A Peculiar King: Sermon on Mark 14:1-9

About 388 years ago a large and motley group consisting of Plymouth colonists and Native Americans of the Wampanoag peoples, gathered together around tables. These tables groaned beneath the weight of a feast of waterfowl, cod, wild turkeys, eel, venison, pumpkins, Indian corn, onions, chestnuts and things we probably can’t even imagine. These people gathered to give thanks for a harvest—certainly not for the first time in human history, and not even for the first time on what would eventually be known as American soil. Nevertheless, their Thanksgiving gathering became iconic: it is the one we recall when we gather around our own groaning boards. And it is good for us to remember, on this day when our observance of Thanksgiving converges with that of the Reign of Christ, that the reason for the feast had to do with a particular group of people resenting the intrusion of a king in their lives.

The Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were convinced that the Protestant Reformation had not gone far enough. Because they did not wish to be a part of a church that was far removed from their understanding of scripture, they became religious separatists, and because of their separatist views they attracted the wrath of King James I, and because they attracted his wrath, they found themselves, eventually, eating venison and eel on a very stony patch of beach on what would eventually be known as Cape Cod.

About 388 years ago, a group of people said, “Thanks be to God, we are rid of that king.”

The American psyche is no more comfortable at the thought of bowing to royalty today than our forbears were 388 years ago. Just this week our president was chastised in some quarters because he bowed deeply to the Emperor of Japan on a visit to that country. The word “groveling” was used. The argument was, Americans, especially American presidents, should not go around bowing to foreign rulers, foreign kings. We, as a nation, are so over kings.

About 1981 years ago, a motley group of people gathered around a table in Bethany, a village on the south-eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about a mile and a half from Jerusalem. This table was in the home of one Simon the Leper, but Jesus knew lots of people in Bethany, including his friend Lazarus, and his sisters, Martha and Mary. Perhaps they were there. The table was groaning with… we know not what. Felafel? Fish? Figs? Hummus and pita bread? Wine, of course. And the motley group gathered, two days before the Passover. Perhaps it was a reunion… Jesus had just returned to Jerusalem, after a long journey with his friends. Perhaps he was giving thanks for the presence of those he loved around him in the midst of what he knew to be the last week of his life.

As they sat at table—really, the idea that they “sat” is anachronistic; they would have reclined around the table, a low table, supported by cushions and rugs on the floor. As they reclined, then, a woman approached the table with an alabaster jar filled with costly perfume, oil of nard. Alabaster is a white material, a kind of stone, translucent when cut into thin sheets. It was highly valued in Jesus’ day as a material for perfume jars; one of the original meanings of the word may have been “vessel of the goddess.”

A woman approached Jesus, carrying an alabaster jar. We don’t know who the woman was, though Mary of Bethany is a good candidate. In another story, in the gospel of John, she is the woman with the oil of nard. The woman did not uncork the jar, or remove a wax seal. Rather, she broke the precious jar so that the even more precious oil might flow out of it and onto Jesus’ head. And by that bold and audacious action, the woman—whoever she was—sparked a debate among the dinner guests.

The intention of the woman was unmistakable. Everyone seated at that table would have understood anointing with oil as a sign that Jesus was being recognized as a king. But, curiously, those gathered that night were silent on that topic. No one said, “Hey, why did you just anoint Jesus king?” Instead, a debate ensued on the proper use of resources in providing assistance to those living in poverty.

A woman boldly walked up to Jesus and anointed him king. But that action made the dinner guests of Simon the Leper almost as uncomfortable as our president’s bow to Emperor Akihito made the folks at Fox News. Who wants a king? Who needs a king? In particular, who wants to bow to a king, to kneel before a king? Don’t we have more dignity than that? Aren’t we freer than that?

Mark’s gospel warns us from the very first chapter, with John the Baptist’s ecstatic proclamation: “The kingdom of God is at hand.” And he is talking about Jesus. There is something about Jesus that is going to usher in the very reign of God on earth. Jesus is the king he is talking about.

But what an odd king, what a peculiar king. A king who hangs around with a ragtag group of friends… fisherfolk, tax collectors. A king who breaks all the religious taboos by touching women and children as he heals them. A king who would eat dinner in the house of a leper, for heaven’s sake… and we know all about lepers and the chart of “Who’s Who” in ancient Palestine. Lepers aren’t even on the chart. What an odd king Jesus is.

There are all kinds of monarchies, all kinds of governments in which royalty figures, so coming up with hard and fast rules is a challenge. But there are a few things we can say about kings with some confidence. First, kings usually acquire that title by inheritance. In order to be king, your father must be king, or, as in the case of our friends across the pond, your mother. You are born into a family of royalty, and you are prepared your whole life for your rule.

Again… Jesus is so peculiar, when we hold this lens up to him. As Mark begins to tell the story of the good news, there is Jesus, coming up out of the water, the heavens being torn apart, the voice coming down from the clouds, “You are my Son, the Beloved…” There is no finer pedigree. But still… as our mothers used to say when they were mad at us for not closing the door behind us, he was born in a barn. He was born to parents of modest means at best. He was raised to be a son of the Law. All the preparation he needed to become king, Jesus must have acquired at his father’s side in his woodshop, or at the rabbi’s feet studying Torah, or somewhere deep inside where he communed with the Spirit of God.

The other thing we can say about kings is that they are in some way symbolic of their kingdom. “L’etat, c’est moi,” said Louis XIV. “I AM the state.” This has caused kings no end of problems as their personal lives have clashed with their public role as stand-in for their countries. When John yelled, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” he meant to let everyone know that Jesus was both king and prime exemplar of all that kingdom stood for.

Jesus is such a strange and unexpected king. A king who welcomes children rather than letting his lieutenants shoo them away. A king who hosts large picnics on a shoestring budget. A king who is willing to die an ignominious death out of his love for his people.

This is the aspect of his kingship Jesus seized upon at that table at Simon the Leper’s house. When wagging tongues complained about the waste of that alabaster jar of oil, Jesus admonished them. Don’t pretend, my friends, that this one flask of perfume will solve the problem of poverty in this or any day. Don’t pretend that you are not called upon to work for the poor every day, but today you are using it as a distraction. This good woman has perfumed me, anointed me for my death. And wherever the good news is told, she will be a part of the story. Wherever the good news is shared, people will give thanks for her, for her prophetic action.

At the heart of our faith is a king who doesn’t look particularly kingly according to the expectations of either his world or ours. And yet, he pushes us to ponder what his kingship could mean for our world, if we were to really let loose his reign. One writer puts it this way:

In its simplest terms, the kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not. Imagine if God ruled the nations, and not Obama, Medvedev, Kim Jong-il, Mugabe, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Every aspect of personal and communal life would experience a radical reversal. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless—peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclusion, etc. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being.[i]

Shalom. Well-being. Peace. If every person who bowed their head over a meal this week—whether they sit at a table alone, or with one other person, or in a room crammed full with extra chairs and tables to accommodate the extended family—if every one of us could recognize within us God’s desire for shalom, peace, and well-being for our world—well, that would be quite a Thanksgiving. That is the Thanksgiving Christ our King wants for us, and with us, and in us. That is Thanksgiving as a call to action, to service of our brothers and sisters in the name of our servant Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Daniel Clendenin, “Can a Good Christian Be a Good Citizen? The Reign of Christ the King,” in The Journey With Jesus: Notes to Myself, Essay November 16, 2009. http://www.journeywithjesus.net.

Honest Prayers: Sermon on 1 Samuel 1:1-20

It’s Friday afternoon, time for me to start writing my sermon (past time, really… I’ve been noodling around on Facebook just a little too long). I’ve had my lunch, the dishes are done, there is coffee percolating on the stove (yes, I percolate my coffee at home… real cowboy coffee, my brother calls it). Time to write. Except, it occurs to me: I should take time to pray before I write. My sermon will undoubtedly be enriched if I pray first—open myself to the Spirit. And then I think: hey, I think I know how I’ll start the sermon… that crucial opening paragraph! And so… prayer averted. I sit down to the computer and start typing.

And there you have it, my friends, the true and unvarnished report on the state of your pastor’s prayer life. Why is it so hard sometimes, to simply sit down and … pray? We promise ourselves (and God) we will do it… sometimes we even manage to keep that promise for a little while. But the first errant thought, the first opportunity for distraction and diversion, and our promises evaporate. Unless… we are in one of those life situations that takes us to the extremes. You know the ones I mean. The extremes of joy or sorrow. The extremes of hope or despair. The extremes of reaching out in love or striking out in anger. For some reason, the every day, workaday practice of prayer feels not nearly so doable as the “Help me Lord, I’m hanging on by my fingernails” kind of prayer, or the “Hallelujah, praise the Lord!” kind of prayer. It has been said that we can basically boil down all prayer to “Thank you” and “Help.” We tend to get very, very good at praying when the prayer is “Help.”

Hannah is a woman living in one of those extremes, a time of extreme pain and distress. When we meet Hannah, her whole identity is swallowed up in her problem, her symptom. She “has no children,” in contrast with her husband’s other wife Peninnah, who has children in abundance. It’s hard to overstate the catastrophe, the sheer scandal that infertility is assumed to be in biblical literature. Fertility is always seen as a sign of divine favor—God, smiling down upon you. Infertility, predictably, is seen as a sign of divine judgment—God, closing the womb. Hannah is suffering as a result of her identity as a woman with no children: her rival taunts her, she weeps. Hannah has the love of her husband, Elkanah, but she is too miserable to eat the double portion he gives her. Elkanah, in a misguided effort to cheer her up, says just the wrong thing. “Hannah… Am I not more to you than ten sons?” he says. When, of course, the right thing to say would have been, “Hannah, you are more to me than ten sons.”

At this point in the story of salvation, there are many holy places, not just one, and so the whole family of Elkanah and Hannah and Penninah and all the kids go to the temple at Shiloh for their annual time of worship and sacrifice. And after the meal she cannot eat, Hannah rises and goes into the temple, and “presents herself to the Lord.” She “pours out her soul before the Lord.” If we could be flies on the wall of the temple… I wonder what the outpouring of that soul sounded like?

O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help.
like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. [Selah]
You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. ~Psalm 88:1-9

There’s no emotion we can feel that we can’t find in the psalms. That is a portion of Psalm 88. It is probably the saddest, most hopeless psalm in the entire psalter. It ends as it begins, in unrelieved darkness.

I think it is an incredibly honest prayer. I suspect the outpouring of Hannah’s soul is something like this, the prayer she prays while weeping bitterly, so distraught and out of control that Eli the priest comes to believe she is drunk. Hannah presents herself before the Lord, and prays an honest prayer out of the deepest places of distress in her heart.

In some ways, this kind of prayer is the easy kind. The times when we say “help,” from the gut, with all our might, and we really mean it. When I think back on the various stages and seasons of my life, I know I prayed the best when things were hardest and scariest. And, by the “best,” I don’t mean high quality poetic prayers in Elizabethan English or even biblical Hebrew. By the “best”, I mean, most consistently. By the “best”, I mean, most honestly. By the “best”, I mean that, at those times, my prayer life was my relationship, my connection with God.

Prayer is a relationship. And all relationships thrive on consistency and honesty. It can be a simple thing to be honest when you are pain, terrified, desperate. Honesty can be… more complicated at other times. I am wondering what kind of prayer I might have prayed if I had sat down to pray before beginning my sermon:

“Well, here I am, God. Sort of perfunctorily checking in with you, in case you have anything good for me.” Yikes. That makes me cringe. That doesn’t feel very comfortable or comforting. I’ve prayed other uncomfortable prayers in my life, too. And I’ve encouraged others to pray uncomfortably. I encourage us all to pray uncomfortably.

I encourage us to say to God those things we think we cannot say to God, even things we don’t want to take up God’s time with. Things like,

Are you really there?

I don’t have time for this.

I’m so tired I could cry.

I’m so sad I could die.

I don’t know how to do this praying thing.

Let’s remind ourselves of something: God already knows it all anyway. God is already there, waiting for us to be willing to join in the conversation God has already begun with us. So, if God already knows it all—the anger, or the ennui, or the confusion, or the irritation, or the questioning—if God already knows it all, we have nothing to fear in articulating it. We have nothing to fear in pouring out the not terribly pious, not terribly articulate content of our souls. We have nothing to fear except this: being in a real, live, fully connected relationship with God. God is already speaking. In honest prayer we have an opportunity to turn a monologue into a relationship.

There is a story of a man who really had some struggles, much like Jim, whom I talked about last week. This man was deep in addiction, and his addiction had led to things like drunk driving arrests and jail time and abandoning his family and finally, under threat of real hard time in prison, rehab. When he came out of rehab, he felt fragile, like a newborn baby with the cold wind swirling all around him. Some of his old friends—the ones with whom he had indulged in his addiction—were having a party, right next door. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to call one of his new clean and sober friends for support, but couldn’t get through to them. Finally, he went home and went in his bedroom, and closed the door, and sat on his bed shaking. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, Buddy, I guess it’s just you and me.” And that prayer—that honest, inarticulate, heartfelt prayer—changed everything. He says, “Believe it or not, it worked: those simple little words worked. Something happened: a little peace came over me.”

Hannah presented herself to the Lord. She in agony, and she prayed and wept bitterly. She was honest. She poured out her soul. She engaged in real conversation with God, a prayer from the heart. And, like her, when we are in agony, or like the man who was trying not to act on his addiction, when we are really frightened, those prayers can just roll out of us, just flow, and our pleas for “Help” fly into the heavens, weightless, direct to God.

The challenge for us is to learn to present ourselves to the Lord, to pour out our souls, in other kinds of situations as well. To present ourselves to God when we’re bored, or just tired, or when we don’t really feel like praying because we aren’t sure we will get anything back, get anything out of it. The challenge for us is to engage in the conversation when fifteen thousand other things are screaming for our attention—that little bit of work we want to finish, the laundry, the latest episode of “Glee.” The challenge for us is to engage in honest prayer when we don’t even know what we want to say, but we do it anyway, because that’s what you do when you’re in a relationship.

It has been said that prayer doesn’t change God, but it does change us. That is the promise of prayer: transformation. The answer to Hannah’s prayer is powerful and dramatic: God sends her the son she is longing for, and we have already prayed together her psalm of joy. For many of us, much of the time, we do not experience such dramatic answers to our prayer. Or, we experience what feels like a painful, wrenching “No.” But let’s not forget: for Hannah, the transformation comes before God’s “Yes.” She is able to return to her family and eat her dinner for the first time…. not at the guarantee of “yes,” but at the moment of pouring out her soul. We pray. Yes, we pray for that “yes,” but more than that, we pray to be in relationship with the One who created us, the One who redeemed us, the One who sustains us. God wants to be in relationship with us, in the heights of our joys, and in the depths of our sorrows, and in the mundane, Friday afternoon trying to get some work done times. God wants to be in relationship with us, whether our prayer is “Thank you,” or “Help,” or even just “Hi there.” God wants to be in relationship with us, and that is where we will find the transformation we really need. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Giving It All Away: Sermon on Mark 12:38-44

I am going to tell you a true story. It is about a man named Jim. That’s his real name, and I’m using it because, once upon a time, he gave me permission to tell his story.

I met Jim… I’m not exactly sure where. But at a certain time in my life—say, 15 years ago, he was sort of everywhere. When I looked out my window, there would be Jim, rolling his shopping cart down my street, and coming up on my porch to pick up a bag I had left there for him.

Jim was a small guy, perhaps in his sixties when we met, but he looked much, much older. He was wiry, and sort of bent over, and he didn’t have a lot of his original teeth left. He had a pack a day habit… these really nasty little cigars; I couldn’t stand the smell of them. I’m not sure whether it was the smoking that aged Jim or the drinking. Jim had a long career of hard drinking; but that was behind him now. When I knew him he was in recovery, a stalwart of the Thursday 8 PM AA meeting. He was so proud of his recovery. First he counted the days, then the months, and then the years. I was invited to go to the meetings in which Jim received his 10 year, his 11 year and his 12 year medallions.

When I first knew Jim, he was walking around the neighborhood, miles and miles of walking each day, to pick up cans and bottles, both those he’d pick out of the garbage or recycling, and those he’d get off the porches of friends who had saved them for him. I was in the latter category. For a long time… I’m not sure how many years… all my returnable bottles and cans went to Jim. It was convenient for me… no hauling them to the grocery store… and it was money Jim lived on. He was on disability because of his health, and he got a Social Security check every month. But the thing that allowed Jim to live in his little apartment on Main Street was collecting bottles and cans.

Jim kept track of his bottles and cans the way he kept track of his sobriety. Every once in a while, he’d give me a call, and ask me to drive him and a whole car load of returnables to the redemption center, and so I’d go, and we’d load them in the back of my car. Not everyone rinses out cans and bottles, especially the students at the frat houses who just put their stuff on the street. So inevitably my car would end up smelling like a brewery. It struck me as odd, maybe even tempting fate just a tiny bit, that Jim lived off beer bottles and cans. You know, given that beer almost killed him, and that he spent his days working very hard not to touch the stuff, to stay sober. But that smell never seemed to bother him… maybe the cigars had killed his sense of smell, I don’t know. But Jim, when we were driving to the redemption center, would say, “Well, last year I got all the way to $1800. It was a slow summer for some reason, I’m only at $1200 and it’s already Labor Day. But I think I can make it this year, if the kids have as many parties as they did last fall.”

To tell you the truth, I didn’t always look forward to Jim’s and my jaunts to the redemption center. I would get a message from Jim on my answering machine, and I’d think, Oh great, just what I need this week. I hated that smell in my car. And my kids were young, so I had to make sure someone was available to watch them, because I had a station wagon and we’d have to put the seat down. So I couldn’t bring them with me. It was kind of a pain in the neck sometimes. But then I’d be with Jim, driving to the redemption center, and, you know, he had this incredible optimism about him. I’d watch him walk, see how hard it was for him… I think his joints were painful, and he had emphysema… did I mention that? So… he’d get winded just going up a little set of three steps. So here was this guy… living alone in a tiny little apartment, living off social security and his can and bottle money, physically in pain a lot of the time… and he just was one of the most grateful people I’d ever known.

That was it. Jim was grateful. He was sober. He had that to be grateful about. He was able to not drink, one day at a time, as he often reminded me. And… in his recovery, he’d become interested in genealogy, so he spent a lot of time calling people, churches, cemeteries, trying to track down his ancestors. I think he had fully fleshed out family trees going back into the 16^th century. He was so excited about his family history, and grateful for it. Sure, he was in a lot of pain, but he could still walk. He was grateful for that. And he loved those dreadful smelly little cigars. They just pleased him to no end. Jim was grateful.

Jim was a churchgoing man. That’s the other place I saw him. I was a director of Youth Ministries and Christian Education for a local Church, and Jim was a member. So I would see Jim there. Occasionally I’d hear his shopping cart squeaking down the hallway, and I’d know Jim was in the building. Jim could talk about his faith; he was an unusual person in that respect. He believed that God, working through AA, had saved his life. And he was grateful.

One fall the youth group decided to do a fundraiser. They wanted to buy gifts for the women and children who find themselves at Local Shelter over Christmas. As you may know, Local is a place for people who have experienced domestic violence, and who need a safe place. I don’t remember who thought of this as a mission project, but the kids were pretty pumped. This seemed like a worthwhile cause to them. They really wanted to help.

One of them got the idea to do a bottle and can drive, and the others all concurred that this would be a great, and relatively easy, fundraising project. All they’d need to do would be to remind the people at church to save bottles and cans for them, and then they’d bring them in, and, voila, easy money.

When you’re a youth leader, you really want to let the kids lead when they are excited about an idea. They really were excited about this idea, so I encouraged them. Sure! Absolutely. We can do this. And so the bulletin announcements were written, the signs were made… the word went out. We were collecting bottles and cans.

And, of course, I felt a little funny about this, as far as Jim was concerned. I was worried. Would we be cutting into Jim’s income? I knew he depended on his bottle and can money. I made a mental note to hold some of our family’s returnables aside for Jim…. maybe we could even try to drink some extra diet soda over the next month. I worried about the next time I would see Jim. Would he be upset? Would he be hurt? I didn’t look forward to our next encounter.

I was in my office one grey November day. I hadn’t seen Jim since the bottle and can drive had begun, but it was going well; I had an appointment to meet a youth group member and his mom to take two carloads to the supermarket to be redeemed. I don’t remember what I was working at, but I probably was on my computer. Then, I heard it: the familiar squeak of Jim’s shopping cart wheels coming down the hallway. I took a deep breath. I dreaded this meeting.

I stood up and poked my head out of my office door. “Hi,” he said. He had a raspy voice, a real smoker’s voice. “Can we talk? In private?”

“Sure Jim,” I said. “Do you want to come into my office?” Jim nodded, and he wheeled his cart just outside my door. He ambled in sort of slowly—he always moved slowly—and he let himself down in a chair while I closed the door.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this bottle drive, Jim,” I said. That was narrowly true. I’d had a sense I should talk to him. But, in my dread about hurt feelings and so forth, I’d not really made any effort to make it happen.

“That’s what I want to talk about,” Jim said. He reached into the pocket of his big parka— it was really too big for him. He pulled out a wet, folded up, wrinkled $20 bill.

I looked at him, blankly.

“This is for the bottle drive. I want you to put this towards whatever the kids make.” Then he paused. “I don’t want them to know it’s from me.”

It took me a moment to re-orient myself from the conversation I’d been anticipating. For some reason, the first words out of my mouth were, “Jim, you don’t need to do this.”

He looked at me, hard. “Oh yes I do,” he said. He paused again. “It should be a lot more, but this is all I can manage at the moment.”

I did a quick calculation. $20.00. That’s four hundred cans. I had some vivid mental snapshots of Jim walking slowly down a street in my neighborhood, of Jim climbing three stairs somewhere to retrieve a bag, of Jim excited and adding up the numbers as we drove to the redemption center. I knew exactly what those bottles and cans cost him.

“Jim,” I began, but I never finished.

“I have not always been the person I should have been, especially when I was drinking, especially where women are concerned. Just know that…” another pause… “I need to do this.”

His voice brightened up as he rose to leave my office. “Have a nice day!” he said. When Jim said that, he said it without a hint of sarcasm. He meant it.

He took hold of his cart, and I listened as its squeaky wheels rolled down the carpeted hallway.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Do This In Remembrance, Sermon on Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” ⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ~ Rev. 21:1-6

I ask you this morning to do something that might be hard for you to do. I ask you to try, for a little while, to forget everything you have ever learned about the Book of Revelation. Images of Armageddon, or Sunday School pictures of the anti-Christ… planes, trains and automobiles left suddenly driver-less… a certain publishing juggernaut, those books with the lurid flame-colored covers that claim to tell us exactly what it all means, what we can all expect. I ask you this morning to do something that might be hard: forget all that. Put it away, put it aside, and, just for a little while, entertain this possibility: the Book of Revelation is a document that describes the attempts of a community to deal with unspeakable loss.

The community that first heard John’s Revelation was living in a world that probably felt apocalyptic for them… remember the hours after 9/11, or, for those of you whose memories are longer, the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Remember that feeling of suddenly living in a different, frightening world, a world that caused you to ask all sorts of questions you’d never faced before. What do we do now? My family, my community, those I love… are we safe? Will my son or daughter or spouse be shipped off to war? For the early Christian community, which we must remember was also, largely, a Jewish community, there was at least a twofold trauma: first, Roman armies had destroyed both the Temple and Jerusalem in August of the year 70 CE. And second, in the aftermath of that destruction, Romans especially singled out followers of Jesus for persecution.

This was a time of tremendous loss. The loss of the Temple was a kind of death. It was the symbolic destruction of more than 500 years of sacred ritual and prayer. It was the death of a way of life, the way of the Jewish priesthood offering sacrifices on behalf of the people. It was the loss of a place that had been central to Jesus and the culmination and goal of his ministry.

And the losses continued, extended into each home, each life. Parents, children, spouses, friends… everyone was touched by death. Everyone was touched by loss. Entire communities were struggling daily with the question of how to face yet another day of persecution, yet another day of uncertainty, yet another day of loss. The early followers of Jesus were suddenly living in a different, frightening world, a world that caused them to ask all sorts of questions they’d never faced before. What do we do now? My family, my community, those I love… are we safe? Will someone I love be snatched up and shipped off to war?

We don’t have to be touched by apocalyptic events to have our own experiences of deep loss. Someone played me a song this week. In a week when my mother has been much on my mind, and on my dad’s mind, it struck a chord. It’s called "Ghost In This House."

I don't pick up the mail

I don't pick up the phone

I don't answer the door

I'd just as soon be alone

I don't keep this place up

I just keep the lights down

I don't live in these rooms

I just rattle around

I'm just a ghost in this house

I'm just a shadow upon these walls

As quietly as a mouse I haunt these halls…

I don't care if it rains

I don't care if it's clear

I don't mind staying in

There's another ghost here

He sits down in your chair

And he shines with your light

And he lays down his head

On your pillow at night

I'm just a ghost in this house…[i]

To me, that song describes so powerfully what it can feel like when someone we have loved is missing from our presence. It can be so difficult and so painful to go on in the face of that kind of loss. But it can be good to recognize that loss is in a sense a part of the DNA of our faith. It was there from the beginning. Think of Jesus’ original friends and followers, watching with horror as his life ebbed away—despite his warnings to them that his death was coming, that it was inevitable. And even after the resurrection, he disappeared again from their sight. Their losses piled up, and they yearned for consolation, and some kind of promise of reconciliation and restoration. They longed for hope.

The Revelation to John is filled with images of hope. The more war-like images have captured our attention (and that of the people who are cashing in on one rather strange interpretation of this book), but to focus on them is to lose sight of the big picture. The entire book can be seen as a glorious worship service, a service enacting the whole of salvation history—the movements from creation, through loss, and on into ultimate redemption. In the face of their own losses, enormous, unbearable, unspeakable losses, the early followers of Jesus cast all their hopes on this glorious promise of heavenly worship in which, as one writer has cautioned, “A few are charged to do judgment; [but] everyone without exception is charged to show mercy.”[ii]

When we are feeling like our losses render us mere ghosts in our own houses, Revelation invites us to a great worship service where we too may hope to get a glimpse of the big picture. When we are oppressed by a sense that our losses are too much for us, Revelation beckons us to that place where we can find that we are already part of a new heaven and a new earth. But even in view of this promise, we are still called to remember. Built into the very DNA of our faith is a command to remember… it’s been there from the beginning. When we gather around the table to break the bread and to take the cup, we are gently reminded that even painful memories, even our most devastating losses, can be gathered together and made holy in community. They are made holy because, as Revelation reminds us, the home of God is among mortals. That is what our communion is about: we do this in remembrance of the One who suffered… who we lost… but who was raised again, and who lit for us the path to new life, life even after loss, life even after death.

I ask you this morning to do something that might be hard for you to do. I ask you try, for a little while, to gather up your memories… the memories of those you have lost, in whatever way you lost them, and I ask you to commend them into the hands of God, who has made a home with us, and in us. I ask you to join me in commending them into the care of the one who has promised to dwell with us as our God, so that we might be God’s people. I ask you to trust with me in the one who will wipe every tear from our eyes, promising that, in the long run, in the big picture, death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for God is making all things new. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Alison Krauss.

[ii] Christina Rosetti, The Face of the Deep, 292.

The Way to See: Sermon on Mark 10:46-52

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Sometimes I think I don’t give Mark enough credit. Don’t misunderstand me. I love the gospel of Mark… at times, I think it’s my favorite gospel (that’s usually when I am reading it…). I love its leanness. I love its political edge. I love its lack of a resurrection appearance, only the strange instruction that Jesus is already in Galilee, so we had better get ourselves there. I love the fragments of Aramaic, Jesus’ native tongue. Talitha cum. Eloi, eloi, lema sabachtani. I love its earliness: the gospel feels so close to the earthly life of Jesus, it's almost like being a detective on the trail before it's gone cold, as if the vague scent of nard is still in the room.

I love the so-called messianic secret, how Jesus keeps saying, “Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone who I really am.” There is a Leonardo da Vinci painting of John the Baptist, an unusual one, in that he is neither portrayed as already decapitated, nor looking like a wild man in animal skins. In this portrait he looks well, robust, and—really odd for John—he looks cheerful. He is shown pointing his right finger over his left shoulder as if to say, Not me, him. And to me, that's Jesus in the gospel of Mark. People keep wanting to label him, pin him down, box him up, and he keeps pointing his finger over his shoulder at God, and insisting, Not me, Him.

Now, having said all that, still, sometimes I think I don’t give Mark enough credit. I don’t tend to think he’s being subtly or slyly theological. But he is. I don’t think he has an overarching agenda, except for clean, clear reporting of Jesus’ comings and goings. But he has. Take today’s gospel story, the healing of blind Bartimaeus. Now, any one of us who has heard a certain hymn knows, right out front, that any time someone in the gospel goes from being blind to seeing, in a sense, they also go from being lost to being found. They are coming to faith. The gospels have numerous stories about those who are “blind” to the truth presented in the person of Jesus, and these are usually people who should know perfectly well that Jesus speaks God’s truth… people such as the scribes and Pharisees, who spend every waking moment studying or debating the Torah, or even the disciples, who spend every waking moment at Jesus’ side. These are people who should know. But, typically, they are blind to what is right there in front of them. They cannot see Jesus for who he really is. They don’t get it.

Then, along come unlikely people… really unlikely people… but after a while we realize they are the usual suspects. Sinners. Tax collectors. Women from whom seven demons have been cast out. Heck, women generally! And children. Let’s not forget them. Non-Jews. Syrophoenicians. Samaritans. These folks come along, and despite their lack of the right lineage, or the right education, or the right social status… they can see. They do not suffer from the kind of blindness that afflicts those who should know better. Blind beggars, sitting by the side of the road can see perfectly well who and what Jesus is. These unlikely characters see. They know. They get it.

So, it’s tempting to right away assign symbolic relevance to the story of the healing of Bartimaeus. The blind beggar sitting by the side of the road represents those who are most likely to be able to see the truth about Jesus: the marginalized, the nobodies. We’ve spoken of them before. Beautiful. A perfect story.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

But lets not be too hasty. Let’s give the story its due. Let’s look at it in context, and not simply as a wonderful little story about coming to faith (though it is still that). This story comes at the end of a section of the gospel known as the “discipleship” section. Beginning with chapter 8, verse 22, we have story after story of Jesus trying to explain to anyone who will listen exactly what it means to follow him on his way. In fact, the section begins with the healing of another blind man… a healing that is unusual in that it takes Jesus two tries to accomplish it. Between the two blind men, we have story after story of the “blindness” of the religious leaders, or the “blindness” of the disciples, who, no matter how many times Jesus spells it out for them, continue to confuse following Jesus with opportunities for power, and status, and getting some kind of prize.

Following Jesus is not about power or status or getting some kind of prize.

If we look at the whole discipleship section of the gospel of Mark, there are several things we can say following Jesus is about. First of all, it is about the business of healing and being healed, and there is a correct order to those. Following Jesus is about recognizing in ourselves the wounds and emptiness and deep need that cannot be filled by ordinary measures, that will not respond to our usual ways of making ourselves feel better, from the cookie to the drink to the impulse buy to the wrong relationship. Following Jesus is about both recognizing our deep need, and identifying the one who can offer real healing. It is about not being too proud to ask for that healing, not being too stubborn to accept it, not being so foolish as to think some other matter takes precedence over it. And then it is about turning around and being in the business of offering that same healing to others, daring to imagine that we, even we can participate in spreading it around. It is daunting.

Second of all, following Jesus is about recognizing the deficits in our own faith systems. This is where nearly everyone in the gospel—all those folks who should know better—this is where everyone stumbles, where we all stumble. Everyone thinks they have it figured out. Everyone thinks they have nothing to learn. Everyone except one man—remember him?—his child is possessed with some terrible demon, and he desperately wants the child healed, and he knows it is all riding on his ability to trust Jesus. He cries out this cry of agony, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” And that terrible admission turns out to be precisely the credo Jesus wants from him, wants from all of us. I believe! Help my unbelief! It is humbling.

Third of all, following Jesus means understanding his intentions and the direction he is taking, his way of doing things. It means not blanching when we hear him say something like, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” It means a complete reversal of all we thought we understood about power and glory. Power is in weakness. Glory is in humiliation. It is confusing.

And so the discipleship section of the gospel of Mark comes to a dramatic culmination with this healing of yet another blind man. So much blindness, metaphorically speaking. And please understand, I do not want to minimize the real effects of literal, physical blindness on someone in Jesus’ time. We say “Bartimaeus the blind beggar,” as if there were any other option for a blind man in the ancient near east. To be blind was to reside on that last rung on the bottom of the social ladder, to be unable to work, to be utterly dependent on others for your very life. Nor do I want to presume such devastating consequences for those who are visually impaired in our day and age. Blindness today is not the same as blindness in Jesus’ day. Thank God, and science, and modern educational theory, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And yet, for Jesus’ day, the image of blindness was a powerful one with a specific meaning and set of consequences. Blindness equaled destitution. And so we find Bartimaeus, whose name can be translated, “son of Timaeus,” sitting by the side of the road…which can also be translated “the Way.” The Way is also what the very earliest Christians called their faith. We call it Christianity. They called it “the Way.” We find the son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, at the side of the Way. When he is made aware that the very large crowd passing before him is made up of Jesus and his entourage, he begins to cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And the people around him attempt to hush him up, to shut him down, but that only makes the son of Timaeus call out to the son of David with all the more fervor. “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Who was this son of Timaeus? He must be significant, because of all the healings in the gospel of Mark, this is the only one in which the person is named. “Timaeus” is the title of a dialogue written by Plato. It happens to be one of the most famous plays to be performed in the ancient, Greek-speaking world—the world Jesus inhabited.

In Timaeus, Plato says that all of us are blind, and only the enlightened philosopher can see. The philosopher is the one who can see [that] this world is fallen, and imperfect… It is what the philosopher truly sees which inspires [her] understanding of the truth.[i]

The son of Timaeus is sitting by the side of the Way, and Jesus and his entourage go by, and he calls out with all his might. And when Jesus says, let him come to me, he not only rises, he not only goes forward, he throws off his cloak. He throws off what is probably his only possession. Remember the wise and wealthy but ultimately sad young man who could not leave it all behind to follow Jesus… and see the contrast. See the joy with which Bartimaeus shrugs off his cloak, and his old life, and his old lack of vision. See how the only thing he asks of Jesus is to be able to see again. See how he knows he is in need of healing. See how he addresses Jesus as “my teacher,” showing us that he knows he does not know everything. See how he is willing to follow Jesus on the Way to the cross.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

The way to see is to know that we are wounded, and empty and in deep need of healing in all our brokenness. The way to see is to know that we don’t know, that our pre-conceived systems of faith and belief need to be re-fashioned, reformed, even. The way to see is to see the Way: the path Jesus follows. The hard path that is not about power or status or getting some kind of prize, but about service and giving and giving up the things we long to cling to.

Sometimes I don’t think I give Jesus enough credit, we don’t give him enough credit. We think we must approach him fully formed, and fail to realize it is for us to let him re-form us. We think we must be pretty or perfect or perfectly strong, and we don’t trust him with our brokenness, our need for healing. We think we need to know absolutely everything about him, or have our fully-fleshed out faith in place, intact, and we don’t trust him to teach us what we need to know. We think we can pull him along with us on whatever track we’re going, and don’t trust him to lead us on his path. But he wants us. Just as we are, without one plea. Blind beggars every one of us. Beautiful and broken, as we were created. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Rev. James Murray, after Tom Long, Midrash lectionary discussion list, October 23, 2003.

God's Hands: A Sermon on Job 38:1-18

A subtly stewardship-ish sermon... perhaps too subtle?

"K." was baptized yesterday.

~~~

We’ve walked in to a bit of a lecture here… a scolding, really. We are hearing the voice of God as an ancient writer conceived it, and God is speaking to Job. At the beginning of the book that bears his name, Job is described as “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” And Job has all the accoutrements that go along with faithfulness and uprightness in the thinking of the Ancient Near East: he is happy and he is prosperous. In Job’s world virtue equals success. He has flocks and herds and lots of property. He has ten children who actually love to spend time together, and host one another for wonderful family dinners. But all that is about to change. When a member of God’s heavenly court—a kind of devil’s advocate figure—asks permission to test Job, God says, sure. Go ahead. Test him. Let’s see what Job is really made of.

In the twinkling of an eye, Job has lost everything. By the sudden actions of enemy armies and fire from heaven and violent winds, everything he had is gone. Property, gone. Flocks and herds, gone. Even his ten children, gone. And Job spends the next thirty or so chapters of the book that bears his name trying to figure out what on earth has happened, and defending his moral character to “friends” who are sure he must have done something to deserve all this calamity. Throughout those chapters Job questions God. Job asks that classic question: why do bad things happen to good people? Why did these bad things happen to me? Why did I lose nearly everything I hold dear—property, flocks, herds, even my children? Why? Job asks God to explain.

Job is not the only one who wants answers to these kinds of questions. When the worst happens, it seems a part of our human nature to ask why. We would like to know why bad things happen to good people, why the cancer strikes or the job is lost or the company has to close its doors. We would like to know why homes burn to the ground or are flooded beyond repair, or why someone comes to feel that their only option is to commit an act of violence. We, too, would like God to explain.

The passage we have read this morning is a small part of God’s response, though I don’t think we can call it an explanation in any sense. Rather than explaining the problem of suffering, God directs Job’s attention elsewhere. The works of my hands, God says. Look at all my hands have done. Look around you at the wonders of creation. Who did you think did all this?

…who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’? ~ Job 38:8-11

God speaks of the earth as if it were a tiny child—a newborn baby—and as God does, divine love and care for that earth become apparent. Despite the occurrence of calamity, God seems to be saying, do not doubt that I love the earth and all its creatures with the tenderness of a parent for its newborn baby.

See what wonders the hands of God have performed! In the ancient language of our faith, God’s hands laid the foundations of the earth while the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy. Or, as we might say in 2009, God tipped over the first cosmic domino that led to the Big Bang, and carefully watched over the debris that was flung from our medium sized star as it whirled itself into planets. Creation. However you look at it, in whatever terms you describe it, God is responsible for it. The mind and heart and will and hands of God fashioned everything that is. God says to Job, Look at the wonders my hands have done!

This response of God—this non-explanation—silences Job’s questioning. But we are still left with the problem of evil—the problem of bad things happening to good people. This problem is not resolved in Job, though some later author gets cold feet and tacks on a happy ending to satisfy those who insist that goodness must equal happiness. The heart of the book of Job points our attention away from suffering and towards evidence of God’s goodness, evil and suffering notwithstanding. Yes, life is hard—but look at the stars. Yes, you have lost much, maybe even everything—but look at the sea. I don’t know that it is a satisfactory answer for most of us.

God’s motives and methods remain a mystery to us, unknowable, unfathomable. But there is something we can know: we can know the works of God’s hands. We can know God as the one who commanded the morning to dawn and who has walked in the recesses of the deep. We can know God as the one who taught the trees to turn themselves into pillars of fire, and who created the infinitely beautiful patterns of snowflakes.

We can know the works of God’s hands. We can warm ourselves on a chilly autumn night with the bounty from the garden and the orchard… the savory winter squash, the glorious crisp apples. We can know the works of God’s hands. We can peer into the face of K., and see the beauty God has created, the miracle that is life, and the gifts that result from human love. We can know the works of God’s hands. We can look around us in this beautiful sanctuary and see people whom God has called together into community, we who have been joined in the body of Christ. We can know the works of God’s hands.

And then perhaps our response to the problem of evil and suffering in the world can be shifted. Perhaps instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” we can respond by asking “How can we help?” or “What can we do?” I heard not too long ago that one unforeseen result of the recession we seem to be emerging from was unprecedented numbers of volunteers, people showing up at non-profit agencies to offer their help. People who had lost their jobs have been reaching out to others who are struggling in record numbers.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.[i]

Some attribute that prayer to the medieval mystic Teresa of Avila, and some attribute it to the 20th century mystic, Teresa of Calcutta. And others tell this story:

There is a church in the UK that was damaged by the Blitzkrieg, and a group of German students went to restore the church [after the war was over]. The hands on the statue of Jesus were blown off, and instead of fixing it, the German students posted "Jesus has no hands but our hands."[ii]

Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Ours are the eyes with which God looks out and sees the suffering of the world, and seeks to alleviate it. Ours are the eyes that see the loneliness of the homebound neighbor, and make a decision to stop in to bring some flowers from the sanctuary. Ours are the feet that will walk to do good, seeking to eradicate hunger in our area by participating in this afternoon’s C.H.O.W. walk. Ours are the hands with which we will dig into hearts and pockets and calendars in order to do the work of God’s church. Ours is the body from which no one is rejected, of which every member is valued for his or her unique contribution. God has no body now on earth but ours. No hands but ours. God depends on our hands to continue the work of creation and nurturing God has begun.

Now. What shall we do with these hands of ours? These miracles of design and creation in their own right? Scripture and our own experience of the world remind us of the ever-creative, ever-caring hands of God at work. Look at what God’s hands have done! What shall we do with our hands? Thanks be to God! Amen.

[i] Teresa of Avila? Or Teresa of Calcutta?
[ii] Evangelical Lutheran Church in America website.

The Welcome Table: Sermon on Mark 8:1-10

We are receiving new members here at St. Sociable Church today, and since this will be their first time as members of a Calvin-descended church, I thought it might be fun to share just a bit of Calvitrivia, a perhaps little known fact about our history.

Many of you know that John Calvin is considered the father of our denomination. He was without a doubt one of the greatest thinkers and theologians of the Reformation. Calvin has gotten a bad rap in the modern era, a reputation as being a kind of harsh, repressive curmudgeon. I am here, first of all, to stand up for the Calvin I know and love. The man was a poet, and his poet’s heart was filled with a fervent love of Christ and the church. Listen to these words, his meditation and teaching on the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which we are going to celebrate today:

We shall benefit very much from the Sacrament if this thought is engraved and impressed upon our minds: that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time, injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren’s bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him. Accordingly, Augustine with good reason frequently calls this Sacrament “the bond of love.”[i]

How beautiful, and how perfect. These are the tangible effects we can hope for in our sharing of the Lord’s Supper: it is an expression of our deep communion with one another and with Christ, our deepest expression of the love we hold for one another and for God. Calvin has stated it so perfectly. And yet, followers of John Calvin instituted a practice that was, at the very least, startling in light of the paragraph I’ve just read to you. This was the practice of Communion Tokens.

There was a concern, in an earlier day, with “irregularities” in the Lord’s Supper, and by that I do not believe they meant the use of pita bread and tortillas. Rather, they were concerned that no one who was unworthy should receive the sacrament. And so a practice arose, by which the elders of the local church would visit all the members prior to their annual celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The purpose of the visit was to ensure that the members had been accurately instructed in the faith, and that they were leading lives worthy of their calling of the Lord. In this country, the use of communion tokens was common in Cavin-Descent Churches, especially those of Scots heritage, well into the 19^th century. (I don’t know for certain, but I imagine the tokens were used at St. Sociable at some point.)

This practice doesn’t exactly describe what I like to think of as “the Welcome Table.” Jesus told us, again and again, by word and by action, that God invites us to a banquet, and all are welcome. Calvin wrote so eloquently of how the Lord’s Supper should bind the community together, of the ways in which it should remind us so strongly that we are all members of the Body of Christ. It’s odd that his followers should have been such strong proponents of “fencing” the table. And, of course, use of the tokens ended eventually. Churches changed their thinking about who to welcome to the table and how to welcome them. I suspect stories like our passage from Mark’s gospel had something to do with that.

It’s déjà vu all over again! Yes, this is the same basic story we treated at length during the summer, as the lectionary served it up to us no fewer than six times. The story of the feeding of the multitudes is retold no fewer than six times in the New Testament… twice in Mark’s gospel alone. It is an event that is surely at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. It tells us volumes about how Jesus looked at and listened to and responded to people.

Jesus had compassion for the people. That means, Jesus looked at people and saw their need. Jesus listened to people and heard their pain. Jesus taught people and noticed their hunger. Jesus put his hands on people and responded to their injuries and illness. All these things are happening right here, as Jesus is in the presence of a large crowd of people who are in need, in pain. Jesus is seeking to feed people who are hungry, and heal people who are ill. Nowhere in this story—or in any gospel story—does Jesus look for a token, or check someone’s credentials before deciding to feed them. The only “credential” anyone must present is their rumbling stomach, their desire to take in what Jesus is serving. Jesus’ feeding them does not depend on their worthiness; it depends on his compassion.

As the years have gone by our church has relaxed many of its restrictions on who may receive the Lord’s Supper. We no longer require tokens testifying to people’s “worthiness.” We no longer require communicants’ classes, or that people be a certain age. We now regard the Lord’s Supper just as we regard Baptism: it is not our Sacrament, but God’s. God’s grace is more powerful than our understanding or lack of understanding. God’s grace is real and effective. God’s grace works best when we simply get out of the way, and let it flow into the world.

In the end, it is not our table. It is Christ’s. And Christ, by his example, shows us a grace that is all too willing to be spent lavishly on the unworthy, which, of course, includes all of us. Christ, by his example, sets a table that has room at it for you and for me and for all God’s children wherever they might be. Canada. Mexico. Peru. Indonesia. Afghanistan. China. Christ gives us a sacrament that can be beautifully summed up as “a bond of love,” and demonstrates that that bond extends beyond our expectations. Christ reminds us that when our sister in Ethiopia has no bread, we should feel her hunger. Christ reminds us that when our friend in OurTown has no home, we should feel the harshness of the elements on his skin. Christ reminds us that when our brother in Laramie is beaten, we should feel his pain.

It is not our table. It is the table of Jesus Christ, which is here in this place and in every corner of the world. It is not our table. But we are welcomed to it. We are received with open arms. It is not our table, but it is surely our responsibility to extend the welcome. Thanks be to God.

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[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960) ed. John T. McNeill, Translated and Indexed by Ford Lewis Battles, [VI, xvii, 38], 1415.