Standing at the intersection

Most days we stand at the intersection of "I don't think so" and "We can only hope."  Whether it is a car salesman's claim that this new car gets 50 mpg, or a child's claim that she is perfectly innocent or a spouse's assertion that it was a late meeting with the boss, most days we stand between incredulous skepticism and the chance possibility of our dreams coming.true.  This is especially true when it comes to faith.

So when Jesus says "I am the bread of life" "the living bread" and "whoever eats of me has eternal life," there we are right at the intersection of "I don't think so" and "We can only hope".

You can hear it in the confused crowd who is trying to make sense out of Jesus' words. They are caught between looking like a bunch of fools for believing this guy, and at the same time, not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to be fed forever. It is hard because Jesus is making some outrageous claims.

Some of the folks know Jesus from the neighborhood; he lived right down the street.  They want to deflate Jesus' elevated opinion of himself.  Some of the folk must have thought Jesus was talking jibberish:  I am the bread come down from heaven, and the bread that I give to the world is my flesh.

We are caught at this intersection because we want to believe that Jesus is living bread, that we can taste and experience life eternal, but life has taken us to some deep, dark places were trusting in God is almost more than we can bear.  Did you read about that 5 year old boy whose family was caught in one of the wild fires?  He calls out from the house, about to be engulfed by flames, "Grandpa, come and get me!" as Grandpa stood helpless - in safety but unable to re-enter the already burning home.  This is deep darkness; we must take this reality seriously when we consider Jesus' words.


But what if Jesus is simply speaking the truth?  "I am" he says.  Not 'I will be' or 'I once was' but "I am".  "Whoever eats of me has eternal life"  Has.  Not 'will have' or 'could have' but "has" - the eternal present. The gift of Jesus is not for some distant time but begins the moment you turn towards him. Commit to this Jesus and begin tasting eternal life today.  Who couldn't use a little taste of the eternal on any given day of the week?

So, today, let's begin with now.  Let's believe that today I will taste the eternal; I will see God.  I will experience or witness mercy or forgiveness or grace or love.  I will be given the strength to be mercy or forgiveness or generosity or grace or love to another.  Today.

Today we begin to taste the powerful presence of the eternal in the ordinary.

Living on the fringe

They stand on the edge, looking over the heads of others, seeing their goal in the distance. 

They are not the majority, although they are often silent.  Pressed to the outside, on the fringe of the norm, their job pays not quite enough, their skin is too brown, their accent is off-putting, their body is misshapen.  They are the trailers on the classic bell curve, and they have little hope of ever making it to the top of the hill, to stand among the accepted and acceptable, those who don’t have to worry about living on the fringe. 

Some are anonymous – the older couple who don’t qualify for Social Security, whose health is sinking and whose mortgage has another 5 years.  The teen whose sexual reality doesn’t conform.  The father of 3 who never eats lunch otherwise his children won’t eat supper.  Some are instantly recognizable.  They wander the streets, they know the locale of every free meal in the city, they live on that street where fleas and cockroaches and violence are common.  

But they are all living on the fringe.  They live in a world of hurt where dreams have a very short shelf life and hope is a rare commodity.  They trust the promises being made by charlatan and politician and that charismatic preacher on the street.  They trust because in the end, something is better than nothing….…which is probably why those people mobbed Jesus wherever he went.  What is a 5 mile walk when, at the other end you just might be healed, you just might be fed, you just might find a bit of respite?

All they needed was to touch the fringe of his garment; whatever his power, whatever its source it could come to them through the fringe of his prayer shawl.  Maybe, just this one time, someone on the fringe could be healed by the fringe of this unknown teacher.

Just maybe.  It was worth a try.  Reaching, stretching, hoping, needing.  

What about you?  Bring back any memories?

Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

Power and fear

Seems they go together like hand in glove.  Power generates fear; fear gives space for power.

I mention this because the story of Jesus of Nazareth should never be read in a vacuum.  Jesus, like his cousin John before him, lived, worked, taught, preached in an atmosphere of fear thanks to the power of the ruling Roman Empire.  Remember always to read those sweet Sunday School Bible stories with a fully armed and underpaid Roman Soldier standing at your shoulder.

(As an aside, consider the long list of potential sources of power:  political, economic, gender, race, military, public reputation, sexual, even, my friends, religious.  There are many empires with power over our comings and goings.)

I mention this because this week John the Baptist loses his head.  Actually it had happened in a previous episode and we are getting a flashback from Herod, but this is the point in the gospel story according to Mark that we actually learn about it.

Some will say that John lost his head even before that terrible moment in the castle dungeon.  He insisted on calling Herod out on his ill-advised marriage to his brother's (I assume she is now his ex) wife.  Herod prided himself on his Jewish connections and the Torah is clear about this particular situation; you can not marry your brother's wife.  Simple as that.

John kept pointing this out.  Publicly. Embarrassing?  Annoying for sure.  Particularly since Herod recognized John as a holy and righteous man, and thought a conversation with John might do him some good.  So he arrested him which accomplished two things:  no more public pronouncements about Herod's morality and Herod could always find John for a quiet conversation any time of day or night

When you think about it, it's a pretty strange situation.  On the face of it, John had no power over Herod at all and yet Herod hesitated to silence John because he feared ......what?  Public backlash? His own conscience?  God?

This powerful and brutal man hesitated because of a still, small voice?

Hmmm.  Power and fear lead us to do curious things.


Mark 6.14-29

She told him the whole truth

"the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before Jesus, and told him the whole truth."  Mark 5.33



It is a story about a desperate woman.  There are a lot of stories about desperate women in the Bible; they parallel the plethora of stories about desperate women filling our news cycle.

This story is about a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.  Beyond the natural discomfort and annoyance, her continual bleeding left her in an untenable situation with the community.  She was unwelcome until the bleeding stopped and she had ritually purified her body.  She was separated from others, and I would guess, a wee bit suspect.  Twelve years?

But she'd heard about Jesus, and sliding up behind him in a crowd she touched the hem of his garment, believing that in this way the power of healing would come to her.  It did.  Jesus noticed and he insisted on knowing who it was who touched him.

Thus the scene above.  She knelt and told him the whole truth.  The whole truth.

I wonder what she said, don't you?

To speak the truth is to confess.  We find confession uncomfortable because the truth that we are telling is generally something embarrassing or dishonorable or just plain wrong.  The truth we tell is this:  we are not perfect human beings and our actions at times cause pain and suffering to others.

We tell this truth to God not because God doesn't already know about our reality, but because there comes a point in every life when our masks need to fall away and we must own ourselves.  We fear this moment.  We fear that those who hear our truth will reject us, mock or vilify us.  I think we are afraid that we won't like ourselves very much either.  So we seek out a large enough bush to hide behind, just like Adam and Eve who said, "I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself"  Gen 3.10

She told Jesus the whole truth.  I am not sure I would know where to begin, but in the end, where I begin is less important than the very beginning of the thing itself.

Discovering ourselves in all our nakedness is not the worst thing that could happen to us.  Spending a lifetime hiding from ourselves just might be.



The whole story of this woman can be found in Mark 5.21-43

Forgiving your scoundrel brothers

It seems we have been talking about forgiveness for weeks now in our weekly lessons.  (The Church has been talking about forgiveness since the cross).  It has been a deep and thoughtful conversation.

Like the whole episode of Joseph and his recalcitrant brothers that we find at the end of the Joseph saga.  The saga begins about Genesis 35 but we are looking at the final verses in chapter 50.

Joseph is one of 12 brothers, the sons of Jacob also known as Israel.  He is his father's favorite.  He knows it and he flaunts it.  He's one of those trumped up brothers who lorded himself over his older brothers.  After a while, they had had enough and became so angry and jealous that they sold him into slavery!  How's that for revenge.

But as God would have it, years down the road those same brothers needed food during a famine and suprise of surprises, Joseph was the person with the power to say Yes or No.  That gets us to this tender scene between the brothers and Joseph.  (BTW Joseph said yes).

Jacob has died and the brothers are concerned that without his influence, Joseph will take his revenge.  So bowing before Jsoeph, and lying through their teeth, these men claim that their father's dying wish was for Jseoph to forgive his brothers.  At this point in the story, Joseph wept.

Here's the question:  why?  Was it out of frustration because he know his brothers were scoundrels and would always be scoundrels?  Was it out of disappointment over all the years he had missed while he and his family were parted?  Was it out of anger that, in fact, Joseph might still be angry at them but they were the only family he had?

Or could it be this?  Joseph wept because, in fact, he had forgiven them long, long ago and it had taken until this moment for them to be ready to receive this forgiveness.  At this moment, the family could truly be reunited and a new life begun.

because.....isn't that how God loves and forgives us?  God's heart is a heart of forgiveness waiting for us to open our hearts to this healing resurrection to new life. 

Oh yes.  I think this is the best of all possible explanations and I would be embarrassed to admit that I didn't think of it* except that God's forgiveness is never ever something to be embarrassed over.  It is something to celebrate and live. 

Celebrate my friends - new life is yours in the forgiveness of God through Jesus.  I think that deserves and Alleluia!

*thanks to Darlene for her insightful response to this story.  It was a gift to me, and I think to us all.

Holy Week: servant to all

Who is it that is working under the table tonight?

Kneeling in the dust, breathing in the stink of sweaty unwashed feet?

Doing the work that no one else would voluntarily stoop to do?  The work of the lowliest of slaves?

It certainly is not someone in middle management, a person with degrees and diplomas.  It is not someone looking for creative and fulfilling work.  It is not someone with investment accounts and IRAs.

No it is that class of workers who lack papers and fear a knock on the door from the INS.  It is those workers who are paid in cash and often fail to receive what has been promised, who have no protection from the law.   It’s the sex workers we distain and the garbage workers we are sure to stay upwind of.

Not just those who work off the grid, it is also those who clean our offices at night and work in the freezing cold and boiling summer sun.  It’s those car wash kids who forget to dry off that last window or the pizza delivery guy who has someone else’s order.  It’s those workers who know how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

These are the folks who are out of sight and therefore out of mind, at least until something is late or wrong or lost.  They are the invisible ones, flipping burgers, mowing our lawns and washing the feet of the elderly at our nursing homes, and washing us in the hospitals.  They are the laundry workers and migrant farm workers.  These are the ones we don’t want our children to marry or our grandchildren to grow up to be.

We have worked hard to get where we are and we don’t want to put aside our honors, accomplishments, pride and comfort.  We don’t want to put aside our fancy robes like Jesus set aside his outer garment and  stoop under the table with Jesus to help him wash the feet of those who called him Rabbi and Lord….the ones who would abandon, deny and betray him.  It was all well and good for Mary to anoint Jesus’ feet – it was her place, her job.  But not us.

Yet Jesus says, “If I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet….I have come not to be served but to serve….If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.”

So at the center of our confession is this:  we don’t want to leave the table to wash the unwashed, to serve the outcasts, to bring comfort to the unmentionables.  We not only don’t want to do this work, we don’t want to be reminded that this work needs to be done.

Jesus breaks the bread at the table and tells his disciples, “This is my body given for you”   He wasn’t talking just about the cross.  He gave his body first under the table with the invisible ones, doing the dirtiest of the work. 

Those who join him at the table are called to join him under the table as well.

Meet me in my secret heart Lord

"....teach me wisdom in my secret heart..."  Ps51

The ancient sages know about the secret heart - that corner of our most inner being where we squirrel away any number of things.  No, that's not quite accurate; what we really do is press things into that corner of our inner being - press them hard and often, assuring that they will never find their way to the surface.

Our secret heart is the place where we secure our deepest secrets and our darkest selves.  It is the corner that we protect: from the light of day, from the casual inspection of onlookers, and from any attempts to dissect or discuss.

In this deep corner of our heart we store three things: our dreams, our fears and our sins.

Let's look at dreams.  When I was a child I spotted a wonderful white angora cardigan on a mannequin in a local shop window.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I knew that if I wore it, I would be beautiful too.  In fact, I might even become the epitome of all dreams: a ballerina....or if that failed, a princess.  All I needed was that white angora sweater.

So I began to lobby for it, subtly of course.  My birthday was approaching so I mentioned that a new sweater would be nice.  White would make it versatile and I had seen so many beautiful ones.  I never missed a chance to point out this wonderful concoction in the store window.  When the birthday box came, it was the right size and shape.  It was a white sweater - a wonderfully practical utilitarian white cardigan sweater.

And my dream was shattered:  now I would never be a princess or a ballerina.  Now I would never know what it meant to be beautiful.  A dream was lost.  A dream no one knew I had.  A dream that wasn't remotely grounded in reality.  A dream that was based on a child's need to feel beautiful.  Gone without ever having been mentioned.

Those are the kinds of things we store in our secret heart.  Dreams like a happy marriage with 2 children.  Dreams like a job helping others.  Dreams like playing professional baseball.  Dreams like sending your children to college.

We tuck these dreams into our secret hearts and guard them from the light of day because the disappointment of their failure is more than we think we can bear.

So what is God's wisdom to us?  God says, "I know."  I know about your dreams, and hopes and disappointments.  I know.  Yet, I have planted within you talents and gifts and strengths and wisdom that are needed in this world to make it a better place, to ease the suffering of others, to build a safe place for all.  I need you just as you are - you are perfect for these tasks ahead.

"...teach me wisdom in my secret heart...."

A Palm Sunday sermon: the palms are so much easier

I think Palm Sunday ranks up there as one of most fun days in the church.  We get to wave palms and sing at the top of our lungs these wonderful hymns.  You could convince yourself that this is just the beginning of one long celebration that will grow throughout the week to the big extravaganza of Easter. 

And yet, today we wave palms to begin a week that marches inexorably to a scene of unspeakable violence which those palms waving folks never saw coming. 

Too many believers will skip over Holy Week observances because

they too don’t want to re-visit this week of fear and sorrow,

violence and grief.

This week requires that each of us look again at our expectations of God, our own broken relationship with God and the potential for great sacrifice when following this Jesus.

The Jesus of Palm Sunday didn’t quite turn out to be the triumphant king they expected.  He wasn’t the magician who would wave his hand and change the world into one which pleased all his followers. 

He wasn’t going to exact revenge on his enemies and pour out all manner of material

blessings of his followers.

 He was going to die….and no one saw it coming.

Which leads me to ask,: What do you do when God disappoints you? How do you react when your expectations of God are dashed to the ground?   It happens to everyone, you know.

 

Some of our disappointments are enormous: the marriage that didn’t work out, the job that disappeared, the diagnosis which meant an early death, the tornado that targeted your house…..and on and on.

Our response to it all is not rational.  It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been singled out……..it only matters that God didn’t turn out to be God the way you wanted, the way you expected.   These are personal stories, for rarely does this kind of estrangement come from a neighbor’s loss.  This is about us and our expectations for our own lives and for God.

We start with “If God were a God of love then…..”

and we end up de-friending God; we leave the Church;

we give up whatever spiritual practices we had. 

We pretend that it never mattered in the first place.

I get it: It is hard to get a handle on this Jesus and the coming kingdom that Jesus points to.  Not only is it not fully visible to us right now, it works with rules that confuse us. 

Jesus says the last shall be first and the first last.  He calls the religious leaders blind and the man born blind is able to see much more than the hand in front of his face.  He calls out the very religious and welcomes sinners to his dinner table.

Occasionally we glimpse this kingdom of God when it breaks into our reality with miracles of every stripe.  But we DONT live in Paradise.  All is not as it will be, even though we would like it to be that way now.

So we are caught: standing between this world and the next, we want justice and mercy for others, but first we want a large enough share to compensate for the pain and suffering of our own lives. And THAT is God’s job.

We want less suffering….now.   In the end we draw our own Pictionary sketch of what God should be ….and ignore the God who came among us in Jesus and the path he took to break the barrier between our world and God’s kingdom.

So when Jesus comes riding in on a donkey, we see a chance that it will all be made great again.  We want a savior so badly, we paint this non-descript Jewish carpenter as a King. 

Finally! We say,  God has come through for us and

We cut palm branches and celebrate that finally it will all be made great again. 

It’s not what Jesus talked about but then Palm branches are so much easier than delving deep into the mysteries of the universe with its big bang theories and black holes. Palm branches are easier than trusting in the unseen and wrestling with the paradoxes of life.  They are so much easier than love.

A Divine Power who can bring life into being, and life out of death……..this is majesty beyond our imagination, and too deep for our comprehension. 

            We would rather cut palm branches, or organize committees or join a

peace march than to truly trust that God is God and Jesus is God’s son. 

AND ALL this is easier than being a servant to our neighbor even unto death.

Just possibly at the heart of our disappointment is fear:

fear that the brokenness of our world is beyond anyone’s ability to fix.  And it is.

The brokenness of our world is a God sized problem that requires a God sized solution. 

Not a God to whom we dictate; but a God who dies in order to explode the 

power of death.

Palm branches are easier, but in the end, it is a cross that we need.

Palm Sunday sermon   Luther Memorial Lutheran Church  April 9, 2017

What is the Good News?

What is the good news?  Evangelism is the sharing of good news: it comes from the Greek 'eu' for good and 'angelion' for message.  When we talk gospel we are talking good news.

So what is the Good News?

God's love, manifestly present in the person of Jesus, is the Good News.  It is good news because it is God's love (and not judgment) because we have concrete examples of how that love is lived out (in all the stories of Jesus) and because, since it comes from God, it is eternal (rather than temperal).

When we gather around Jesus the Christ to worship, we are  not just gathering around the person of Jesus. Rather we gather around God's good news to all of creation in the person of Jesus, called the Christ.  The difference is between worshipping the man (historical, physical) and giving worship to the God whose love for all creation became human, living among us as the person of Jesus.  


If this is the Good News, then what is the Bad News?

The Bad News is that the world is not generally like this.  The world does not love us so that we may blossom and be all that we might be.  The world isn't interested in the health of our body or our souls.  Any reward that comes to us from this world comes as a result of our hard work and frankly, can disappear overnight.  The Bad News is that this world doesn't forgive, doesn't make us whole from the inside out, and too often won't even cross the street to give us a hand.

The Good News is that the one who created us for this lifetime is also waiting for us in the world to come.  The Bad News is that the race in this world is only to the swift and will leave all others behind.

The Good News is that everyone is invited, welcomed, considered valuable.  The Bad News is that only some are valuable, only some are welcome and few are invited in.

The Good News in Jesus is that healing is possible, your race is not a factor and it doesn't matter if you are male or female or something in between.  God is at work in Jesus bringing into existence the world to come: a world founded on mercy where all are made whole and live in peace and comfort in the presence of God.  

The Good News is that this kingdom of God breaks into our world everytime there is healing and forgiveness and invitation.  We get a foretaste of the wonder to come.  We can participate in that glory today, in this place.  We can bring that new life into being by being instruments of healing, forgiveness and welcome.

So if Jesus was such Good News, then why the cross?  That's for tomorrow.