A Rush of Wind: Sermon on Acts 2:1-21

Two weeks ago we had a brief spring windstorm. Late that Saturday night we hunkered down in our homes, listening first to the whistle and then to the roar of wind outside. It blew through the rafters and rattled the windows. It made the hair stand up on the backs of our necks. It blew around items that weren’t strapped down—recycling bins, light patio furniture. I wondered, at a certain point, whether it might not lift the roof right off my house. In the morning, we surveyed the damage: downed branches, the occasional power line, and worse. For one neighbor the casualty was a beloved old tree. The wind has amazing and unpredictable power.

Our passage from the Acts of the Apostles depicts the coming of the Holy Spirit in a violent rush of wind. The Spirit comes in power and is frightening in its intensity. Both Hebrew and Greek use a single word to signify “wind” and “spirit” and also “breath.” At the heart of this image of “Spirit as wind” lies a fairly simple truth: like the wind, the Holy Spirit is most easily described by what it does.

It is fifty days after the Passover celebration. It is fifty days after the great Easter event, the resurrection of Jesus. For forty of those post-resurrection days Jesus has walked once again with and among his friends, alternately hiding from them and revealing himself to them, cooking for them, eating with them, and returning with them almost to a state of normalcy. People speak of finding the “new normal” after a major life event. But what is “normal” for someone who was dead but who now is alive? What is “normal” for one who has always been recognized as a man but who now is recognized as belonging to some other newly revealed categories as well—Lord, Messiah, even, God?

In a sense there has been no pretext of “normal” for Jesus and his friends since the resurrection. They exist in terra nova, a new land, in which the mission and ministry of Jesus must now be accomplished in a new way. This is dramatically demonstrated to them forty days after Easter, when Jesus is “lifted up, and a cloud [takes] him out of their sight” and into heaven, leaving Jesus’ work squarely in their hands. And yet… they haven’t exactly thrown themselves wholeheartedly into their work. They have not been preaching or teaching or casting out demons or healing the sick. In fact, the disciples and friends of Jesus have been in a kind of limbo. They have been hunkered down in an upper room. They have been praying a lot. They have attended to what you might call administrative details, choosing Matthias to replace Judas, for example. Their numbers are at a healthy “small church” level of 120. But they’re not growing. They’re not trying to grow. Frankly, they’re mostly trying to avoid dying.

Finally, the day of Pentecost arrives. For Jews, a harvest festival associated with God giving the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. The friends of Jesus have spent the night, once again, hunkered down in that upper room, all together in one place. “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…” [Acts 2:2, 4a] It happens in an instant: in a whistle, and then a rush, and then a roar… the Spirit comes.

It is easier to talk about what the Spirit does than who the Spirit is. Here are some things the Spirit does:

• The Spirit gives Jesus’ followers the ability to speak in other languages.

• The Spirit prompts Jesus’ followers to tell of God’s deeds of power.

• The Spirit promises insight—vision—to “all flesh”—sons, daughters, young, old, slaves, free—there is no limit placed on who will receive this particular manifestation of the Spirit’s power.

And that’s just in our passage. The same author composed the Acts of the Apostles and the gospel of Luke—they are a kind of two-part book, telling of Jesus and the early church. Together they have been described as “the acts of the Holy Spirit.” And that is so true. In chapter after chapter, verse after verse, the acts of the Holy Spirit are recounted. Luke’s gospel begins with the birth of John the Baptist—Luke tells us, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit” [Luke 1:15]. By the power of the Holy Spirit a young woman conceives Jesus, the one who will be called Son of God [Luke 1:35]. In adulthood John the Baptist tips off his followers that “one who is more powerful than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” [Luke 3:16]. Jesus begins his ministry quoting that powerful passage from Isaiah; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…” [Luke 4:18-19]. And on and on and on: the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the life of Jesus.

The book of Acts reads the same way—the Holy Spirit is hiding in every upper room, providing courage in every jail cell, inspiring believers to prayer down by every river, and filling the mouths of Jesus’ followers with words—on the streets where they are compelled to share the Good News, and in the courtrooms where they plead their cases before the mighty. And on and on and on: the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the life of the church.

And the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in our lives. As one theologian has explained it: if God the Father is God over us, and Jesus is God for us, then the Spirit is God at work in us. The Spirit gives us the gift of prayer. If you have ever been moved to say a prayer, whether at the bedside of someone you love or to simply say “thank you” for the glory of an early summer day—you have experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in you. The Spirit gives us the gift of the church. If you have ever chosen to do something that binds you more closely to the other members of the body of Christ—you have experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in you. The Spirit gives us the gift of forgiveness. If you have ever been moved to forgive someone who wronged you—or to seek forgiveness from someone whom you have wronged—then you have experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in you.

As dramatic and astonishing as we find the power of a wind that can uproot a tree or send a house spinning, it is nothing compared to the kind of power that can enter the human heart and change it. There are at least two astonishing examples of that specific use of the Spirit’s power in the Acts of the Apostles. First, we have the famous story of Saul the Pharisee, who at one moment is “breathing threats and murder” against followers of Jesus, and in the next is calling Jesus Lord and becoming his apostle Paul [Acts 9:1-20]. And second, we have the story we read several weeks ago, about Peter having a change of heart through a Spirit-given vision that persuades him that God’s love is for everyone, and we cannot construct walls to prevent others from having access to the Good News [Acts 10:1-11:18]. The Spirit can enter the human heart and change it. Both Paul and Peter know that, first hand.

Look again at the actions of the Spirit in our passage: they cluster powerfully around communication and understanding. The Spirit allows people to come together in understanding, who, before, spoke completely different languages. The Spirit fosters the best possible use of language—allows it to be used, not as a weapon or a wall, but as a bridge. It is no accident that on Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the birth of the church—a body of believers that is possible only because the powerful, awe-inspiring Spirit, has knocked down the walls that divide us, replacing “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, [and] factions” with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” [Ephesians 5:20b, 22-23]. We can’t do that on our own. The Spirit has to do it for us.

And now: The Spirit has been poured out. And so Jesus’ work has been placed squarely in our hands. And yet… something holds us back from throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into our work. We friends and followers of Jesus have been in a kind of limbo. We have been hunkered down in our own beautiful upper room, the church. And we have been praying a lot. And we have attended to what you might call administrative details, conscientiously keeping up strong rosters of deacons and elders. Our numbers are at a healthy “small church” level of about 77 in worship. But we’re not growing. Frankly, we’re mostly trying to avoid dying.

The Pentecost story speaks to our situation, point for point. Hunkered down. Worried about the future. Scared of dying. But then it comes: the strong rush of wind, and the Spirit entering in with a new imperative: Jesus’ friends and followers are no longer content to wait around inside. They are compelled to step outside their doors. They are driven to speak to others, even across boundaries of language and custom. They cannot help themselves: they are inspired to share the Good News of what God has done!

Pentecost is now. It is not merely some moment in the distant past, to be fondly remembered with a tear in our eye. It is now. The moment to step outside our doors is now. We know the Spirit by what it does, and the Spirit promises to be with us:

• The Spirit will continue teach us how to speak to one another, and how to reach out to others, even across great divides, how to share the Good News.

• The Spirit will continue to show us—every single one of us— a vision for the life God dreams for us.

• The Spirit will continue to dwell inside us, so that God’s dream for our lives becomes our dream.

Pentecost is now. The Spirit is as real as the breeze that will blow across your face and ruffle your hair when you step outside the sanctuary doors. The Spirit stands ready to renew us, from the inside out. Pentecost is now. Thanks be to God. Amen.

One: Sermon on John 17:20-26

Jesus is praying for us, today, in this passage from the gospel of John. Let’s start there. He prays, “I ask not only on behalf of these…” by whom he means, his friends, his disciples, the ones gathered around him, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,” which is to say, every Christian who followed. Which is to say, us. Jesus is praying for us.

We are seven weeks into the Easter season, just a Sunday away from the great celebration of Pentecost, and the lectionary appoints for us a story that takes place on the night before Jesus is crucified. It sounds strange I know. But of all the gospels, the gospel of John shines with the resurrection in every verse. It is always there, saturating every scene, every interaction, every conversation. The resurrection is encoded in the opening verses… “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” [John 1:1, 3b-4]. The resurrection is behind John the Baptist’s description of Jesus, yelled out as he passes by: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” [John 1:29b]. In John’s gospel, the resurrection informs the content of the miracles, whether Jesus is turning water into wine at a wedding, providing the revelers with a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, or he is raising a man from death to life, a tantalizing foreshadowing of his own rising. Everywhere, in virtually every verse, the gospel of John speaks, shouts, sings joyfully of the resurrection.

And so, the resurrection is right there, even on the night Jesus is betrayed into the hands of those who will kill him. We have wandered into a powerful, private moment here. Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends. John’s gospel devotes four chapters to Jesus’ words of farewell, and they are modeled very much after the ancient Greco-Roman farewell speech: The speaker announces his imminent departure, recalls his life, urges his audience to follow in his footsteps, perhaps even surpassing him in their behavior, and consoles them in their sorrow. Our passage constitutes the very end of this lengthy goodbye, a moment in which Jesus has moved into a prayer on behalf of his followers—and it bears repeating, he is not only talking about the ones in the room with him, the men and women who have followed him, and learned from him, and sat at table with him, and allowed him to wash their feet; he is also taking about us. He mentions us by name, we who have heard of Jesus as a result of a long and ancient chain of storytellers and preachers, from the people in that room, all the way down to our grandparents, and our parents and our preachers and our Sunday School teachers, to us.

Jesus is praying for us. He prays, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” [John 17:20-21]. This is Jesus’ prayer: that we may be one, even as Jesus and God are one.

The next logical question: What does it mean to be one as Jesus and God are one? Great volumes of ink have been spilled over this exact question, and blood, too. It is a big question, and it might be that we can’t start there. It might be that we have to look more—locally. So, let’s look around us. Where do we see parables of what it means to be “one”?

Let’s look at the news. I know it might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but take politics: There was an election in Britain last week, and the painful global recession once again took its toll on the incumbents, booting Labor prime minister Gordon Brown out of office. But there was no clear majority winner, and so the party which garnered the most votes—the Conservatives—formed a coalition with the Liberal Democratic party. Their goal in doing this is clear: they have to rescue their nation from the brink of bankruptcy and worse. So these two parties—which are almost at opposite ends of the political spectrum—have chosen to become one, a single ruling coalition, in order to do the monumental task that has been set before them.

Or, we could look to industry and government’s response to the latest environmental disaster: There are some estimates that the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico in the past three and a half weeks is already greater than that lost by the Exxon Valdez. It quickly became clear, following the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent uncontrolled release of oil, that all hands were required on deck, and British Petroleum put out a call to, not only the US government (including our armed forces), but also to all the other oil companies asking for their help in trying to stem the disaster. As the technicians and engineers attempt to cap the spill, those who fish the waters of the Gulf of Mexico for a living are being hastily trained to do the arduous work of, literally, mopping up the oil and tar that have been washing ashore and working their way into the fragile Mississippi River delta. In other words, enormous numbers of people are coming together from very disparate backgrounds in the service of one goal: to save the waters and wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico.

One thing to note about both these examples of “oneness.” In each instance, people are coming together who are not necessarily likely allies. The fisherman and the BP oil executive, on April 19, had very different priorities, as did the Liberal Dems and the Tories on May 6. But in the wake of the disaster in the gulf, in the wake of the vote and the threat of a hung parliament, priorities were reordered, and those whose primary interest had been profits came together with their competitors and critics. Extraordinary events conspired to make “one” those who might never otherwise have found themselves seated around the same table.

What about us? “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” This is Jesus’ prayer. There are two separate themes in theses verses. First: Jesus’ desire that we be one. There is a belief that tends to make its way into our common life, that unity must equal unanimity. Or, to put it another way, that the way to be “one” is for all of us to always agree with one another. To be “one,” we must be of “one mind.” But our examples from the news show us another way. They tell us stories of those who may have strong, principled disagreements—those who believe we should or should not engage in offshore drilling, those who believe the tax burden should or should not be shifted from the poor and middle classes to the wealthy. All these disparate voices, the holders of these divergent opinions, suddenly recognize the imperative that they must come together, now, for the sake of something that is bigger, something that is more important than their disagreements.

And that brings me to the second theme: the reason Jesus wants us to be one. His reason is simple: “…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Ah. There’s the rub. Another glance through the newspaper reveals a sad truth: if there’s anything we Christians do well, it’s argue. The testimony for this is present right in scripture—just read 1 Corinthians for a rip-roaring account of a church with seriously dysfunctional relationships—I mean, people who are seriously at one another’s throats. And if we are at one another’s throats—and usually, what we’re arguing over who is most perfectly following Jesus—oh, the irony of it! Then none of us is really following Jesus! And that pretty much throws our opportunities for showing the world the wonders of our faith in the garbage heap.

Martin Luther’s definition of sin was “the human curved in upon himself (or herself).” When we play “who’s on first” with our faith—when I claim my faith is better or truer than your faith—I am embodying that definition of sin far more successfully than I am following Jesus. I am looking inward at myself and ignoring the whole beautiful and broken world God to which has called every one of us to bring the Good News of God’s love. And you know, the state of the world today—it’s every bit as big an emergency as a potential hung parliament or an oil spill. We have every conceivable reason to put aside our differences on behalf of the effectiveness of the gospel. We have every conceivable reason to show to the world that the followers of Jesus are “one,” because it is a world that is aching for repair and restoration, and our Good News is the prescription.

In 1991 the band U2 was recording “Achtung, Baby,” their seventh studio album. They were using as their theme the reunification of Germany; the Berlin Wall had fallen less than two years earlier. While they were in the studio, however, conflict arose among the members of the band over their musical direction and the quality of their material. After weeks of backbiting and slow-to-no progress the band began to rally, around a song that came about, largely, through improvisation. Here are some of the lyrics:

One love, One blood
One life, You got to do what you should
One life, With each other
Sisters, Brothers
One life, But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

We get to carry each other. Not only that, we get to let God carry us. Jesus is praying for us. And that means Jesus has placed the notorious problem of our failure to be one in God’s hands. Our job is to follow Jesus, so that probably means we should put our “oneness” problem in God’s hands. And that would suggest that, in addition to working hard to set aside our differences, we should probably be joining Jesus in his prayer. It really is true that, if you have a complaint against someone, a resentment, the best possible thing you can do (for yourself!) is to pray for them. Nothing about smiting, mind you. Take that person—or that group of people—you have trouble with and pray for them exactly as you pray for the people you love most in the world. Pray for them joy. Pray for them success. Pray for them wholeness and peace and every possible blessing from God’s generous heart. Do this without reserve or tricky clauses. Do this for a month. Do this, and see what happens. Do this, and be surprised at God’s amazing capacity for healing. Do this, and behold the power of Jesus’ prayer.

“I ask… that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” We are one, and we get to carry each other. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image courtesy of U2 Fan Life.

"At the River": A Monologue of Lydia, Acts 16:9-15

Ever since I was a child I have felt the sure sense of something greater when I am in the presence of running water. I was always drawn to the river… it put me in mind of the eternal, as I saw the cool, crystal tides flowing fast from an unknown source and proceeding in an unending course to the sea. Even as a little girl, when my mother would clothe me in my finest robe and take me to the temple for the ceremonies in honor of Athena, I would hang back, dropping a stone into the water to watch its ripples. I knew the gods and goddesses were not in the temple. I knew they were playing along the riverbanks, frolicking in the water.

I grew up in Thyatira, the eldest daughter in a family with many generations of membership in the venerable guild of dyers. Thyatira was known throughout the world for its exceptional indigo dyes; that meant our city was frequented by the emissaries of lords, chieftains and kings. Every royal family had need of our luxurious purple cloth. They needed to let the world know. To clothe yourself in purple is to announce: I am royalty. I am king.

I was schooled in the trade by my mother. While my brothers learned the art and craft of creating and using the precious indigo dyes, my sisters and I were learning the fine art of selling our goods, whether to brokers or directly to the very, very wealthy and powerful. Because I also married—as did most girls and women—I was a working mother, once my children came along. My daughter, Maia, proved a particularly good traveler. She came with me on my many trips to Philippi, when, with an entourage of two or three men, we would travel the 250 miles to trade, to sell our dyes and our cloths to those who could afford them.

My travels took me to many rivers and even to the sea. And my travels led me into the presence of others who felt the presence of the gods in different ways. I remember well dealing with a Jew from Samothrace, who puzzled me by being unable to make an appointment on the seventh day of the week. When I pressed him, he said “It is a day holy to my God. It is a day of rest, not of work or trade.” When I heard those words—a quiet thrill pierced my soul. And I tried to imagine what would be the shape of a life in which one day of the week —one entire day—was so sacred that no work might be done on that day, no trade, but only a kind of holy rest.

It became my custom both at home and in my travels to find a place where I might gather with others who worshipped the God of the Jews. I took particular pains to do this on the Sabbath—that was what they called the seventh day, the Sabbath. And to my delight, I found that in many places where there was no Jewish temple, such times of prayer took place at the river. This to me seemed a sign from the gods—or was it, simply, God?—that the worship of the Jews was right and good, and I decided to learn from them as much as I could.

It was a particularly trying journey, that year, the trek to Philippi. The rainy season lasted longer than normal, and so we set out later in the year than we had planned. Add to that the fact that my daughter, my Maia, became ill—nothing serious, just the normal discomforts of a traveling child’s stomach. When we arrived at our usual place of lodging, the rooms had been given away, and we found ourselves scrambling for other accommodations in the busiest trading days of the year. On an impulse, I went to a neighborhood I knew to be a home to the Jews, and knocked at the closest door. A woman answered, just about my age, and I explained our plight to her. I could see curious children gathered behind her. She hesitated; I knew that Jews were loath to share lodgings with Gentiles. Finally she looked down and saw my little Maia, pale but upright, clinging to my skirts. Her face softened. “We will find a place for you.”

An hour later we were settled in modest but comfortable rooms, one for Maia and myself and one for the men. After I had soothed and sung Maia into a nap I noticed a flurry of activity in the household. Two little boys carried wood, laughing and teasing as they ran in and out of the house, one little girl swept the floors while another stood alongside her mother kneading fragrant dough for bread. I stood uncertainly in the kitchen door, and asked our hostess, Rebekah: “Please, tell me you are not going to all these lengths for us; we do not want to impose.” Rebekah looked up and laughed. “Not at all. The Sabbath approaches. This is how you will always find us as evening draws near on the sixth day of the week.”

The Sabbath. Of course! I had nearly forgotten. And we would be in a household of Jews as they went about their observances. I was thrilled. I set out with an assistant to meet one of my buyers, with a firm promise to be back before the sun had set. Rebekah in turn promised to look in on Maia if she should stir.

I returned as promised, and found that Rebekah’s husband was home with the meat for the evening’s meal. As we gathered at the table, I heard Rebekah’s quiet explanation to her husband of our presence, and saw with relief he responded with a smile. “Our Lord Yeshua never turned away a stranger, Jew or Gentile alike. You did well, wife.”

This was the first time I heard the name which is above all other names. But I did not know that yet.

That Sabbath meal remains as one of the highlights of my life. How can I explain it? It was not the food, though the food was delicious. It was the soul, the spirit of the meal. I remember the flickering light of the Sabbath candles as Rebekah lit them, and then waved her hands over them, as if to welcome the Sabbath as a beloved guest. She intoned the Hebrew prayers that brought the Sabbath in words:

Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe,
who has sanctified us with his commandments,
and has commanded us to kindle the lights of the Sabbath.

And then a similar blessing over the shiny brown loaves of bread and the cup of sweet wine. And finally, a blessing I found most mysterious:

Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe,
Who sanctified us with his commandments, and commanded us to be a light to the nations
and Who gave to us Jesus our Messiah
the Light of the world.

As I tucked Maia into her bed that night, she said “I love the Sabbath” in her sleepy child’s voice. “So do I,” I murmured, as I kissed her on the forehead… I loved it, and I hardly knew what it was.

We rose early in the morning. W followed Rebekah and her daughters as she took the winding streets of the city and followed them through the city gate, to a wooded path that wound gently downhill, bringing us, finally, to the location we were seeking: a place of prayer at the river. There was a circle of rocks there, just the right size upon which to sit, and we took our places as a group of about a dozen women gathered there. A breeze whispered through the leaves of the trees as the river swept freshly across the rocks below.

Rebekah spoke: “It is written in Torah: ‘When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.’” [Leviticus 19:34-35]. As she spoke three men walked slowly down the hill and stood at a slight distance, listening. One of them was quite young—hardly older than a youth. Another man, perhaps a bit older, was tall and pale; he hung back and seemed disinclined to speak. But the man who arrested my attention was older still, small of stature, with thinning hair upon his head, and a somewhat twisted, limping gait. But these were not the first things one noticed about him. The first things I noticed were his eyes. I have never seen such fire behind a man’s eyes, before or since.

Rebekah looked up, expectantly, and the man with the fiery eyes spoke: “Grace and peace to you, sisters, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus, the Christ. I am Paul of Tarsus, and these are my companions Timothy and Silas. We are following the leading of a vision granted by the Holy Spirit. We believe the Spirit brought us here to Philippi to share the great Good News with you. Let us tell you about Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, he who is full of grace and truth…”

For the next hour—or was it more? I have no idea—I listened to the story of a man who had no need to clothe himself in purple in order to show that he was a king; a man whose royal nature expressed itself in miracles, in healing, in acts of love towards the least of his brothers and sisters. I listened to the story of the one who was the true child of God. I listened, and finally, I knew.

I understood, at last, what the river had been telling me since I had been a child. It was then that my heart opened like a flower in the spring sunshine, and I knew that I had found the answer I had been seeking all my life: the river was calling me. Paul led my daughter and me, and the others of my household to the water’s edge and asked whether we wanted to be baptized in the name of Jesus the Christ, and I answered, yes, we did. And one by one he led us into the cold, swirling water, and lowered us into it so that we arose, breathless, gasping for air, and so filled with the Holy Breath of God. And since that day I have made it my one goal to live a life—a busy, active life, the life of a mother and a wife, the life of a merchant of indigo dye and cloths—to live this life in a manner worthy of the Good News that took hold of my heart that Sabbath morning at the river. I invite you to do the same. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rules for Eating: Sermon on Acts 11:1-18

I am willing to bet that every person in this sanctuary not only has their own particular “rules for eating,” but can also rattle off at least two other sets of rules. That’s how prevalent the notion of “the right and wrong way to eat” has become in our culture. For most of us, arriving at those rules is a more or less casual affair. We go along in life, we figure out what works for us. For some of us, it’s “stay away from dairy,” for others it’s “no nuts, not ever.” Some of us feel better if we don’t eat past a certain hour in the evening; for others, that’s just when we’re getting really hungry. Many of us feel better if we do without certain foods; at the same time, we have the ones we absolutely, simply cannot do without.

The powers that be, those who look after the public good, have their $0.02 to add to the conversation. There’s the venerable USDA food pyramid. It breaks the diet down into grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, oils and what they euphemistically call “discretionary calories.” Alas, by the time we have eaten the requisite 6 ounces of grains, five-to-six servings of fruits and vegetables, and so on and so forth—all those things we need to maintain health—well, we don’t have a whole lot of discretionary calories left. Still, the Food Pyramid is the gold standard for Americans: it tells us what we may eat, urges us to eat a variety of foods within those possibilities, and promises that general good health will follow.

Other have submitted their health-based proposed rules for eating, everything from Dr. Dean Ornish’s claim that we should eliminate all fat from our diets to Dr. Robert Atkins’ claim of the precise opposite—that we should eat that fat! But health is not the only consideration when constructing rules for eating.

Several years ago, writer Barbara Kingsolver and her family decided to spend an entire year eating only food they’d raised themselves or food that was raised in their own neighborhood. If something didn’t fall into one of those two categories, they would learn to do without it. Her book chronicling that year is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and it’s had a profound impact on the way many people are re-thinking their own rules for eating. A friend of mine—who also lives in the northeast—says she and her partner are working towards this goal, but there is just one thing holding them back: the avocado.

Of course, young parents often have rules for eating that boil down to two basic tenets: 1, Eat your food. And 2, Food goes in your mouth, and nowhere else.

As even this little tour through some of the better-known examples demonstrates, rules for eating often have to do with more than simply eating. They may be aimed at solving problems ranging from the epidemic of obesity to coronary artery disease to the problem of getting spaghetti off the walls. In the case of Kingsolver and the “locavore” movement, the problems being addressed are spiritual: we are disconnected from the source of our food. We rely too much on the “industrial food pipeline” and not enough on our neighbors. We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating: food is always so much more than food. Eating is always so much more than eating.

We have a reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles, a book that tells us stories about the early, post-Pentecost church—the time after the resurrection, when Jesus’ friends are spreading the Good News through their own preaching and healing. In our reading, Peter is trying to explain an experience he has had, in which everything he had ever believed about the rules for eating has been dismantled and tossed away, at the instigation of God. Here’s the scenario. Peter, like Jesus, was raised a Jew, and so ate according to the laws laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Here’s just a sample of Peter’s understanding of the way God wanted him to eat:

Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof cleft in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cleft you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. And the pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses.

~ Deuteronomy 14:6-8

The rules for keeping kosher have been interpreted in a variety of ways. Some have tried to make the case that they were actually beneficial for health in the desert climate of the Ancient Near East, and that may be true. But the meaning of these rules in scripture is clear: honoring God’s instructions about eating has to do with the fundamental way in which Jews identified themselves as belonging to God. Their rules for eating, as well as other observances, made them a people set apart, God’s chosen people. Food is never just about food. Eating is never just about eating.

Back to Peter. He sees a vision—he’s recounting the vision today. In the vision, he sees all kinds of food—food considered unclean, inedible for a Jew—all this food, being lowered from heaven, and a voice commanding him to kill and eat. And he resists. He says no. Three times he says no. (Because, after all, this is Peter, and he likes to do things in threes, I guess.) And finally, he gets it. What he gets is this, in the words of the voice from heaven: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Peter is still puzzling over this vision when he is approached by representatives of Cornelius—a Roman centurion and God-fearer, who has had a simultaneous vision that he should see Peter. Please understand: as far as Peter’s beliefs are concerned, Cornelius is every bit as unclean—and therefore, as unacceptable—as that food was. When Peter comes to Cornelius’ home, and preaches the Good News to him and his family—well, it’s Pentecost all over again. The Spirit falls upon all the hearers, non-Jews that they are, and Peter sees it as God’s will and baptizes them.

And now Peter is back in Jerusalem, among the circumcised believers, those who are undoubtedly still keeping kosher, and he is asked a question: Why are you eating with these people? So Peter tells the story, he tells how his rules, not just for what to eat, but how to eat, with whom, were exploded, by a loud and clear message from God combined with his own experience of seeing the faith of Cornelius and his household. Peter concludes the story with a rhetorical question: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

For Christians, food is never just about food; eating is never just about eating. One could make the argument (and some have) that the early Christian movement, beginning with Jesus and continuing with his friends and followers, was almost entirely about table-fellowship. One could argue (and some have) that Jesus constantly pushed the boundaries of who is to be welcomed to that table. Jesus has no regard whatsoever for notions of clean and unclean, and he does his best to subvert and undermine them whenever he can. Here we find Peter following in his beloved master’s footsteps, and making the radical, truly scandalous judgment that the gospel is not to be fenced in, especially when God has made it so very clear: God gives the gifts of faith indiscriminately, to whomever God wishes. And the community is called upon to shift, spread out, and make room for another at the table.

And so here we are. Ready to gather around this table. And the gospel calls upon us, demands of us today that we know, in our hearts, as Peter knew, as Jesus knew, that the table of God is a radically welcoming place. Our rules for eating here have been expanded, opened up, so that we can make way for Jesus, the One who calls and welcomes each of us, who calls and welcomes all, the One who is the very welcome and love of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Do You Love Me? A Sermon on John 21:1-19

“Do you love me?”

There are so many ways to ask that particular question.

There is the tentative, newly-in-love lover… holding his breath, hardly able to ask for fear he’ll wither up and die if the response is not what he’s hoping for.

There is the angry, betrayed lover… wondering what has happened to this love, what has happened to this relationship, demanding to know what to expect next.

There is the playful child, trying to distract mommy or daddy from those tasks that seem so very interesting and important to them.

There is the friend making a request that they know may push at the boundaries of friendship—a room for a couple of months, a loan, a job.

There is the parent, fearful, perhaps pushing at the boundaries of their own pride and dignity, asking the now grown child what they can do to help now that the caretaking shoe is on the other foot.

“Do you love me?”

The composers of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” put these words in the mouth of the protagonist, Tevye. His world has just been turned upside down by his daughters breaking age-old tradition by choosing their own husbands, rather than allowing the matchmaker to find them spouses. His daughters say, “I love him, Papa.” Tevye turns to his wife Golde—they were brought together by the matchmaker, after all—and he asks her: Do you love me? To which she responds, “Do I what?”

“Do you love me?”

These words are in Jesus’ mouth this morning, in this third successive week of resurrection appearances by Jesus courtesy of gospel of John. It’s odd to find ourselves back in John’s gospel, because, do you remember how last week’s reading ended? As if it were really, really the ending of the gospel? John wrote (and we read),

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. ~ John 20:30-31

That sure sounds like the end of the gospel to me: Cut, print, it’s a wrap! But, intriguingly, there’s more—another chapter beyond that chapter with a pretty final-sounding ending. It’s as if John suddenly remembered something so vitally important, he said to himself—oh, I can’t leave this out, I just can’t. Whatever it is, it seems to have something to do with Simon Peter. And so another chapter begins. “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias [that is, the Sea of Galilee]; and he showed himself in this way.” After all the excitement and confusion of Easter morning—Mary and Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved—and then the further excitement and tension of Easter evening—the disciples minus Thomas, frightened and hiding out—and all the tension and doubt of the appearance one week later—Thomas, and his declaration, “My Lord and my God!”—well, it’s as if it’s all just a little too much for the disciples. Any of you who have ever been a witness or participant in a major life transition knows at least a bit what this feels like. After the birth, or after the death. After the wedding, or after the separation and divorce. Sometimes, you just need to do something that feels normal again. Simon Peter announces, “I’m going fishing.”

Peter. Peter, whose biography reads, in part, “Said to Jesus, ‘I will lay down my life for you,’ only hours before he denied three separate times that he even knew Jesus.” Peter whose head and heart must be filled with the most fascinating and difficult maelstrom of memory and regret, elation and hope. Peter tells the others, That’s it. I’ve had enough of whatever this is and has been. I’m going back to something I know, and know well. I am going fishing. And the other disciples, hard pressed to come up with a better idea, tag along.

Except, you don’t really tag along fishing. You don’t just go along for the ride. And, unlike our experience with fishing poles and streams, you don’t have much opportunity to relax and daydream while waiting for that nibble. Fishing with nets on the Sea of Galilee is something that requires serious concentration, and even more serious strength. It requires well-coordinated team effort.

Peter and company set out in a boat, fully aware of all the above—after all, this is what they do, or did, in the days before Jesus beckoned them along the Way. But their efforts, their teamwork, their patience, their strength—all is for naught, apparently, because they don’t notice even the slightest ripple on the water all that long night.

Night on the Sea of Galilee. What do the disciples do that long night while the fish are not swimming into their nets? Do they need to be silent so as not to scare away the fish? And if they are silent, are they all lost in thoughts that are pretty much identical? Or can they simply not stop themselves from murmuring to one another, again, all the events of the past weeks? Are they too lost in quiet conversation to notice a silver fin when it does slip quickly through the water?

Morning comes, at last, and with the light they can see that a man is standing on the beach. Once again, just as before, they don’t know him. They don’t recognize him. The risen Jesus is different. They don’t understand that it’s Jesus, not until his explicit instructions on where to cast their net yields a staggering bounty of fish. And then they see, and then Simon Peter—the one who was trying to get away from it all to begin with, the one who, perhaps, had the best reason to want to get away—Peter jumps into the sea to swim, as fast as he can, to Jesus’ side.

“Do you love me?” It’s later now. They’ve eaten a breakfast of bread and barbecued fish, and the hard work of waiting and then hauling is making them, perhaps, drowse in the warm morning sun. And Jesus asks Peter—or Simon, as he calls him, harkening back to the early days, when they were just beginning to know one another—he asks, “Do you love me?”

And Simon Peter, perhaps grateful to have the opportunity to say it, and say it to Jesus’ face, says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” It’s a relief, after all that denial and obfuscation and hanging out and hiding out. It’s a relief to be able to say it, to be able to make it plain: I love you. “Feed my lambs,” Jesus says. And we might assume that he would be satisfied.

But Jesus is not satisfied, because he asks again. Now Jesus sounds a little like that tentative, fearful lover, as if he’s saying, “Really? Do you really love me?” And Peter replies, again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Tend my sheep,” Jesus says. Is he satisfied now?

Evidently, not. Jesus needs to ask one more time. Peter feels hurt, we are told. But Jesus asks anyway. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” You know, Peter replies. You know. You know everything. Of course I love you. And Jesus nods, Yes, I know. Now. “Feed my sheep.”

Do you love me? What is this strange exchange all about? Is it about Jesus’ need? Or is it, maybe, about Peter’s need? Peter is given an opportunity to affirm his love for Jesus once for each time he denied it before. And along with the opportunity—to heal the breach, to unring the bell, to un-say the words (even though we can never really un-say the words), he is given his commission, his call. It’s as if Jesus is saying, alright Peter, now that we’re past that—now that you and I have no more unfinished business—it’s no longer about us. It’s about them. Feed them. Tend them. You know what to do.

This odd epilogue chapter seems to want to say something about the leadership of the early church. It seems to want to place that leadership squarely in the hands of Simon Peter, even at the same time it acknowledges his frailty, his humanity, all the things people might ponder when considering who they want as their leader.

But in the end it’s not about Simon Peter. In the end, it’s about the flock whose care has been given into his hands. It’s about their call. It’s about our call. It has been said (by Rob Bell) that the church is at its best when it gives itself away. So a chapter of John’s gospel whose point is to tell us who Jesus left in charge ends up being, instead, about the church’s responsibility towards God’s people. And that is where the Easter message comes home to you and to me.

Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Blessing is always instrumental. (Thanks again, Rob Bell!) When God blesses us, it is never so that the blessing will end there: as if God says, I’ll bless this one, but not that one. That’s not how it works. If we are blessed by God, whether with faith or fortune or gifts or gratitude, the intention is that we become a conduit through which the blessing flows. Peter receives this immeasurable blessing of being able to affirm his love for the Lord he denied. He receives his assurance of pardon. But the blessing isn’t supposed to end with Peter. It’s supposed to equip him to bless others. Do you love me? Feed my sheep.

We are so deeply blessed, here, in this place: with an ancestry of strong, resourceful forbearers, with active and involved members who are willing and able to serve in all capacities, with a love for music and a passion to share it, with a tradition of raising up pastoral leadership from within our midst, with a gorgeous and functional physical plant, with the thriving ministries of our counseling center and our Pre-School, with endowments—the treasure of those who came before us… and the list doesn’t stop there. We are so deeply blessed. But the blessing cannot and should not and does not stop with us. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. That is the call to every one of us: that the blessing of God should flow through us to a world that is hungry, for bread and for love. Thanks be to God. Amen.

+++

Painting: "Pentecost" by Alexander Sadoyan.

Holy Hilarity Meditation on John 20, 19-31

In 1948 the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, sent out an urgent call to the Chicago monastery of Poor Clare nuns. Clare of Assisi founded what were then called the Poor Ladies, with the help of her friend Francis, back in the 13th century, part of a great church renewal. They are an order of cloistered, contemplative nuns. That means that, once they take their vows, it is their firm intention never to leave their monastery again, but to live their whole lives there, lives of service through prayer and contemplation. In 1948, apparently, the Archbishop felt that Roswell, New Mexico urgently needed the presence of such a group of women. And so seven Poor Clares, who had all thought they would live and die within the Chicago enclosure, boarded a train for Roswell, to found a new monastery there. One of the women, Sister Mary Frances, would eventually write a book describing their adventure.

Fast forward to 1973. I am a bored seventh grader who is roaming the house, in the days before computers and iPods and text-messaging and DVD’s. I am disgruntled, and in need of something—anything!—to read. My mother picks up Sister Mary Frances’ book and places it in my hand. And I can’t put it down. I am absolutely gripped by this story. And I didn’t even know the parts about the spaceship and the aliens—she never mentions that stuff. What was it that so enthralled me about this book? Was it the romance of the cloister—living as a bride of Christ? Was it the promise of life close to the earth, reading about the nuns growing and canning all their own vegetables (no small feat in the desert climate of New Mexico)? Or was it this: The book is called “A Right to be Merry.” That title comes from a quote of Saint Francis. He was under fire because of his unusual rule of silence. Most monasteries, then and now, had a certain period of the day in which silence was mandatory. Francis’s and Clare’s monasteries had this feature as well. But the reason they was under fire was this: their rule of silence allowed laughter. When asked about it, Francis said, “My poor ladies have as great a right to be merry as any in the world!”

A life lived with the confidence that the love of God gives us a right to be merry sounded good to me when I was twelve years old, and it still sounds good to me today! And so, today, we join with churches all over the world in proclaiming today, the Sunday after Easter, Holy Hilarity Sunday! Also known as Holy Humor Sunday, or Bright Sunday. The tradition began in the third and fourth centuries, in response to the writings of the church fathers—Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostum, Augustine of Hippo—all of whom agreed that God had played a tremendous joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. God had a cosmically wonderful sense of humor.

But just think what an uphill battle it is in some folks’ minds—the idea that church can be a place for joy and laughter, the idea that God’s marvelous actions in and through and beyond history give us something worthy of the greatest belly laughs. There is a story about a pastor who spotted Groucho Marx in a hotel lobby- a man who was clearly a pastor, decked out in his clerical collar. He rushed over to Groucho, grabbed his hand to shake it, and said, “Thank you, Groucho, for bringing so much joy into the world!”

“Thank you,” Groucho replied, “for taking so much joy out of it.”

That is what we’re up against. And, frankly, the most recent headlines to do with all things church are no laughing matter. The church of Jesus Christ is a divine institution that has been given into human hands, and… sometimes, we don’t do the greatest job with it. Sometimes, the proper posture of the church is on our knees, begging the people’s forgiveness.

I want to suggest something that may sound somewhat radical—or, at the very least, somewhat strange. The first step towards being a properly repentant church may just be learning to take ourselves a little less seriously. Lightening up. People who can’t laugh at themselves are often the very same people who don’t know how or when to say “I’m sorry.”

Let’s take today’s gospel lesson as a case in point. When our lesson begins, it is the same day as it was last Sunday—it is Easter, that first resurrection day! The disciples—the friends and followers of Jesus—have just heard the astonishing news from Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter and that annoying Teacher’s pet—I mean, the disciple whom Jesus loved. They’ve heard that the Lord is alive! So naturally, they are holed up in a room with the doors locked tighter than a drum. So, apparently their logic is, The Lord is alive! Let’s go hide.

And, one can only imagine Jesus, standing outside that very locked door—Jesus, who was not held at bay by the stone in front of the tomb, a massive stone which probably weighed about as much as that Ford F-150 in the parking lot. Jesus, whose body apparently is not entirely subject to the same rules and regulations as ours now that he is risen. Jesus, who—whoops! Is inside. Standing right there, in front of them.

Saying, Peace. Salaam. Shalom. Which, I take to mean, rather than “Peace be with you,” something more like, Now that I’m here, peace is with you. So, you can all stop hyperventilating. It’s going to be ok. And then Jesus gives this very fallible group of people—remember all the hiding, the running, the abandoning? Remember Maundy Thursday, when our Tenebrae enacted something very much like rats fleeing a sinking ship with each passing reading, with each dimmed candle? Surely there is no greater evidence that God, and Jesus, are the funniest beings in the universe than this: To this group is given the job of forgiveness. To this group, which has a lot of explaining to do, whose members have probably been having nightmares of remorse all weekend long, is given the amazing responsibility of bringing forgiveness to a world that is wracked with anguish and guilt. Our God is a funny One.

There’s something else funny about this story: Thomas gets this adjective forever affixed to his name, an adjective which actually gives a parent or two pause when choosing names for their newborns. Doubting. Doubting Thomas. And that is so, so unfair. That is unfair because all Thomas wants is what all the other friends of Jesus have already gotten: a front row seat at the resurrection.

To dwell on Thomas as a “doubter” is, I think, to miss something sweet and subtle going on in his part of the story—something that is actually aimed at us. The point is this: for those of us who come later—who come to faith slowly, or painfully, or with many twists and turns, or with questions that still remain unanswered— in Thomas we have a friend, an ally, a patron. In Thomas, we have someone who says “I’m sorry” with astonishing flair: “My Lord and my God.” In Thomas we have someone who, like us, gets to say “Oops,” and have our ears turn red when it turns out Christ is standing right next to us, wounds gaping.

And that happens so, so often. Every day, in fact, we have opportunity after opportunity to see Jesus Christ risen from the dead. This is not a metaphor. He is quite clear with us. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:35-36) Every day we have countless opportunities to look Jesus in the eye, and to blush at the fact that we didn’t recognize him right away, and to say, My Lord and my God.

So let us be merry! Let us be glad and rejoice! For we follow a risen Lord of whom it has been said,

"This was no gloomy Messiah. We know that children were attracted to Jesus, and flocked to be near him. In any age, children are never attracted to melancholy or stern grumps. It was clear that Jesus was the antidepressant of the early Christians." (Malcolm Muggeridge)

So let us give thanks for that Lord who was the antidepressant of the early Christians. (Maybe we can figure out how to put that on our sign out front.) Let us be thankful that we are in the season of Easter, when the whole of creation conspires to urge us to joy and merriment, and that we have as great a right to be merry as any in the world. Let us be thankful for Jesus, who says to us, “So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” [John 16:22]. And, “Let us then be thankful that, when the Gates of Heaven swing open, mixed with the celestial music there is the unmistakable sound of celestial laughter.” (Malcolm Muggeridge) Thanks be to God. Amen!

The Missing Maundy Thursday Meditation

Oops! Forgot to post this.

“A Love Story”
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2010

The more I read scripture, the more I read the gospels, the more I am convinced that the whole thing, from start to finish, is a love story. The love affair of God with humanity has its beginnings in the poetry of Genesis, a God who creates, not because of a deficit or loneliness or neediness within God (and, let’s be frank, that’s how many of our own love stories seem to begin), but because God is love, and God contains an excess of love and a longing to lavish it on someone, something. And that someone, something, has its beginning as a mud pie, and then has life breathed into it, and then turns out to be you, and me. And so it begins: God loves us; we are loved.

Tonight’s gospel passage says it all again. Jesus is at the Passover celebration: Passover, the ancient Jewish feast of liberation, the story of God’s hearkening to the anguished cries of God’s beloved children and responding with power to bring them to wondrous freedom. And Jesus is at this celebration with his friends—his own, the passage calls them—and he knows what lies ahead. He knows it is his last night with them in the old, familiar way, the way we can be at the table with those friends who know what is on our mind before we speak it, the ones who know that a joke is about to come out of our mouths by the glint they see in our eyes. Jesus knows it is the end of something powerful, even as it is the beginning of something glorious. Here he is with his own, those he has loved. And he must do something with them, and for them, to try to help them truly come to terms with the nature of his love for them.

So, oddly, he gets a towel and a basin, and proceeds to kneel in front of these friends, his own, and to wash their feet. We talked about this not too long ago. Washing feet was a common enough practice in the dusty middle-eastern climate. Still, it was an action most often performed on oneself. The only person who would wash the feet of another was a slave. And this is why at least some of Jesus’ own balk. This is why they are outraged. They have been following this Jesus for three years, and they have taken on the yoke of his teaching, and they have called him Rabbi and Lord, and your Rabbi or Lord does not wash your feet. It is just wrong. I don’t know if we can really bring to mind a modern day parallel. I was going to suggest that it was as if the president of IBM would come to the home of the entry-level programmer and—I don’t know, de-frag her computer? Or maybe change the oil in her car or clean her broiler? But as US citizens we like to believe that we live in a class-free, or at least a class-mobile society, so I don’t think any comparison can have quite the punch of the original. Suffice to say: Jesus’ friends were stunned. They were appalled.

And they go back and forth with Jesus on it, or, more accurately, Simon Peter does. No, don’t do that. Oh yes I will. No, really, don’t. Oh yes I will. OK, then, do it this way, so I can be marginally less appalled. No, I won’t do it your way. I’ll do it my way. I’ll be a slave for you.

I’ll be a slave for you. What an astonishing thing for this Lord and Rabbi to insist to his own. What an astonishing thing for the one who is one with God in heaven, as John reminds us frequently, that same God who is responsible for the rescue of the Hebrew slaves being celebrated by this little gathering. I’ll be a slave for you. I’ll serve you. I’ll wash you. And unless you let me do these things… well. Just let me do these things.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And in the end he needed to demonstrate in a vivid way the form that love would take. It would take a self-negation, a self-emptying that no one had ever before associated with their Lord, or their Rabbi, or—how is it even possible?—their God. Just let me do these things for you. This is what love looks like. I am giving you an example—one you’ll remember, if only because you are so appalled. This is what love looks like. Now, go do this for one another.

The gospel of John is the only gospel that doesn’t talk about what happens during the meal—when Jesus says “Take, eat, this is my body,” and “Take and drink, this is my blood.” John doesn’t dwell on that, I suppose, because that aspect of the supper was already so well known and established by the time this very late gospel hit the presses. But John explains something about the supper that is absolutely vital for us to understand. The meal is both for us and not for us. It is for us in that it exists to bring us together, and to remind us of our connection to Jesus and to one another, and to impress upon us that it is God who nourishes us, first, last and always. But the meal is not only for us, most profoundly. The meal is not only for us, and we cannot afford to forget that. The meal exists so that we will be strengthened for service. The meal exists so that we will be given the courage and the will to make ourselves servants, even slaves for others. This is what love looks like: a meal given to nourish, so that we can, in turn, nourish others. This is what love looks like: allowing the One with all power to serve us, so that we can, in turn, serve others. This is what love looks like, as God designed it from the very beginning: an endless dance of giving and receiving, in which the joy is in the dance.

God loves us. We are loved. Love is our bounty and love is our calling. We are welcomed to this table to receive the bounty and to respond to the calling. The whole thing is a love story, from start to finish. Thanks be to God. Amen.

~~~


Image from Nathalie Kelly, borrowed hopefully.

In the Garden: Sermon on John 20:1-18

This is the day… this is the day on which it all hinges, really. This is the day on which our entire faith rises or falls, the day on which it matters or is irrelevant, no more significant than any other competing philosophy in the great marketplace of ideas. As the apostle Paul says, “…if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.” If Christ has not been raised, “we are of all people most to be pitied” [1 Cor. 15:14,19]. Either we proclaim with all our hearts, “Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!” or we may as well just close our hymnals and go home to the Sunday paper and our Easter brunches right now.

This is the day that begins in the garden. Have you noticed that a number of crucial moments in the story of our relationship with God occur in a garden? God plants a garden in Eden—God is a gardener!—and then places the newly created man and woman there, walking with them in the cool of the day. And all that disastrous business with the serpent and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…the willful disobedience, the agonizing confrontation, confession and banishment…it all takes place in a garden.

A garden figures prominently in the stories we have been hearing throughout this Holy Week, the gospel accounts of Jesus’ passion and death. After Jesus’ final meal with his friends, the little band heads out across a valley to a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives. John’s gospel proceeds immediately to the arrest of Jesus. But the other gospel writers tell of Jesus’ agonized prayer in the garden called Gethsemane, a prayer raised while his friends sleep peacefully beneath the rustling leaves, inhaling the fragrance of juniper and hyacinth.

And then there is the crucifixion. John mentions, almost as an afterthought, “there was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified, and in that garden there was a new tomb…”[John 19:41]. I confess: I had completed my second Master’s degree in theology before I noticed this detail. Jesus was crucified in a place with a garden. And there he was buried. This is the day that begins in the garden. There is a well-known Victorian poem, a fragment of which has become famous:


The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer to God's heart in the garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

I suspect that poet spent some time pondering gardens and our salvation history. From the creation and great expulsion from Eden, to the suffering and death of Jesus, to this morning’s encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, God’s heart does seem to be beating in a garden. It seems to be beating there for us.

It is the morning of the first day of the week, and coming to the garden tomb while it is still dark, Mary finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. She rushes to tell two disciples, Simon Peter and the one Jesus loved, and they in turn rush to the garden to investigate the scene. The beloved disciple believes, though it isn’t clear yet just what it is that he believes.

And then we come to Mary, weeping in the garden. Morning is breaking. Perhaps it is getting a bit lighter. The birds are awakening and beginning to call to one another. The dew is still on the roses. As she weeps, she bends over into the tomb. She sees two white-robed angels who ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Her answer shows that Mary is focused on what she believes has happened. She clearly believes that the horror and cruelty of these three days has been compounded by a further cruel act: she believes Jesus’ body has been stolen. Resurrection is not a thought Mary is prepared to entertain. She expects to see a dead body, and finding it gone, she accounts for it logically. Resurrection is not logical. It’s not an option.

Alas, the angels are no more helpful than the disciples. Mary turns away only to encounter Jesus himself, standing there, though she does not recognize him, and he too asks her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” He also asks, “Whom are you looking for?” Mary supposes he is the gardener. Mary supposes he’s the gardener! Is it possible—could Jesus actually be—gardening?

Mary tells her sad tale again, hoping for a better outcome than the two angels were able to provide her. Jesus speaks, but he does not say, “Don’t you recognize me? It’s Jesus! I’m alive! Isn’t it the darnedest thing?” Neither does Jesus launch into a theological discourse on the resurrection of the body, or a scriptural explanation of how his presence here is the fulfillment of prophesies that extend back to Isaiah and beyond. Thank God, he doesn’t do any of those things. What he does takes our breath away. He says, simply, “Mary.”

Jesus calls Mary Magdalene by name. “Mary.” And it is only in hearing her name called that Mary is able to consciously admit into her wounded soul the possibility of something new, something completely unexpected and illogical. It is only in hearing her name called that Mary is able to conceive of the possibility of resurrection. It is only in hearing her name called that Mary is able to understand that in the garden, she is indeed near to God’s heart, that it is still beating, and that it is beating for her.

Maybe there is something to this idea of Jesus as the gardener. He did love to talk about seeds… seeds sown in all kinds of places…rocky soil, footpaths, the good, brown earth. He loved to talk about tiny seeds that yielded amazing bounties. Jesus loved to talk about God’s love for us in all kinds of ways that might occur to a gardener … he said, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” hinting that we are already one with him in the most organic way imaginable, that it is almost impossible to know where he ends and we begin. Jesus said that God cares for every flower, every lily of the field, despite the fact that flowers do not earn their keep, and that as beautiful as lilies are, we are even more precious in God’s eyes. Maybe Jesus was gardening that morning, as the light grew stronger and the woman in front of him wept for her lost Lord. Maybe it felt right to him, after all he had said about green, growing things, to put his hands into the good earth and work to bring something out of that darkness, as he himself had emerged from the darkness of the tomb.

This is the day on which it all hinges. This is the place where our faith hits the road or ends crumpled up in a ditch. Mary saw, and heard her name called, and believed. She encountered the risen Lord. So what did Mary have that morning that we don’t have? What do we need so that we too can experience the resurrection joy this Easter morning?

Mary came to the garden heartbroken, grieving the loss of her rabbi, her teacher, her Lord, the most important person in her life. Mary came with a profound, heartbreaking loss. Mary came, though she didn’t even know it, with a deep and burning need for resurrection. Do you come with a loss? Do you come in need of resurrection? Have you lost mother, father, husband, wife, the love of your life? Have you lost a child? Grandparent? The best friend in the world? The best teacher, boss, aunt, uncle, kin by blood or by love? Let’s face it: almost every one of us is longing for resurrection, and almost none of us would ever admit it in polite company. It’s too primal a wish; it’s too illogical. For a long time—nearly a year—I kept a pair of shoes in a bag in my closet that I had worn to my mother’s burial. It was right after a big snowstorm, and the cemetery was muddy. For a long time the dirt from my mother’s grave clung to my shoes, and I was not willing to brush it off. It’s not reasonable. It’s not logical. It’s what Joan Didion calls the “magical thinking” that occurs when you are grieving. On some level I was holding out for another outcome, for a mother who was still vibrant and full of life and not riddled with cancer. How about you? Are you still hoping for another outcome, no matter how irrational that might seem? Are you heartbroken, full of grief and loss? Thank God. You have come to the right place. This is the day the Lord has made, and you have come to the garden.

Mary asked questions. “Where is my Lord? Where have you taken him?” When a matched set of angels—angels, mind you—did not give a satisfactory answer, she went looking for someone more knowledgeable—like a gardener. Do you have questions? Are you willing to keep asking them? Are you willing to ask everyone you meet until your questions are answered, even if they are not answered in the way you expect? Thank God. This is the day the Lord has made. Welcome to the garden.

Mary opened her mind and her heart to hear the voice of her Lord calling her by name. Even though she did not know it, the voice of Jesus was the only voice she wanted to hear. And her own name—that intimate knowing of who she was, in all her grieving humanity—was the only word, whether she knew it or not. She wanted to hear it so desperately she finally admitted the possibility, despite the illogic of it all. Do you have a desire—a deep, burning, restless desire—for an encounter with the risen Christ? Do you have a longing to hear God call you by name, for God to know you intimately, a desire so great you are willing to open your heart and your mind to what cannot be proven or measured? Thank God, for this is indeed the day the Lord has made. You have come to the garden.

Friend, why are you weeping? Woman, man, child of God, what sorrow burdens your soul? Whom are you looking for? Whose heart are you seeking? There is One who has been looking for you, who has been calling you by name. There is a gardener who wants to plant the seed of resurrection faith in your heart. There is One whose heart is beating—his is risen indeed—and it’s beating for you. This is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made. Alleluia. Amen.

Given in Love: Sermon on John 12:1-8

She was a particular woman, with a particular history, and a particular relationship to Jesus. Let’s start there when we think about Mary of Bethany. It might be good to begin learning about who she was by first clarifying who she was not.

She was not, for example, Mary Magdalene, the woman named in every gospel as the pre-eminent witness to the resurrection. There is no biblical record of Mary Magdalene ever anointing Jesus, though that is portrayed time and again in film and popular imagination. But this is not that Mary.

Neither was she a sinner. Let me re-state that. As good Presbyterians, we confess that we all are sinners, that all have fallen short of the glory of God. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say “She was not known as a sinner,” or “She was not a notorious sinner.” There is a story of Jesus being anointed by a woman who is identified as a sinner. But this is not that woman.

And, of course, she is not the mother of Jesus. This is not that Mary, nor is she Mary the wife of Cleopas, as far as we can tell. So many Mary’s—in the Hebrew “Miriam”—many, probably, given that name because Herod the Great counted not one but two Mary’s among his wives. So, just as many little Diana’s were Christened in the early 1980’s, so were many young Jewish girls, in the era in which Jesus lived, called Mary.

She was Mary of Bethany, and Bethany was a village located on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives, just about a mile and a half from Jerusalem. She was the sister of Martha and of Lazarus, and the three of them lived together in a family unit that was comprised not of a patriarch and his offspring, or of couples and children: rather, they were a family of single siblings, a family who became very important in the life and ministry of Jesus. So important that the gospel testifies: Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Two gospels bear witness to the fact that Jesus was able to find himself at home in this home.

It is impossible to speak of Mary of Bethany and her particular relationship with Jesus without speaking of what happened in the days leading up to this episode. Our text mentions it casually, as one might refer to any old piece of identifying information. But it still shocks us with its power: “Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead” (12:1). At the beginning of Chapter 11 Jesus had received a note from Mary and Martha, in which they said, “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (11:3). Jesus had delayed, intentionally, going to the side of his ailing friend, “even though he loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus,” John tells us. He only started out towards Bethany after having been assured that Lazarus was, in fact, dead.

It bears saying something, before we go any further, about the particular portrayal of Jesus that we find in the gospel of John. As many of you have heard me say before, John’s gospel is very different from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. When we are told that Jesus delays going to Lazarus until he is dead, to most of us that sounds like a shocking, nearly indefensible decision on Jesus’ part. The grieving sisters certainly question it, even condemn it. But we need to understand the ways of John’s gospel in order to appreciate why Jesus would do such a thing. The first eleven chapters of John are woven around signs Jesus performs, miracles designed to reveal the truth about Jesus’ identity. Once we understand that, we know that this decision will aid Jesus in performing his greatest sign, his most astonishing miracle, raising Lazarus from the dead. This delay, which causes such pain to those he loves, is part of a larger plan.

Well, we know what happens in the rest of Chapter 11. Jesus weeps at the tomb in the presence of this family he loves, showing that he recognizes and even feels the human cost of his inaction. And then he unleashes the very power of God from within himself, and he restores Lazarus to life.

And so the stage is set for today’s passage. A meal, a celebration, and Jesus once again finds himself at home in this home. We can imagine the merriment tinged with awe, the sense of reprieve and relief, the sheer giddiness of the festivities. I envision a room made intimate as evening falls by the glow of firelight and candlelight, by the savory smells of the meal, and by the bonds of affection that are shared around the table.

But into the room comes Mary, bearing a pound of the rarest of perfumes, oil of nard. It is made from the crushed stems of the spikenard plant, which grows only in the Himalayas, in China, India and Nepal. When distilled it becomes a thick amber-colored oil with an intense, aromatic scent. A pound of it might well make you dizzy. It might well put you to sleep; oil of nard can be used as a sedative.

Mary lavishes this costly, fragrant oil on Jesus’ feet. As you may know, it was a custom in the Ancient Near East to provide a basin of water for washing the feet to any guest who might enter a home. People walked dusty roads wearing sandals or even barefoot; it was a basic measure of comfort and hygiene. In general, though, people did not wash the feet of their guests. If you had servants, slaves, you might direct them to wash your friend’s feet. Otherwise, it was a ritual people performed, mostly, on themselves.

So here is Mary, performing an action that would only normally have been undertaken by a slave. And here is Mary, making a startling, sensuous gesture, even to the extreme of wiping Jesus’ feet with her own hair. And here is Mary, filling the room with the exquisite, even overwhelming fragrance of her action.

Her gesture is misinterpreted, of course. It is judged, naturally. (W. H. Auden said, “As a rule it was the pleasure-haters who were unjust.”) It is judged as being wasteful and even selfish—Judas mentions the poor with a bite in his tone. It is unfortunate that Jesus’ response—you will always have the poor with you—is so often used to excuse our not responding to the needs of the needy. And I don’t need to point fingers on this one, because I have pulled it out myself often enough, when I have felt that I didn’t have the wherewithal to respond kindly to one more request for assistance, for a donation, for a handout. But Jesus is not offering me any excuses here. Even the most casual reader of the gospels knows, Glenn Beck’s opinions notwithstanding, that Jesus’ stand alongside the poor is absolute, and irrevocable, and our call to do likewise is a mandate to everyone who calls himself a Christian.

But there is a time for extravagant, even wasteful gestures, says Jesus, who in just about a chapter’s time will himself kneel at the feet of his friends making himself their slave. There is a time for the extravagant fragrance of love poured out, insists Jesus, who will, himself, pour out his own life and love for humanity on the cross.

Just for fun, because I was curious, I looked up the word “fragrance” in an online bible search engine, just to see how many times it occurred in the bible. It occurs just eleven times. Six of those are found in the Song of Songs, arguably the Bible’s go-to-text for lovers of sensuous gestures. Two references are from the prophet Hosea, describing the fragrance of God’s people Israel in repentance and faithfulness. Two references are from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, describing the fragrance of life in Christ. And here, in this scene, we have the other occurrence.

The gift of Mary of Bethany is given in love. Anything given in love is endued with a particular fragrance; the rabbis said, such a gesture would fill up the world with its sweetness. I realize there’s always a risk of misunderstanding, when that much-misused word—“love”—is pulled out and thrown around. I am not, of course, talking about romantic love, though I don’t have any particular insights into the heart of Mary of Bethany. I am also not talking about “love” as a feeling, though I can of course imagine Mary’s deep sense of devotion and commitment. I am talking about love as a decision. Love as an action. Love as a verb.

When Jesus tells us, as he so often does in the gospels, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, I don’t think he is talking about conjuring up feelings inside ourselves, though we may have some of those feelings. And when he talks about loving our neighbor as ourselves, I don’t think he means that we are commanded to warmth and fuzziness about the person next door or across the ocean. When we are commanded to love, we are commanded to take action.

I hope you have all had this kind of experience: being on the receiving end of a gesture made in love. You are in a terrible state over something real—your health, your work, your relationship, your finances—and someone says something to you that is so kindly encouraging you nearly weep. Or, you don’t know how you’ll manage the busy week you have, and someone takes a major responsibility and simply lifts it from your shoulders. Or, you are sick, and someone cares for you. You are hungry and someone feeds you. You are thirsty and someone offers you a cool drink of water. There are, or may be, feelings attached to each and every one of these situations on the part of the giver. But, in the end, the feelings are almost irrelevant. What matters is the action that is taken. Because that is what love is. Love is an action. Love is a decision. Love is a verb.

Now imagine you are a child living in a tent in Haiti, because your home collapsed on January 12 when the earthquake devastated your country. And your mother and father are dead, and maybe one sister remains alive. And there is no school for you to go to, no relatives to take you in, and even if there were, all the buildings are heaps of rubble. And now the rainy season has begun. And your just barely tolerable living situation becomes, again, unimaginably dreadful. And then, help arrives. Because somewhere, some Presbyterians held a coffeehouse on a beautiful March evening and bought more than they really needed and laughed themselves silly because they understand that love is an action. Love is a decision. Love is a verb.

She was a particular individual, with a particular history, and a particular relationship with God. Mary of Bethany’s relationship with Jesus may have begun in any number of ways—she was his student; he was her rabbi; she was his friend; perhaps he was her confidant. But the power of God in Jesus blew open and apart the categories of relationship for Mary and left her only one option: he was her master; she was his servant. She was a mourner; he restored her dead to life. She was a supplicant; he was the answer to prayer. And, in the end, he was love, and in her response, she was love.

Each of us is a particular individual, with a particular history, and our own particular relationship with God. Perhaps it begins because we are in Sunday School, and Jesus is the lesson. Or we are being taught to say our prayers, and Jesus is the one we pray to. But in the end, Jesus longs to find himself at home in our homes, in our hearts. In the end, we are called to recognize the shocking reality of the breadth and length and height and depth of his love for us, to recognize that he is love. And we are invited, in turn, to be that love, in response, so that every action, every gesture, may reveal this deep and wide love to the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

My Brother, Myself: Sermon on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

I wrote this sermon many years ago (12!) and have not preached it since (though I did post it here three years ago). It will be preached tomorrow.

~~~

They are all in there—I can hear the music from here, the stamping of the feet, the voices as they raise the cups in toast after toast. They are celebrating as if it were the harvest, or a wedding. I can’t go in there. I can’t go in there. If you had seen what I have seen, you would understand why.

A year ago my father was an honorable man, with not one but two sons to share his good fortune. As the oldest, naturally I had a place of honor at my father’s table, and beside him at prayers in the synagogue. After all, I would inherit the lion’s share of his estate: two thirds, as it is written, a double-portion for the firstborn. My father never had a moment’s anxiety on my account. I was there, by his side, every day from the time I left my mother’s care, learning from him: the land, the accounts, the servants. I learned how to manage his estate by his wisdom, and I gave him the honor he was due as my father. And I ate my daily bread by the sweat of my brow.

But my brother… from the day he was born you could see that his eyes never properly focused on what was right in front of him: his family, our honor. He walked about as if in a dream. Far off lands. Exotic tales of strange peoples. He saw no good in the bread that was before him on his plate, but longed for strange and alien feasts.

I remember well the day he left. He stood in front of the house, in broad daylight, in front of the hired servants, and said, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” He stood there with no shame on his face, and all but told our father, “Your only use to me, old man, is as a corpse.” With his words he wished our father dead. The servants hid their faces and scurried away, so as not to look upon their master’s shame. And, in truth, something in my father did die that day… I could see it in his eyes. His younger son had killed him just as surely as if he’d driven a knife into his breast.

My father walked slowly away from the house, and gestured to a parcel of land. “There. That is your third. The servants will draw up the contracts. So be it.” And then he took his tunic between his great hands, and I thought, for a moment, he was about to tear it. And I thought, “Ah, he will tear his garments to show that this son of his is dead to him.” At least, that is as a man of honor would have seen it. But my father… he did not tear his tunic. It fell from his hands, and hung limply about him, and he shuffled back into the house.

No one said good-bye to my brother. He took his deeds and a parcel of clothing and he disappeared over a low hill.

So. Now I too was a landowner, and not just the oldest son, for my father had divided his property. The servant had handed me a deed of ownerships just as he had handed one to my brother. My father left his place as head of the household, preferring, for some months, to sleep beneath a shade tree in the garden. His ceremonial robes hung unworn inside the house, and he never left to go to the village to trade or to the synagogue to pray. He ate only such food as would sustain a child, and so took on the lean look of a hired man, even though he did no work. And I… well, I was put in the most impossible position of all.

I became the head of the household, but my father lived on. I had accepted my inheritance while my father still breathed! How could I sit in the place of honor at the table beside my own father? How could I wear his robes and trade with the merchants who knew that he had been shamed by a vile, ungrateful child? The other men of the village—they knew as well as I that my brother had marked our family as disgraced. I heard the plan they had for my brother should he ever dare to show his face again in our village. My brother would be dead within the hour he reappeared, they said. What was the alternative? That their sons be permitted to think a father could be so misused and his wicked son live on?

So my brother was a dead man. And my father was a dead man. And I was a man half-alive in my own home.

After a time my father roused himself from beneath his shade tree. He washed his face and put on a clean tunic. He stood out in front of the house, staring off at the low hill. And then he began to walk. He would set out early, before the heat of the day, and usually return in time for the meal, though not always. He would take his staff and walk in the direction of the low hill over which my brother had disappeared. When he returned, he would take his meal, saying little, but eating more now that his body was working again. And then he would sit on a little cushion outside the door, and watch. He sat there watching the horizon, the servants coming and going, every day. The sun hardened his skin, and he had only the occasional clouds for his shade.

I ask you, what am I? I am a child who has done his duty towards his father, no more and no less. If I had taken my pack and followed my brother, would my father’s grief have led him to hold this vigil for me? If my brother was all but dead—and the men of the village vowed never to let him return alive—why did my father hope for his return? Did he not have a son who loved him, who showed him honor? What am I?

Today my father went out for his usual three hours of walking. We had our meal together, as always. I saw nothing unusual—just some vagabond child off in the distance, coming over the hill as my father sat upon his cushion. No one worth noticing. I went out into the field to supervise several men who were digging a drainage ditch. I did not return until the sun had sunk low over the horizon.

When I returned I could smell the aroma of veal roasting, and I could see that the house was lit with lanterns, and I could hear the music that was playing, and the sound of the stamping of the dancers’ feet, and the voices as they raised their cups in toast after toast. I called a house servant to me and asked him to account for all these goings on.

“It was the most amazing thing master! One moment your father was seated, as always, on his cushion. And in the next he was up and running towards some beggar who we could see coming up the road! Yes, running, I tell you, his robes flapping about him! And still we had no idea what or who it was all about. And then we could see that he had embraced this beggar, and kissed him, and that he was bringing him back towards the house! And then I realized who it was. Master. It is your brother.”

My brother?

So. He has returned. And apparently the men of the village have not stoned him to death or cut his throat. Of course, once my father had kissed him, they could not. It appears that my father has taken his place once again as the head of this family, and that he has taken my good for nothing brother under his protection. So the men of the village are now raising the glass with him instead of describing his death in detail to their sons. So this is how it is.

Why is it that my father, who was so shamed, can forgive? And why is it that I, who have never shamed my father, find myself now standing outside the great feast, looking in? How can I go in?

And yet, there is my father, and he looks altogether unfamiliar to me, as if he were a stranger! Why is that so? Is it that the expression on his face is so alien to me I do knot know him when he wears it? He is smiling. He is smiling so broadly his eyes have disappeared into the deep creases on his face. He looks utterly at peace, completely happy.

And there is my brother. He looks like one who has been imprisoned, like a child who has been released from a prison. He looks as if he had suffered, truly. Gone is the face of that arrogant young man who demanded his portion of the inheritance. What remains is the face of a child. And he too is smiling as if the joy within him is too great to be contained.

My father came to me, just now, and he asked me—he pleaded with me—to come in, to raise the cup for my brother as well. “My son,” he said, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found.” All that is his is mine? Including this lost-and-found child, my brother?

Oh my father… your heart is so deep, so wide! Is that because it has been broken? Can a broken heart love all the more? Then let my heart stop its straining and break so that I too might come into the fold of your love again. Can I come in? Can I let my heart break once and for all so that I too can yield to love?

~~~~~

*Information about social customs and family relationships was taken from Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels by Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg/ Fortress Press, 1992), 370-373.

Image from artist Charlie Mackesy.