The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 13B] - August 5, 2012 (John 6:24-35)

Every three years, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the fancy name for the cycle of Scripture readings we use in our worship, features these readings from the 6^th chapter of John. Because the gospel writer John fashions the chapters of his gospel as single scenes or themes from Jesus’ ministry, with often one whole chapter devoted to a specific occurrence or teaching, we end up getting five weeks in a row of bread.

Well, that’s one way to put it. Really what we get is five weeks in a row of Jesus talking with various crowds and his disciples about the bread of life. It’s a fascinating and meaningful episode of Jesus’ life and teaching, but, used in worship so repeatedly, it does start to feel like bread, over and over again. It’s like going to a restaurant on several Friday nights only to discover the same bland thing on the menu. This theme actually began with our gospel offering last week. As some of you may remember, we heard the story of Jesus’ miraculous sign in which he multiplied five loaves of bread and two fishes to feed 5000 people. Those crowds follow after Jesus and his disciples and pretty soon this long conversation ensues about why Jesus performed that sign and what it all means. It will continue for a few more weeks…so prepare yourselves!

Here’s the funny thing: we pastors notoriously complain about these five weeks of bread talk. It’s like carb-loading, homiletically-speaking. If you think it’s bland to hear so much on one topic for five weeks, just imagine preparing sermons and choosing hymns for it. Nowhere else in the lectionary (that I know of) do we spend so much time on one chapter and motif. And, yet, as I reflect on it—on this overabundance of bread readings—there seems to be some wisdom to it, and maybe a bit of prophetic justice, too. Who am I to complain, for example, about five straight weeks of talking about Jesus as the bread of life when most of the world must subsist on nothing but bread? Who am I to demand some variety in church Scripture readings…or in the words of the hymns…or even in my own preaching…when most of the world has absolutely precious little variety in much of anything?

We live in a corner of the world where just about any amount of any kind of food we can imagine is but a five-or ten-minute drive away. Many, however, still live in places where the energy of each day is literally given to making sure the belly doesn’t grumble too loudly at night. The focus on bread here in our worship these weeks could, in fact, mirror the real world’s focus on real bread, spurring us to consider how we view food and how we might share from our abundance. Furthermore, a steady diet of the same thing might force us to come to terms with how necessary we really think Jesus is for life, or how central a choice he is on our busy menus.

You see, the people who followed Jesus in his day and age probably had the same type of relationship to food and bread as those who live in developing nations today. There’s rarely enough to go around, and you have to work hard just to get that. They encounter Jesus as he miraculously feeds a multitude—or maybe they just hear about it—and he is instantaneously popular. In fact, in the portion just prior to today’s reading, they try to make him king. He manages to escape that plot, but they track him down, no doubt looking for more bread. It is easy to understand their M.O.: if this man can provide it so easily, then they need to find a way to keep him around.

In fact, this whole episode reminds them of the days their ancestors trudged through the wilderness and survived on the bread their leader, Moses, provided bread for them. It was a constant, never-failing supply, this strange manna. They didn’t really know what it was, but they learned to receive it and live on it. Each morning they would walk around picking it up, using just what they needed that day because if they tried to collect more and save it, it would get wormy. The manna got them where they needed to go, a day at a time.

Granted, it was not always delicious. It was nothing like the sumptuous selections they supposedly fondly remember from Egypt, but the manna was always there, and they didn’t have to do anything to receive it, other than follow God’s instructions. And although they probably could not explain why, they knew it satisfied them.

So it appears to them that Jesus can provide the same kind of sustenance that Moses did, the same kind of hope for survival, but it also appears they are missing the point on at least two accounts. You see, Jesus has not come to give God’s people the kind of bread that Moses did. In fact, Jesus has not come to bring us bread at all. Jesus is here to be bread. God has rained him down on us from heaven so that we may have life. His words, surely, are something for us to live by, but it really goes beyond that. His actual life is what humankind longs for: that is, a perfect devotion to God our Father, as well as a pure compassion in community with each other.

Sin has left us empty, starving. Jesus will be the feast that fulfills us at all times and in all places…even when we betray him, when we turn our backs on him, when we look elsewhere for spiritual nourishment. The crowds want him to given them this bread always. On the cross, he will even die to make sure that will happen.

The second point they are missing is that they don’t have to do anything to receive this bread of Jesus. It is human nature to make faith into a work: to think that we must do something to deserve the goodness of God. In this case, the people want to know—thinking of their ancestors with those baskets—what they need to do for this bread to be theirs. Do we need to perform daily devotions? Come to worship each week? Perform a good deed each day? Say prayers every night? Get the kids in Sunday School? What can we do to ensure we’ll get our share? What’s our end of the bargain and how can we control, contain, commodify this bread that will never leave us hungry?

The feeding of the multitude

In the questions of the crowd, we hear our own deductions about how God works, that there is some hidden this-for-that that we haven’t considered. But Jesus promises them that’s not how his bread works. God simply provides it. Out of great love and a desire that we flourish, God provides his Son, that we may have life. Trust in him is what follows on our part—but it never depends on it. We don’t love Jesus and follow him for the things he can provide us. We are to love and follow Jesus because he alone is exactly what we need to truly live. Like the bread and the fish that multiply without explanation, life with this person is so much greater than without him, and we can’t always explain why.

The crowds misunderstood Jesus and the bread he gave and therefore wanted a way to keep him around so that he could keep on giving. Little did they know that he would find his own way to stay present, tangible, real, right at the heart of their community. They could gather and share another set of loaves. Again, inexplicably, he would be there, multiplying forgiveness and love like he did the night before he died.

We have just had a week where and awful lot of attention was given to eating. In this case, it two pieces of bread with a piece of chicken in between. Next week it will probably be something else. People assigned all kinds of social and political meaning to the decision to eat at Chik-Fil-A or to boycott their food because of the actions and words of the owner. Trust me: I am not going to wade into those dangerous waters today or any day and tell anyone which restaurants they should or should not patronize, but one thought did cross my mind.

Namely, what if people of God on all sides of any issue were not primarily known by their participation in or absence from a meal at a fast food chain, but instead by their association with this meal? What if people of faith on either side of this issue made a bigger deal about showing up for sustenance here, taking a place at a meal that reminds us all of true freedom? Forget about the social or political statements we make by eating or not eating at Chik-Fil-A. What about the bold statement you proclaim weekly that you come here and nowhere else for nourishment, for forgiveness, for hope? The world is often a wilderness, with people taking sides, pointing fingers, sitting in judgment, and looking in all sorts of places for the bread that lasts. Yet every week you line up to “eat more Jesus,” and declare to the world that the bread of life has been given for you.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 12B] - July 29, 2012 (John 6:1-21)

Loaves and fishes.

Every once in a while, if you are paying close enough attention, you will see the stories of Holy Scripture written directly into your life. I’m sure it happens more often than we ever notice, our egos and our agendas normally crowding out any chance at recognizing the many ways the Holy Spirit swoops down to draw us into God’s story. Yet that is precisely what I found happening to me last week while I was with thirty-six members of the Epiphany Youth group and chaperones at the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans. Our denomination of the Lutheran Church, the ELCA, holds national youth gatherings every three years, and typically when I attend these huge events I am so busy and tired and sleepy and hungry that I can’t stop and enjoy those moments of the Holy Spirit and see my life through the prism of Scripture. But last week it happened at least once (that I’m aware of), and the story that I found my life momentarily mirroring is this very account from John’s gospel where Jesus feeds the multitude, the story of the loaves and fishes.

The day was Friday, the third day of the Gathering. Friday was our “easy” day when we didn’t have to be anywhere at any specific time. Many other youth groups had planned something exotic and expensive and very touristy to do on their easy day. Some had paid high-dollar for swamp boat tours, while others had paid premium prices to go to a museum or the aquarium. Already close to the squeaking point on our budget, we had not scheduled any of that, and, to their credit, there was no grumbling from our youth.

What we had left open, however, was the possibility to visit an Epiphany member out in the St. Bernard Parish in the Arabi section of greater New Orleans. Joe Wall is a New Orleans native and is currently restoring an old home there that has been in his family for four generations. It had sustained some damage in Hurricane Katrina, but was now in its final stages of refurbishment. Before we actually left for New Orleans, Joe had figured out the youth Gathering was going to coincide with his own visit to check on his property, and he invited us out to see a real historical New Orleans home. He also wanted to take us to lunch at a littlesandwich shop/food mart down the street that supposedly sells some of the best oyster and shrimp po-boys in the entire city.

So this little expedition is what we decided to do on our “easy day.” It was nothing too fancy or elaborate, yet it exposed us to something interesting and authentically “New Orleans” outside of the downtown bubble we had been in. In terms of the Scripture story, you might say we had travelled to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Joe was a gracious and wonderful host. When we showed up at his house,  the bottom had fallen out of the sky and we were looking like drowned rats but he didn’t hesitate to welcome us right in and show us around. We also took in a few of the sights of the humble but very tidy neighborhood right along the levee that holds back the Mississippi, including the remains of the oldest plantation house in the city. Joe was, however, a little taken aback by the size of our group. I don’t know how many he expected, but he seemed a little concerned that the little sandwich shop might not be able to handle thirty-seven people. In fact, he was concerned enough to call the shop ahead of time and ask them if they—get this—had enough French bread on hand to make that many po-boys. I had seen the place as we’d driven in. Hand-painted sign, pay-at-the-cash-register kind of place…to call it a “restaurant” was a bit of a stretch. In fact, it calls itself a food store. Suffice it to say that because it was so far off the beaten path, and especially because we were arriving after the lunch rush, that shop might not have but a few, say 5, loaves on hand. I was a little worried where we’d get food for our entire group if this option didn’t pan out. But the owner told Joe on the phone, “We’ll make it work.”

So we trudged down the street in the rain, literally crowded ourselves into this little food mart, and all of us—well, just about all of us—ordered po-boys. We took up every seat in the place. The kitchen help fired up the fryer again full-speed, and the waitress and the young bus boy, who couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old, both worked diligently to make sure everyone was comfortable. But just before the food began to come out, someone requested that I say a prayer. The whole place stopped talking, and the employees paused in their tasks. Suddenly I realized that I was praying for the whole establishment, which is something I’ve never done before. I’ve prayed in restaurants before, for a table or two of people here or there, but never for an entire eating establishment. So I gave thanks. Then the food was delivered and, as you guessed, it was absolutely delicious. There was more than enough for all, and I’m pretty sure I saw some people leaving with doggie bags.

So, there you have it: life mirroring Scripture. Loaves and fishes. French bread loaves and shellfishes. Jesus said, “Make the people sit down—“we’ll make it work.” So they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; also the fish, as much as they wanted.”

A miracle—a sign of God’s presence—happened to us in that little food mart that day. I’m not saying that the kitchen staff somehow miraculously transformed 5 loaves of French bread into thirty-eight po-boys, but we did experience a hospitality and and a feeding of our souls that went far beyond what I think any of us expected. In reflecting upon our trip as a whole, many of the youth lifted up the day we spent at Joe’s house and in the Arabi Food Store and Café as one of the highlights of the trip. It was a humbling reminder to me that wholesome learning experiences do not always come with a high price of an admission ticket or with elaborate planning. A component of grace, they just come, and often without warning.

When Jesus Christ is present in the breaking of bread and the sharing of gifts, any ordinary situation can become a feast of heaven. And in this occurrence of life mirroring Scripture, Joe, the other adult leaders, and I all served, if only for a few moments, as the worried disciples who wondered whether any feast could take place at all, especially with so many hungry people and in a place with such an apparent shortage of resources. The youth and the workers at Arabi Food store, however, supplied the firm if not quiet faith that God was indeed going to provide everything we’d need: the po-boys, for sure, but also the sustenance of an experience where relationships were formed and gifts were blessed, from the bread in the kitchen right down to the labor of the bus boy.

The question is: how many instances like this will need to happen before we realize that this is how our God operates, that God does not function on an economy of scarcity? How many times will our lives need to mirror the stories of Scripture before it finally dawns on us that God’s grace permeates even the ordinary Arabi Food Store experiences of life? How many occurrences of God’s surprising grace will it take to convince us that Jesus is often quietly at the middle of everything, blessing our meager gifts and our inexpensive easy days and then multiplying God’s goodness so that there is enough for all.

The sign that those disciples experienced that day beside the Sea of Galilee was designed to prove just that: that Jesus is God’s amazing grace and that he is given for the life of the world. This kind of thing is what he does, not just for our bellies and our bodies, but for our souls as well. Our lives will be far more with him than without him. And as we feast on his word in Scripture, as we gather weekly with other people who are hungry for a word of hope and comfort, as we take our place at this feast each week, Jesus Christ shows up and promises, against all odds, that he will be enough, that his own body will be blessed and, on the cross, broken for the life of the world.

A further challenge involves not just seeing that this is how Jesus Christ graciously interrupts the normal flow of  human existence to provide enough for all, but to then model that ourselves as his disciples. God calls us to be the bus boys and the waitresses, the cooks and bread bakers who see our lives transformed by Jesus’ power and then go out to see where loaves are broken and blessed for the life of the world. Strengthened time and again by the experiences like the youth had in New Orleans, or the volunteers at Vacation Bible School, or even by our worship here, we become able to see the scope of our lives written into Scriptures story where people meet Jesus daily and join in his mission, where see the death of Good Friday give way to the news of Easter morning.

Our call to pull up a seat and be fed turns into a call to go gather the leftovers and be prepared to feed the world.  One of the speakers we heard at the Superdome, Shane Claiborne, said that we often look at all the injustice and suffering and inequality in the world and often say, “God, why don’t you do something about all this?” And God says, “I did. I made you.”

And when we doubt whether our meager lives, our meager gifts and talents, our meager faith are enough to be broken and blessed for Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes, then perhaps we should arrange a trip with Joe to Arabi Food Store and Café in St. Bernard Parish for a refresher course, Or, better yet…no need to go anywhere at all. We can simply grab a seat and arrange ourselves here at the Lord’s Table, where there is always plenty for all, the body and blood of our crucified and risen Lord, the bread of life.

And, by the by, see every moment of our lives—life, death, and life again—written into the story of God.

Amen.

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 8B] - July 1, 2012 (Mark 5:21-43)

Health care has certainly been the talk of the week. Everyone around has been anxiously awaiting word regarding the validity of a recent campaign that promises health and wholeness to all people. People have even been assembling on the streets in some places, some of them voicing protest and others offering support. In and amongst them are plenty, I’m certain, who are just curious and want to be in on the action. Questions have abounded as the controversy reaches fever pitch: will quality health care be a privilege of the rich and well-connected or will there be access for the poor and anonymous? Who can count on getting attention in a system of care that is much larger and more complex than anyone realizes? What is the value of human life?

And throughout the whole episode, we’ve heard of desperate cases and extreme examples, those who are at the end of their rope and have nowhere else to turn. All in all it’s been a very sticky situation; one leader in particular finds himself walking a tightrope of legal restrictions, interpretations of codes and statutes that few common people can follow, much less understand. What will be the outcome? They tell us the whole thing is historic. It could change the future of everyone’s welfare. After all, Jesus of Nazareth might only pass through this town once. If you are in search of health and healing, you had better push and elbow your way into his presence and use any connections you may have to get his attention.

Jesus heals hemorrhaging woman

The scenes from this morning’s gospel lesson rivet us, and if they don’t, they probably should. Something monumental is happening. Jesus is back on the more Jewish side of Lake Galilee. The crowds are mobbing him. They know he can heal because he’s performed some miraculous healings, but many are probably equally fascinated by his teachings, which is why they are calling him teacher. Teachers of the law are supposed to follow the law, and that means staying away from things like bodily fluids and corpses. And yet Jesus, the teacher, doesn’t. It’s all quite riveting. In one episode, he is both approached by a synagogue leader named Jairus whose young daughter is near death and also accosted by an unknown woman who has been bleeding for twelve years.

Although few details are given, it is safe to assume that both of these people come from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. One has likely been on the fringes of society, the realities of her condition making her ritually unclean. Kids these days might call her a creeper, someone who lurks around in the crowd, never directly confronting the object of interest. However, being a woman marked by the religious authorities as dirty, she had no other option but to creep up on Jesus.

"Raising of Jairus' Daughter" Ilya Repin (1871)

By contrast, the other person apparently has an entourage. Jairus would have been well-known in the community. In Mark’s gospel, we only know the name of one other person Jesus healed. As a synagogue leader, Jairus would have been well-versed in the law, as well. That he would approach Jesus, this controversial upstart from Nazareth, is no small thing. Few Jewish religious leaders would embrace Jesus’ ministry, but I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, and his daughter is dying.

Two different folks, two different circumstances, but one clear message that God is concerned for the welfare of all of his people. Like many of other miracles in Jesus’ early ministry, these actions demonstrate God’s desire to free people from the powers of sin and death. This is God’s individual mandate: powerful redemption for the whole world.

Our response to this good news is faith. That is the other important thing that both Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage illustrate, and it is ultimately what Jesus wants to show us in performing these healings. Jesus is not just a wonder-worker who is here to do our bidding; rather, he is the Savior of the world who wants us to receive his kingdom message in faith. Jesus is not just a healer of medical conditions, but is the one who embodies the very compassionate heart of God, who desires all people to trust in God’s mercy and lovingkindness.

And yet in both cases, we see a wavering of that faith and trust. Once the woman is healed, she is overcome with fear and trembling.At first afraid to own up to her pushiness, her sneaking up behind him, she finally confesses how she pressed in on him so close that she could touch his clothes. In the case of Jairus, his supporters initially give up on Jesus’ ability to help after Jesus is detained by conversation with the woman. The daughter is already feared dead. Once Jesus arrives at his house, Jairus’ friends laugh when Jesus suggests that the girl is not dead but sleeping. Fear and laughter. Anxiety and mocking. Unwavering trust and belief are not the reactions that Jesus’ presence and actions produce, at least in these two. Even these models of faith show some vacillation as they learn to trust Jesus’ power. The promise of new life in Jesus is never first based on our faith or our power to believe to begin with. That’s why it’s called grace.

This past week, while the rest of the country was in the grips of the ruling over health care, I found myself at the Virginia Synod Kairos youth event at Roanoke College, in the grips of almost two hundred teenagers who were learning to articulate God’s loving care. During some of our large group sessions in the chapel, seniors are invited to sit before the whole assembly and give what they call a “faith testimony.” They sit on a stool in front of everyone and read aloud a statement they’ve written and agonized over which attempts to describe how they’ve felt God moving and working in their life.

As you can imagine, often these testimonies contain stories of trials and suffering, secret and shocking pain that often go unshared until they come into the presence of their peers. I consider it an honor to hear these stories and testimonies. One youth shared his fear and turmoil over a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy and what that might mean for his future. I was particularly moved by the testimony of one young man who openly confessed to everyone that he didn’t think he was a “good Christian.” He went on to explain how faith was something he never could get a handle on. Just when he thinks his understanding of God is deepened, at that moment he realizes it could be so much stronger yet.

At this point I’m unable to remember the exact words he used when he spoke to us, but rather than speaking of faith in terms of an object or tool which he might use to get what he wants—which so many of us often do—he spoke about it almost as if were the hem of a garment that slips from his hand just as he begins to grip it. His faith, he said, was more like a set of questions and hopes that he brings before God, a journey that he never can define or fully describe. In his testimony I could hear the echoes of both Jairus and the bleeding woman, a longing to be close to the Lord but also a fear that things won’t always work out like he hoped, that his failings and brokenness might somehow invite God’s wrath rather than God’s compassion. I heard him speak about feeling at times unworthy, ungrateful, unwilling, and I wanted to tell him that the fact that he acknowledges he is not a “good Christian” actually makes him a great Christian. I could hear an understanding that Jesus does not respond to our faith, but that faith is a response to what Jesus has done. But most I heard this young man’s thanksgiving for what he had already received from the hand of a loving and healing Savior, and his expectation that there was more of it to come. A common theme in all testimonies—his and the others—was that faith somehow made them well. It sometimes eluded them, often surprised them, but always, in the end, made them well. What about you? What words would you give to describe your faith? What actions in your life press you closer and closer to the man from Nazareth?

In the end, that is where this relationship of trust is aimed: God makes us well. And no matter where we are in life—and no matter what the world’s state of health care is—there will always be something healing, something truly life-giving about a relationship with Jesus that cannot be found anywhere else. There will still be something saving about seeking to know and—more importantly—being known by God. There will always be power in his cloak, if we can but touch it.

As we press closer to him, as we continue our questions of discovery, as we thrust onto God our pain and suffering, we learn that Jesus will not primarily free people from the powers of sin and death by performing miraculous healing. He will primarily do this by succumbing to the powers of sin and death himself. He is here, in our midst, not simply to command his power over everything but to give up that power and enter into the weakness of human experience. On the cross, Jesus touches…grips…is nailed to…all that separates us from God and, in his rising, conquers it.

Brothers and sisters, this is historic. It affects the welfare of everyone in the entire world.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 6B] - June 17, 2012 (Mark 4:26-34)

So, Jesus likes agricultural metaphors, does he? Mustard seeds…birds nesting in branches…farmers planting things and then picking the crops. Perfect! This stuff is right down my alley! Some of you might know that I have a small vegetable garden in my backyard and that I’m more than a little obsessed with it. In fact, I have become the butt of many jokes in my family. My father, who was raised on a farm but raised his own children in the suburbs, probably thinks I’m trying a little too hard to get back in touch with our agrarian roots. Melinda, my wife, has complained I’m neglecting her in favor of the sugar snap peas and the cucumber vines. I have been known to arrive home from work in the afternoon and go around back to spend a little time with the plants before I go in to say “hello” to her. In fact, she has said more than once that if ever a garden grew from someone just watching it, it would be mine.

The truth is I really don’t know what I’m doing and I worry like crazy about it. This is the third year I’ve really ever tried to grow vegetables, and I’m convinced they’re all going to die and all that time and effort will just dry up to a crisp in the hot July sun. In addition, the other pastor here is pretty competitive when it comes to tomato growing. I’ve been feeling the pressure to produce. Maybe at the end of the summer there’s going to be a big “tomato-off” or something. Nevertheless, I still don’t really know what I’m doing, and so I watch it…vigilantly…as if I will catch the tiny green leaves in the very process of unfolding.

And, to tell you the truth, sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I check the strawberries and find nothing ripe enough to pick. I’ll walk away for five minutes to study something else and come back and, what do you know? One of those strawberries got just a little redder while I looked away! And then I pick it to find that it’s mostly still white. I was just over-anxious.

Yes, Jesus’ agrarian metaphors and parables about growing things are right down my alley. The only problem is that the seed planter in his parable is the opposite of me. His garden grows whether he is vigilant about watching it or not. In fact, it sounds like he’s downright nonchalant about its well-being. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” No pacing around its perimeter, no daily monitoring of its progress. This garden just grows, producing what it needs to regardless of how conscious he is of it. Granted, he has work to do, but the gardener in the parable seems less concerned with how to measure it and how to tweak it and certainly less concerned with how to worry about it and more concerned with trusting that it will do what it’s supposed to. Yes, it has more to do with a faith that, in time—with the flow of seasons and the sunlight and the rainfall—things will grow and flourish just like God wants them to. With that in mind, I think of the Epiphany Gardeners here at church, who plant and work mainly on the odd weekend and afternoon, but otherwise leave it to itself. They know to wait until the strawberry is ripe before they go in with the sickle.

Yes, gardening may be right down our alley, but appreciating the growth of God’s kingdom is not right down our alley much of the time. And on some level, I find it easy to resent this simply little parable. Because—let’s be honest—when it comes to faith and mission and service to neighbor, we like to measure it. We want to see growth happen in the process. We want to catch, for example, the new believer’s life unfolding in faith before our very eyes. We want to be a part of the exciting new ministry that feeds the homeless, the Youth trip to New Orleans, or the invigorating Sunday School class because those are the times we’re sure the kingdom is breaking in all around us. We can just feel it, see it.

But what about the day-in, day-out duties of prayer and devotions? The commitment to weekly worship? Extending hospitality once again to the Sunday visitor? Practicing routine forgiveness with the people you’re living with?  Those things not so much. And what about, in the midst of everything, trusting that God’s kingdom is truly unfolding, doing what it’s supposed to do, as all these more mundane, run-of-the-mill activities take place? That’s perhaps the trickiest part of it all.

Jesus’ lessons to his disciples about the kingdom are often very tricky. In the first place, they’re tricky because they’re trying to explain something that is essentially impossible to picture or place. Even Jesus himself seems to search for a worthy metaphor—“Hmmm…with what else can we compare the kingdom of God??”—choosing never to lecture or hold forth with some long-winded theological description that would probably bore everyone to tears. No, Jesus gives experiences, speaks in images. And in this morning’s first parable, God’s kingdom can best be described as a growth that happens mysteriously and is never entirely dependent on the work of you or me.

This is something his disciples will need to know before they go much further. Right here at the beginning he’s telling them, “When you’re out there ministering to people, doing the work of grace, spreading the news of God’s love, don’t get distracted by the mechanisms of how it’s all supposed to work. That’s not necessary for God’s kingdom to appear amongst you. In other words,” Jesus tells us, “Don’t constantly pace the perimeter like that silly Pastor Phillip, clinging to every leaf and blossom.” Do what you can and let the rest take its course.

And, above all, don’t be too obsessed with grandiosity. That is the lesson of the mustard seed. Don’t be obsessed with grandiosity, because God’s not. What may look tiny and insignificant or ugly or paltry boring at the beginning is still the perfect place for God to get a foothold. God is not obsessed with grandiosity. And we know this as the Christian’s journey begins with just a simple bath of water and the words of forgiveness. Jesus knows that we often seek after the big and the great and the impressive, sometimes building enormous cathedrals and dreaming up all kinds of flashy, fancy schemes. But God isn’t obsessed with grandiosity, choosing to gather us for nourishment each week with a small chunk of bread and a cup of wine. As his disciples venture forth, they will need to know this because the world, by contrast, is quite taken with the powerful and take-them-by-storm approach, and it will be difficult in the church to fight that urge.

Yet, no matter how well they keep these lessons at the back of their minds, they will never quite be able to predict just how unimpressed with grandiosity and—on the other hand—utterly fascinated with the weak and downtrodden Jesus’ Father actually is. At the cross, we all will see just how God can use the weakest, ugliest, most insignificant of beginnings to grow the grace of his kingdom. And, like the birds of the air, all God’s children may come to roost in the branches of this tree.

My uncle, who is pastor at a congregation in South Carolina, told me a story while I was in seminary of something that happened to him a good twenty years after he was ordained. He had already served as chaplain in the US Army for twenty years, having been stationed in three foreign countries and at least twice that many US States. He had finally moved back to take a call at this church in the Columbia area. One day, he was in the check-out line at a grocery store when the guy in front of him turned around and said, “Are you Vicar Bob?”

Surprised, my uncle responded, “Yes, although he hadn’t been called “vicar” since those days in seminary. My uncle didn’t recognize this person, but deduced that this man must remember him from over 20 years before. He started to rack his brain, but he admitted he didn’t know the man’s name or even how he might know him. The younger man said, “You were my youth director at church.”

My uncle said he racked his brain again. He could only remember being a youth director one time—it was for a brief 4 months interim period at a rural church that happened to be within a few miles of that grocery store during his first year of seminary. It had been such a short, almost meaningless job at the time that he hadn’t really considered himself an official youth director, much less a vicar. He vaguely remembered there had a been a handful of youth there, and he had signed up for the position to get class credit before he went away on internship. My uncle said something like, “Oh, yeah, OK. I remember now. That was a long time ago.”

The man then went on to say, “You were great with us. I will never forget the time you spent there. I still live around here, and am still at that church and am so thankful you got me involved with those silly games you taught us to play.”

My uncle thanked him and continued to bag his groceries, and then they parted ways. Bobby told me that on the way out to his car he began to recall in those short days at that rural church a particularly messy-haired kid who never really fit in with everyone else, who he thinks might have attended once or twice. That was the man in the grocery store line.

You just never know, do you? God is not obsessed with grandiosity…at least not at the outset. In fact, it’s almost like God is obsessed with the insignificant. And there is no need to pace the perimeter to check and measure the growth potential of every little action and word. That was just the story of one pastor. Imagine the breadth of your own ministries and interactions! The kingdom can begin and grow right here, among us. Day in and day out…we just never know how.

But God does. As it turns out, this kind of gardening—these kinds of holy and blessed encounters, sprouting from what looks like nowhere but nevertheless reaching up, up, up to include all kinds in his embrace—is right down God’s alley.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Seventh Sunday of Easter [Year B] - May 20, 2012 (Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 and John 17:6-19)

As some of you already know, my family just returned from a vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida, which was a trip my father happened to win in a fundraising raffle at his alma mater. The last time I had been to Disney World was over twenty years ago, and my only memory of the occasion was of long lines—too long, in fact—for all the rides. This time was drastically different. The longest I think we had to wait to board a ride was twenty minutes, and that happened only once. Most of the time we just walked right in, Fast Pass in hand, winding our ways through the mostly-empty ropes and stanchions to the spot where you get on.

What amazed me about this was the efficiency at which the amusement park moves large numbers of people through the rides. It’s an exact science they’ve honed from years of practice. At the end of each system of lines, for example, just before you’re supposed to get on the ride, stands a Disney employee who is counting off the people and quickly dividing them into sections so that when the next car—or teacup or magic carpet—comes along the precise number of riders are ready to get on the ride. Most of the rides need to have weight and number of passengers evenly distributed. There is no wasted space. Each compartment is filled to capacity, and most of the time all of us got to sit together. Like I said, it is a science, and those Disney employees know exactly where to place extra people and how to fill up empty seats.

In this morning’s lesson from Acts we learn that the first apostles were faced with an empty slot that needs to be filled. The journey of the church is about to be launched, and one seat among twelve remains empty. Twelve disciples had originally been chosen to inaugurate God’s ministry with Jesus, but Judas had bailed. He had been missing ever since that fateful night he turned Jesus into the Roman authorities. To us, the number twelve may seem a bit arbitrary and no big deal, but it was deeply important to the mission of Jesus. Twelve disciples corresponded to the twelve tribes of ancient Israel, the people from which Jesus came. The number twelve was that perfect amount that signaled to all Jews that God’s people were being restored. The New Testament is not completely clear on what actually happens to Judas, but it is clear that his absence leaves a hole that needs to be addressed in order for the community of Jesus’ followers to begin their mission and, it would seem, to be taken seriously. You could say it is too, in some way, an issue of proper balance and ratio.

icon of the election of Matthias

And so the community of Jesus’ followers is forced to make its first big decision: who will fill that seat as the church is propelled into the world? Peter begins by consulting Scripture, underlining the fact that the Word of God will always be a guide for Jesus’ people. Facing a problem or a test? A study of scripture is always a good place to start finding a resolution. The particular part of the story where Peter quotes the Old Testament is not included in our reading for today, but it is important to note that the community of believers begins by basing its understanding of mission and identity in Holy Scripture. As it lurches into the future, the church will never completely be flying solo. The Word of God goes with it. In this case, Scripture tells them to “let another take his place,” and, lucky for them, there happen to be several people to choose from, men—and even certain women—who had been with Jesus throughout the time of his public ministry. Two candidates from this bunch are then put forward and the entire group prays and deliberates. A man named Matthias is chosen by the casting of lots. The boat is filled and the trip commences.

The casting of lots to settle such a major decision is another thing that may seem awfully arbitrary to us, but, as it happens, that was one common and accepted way to resolve decisions in the ancient world. In fact, a similar process will be employed in the coming months as the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt selects a new Pope. After honing down all potential candidates in a very deliberative process, a five-year-old child will be chosen to walk up to the altar during a worship service and choose one name at random out of a box that contains three. That name will be the new patriarch. In a culture like ours, where a democratic process seems like the only rational option for deciding leaders, this method seems strange, maybe even a little superstitious, but we need to realize that this was the system they trusted. They understood that God was somehow part of the process, that God “knew the hearts” of each of the candidates they had vetted, and most importantly that God could work with whatever outcome resulted.

Interestingly, we never hear of the apostle Matthias again, nor of the alternate candidate, the guy with three names: Joseph, Barsabbas, and Justus. And in book that is named “The Acts of the Apostles,” that is perhaps peculiar. The point here is not necessarily who will fill that seat but, rather, what they will together be doing so that the mission can begin. In this case it is not so important which leadership style Matthias has or which particular qualities any one of the apostles brings to the table but what they as believing women and men are going to be about.

And what they will be about is the ministry of Jesus in the world. What they will be about is embodying the love of God in Christ for the rest of creation. It’s just like Jesus prays the night before his crucifixion, as recorded in John’s gospel: Jesus will no longer be in the world, but they will be in the world, vessels of the truth. As his representatives, his body on earth—his torso, limbs, feet, hands, fingers, ligaments and bones—they are sent into the world,  just as Jesus had been sent by his Father. And just as the number Twelve would imply to the Jewish audience that would originally receive them, they are sent to restore what has been broken, bind up what has been wounded, put to rights what God has redeemed. This decision over Judas’ replacement will be just the first in a long line of decisions and changes and adjustments the church will need make as it lurches forward into the future.

It is easy to think, especially on a Sunday morning, that faith in the risen Lord Jesus is all about this place, this sitting, this standing, this opening the hymnbook and singing, this Sunday School class, this shaking the pastor’s hand on the way out. It is easy to think, you confirmands, that faith in the risen Lord Jesus is all about memorizing the Apostles’ Creed, or passing confirmation tests, or saying the right words and believing the right doctrine. It’s easy to think all that, for all of us, because we do spend a good bit of time concentrating on those things. Those things are a part of it, but chiefly Christian faith is about what those first believers discover as they select Matthias, which is also what Jesus prayed for so fervently in his last night before dying.

It is about this wild but joyous ride together with the brothers and sisters around us where we learn to love in the right and healthy ways, where Scripture illuminates our conversations. It is where the cross constantly reminds us of God’s forgiveness, and where the Spirit enables us to be our true selves and lets our gifts blend and join up with each other’s so that the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. That is the ride that Matthias’s election helped kick off that day which we, believe it or not, are still on.

Yet we are aware that life in the Church is often painful and frustrating for many, filled with conflict and disputes about everything from what kind of candles should be on the altar to which version of the Lord’s Prayer we should say in worship. We are aware, for example, of the young person who, despite everyone’s efforts, still feels shunned or left out at youth group. And of the visitor who attends worship several times but is never genuinely greeted by a member. And of the committee member whose opinions seem to be repeatedly ignored. Sometimes I even wonder about those who supported Joseph-Barsabbas-Justus instead of Matthias. Were they angry?  Did disappointment get the best of them? I guess I’m just thankful they didn’t make a stink about it. Sad to say, but those things are also going to be a part of the life of this imperfect community called the church. Yet at its core, these kinds of issues and how we talk to each other about them, how we include others’ ideas and sacrifice personal agendas for the sake of the gospel is absolutely central to who we are as the people Jesus prays for. Christine Pohl, provost at Asbury Seminary puts it very bluntly in her new book on church community, “The character of our shared life in congregations, communities, and families has the power to draw people to the kingdom or to push them away. How we live together is the most persuasive sermon we’ll ever preach.”^[1]

In the days and weeks following Epiphany’s Youth Sunday on April 29, I received so many positive and sincere comments about the youth group. Many directed those comments at me, as if the youth group adult leaders were the main ones responsible for the sermons they preached or the other gifts they shared. It occurred to me that what we heard and saw on Youth Sunday was nothing more (and nothing less) than a reflection of the best in yourselves. Their words and vision, their understanding of Scripture and worship and the public witness of Christ have all been formed not so much by a particular pastor or leader, but by the witness of this congregation and their parents. It is this community’s life that has nurtured them. My friends, if we are moved by any offering of gifts, if find ourselves drawn closer to the kingdom by any expression of the gospel here, we may count it as yet another example of how Christ, in our baptism, has chosen us for the ride, counted us as a part of the number, and has put us to work as his body in the world.

Come to think of it, maybe we’d get the point better if our pews were equipped with those safety bars on Disney rides that come down and strap you in. Maybe then we’d get the notion that we are, indeed, moving in a direction, that the church is a ride that lurches and zooms into the future where God knows our hearts and urges us to share our gifts.

Step right up, boys and girls, men and women, and take your places.

Hold on tight…because this could get wild.

But you can bet, most of the time it’s going to be…fun!

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Christine Pohl, “Our Life Together” in The Christian Century. February 22, 2012

The Third Sunday of Easter [Year B] - April 22, 2012 (Luke 24:36-48)

I am appreciative of the stories we have in the New Testament of Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection. On the one hand, I appreciate them for the good news they give us. These accounts of Jesus with his disciples show us that the crucifixion was not the end of the story. The fact that Jesus appeared to his disciples and others several times shows that Jesus lives, death has been conquered, and the great gulf of sin that separated us from God has finally been bridged.

On the other hand, I find that I’m also appreciative for these stories because they’re so honest about the way those disciples and friends first respond to that news. They show us, for example, that the disciples never  coolly accept what is being presented to them, casually coming to terms with what it all means—“NBD,” as they might text it today. These accounts also never show the disciples and friends of Jesus slamming their hands against their foreheads in a “duh”-like expression. “Of course he’s risen from the dead!  What were we thinking?”

"Christ's appearance on the mountain" Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-11)

Neither do these accounts show the disciples particularly revved up to tell anyone about it. Granted, the Holy Spirit has not yet been sent to help the believers make sense of it all—we get that story in the book of Acts and, boy, let me tell you, they eventually get pretty revved up—but even here, in the days fresh after it’s happened, you might expect the disciples to show some immediate faith and interest, some compulsion to spread this unbelievable news. But the word “faith” isn’t even mentioned, and the disciples are mostly overcome with terror and confusion. Even in their joy they still struggle to believe. Instead of being some biblical version of a rubber-stamp, “happily-ever-after” ending, these resurrection appearances do a good job of showing that the disciples have been presented with something that they can’t quite get their head around, that the whole concept of Jesus’ miraculous and mysterious rising from the dead was pretty hard to grasp...not to mention getting revved up about so as to serve as witnesses.

There is great irony in this because Jesus spends much of his time during these appearances going about trying to show that he is, in fact, something to be grasped. And I’m not talking about grasping just the concept or idea of the resurrection or the theology of it all or grasping the underlying Scripture that tells its story…but his actual body, himself.  It can be grasped. “Touch me and see,” he says to his followers, “for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have  By the way…Do you have anything to eat?” The risen Lord spends a good bit of his time after the resurrection finding his friends, searching out community, doing what he can to convince his followers that his body is real and that he is not a supernatural spirit. So Jesus offers, then, what a real human can offer: flesh and bones. Skin, supposedly with wounds.  And an appetite.

Interestingly, this story from Luke does not mention Jesus’ wounds directly. We often assume he shows wounds here because he does so in other gospel accounts and we know that the crucifixion would have left marks in his hands and feet, however here the emphasis is on the hands and feet themselves. In the ancient Middle East, men typically wore (and still wear) a tunic that covered the entire body, leaving only the hands and feet exposed. Here he offers them as proof that he has bones and skin, that he literally takes up space in this universe and is not just an image.

The fact that Jesus can be physically grasped may eventually help the disciples understand that what they are seeing is real. He establishes his reality—his graspability—so he can get to the point of his resurrection: that repentance and forgiveness of sins may be proclaimed in his name. The entire gospel story has been working toward this point. Way at the beginning John the Baptist came preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ whole ministry was based on seeking out the lost and least, ensuring them—and others, at the same time—that God’s forgiveness was offered even unto them, despite what the religious leaders were saying. Now that death, the last barrier separating God from creation and creation from itself, has been defeated, full forgiveness in God’s name may be proclaimed and made real to all nations.  

In fact, if this is what the community of Jesus’ followers is to be about—to offer forgiveness and embody it with each other—it must be a real community, a physical presence. In being emphatic about his own physical presence, Jesus is, in a way, conveying to them the importance of their own lives, their own bodies, their own flesh and blood, in the ministry of his gospel. That is to say, as witnesses, they will also need to be a community that can be grasped, a group of people that actually takes up space in the universe. They will not just have thoughts about God and God’s forgiveness and the Bible and all that jazz, or just speak words about repentance or theories about binding up the broken-hearted. They will do it. They will practice it. They will exert real, physical energy to attempt it. These followers of the risen Lord will allow themselves to be touched and even wounded in order for it to be made real.

I recently ran across an incredibly uplifting obituary (imagine that: an uplifting obituary!) in one of my favorite magazines for a British woman named Lyn Lusi. I had never heard of her before until her death, but reading about her life made me wonder why I never had. Lyn Lusi was a Christian missionary’s wife who worked almost her whole life in the most remote and dangerous corners of Congo, the country formerly known as Zaire. Her husband was a doctor and a hospital builder; she was his main administrator. There, in one of the harshest and darkest places of the universe, Lyn and her husband took up space, working through the years to train thirty doctors and tending countless sick and injured. When Lyn Lusi discovered that many women in her area had been brutally sexually assaulted by militia men and then disowned by their families, she responded by offering them all the love and compassion that she possibly could. Together, she and her husband founded an organization called HEAL Africa, the letters in HEAL standing for Health, Education, Action, and Love.  She died last month from cancer at the age of 62, but not before she and her husband had helped treat, often with surgery, over 5000 of these cases.

Lyn and Jo, her husband

One of the most remarkable aspects of their ministry of healing was her recruitment of local “mamas,” women from surrounding villages who would stand ready to welcome the injured, forsaken, often filthy women with open arms as they got off the buses in front of the hospital. It was a ministry of grasping and being grasped: the life of resurrection faith that takes up space in the universe, one that does not just sit around dreaming about things like forgiveness and a world without pain, but puts its flesh and blood on the line to embody it.

The world will dearly miss Lyn Lusi, but she is far from the only example of this grasping, graspable life of faith. I caught glimpses of it yesterday as volunteers here stretched and sweated as they set up the fellowship hall for our CARITAS guests, hooking poles together and unloading sleeping mattresses on a sunny Saturday. We see examples of it all the time here as people lug food donations into the HHOPE pantry and then sort it, weigh it, bag it, and lovingly hand it to real people in our community who need it. Then there’s Cecil McFarland, chaplain to state prisons, physically going to the incarcerated to share the news of forgiveness.

This graspable faith is also put into motion by the tireless volunteers who do their best to make sure that this particular place of bricks and mortar is locked and secured on a regular basis, outfitted with the best and cleanest facilities for our ministries, grass and altarware shined up.

And this same faith is embodied by those who come to sit their real, flesh-and-blood hineys down in pews at some point during the week to hear about this Jesus who has been risen from the dead. These and more are instances of people who are living in their own bones the reality of a world set to rights by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, people who are working out what it means to offer forgiveness of sins, repentance to a life of serving others in Jesus’ name.

I often get wind of anxiety, especially in our country, about the future of the church and whether it will be relevant amidst the new challenges of technology and science. I hear of anxiety about how people of faith can or should adapt to changing cultural mores and attitudes about everything from sexuality to politics to economics. There is a sense that we’re losing ground, or that we’re losing influence. While the challenges that face us are real, sometimes I think the anxiety is much ado about nothing. What place will the church have? Will we thrive? Will we be—dare I say it?—relevant?

Friends, the church will always have a place in this world because it has been given to proclaim and embody the forgiveness and repentance in Jesus’ name, because it is the community dedicated to standing there, offering words of healing and real arms of embrace as the world gets off the bus, looking for hope, looking for a new start. The church will always be relevant not because it’s just acquainted with the concept of new life, but because it allows itself to be present, grasped, touched—and, yes, wounded—as it proclaims the forgiveness of sins, as it offers repentance, a life in the direction of God.

And to do so, we must not forget our appetite—our appetite for his meal. We’re going to need some nourishment. Let us be strengthened by the promise that Jesus is somehow still with us, God’s little children, breaking his body and pouring out his blood to bind up the brokenhearted and restore us to God’s heart. And even when we cannot explain it, even when this meal, this moment, this mystery cannot be grasped by our minds, let us at least grasp it with our hands. May the joy of this news—He is risen!—then grasp us and empower us, once again, to take up space here in this universe, to proclaim his forgiveness and serve as witnesses to the life he offers.  Relevant…now and forever.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.