Herod had three of his own sons executed, lest they usurp his throne. And second, Herod issued a decree that, upon his death, one member of every family in Judea should be killed. That way, he reasoned, the people would truly mourn.

And so, Herod was entirely capable of responding to the threat of a new king, a king whose birth even the stars bore witness to. And his response is a brutal and merciless act, the act of killing all the children in Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. Mind you, scholars are not convinced that this killing really happened. There are a couple of reasons for that; first, there is no evidence outside scripture, or anywhere except this passage, that it happened. And second, Matthew writes his gospel very much with the intention of showing Jesus to be a kind of new Moses, and the slaughter of children by a cruel monarch echoes the killing of the Hebrew infant boys by the Pharaoh.

Still. Bethlehem, in the years of Jesus’ birth and infancy, had a population of just around 1000. That means there would have been, perhaps, twenty infant boys of the age Herod targeted. It may be that, in the midst of a tyrant’s reign that was filled with killing, the deaths of twenty Jewish children were not considered to be worth the notice of the historians. In any case, whether or not the story is factual, it is true.

What do I mean by that? That the story may not be factual, but it is true. I mean, the empire always strikes back. When someone rises up, someone on the margins, someone like this Palestinian Jewish baby boy, born to poor parents with no political power, but still someone who, in Herod’s mind constituted a threat to him, to the Empire—of course, the empire will strike back. Think of everything Jesus came to stand for. Jesus came, preaching the good news to the poor and powerless. He came healing the blind and the deaf and the lame and welcoming sinners and children. He came challenging the system that insisted on ritual purity and instead insisted on love and compassion. He came, eating dinner with anyone and everyone. He came saying, not “Blessed are the fortunate,” or “Blessed are the elite,” but “Blessed are the poor,” and “Blessed are the merciful.”

Of course, Herod couldn’t yet know any of that. All he knew was that someone, somewhere was thought of as newborn king, perhaps only by a handful of star-gazers. For King Herod in Judea, for the Emperor Augustus in Rome—the coming of this child could only mean that the delicate balance of power of the empire was being threatened, was being challenged. In Jesus’ day, as in our day, innocents are regularly killed when they become even the tiniest threat to those in power.

And so what becomes of Jesus? His parents flee with him; they become vagabond refugees. Like Moses, Jesus becomes a wanderer in Egypt. Our church teaches us that Jesus is fully human and fully divine—that is the mystery of the incarnation, that is what is at the heart of Christmas . If we take that belief seriously, we are confronted with the staggering irony of the all-powerful creator of the universe, the one who fashioned every star and planet and galaxy and sun, on the run from a third-rate king who only gets to wear a crown because he is willing to play nice with Rome. This gives us some sense of the cost of the incarnation, the cost to God of becoming human. God was willing to empty God’s self of power so thoroughly, so completely, that he took on our fragile human flesh and made himself vulnerable to even this Herod, this petty tyrant. Jesus becomes our wandering savior, on the run with his parents, until such a time as Herod himself is dead and the warrant cancelled.

This is a hard gospel lesson for the Sunday after Christmas. But the incarnation is more than a beautiful baby held by his glowing mother in a warm and cozy stable. The incarnation is more even than glorious visions of angels singing their heavenly melodies, and shepherds running, jubilant, to tell the good news. The incarnation is about God being willing to experience what it is to suffer and die as a human, because God wants to put an end to our suffering. The incarnation is about love so deep, so broad, so high, it is willing to go to any lengths for our sake. That kind of love is something to make us rejoice, to be sure. And it reminds us where Jesus’ heart is, who it is that Jesus stands solidly alongside: the refugees, the vagabonds, the powerless, and the poor.

Because this story is so painful, Matthew remembers for us the weeping of Rachel, one of the matriarchs of Israel. He quotes from Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” The piece I am about to sing was written about five hundred years ago, and it too gives voice to Rachel’s pain. I invite you, if you are mourning any loss, or if you simply are mourning the ongoing violence of this world, the ongoing suffering of the innocents, to pray this lament with me, knowing that the love that saves comes at a great cost.

Rachel’s Lament From a Medieval Mystery Play


Ah! Alas! You tender babes!
Such savage wounds we are viewing!
Ah! Alas! You sweet infants,
Doomed to death by a deed of madness!

Ah! Alas! That neither years
Nor tender affection could save you!
Piteous mothers, Ah!
That you should have to realize
What we have witnessed!

What shall we do now? Alas!
How can we bear such happenings?
All these memories of ours, Alas!
Can but serve to renew our grief!

No more can there be gladness
Since our sweet pledges of love have perished!


This is, as I have said, a hard gospel to hear the day after Christmas. But we have to hold alongside this story the words from Christmas Eve: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). The empire strikes back. But the power of the empire is fleeting. And the Christmas promise of peace on earth and goodwill towards God’s people is real and enduring, despite the burnout we may feel today from overdosing on shopping or cookies. We can find that promise reflected in the resilience and courage of this little vagabond family, traveling home again after a sojourn in Egypt. They made their home, we are told, in Nazareth of Galilee. But the truth penetrates deeper than that: God made a home with humanity, forever. And nothing—no petty tyrant or superpower, no heartbreak or illness, neither heights nor depths nor things past nor things to come—nothing can separate us from God, now that God’s home is with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Tale of the Innkeeper's Wife: A Sermon for Christmas Eve

“It’s all about the hospitality,” he says, my husband, Amos. He says that all the time. I suppose it makes sense. We’re innkeepers. What else would it be about? Well, I’ll tell you what else it would be about: it’s all about the business. It’s a business! Sometimes you have to shake that man to remind him: we’re not doing this for our health.

Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am Rachel, and my husband and I are innkeepers in Bethlehem, the great City of David. Oh, it’s not so “great.” Just a thousand souls or so. But every so often, when the Roman bigwigs get it into their minds that they want a count of us, just to see how much trouble we’ll be, or where they need to send their regiments and legions, Bethlehem swells to be a city of many, many more than that. It’s a great homecoming: everyone of the house and lineage of David, which is to say, the tribe of Judah, comes home to Bethlehem. Amos and I, we’re not from Bethlehem. We’re of a different tribe, the tribe of Benjamin. And the tribe of Benjamin—let’s just say, we don’t have quite the reputation for hospitality of our brother tribes. Maybe that’s why Amos has such an issue with it. Maybe he feels he has something to prove.

It’s like those guests we had, in the time of that last census. Oh my, the city was packed. I had never seen it so filled with travelers. Now, most travelers, when they come to their ancestral city, well, of course, they stay with family. But occasionally, you have a family that’s not—well, let’s say, they’re not so friendly with one another. Let’s be realists here, shall we? It happens all the time. So, that’s where we come in! Some poor travelers come all the way from Bethany or Jerusalem or even, God help them, some backwater like Cana or Nazareth—and who puts them up for the night or the week or however long it takes the Romans to count them on their little beads? We do! Amos Ben Joseph! And wife. Of course.

And children. We have five, thanks be to God, five who have lived beyond the age of two, at any rate. The children work with their father and me in the inn, they tend our little garden and see to the livestock. It’s a good life, an honest living. And it’s a service that is needed.

So the town was filled to overflowing, and for the first time ever we had to turn away traveler after traveler. A lot of families having squabbles that year, I suppose. Or maybe our people are exploding in number! Who knows? But day in and day out for two weeks, Amos and I were forced to say, “No, I’m sorry, we are full—try Jacob and Naomi down the street.”

I remember I was working in the kitchen that night, trying to provide a decent meal for about thirty hungry souls when in walks Amos, with that look on his face. That look he gets when he has to tell me something he knows I’m not going to like.

“What is it?” I asked. I was kneading dough for bread. I’m sure my face was flushed, which also happens when I get angry. I wasn’t angry. Yet. He hesitated. Amos is a good man, but he can be timid. Especially with me.

“What is it?” I asked. I was so busy. I had no time for some great complication that probably wouldn’t matter in the end. I had so many things to do!

Amos straightened himself up and said, “We have taken in some additional guests. You will find them in the stable. See that they have a decent meal tonight.” And he turned on his heel and walked away.

Or, tried to. “Just a minute, husband,” I stopped him, and he turned around to face me again. I see that very same look on our children sometimes. That look of almost having gotten away with something.

“What in the world are you telling me? The busiest night of our year, the we are full to overflowing, and you get it into your mind to put someone up with the cows and the goats?” Then I thought a moment. Maybe Amos was a good business man after all. I was suddenly eager to hear what could possibly have persuaded him to open our stable to travelers. “What—did they offer you some exorbitant amount of money? Did they give you a denarius?”

Amos shook his head. And all pretense left his face, all false bravado. He was just the man I married, just for a moment. A deeply kind face, my Amos has. Kinder than his wife.

“Rachel, they were so poor. A husband and a wife. And… she was in a bad way.” My Amos, five children, and he still can’t bring himself to speak frankly about the facts of life. I knew instantly what he meant.

“The girl is with child?” He nodded vigorously. “Is it… soon?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Could be.” I nodded, still kneading.

“And there’s something else,” Amos said. I could feel myself bristling with irritation. “What? What else?” I snapped. Amos looked down. He was twisting a piece of cloth in his hands. “His name was Joseph, like my father.” Then he looked up at me again. “It’s all about hospitality, Rachel. What kind of people would we be to turn them away?”

I shook my head. It’s all about the business, except when it isn’t. Then I looked up into my husband’s kind face. I suppose even we Benjaminites have learned a thing or two about hospitality. “Fetch me one of the girls,” I said, and he nodded and ducked out of the kitchen.

I placed six fat fragrant loaves on the stone in the oven, and stepped out to the well to wash my hands and face. Hannah, my eldest came running to me, a little out of breath. She had been serving the guests in the great room. Hannah is a good girl, smart, and ready to be helpful. Truth be told, she should be married by now—she’s almost fifteen. But I have been dragging my feet. It’s good to have a good daughter by your side.

“Mama?” she said, expectantly.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Hannah, there are guests in the stable, a husband and wife, and the wife is going to have a baby. Go to them, see what they need.”

She nodded, turned and ran. My Hannah. I know I can depend on her.

A few short minutes later she came running back. “Mama,” she said. “I think you’d better come.” My daughter does not panic. If Hannah felt it was urgent, I should listen to her.

“Check the loaves in about an hour,” I said, “unless they smell done before that. See to the guests in the great room.” I smiled at her. “I know you can do it.” She smiled back at me.

I ran to our closet and took an armful of soft cloths, and I went to the well for water. I ducked my head back into the kitchen. “And Hannah—warm up some water for me. Not too hot.” She nodded, and pulled out a large pot. I took a good sharp knife from the table, and I was ready.

As I headed towards the stable I was shaking my head. For the goodness and kindness of my husband, tonight I would be a midwife. This was a first. Not midwifing a birth—no woman gets to be my age in Bethlehem without standing in on a birth or two or ten. No, the first was—they were strangers. It was in our stable. I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving that Amos and I had taught our boys to keep a tidy stable; I knew there would be fresh straw at least, for a bed for the mother.

I stepped into the dim light. There was a lantern near the door, and another at the far end, which is where they were, the wife already lying on the ground with her back to the wall, the husband hovering nervously over her. I looked around at the animals… they were restless. They knew what was happening. Animals have unfailing instincts about birth and death, and they lend their sympathy to all creatures going through the great passages.

I approached, and I could see she was already in hard labor—she probably had been for some time. I smiled at the husband, in a way I hoped was reassuring. The wife—young thing, high color, grimacing with pain and trying as hard as she could not to make any noise—looked up at me with, not fear exactly, something more like—hope. The husband startled me by his insistence on staying, though I tried to shoo him out more than once. He seemed—very attached to his wife, which is always refreshing. At some point Hannah crept in with the basin of warm water. She stayed by my side, wordlessly taking directions from me, helping as if she’d been doing it for thirty years instead of just an hour.

What happened next is what nearly always happens. The hard, hard work of bring a new life into the world. She was brave. Far more brave than I was at her age, and I had my mother and my sisters beside me. As the night wore on and the moment grew nearer, her face changed so that—I swear, this is true—it was filled with a kind of light. I have never before seen anything like it, or anything since.

And then all was silent, as the mother lay back in the straw, breathless, pale again. I took the babe, and showed the mother how to wrap him in clean strips of cloth. I held him, for just a moment. I saw it in his face too—that light, I swear it stopped breath in my lungs. And then I handed him to his mother. I left them, and the father had curled himself around the mother, who curled herself around the child. Just an ordinary babe, an ordinary family, after all. As Hannah and I left I realized I was trembling. I wondered why it affected me so much. Why it affects me still.

It was already early in the morning by the time we returned to our room, where we found Amos awake, waiting for us. I must have looked tired; he put his arm around me without saying a word. I was still filled with the wonder of the birth—the accident of it all, wandering travelers who just happened to find their way to us, my husband who just happened to have a soft spot for young couples in distress, and for men named “Joseph” like his father. And me, called upon to be midwife for these poor strangers. It just seemed the right thing to do. In the end, it changed me. I’m still not sure how.

It’s all about the business. That’s what I like to tell Amos when it seems he’s grown too softhearted to make tough decisions. But maybe Amos is right. Maybe it’s all about opening your home, opening your heart to the weary, needy traveler. Opening your life to a young family, to a child in need. Maybe it’s only when we do that, that we can truly open our hearts to the holy One, to God. Thanks be. Amen.

The Nearness of Heaven: A Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12

Who or what draws us? By which I mean, for what or for whom would you stand in line, or go through security, or pay an exorbitant amount of money to get the tickets? In my family, we have been known to go out of our way for theater. Far out of our way. Three hour drives, for example. For my mom, it was Frank Sinatra. She first stood in line for him when she was in her twenties, and I joined her in one of those lines when she was in her sixties. Performers like Lady Gaga regularly attract sellout crowds at astonishing prices.

Of course, we go out of our way to experience things other than entertainment. About a month ago I drove almost two hours and went through pretty tight security to see former President Bill Clinton speak at Colgate University. My son got on a bus in Manhattan that same weekend to be one of about 215,000 to attend Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore the Sanity in Washington, DC, just a couple of months after about 100,000 other Americans attended Glenn Beck’s Rally to Restore Honor. Who or what draws us?

John the Baptist, the man at the center of today’s gospel lesson, draws people. He draws crowds. He draws all types of people—young and old, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. Pharisees and Sadducees are among those he draws, and that means he draws people from across the religious spectrum, from those considered most tradition-bound to those pushing the boundaries of progressivism. He draws them all, and we have to wonder why. What is it about this man who suddenly appears in the wilderness, proclaiming a message of tough love that has crowds flocking to him? What is it about John, about whom Matthew makes an astonishing claim—that five hundred years earlier the prophet Isaiah was referring to John when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” What is it about this man who dresses strangely, wearing animal pelts, and who survives on a diet of insects and wild honey? What is it about this man who urges people to be baptized, because, he promises, “The kingdom of heaven has come near”?

John offers people a “baptism of repentance.” John takes us back to the most ancient understanding of baptism, from a Greek word that means, “dipping.” For John, baptism is about one thing and one thing only. People come to him in the wilderness, and he dips them into the water, and when they emerge, they are cleansed. They are free. They have a fresh start. And John wants them to have a fresh start, because the nearness of heaven demands their full attention.

When John says, “The kingdom of heaven has drawn near,” he is using a euphemism. When he says heaven, he means God. It was not permitted in Judaism to use the name of God casually, or to even write it down in its entirety. Across the street from the place I went to seminary is Jewish Theological Seminary. In the seminary there is a room dedicated to the permanent—eternal—storage of pieces of paper that have the name of God written on them, but which are no longer being used. Such paper cannot be destroyed, recycled, or otherwise re-purposed. The name of God must be preserved. John uses a euphemism to indicate God. He uses the word “heaven.”

At this point in the gospel, John knows that something, someone extraordinary is coming, but it isn’t until Jesus presents himself for baptism that John knows precisely who and how. Only when he lets John dip him in the water does John come to realize that the presence of God is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. At this point, John simply knows that something amazing is on its way, that God’s presence will be made manifest among people in a wholly new way. And John’s judgment is that the best possible way to be ready for this presence is to throw off the old, to be done with the sin and failure of the past. John invites everyone to come with a clean slate, a new lease on life.

I think this is the answer to my question. I think this is the draw. This is what has Pharisees and Sadducees elbowing each other to get a better place in line. This is what appeals to young and old, to rich and poor: the chance for a fresh start. What would you give? What would you endure? What would you pay? How long would you wait for a fresh start? A clean slate? A sense of being totally new?

No matter that it is still Advent in here, and will be for nearly three more weeks, out there you and I know it’s already Christmas. The lights are up, the carols have been playing since mid-November, the magazines telling us how to have that elusive “perfect” celebration have long been on the stands. I think one of the things that draws us in this season is that promise of the perfect Christmas. I think it represents a kind of fresh start for us, a day when old hurts are healed and we come together with loved ones in perfect peace and harmony.

Except, we don’t seem to believe we can come together in perfect peace and harmony unless we have managed to transform our homes into some kind of magazine-spread of glittering Christmas beauty. And so we do all kinds of things to make the holiday everything we think it should be. We cook and we clean, and we bake and we decorate, and we buy and we buy and we buy, because we have somehow become convinced that the amount of love in our hearts is directly translatable into dollars and cents. And we come to the day itself, and we find that the preparations have entirely drained us of all hope of feeling anything but exhaustion or numbness.

I think that none of the trappings are anywhere near the heart of what we really want. I think what we want is a fresh start—with our family, with our friends, with our church, with our co-workers. I think that’s why the image of the “white Christmas,” in which a fresh fall of snow blankets everything, is so powerful. We want a beginning that fresh, that pristine, that beautiful. We want hope.

‎Writer Barbara Kingsolver said, “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside your hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.” John the Baptist reminds us of what it’s like to live in hope, the confident anticipation that heaven, God, is near. Living in hope means casting off what is weighing us down. Living in hope means accepting God’s gift of a fresh start each morning, sometimes each minute. Living in hope means opening ourselves to every opportunity to experience the nearness of heaven—starting now, around this table. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Least Likely: A Sermon for Advent 1

I have gone off-lectionary with this sermon. I was reading the marvelous Brian Stoffregen's commentary on the lectionary gospel, and he made an off-handed reference to this passage, Matthew 1:1-17, as a possible alternative reading. I went with it.

Some have called me chicken. That is their right. But I had fun with this text. Maybe 'fun' is the wrong word. I felt connected and excited about the dawning of this beautiful season, and the amazing women whose stories we can tell as a part of it.

~~~

I suppose I’ve been fascinated with genealogies from the time I was a little girl. Maybe it’s because I am an adoptee, and for much of my life there was always a kind of mystery to my background. Maybe it had something to do with old family photographs—I could look for hours at my parents’ black and white or sepia-toned pictures or daguerreotypes showing the faces of people long dead. Many such pictures, of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, hang in my hallways. The questions they raised up in me were always, “Who are they? What is their story? And how are they connected to me?”

The first Sunday in Advent seems to be an appropriate time to look at Jesus’ genealogy. Two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, consider it important enough to include genealogies, though the two genealogies are very different. The first Sunday of the new church year, which for us will also be the year of Matthew, is the right time, I think, to delve into the genealogy of Jesus as found in Matthew’s gospel, and to ask about some of the names it holds: Who are they? What is their story? And how are they connected to Jesus? How are they connected to us?

Hopefully something jumped out at you when you I read our passage from Matthew just a few minutes ago. I’ll let my seminary professor, Ann Ulanov, lay it out for us. She writes,

Nothing odder or more stimulating occurs in the genealogies of Christ’s ancestors than the appearance of four women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba [she who is called ‘the wife of Uriah’]… Why does Matthew place them among the “begats,” which for the rest consists only of men and the lines of fathers? Why only these women... What is special or distinctive about them? And why have we heard so very little about them in our traditions and our teachings? What explains their presence in the Tree of Life leading to Jesus? [1]

Before we look at the individual women in Jesus’ family tree, let’s remember this: every time a genealogy appears in scripture, it’s meant to tell us something important about the person at the end of the line, the ultimate member, in this case, Jesus. Genealogies point to character, but they also speak to something deeper. To know one’s roots is to be able to live in connection to the past as well as the present. In the ancient world connection with one’s ancestors is incredibly important. Through his genealogy, Jesus embraces all those people who came before him. He is the product of all these souls, whoever they may be. Their struggles tell us something about what Jesus himself will face.

The first woman to be found in our passage is Tamar (Genesis 38). Tamar is the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, and Judah is the patriarch of the tribe bearing his name. Judah had three sons, and Tamar, a non-Israelite, was wed to the eldest. However, he died before they had any children. A couple of weeks ago we were talking about that hypothetical woman who was married to seven different brothers in succession: remember that passage from Deuteronomy, describing what is called the Levirate duty.

When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage… and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ~Deuteronomy 25:5-6

Tamar was the wife of a man who died childless, and who had brothers to fulfill this obligation. So, her husband’s second brother married her. However, he was not willing to father children by her, and so he died as well. Judah, seeing that two of his sons had died, became unwilling to risk the life of the third, as he saw it, and told his daughter-in-law Tamar to live as a widow.

We cannot overstate the tragedy of this kind of situation for a woman in ancient Israel; to be a childless widow is to have virtually no value in that society. Starvation and death were two very real possibilities.

Tamar takes matters into her own hands. Dressing as a temple prostitute, she sits by the side of the road when she knows her father-in-law will be passing by. He obligingly goes into her, and not recognizing her, fathers twin sons. When all is revealed, he admits that she was in the right—it was his family’s duty to give her children. Tamar and her children are in Jesus’ family tree.

Rahab’s (Joshua 2:1-24) name will be familiar to you if you know the story of the conquest of Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites as they enter the Promised Land. Rahab is no pretend prostitute: she is the real deal, living in an apartment in the city’s walls. By virtue of her profession, she is not only an alien to the Israelites, she is also an alien among her own people, living on the outskirts of society as well as the city. Rahab aids the Israelites in return for their promise that neither she nor her family will be harmed in the coming invasion; they are identified by a red cord she hangs out her window. Rahab and her family are spared. Rahab and her child are in Jesus’ family tree.

The story of Ruth (Ruth 1-4) is another story of an alien, non-Israelite woman married to an Israelite man, whose husband dies, leaving her alone and childless—along with her sister-in-law and mother-in-law, both of whom have had the same terrible hand dealt to them. Ruth and her mother-in-law return to Bethlehem where an opportunity presents itself for Ruth to join herself in marriage to Boaz, the male next-of-kin to her deceased husband. Ruth, at the time of the harvest festival, takes the advice of her mother-in-law and memorably anoints herself and lies at the feet of Boaz, her gentle suitor, after a feast on the threshing floor. Ruth and her child are in Jesus’ family tree.

The wife of Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12) is included in the genealogy, but not by name. Women were left unnamed in the ancient world for two main reasons. The first, and far most common reason, was that women were not considered important enough for their names to be recorded. The second reason to leave out a woman’s name was to protect her honor and dignity, when to associate her name with a story or an event would tarnish it too badly. That latter one seems to be the reason here. The wife of Uriah, whose name was Bathsheba, came to the attention of King David when he spied her from his rooftop while she was performing a ritual bath, a ritual required of all Israelite woman. David was immediately seized with desire for her, and sent for her, and took her, even though he knew she was the wife of one of his most trusted generals. When she told him she was pregnant he tried to cover it up, first by calling the general home, and finally by having him killed. God punished David for his crime—which apparently included rape as well as murder—the child born to David and Bathsheba did not survive. Bathsheba was subsequently taken into the palace to be a queen of David’s. In the end, as the mother of King Solomon, Bathsheba was a woman of great influence. But her original connection to David was so scandalous that Matthew, apparently, chose to leave her name out of it. Still: Bathsheba and her child, Solomon, are in Jesus’ family tree.

Does a pattern seem to emerge as you hear these stories, all together? We have entered into this season of Advent in which we prepare ourselves to celebrate a mystery. The mystery at the heart of our faith is that our all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God chose to take on human flesh, to live among us in Jesus. What thread ties together the stories of these women who are Jesus’ ancestors? To put it in one word, scandal.

Each of these women either comes to be pregnant in a way considered scandalous, or comes to pregnancy with her own scandalous background. And when we think of the story of Jesus’ birth, the inclusion of these women begins to make sense. Jesus is the son of a woman who found herself to be pregnant out of wedlock, and not by her intended. Jesus was the son of a woman whose fiancé had every right under the law to take her out and have her stoned.

But Jesus is also the son of a woman whose intended was visited in a dream by an angel. Jesus is the son of a woman whose fiancé, instead of “quietly putting her away,” decides to marry her, because whatever the nature and source of this pregnancy, he becomes convinced it is the handiwork of God. Jesus is the son of a woman who is also convinced of God’s role in her pregnancy; in another gospel she announces that, “the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 1:49).

I believe these four women—the woman who achieves pregnancy by trickery, the prostitute who bargains for the lives of her family, the woman who seduces by her innocence and hard work and love for her mother-in-law, and the woman who was raped by a king—these four women take their place in Jesus’ family tree as a sign to us. Though they may seem to be the least likely candidates to be a part of Jesus’ genealogy, they are a sign to us that, with God, nothing is impossible. They are a sign to us that, no matter the brokenness in our own lives, God stands ready to redeem. They are a sign to us that Jesus will take his stand alongside the least and the lost, the sinners and the sinned against. They are a sign to us that the Savior whose birth we await in this Advent season stands ready to save us all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] Ann Belford Ulanov, The Female Ancestors of Christ (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1993), 1.

Thanksgiving: Sermon on Deuteronomy 26:1-11

I once heard someone say, “You can tell your life story in two ways. You can say, ‘I can’t imagine how I got from there to here.’ Or, you can say, ‘Every road I traveled, every choice I made, was designed to bring me right here, to this place.’” If you think about it, both are completely true. We marvel at the winding and twisting path that somehow brought us to the present place. At the same time, we recognize that who and where we are has a kind of weight to it, a sense of a larger vision than our own. We Christians call the one who spins and oversees that vision God.

In this morning’s passage from Deuteronomy, we have a kind of “life story” of God’s people. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, Moses retells the entire story of salvation, and he does so under very particular and poignant circumstances. Moses and all the tribes are camped together in Moab, just beyond the Jordan. They have been wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and they are about to enter the Promised Land. Moses is dying, and he knows that he will not have the privilege of entering into that land. Despite being God’s mouthpiece with the Pharaoh, and despite being the mediator of God’s plagues upon the Egyptians, and despite being the great liberator, the one who led the people out of Egypt, Moses sees the people all the way to the edge of the Promised Land, and no further. The reason scripture gives is this: when the people were crying out for water in the wilderness, and God instructed Moses to strike the rock with his staff, Moses struck it not once, but twice. Moses’ sin is that single, momentary lack of faithfulness; Moses’ punishment is that he will never enter the land himself.

And so, on his deathbed, Moses recounts this long history, with all its twists and turns. And here he gives instructions about what would constitute a good and proper expression of thanks from God’s people to the One who is their redeemer, the One who heard their cries, and brought them to this new place of abundance. Moses is invoking his authority as the leader of the people. Moses wants the people to be appropriately thankful.

One of my very favorite movie musicals of all time has to be “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Adapted from a story by Stephen Vincent Benet, it tells of Millie, a young woman in the Pacific northwest during frontier times, who impulsively marries Adam, a backwoodsman, just a few hours after meeting him. She soon learns that he is one of seven brothers who are eager to have a woman around the house to cook and clean up after them. Somewhat in shock, but still hoping she hasn’t made a dreadful mistake, Millie cleans up the pigsty of a house and cooks an enormous meal for her new family. When the men descend upon the meal like a swarm of locusts, pushing each other out of the way to grab the food, spilling it while they are stuffing their faces, Millie delivers them a lecture on their shameful behavior. It has absolutely no effect. In a rage, she turns the table over, like Jesus with the moneychangers, and yells, “If you’re going to act like hogs you can eat like them too!” Millie is horrified by the fact that the men don’t give thanks before diving into their meal. The rest of the movie follows her attempts to civilize her new brothers and her husband. But her initial rage has a powerful effect. The next time the brothers are at table, they bow their heads, chastised and docile, while Millie offers grace. And the grace she offers echoes some of the words that Moses proposes for God’s people to say when they offer thanks. Millie prays:

“O Lord, thou has brought us through desert, mountain and wilderness to a good land, a land of wheat and gain where we need never hunger. We thank thee for thy care and thy bounty. Amen.”

Here’s the grace that Moses suggests:

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” ~Deuteronomy 26:5b-9

Moses encourages the people to remember their story, with all its twists and turns, and to tell it to one another in the act of offering their thanks to God. It is a story that could be told any number of ways, including, ‘How did we start out there and get here?’ Moses answers that question, and in so doing he tells the story in the other way as well: ‘Every road we traveled, every choice we made, was designed to bring us right here, to this place God had chosen for us.’

In describing how to give thanks, Moses encourages the people to remember the hard parts, the painful parts of the journey as well as the good parts. He doesn’t want them to edit them out or to forget them. The act of thanksgiving, in some way, always involves holding together the bitter and the sweet, and gazing upon them, and knowing that, somehow, however improbably, we have been guided and cared for and blessed.

I saw a beautiful needlepoint tapestry the other day. It was large—maybe five feet wide and four feet tall. It depicted a scene from the life of King Solomon—that moment when he is determining who is the true mother of the child claimed by two women. The tapestry is almost finished, though there are three small areas, just a few inches here and there, where it is not complete. Still, the family that owns the tapestry has decided to frame it, because the tapestry will never be finished. The Jewish woman who began and nearly completed it, a labor of love for her dear husband, died more than sixty years ago in a concentration camp in Poland.

The tapestry is a treasured family heirloom. It contains memories both powerfully good and terribly painful—the love of that woman for her husband, the manner in which she died. The family wants the tapestry framed by Thanksgiving. They want this treasure to be a part of their celebration, filled as it is with the beautiful and the painful, inextricably woven together, like all our lives.

It is the season in which we, as a nation, turn our attention to those people and things—tangible and intangible—for which we are grateful. We have an entire day set aside for this giving of thanks. Like the Hebrews, we are the descendants, most of us, of people who traveled to this land from far away. Also like the Hebrews, we have had our ups and downs, our conflicts, the moments in which our actions were filled with honor and courage and beauty, and the moments in which we failed in our common human vocation. The good and the proud mingle together inextricably with the painful and the shameful. This is our heritage, these are our lives. This is Thanksgiving: holding together the bitter and the sweet, and knowing that, somehow, we have been cared for and blessed.

Moses advises us to gather for a celebration! He says, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” Among the ancient Hebrews, the Levites were the upper crust, the ruling class of temple priests. And the aliens—well, they were wanderers in the land, just as the Hebrews themselves had been. They were the most vulnerable people in a society, the ones without tribes or families to fall back on in hard times, the people most likely to fall into slavery. Moses’ intention is to gather all these people together at table: the upper crust, the vulnerable immigrants, and everyone in between.

The advice of Moses suggests that we need to broaden our scope when it comes to celebrations of Thanksgiving. We need to broaden our definition of who’s in the family, who is invited to the table. When we consider our lives, the beautiful and the painful, the bitter and the sweet, we start to recognize that the God who blesses us doesn’t intend for the blessings to stop there. The blessings we receive are to be given away, shared, dispersed, like the pie and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. Everybody gets some. That’s God’s vision for every human being on the planet.

We can each tell our life story in any number of ways. At Thanksgiving, we have an opportunity to tell it again—while bustling around the kitchen, or gathered around the table, or sitting on the couch with pie and coffee. For each one of us, we can marvel that we started out there and ended up here. Each one of us can trust that a powerful and loving heart created the vision, was guiding us, even in the times we felt confused or alone. And each one of us can celebrate—truly celebrate—the bounty we have been given at God’s generous hands. Thanks be to God. Amen.