The Fifth Sunday in Lent [Year C] - March 17, 2013 (John 12:1-8)

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

The gospel writers often don’t give us a whole lot of sensory data—what things looked like, for example, or how a particular scene was laid out, the sights and sounds of daily life. Then again, the gospel writers weren’t writing in order to paint vivid pictures of life in first century Palestine. Rather, they were writing with one objective alone: to tell us who Jesus was and why he matters. Instead of concentrating on the surroundings, they focus on things Jesus does and things Jesus says and the effects they have on the world around him. That’s why they’re called gospels: they focus on the good news about Jesus. Every word and sentence is carefully chosen to communicate that point.

Every once in a while, however, a very specific description creeps in. This brief story where Mary anoints Jesus’ feet is one of those occasions. Here, in the midst of a dinner party at the home of Lazarus, Mary breaks open a pound of perfume and John adds the little detail about how it makes the whole house smell good. Can you just picture it…or, better yet, breathe it? Every room is permeated with this thick, sweet scent, like when you walk into the Yankee Candle Company Store at the mall. In a story that is typically lacking in these kinds of extra details, it almost takes you off guard.

But after a deeper reading, maybe the detail isn’t so little, after all. One might remember, with a bit of prodding, that the last time this particular group of people was together, there was talk of another aroma. In fact, just prior to this chapter, Mary and Martha are at Lazarus’ tomb, weeping and wailing with devastating grief because death has taken him. Just after Jesus asks for the stone to be removed, Martha blurts out, “There’s already a stench. He’s been dead four days.” And so, you can see that this little detail about the aroma of Mary’s perfume filling the house actually proclaims something big about the power of Jesus and the life of thankful discipleship. The former odor of death has gone and is now replaced by a new, beautiful fragrance of luxuriant life.

That kind of imagery and symbolism is nice—the contrast between the death and life, that decay and this revival, that crying at the tomb and this merriment at the dinner party—but it’s probably not the main thing we’re supposed to take from this. John, you see, slips in another little detail: the perfume is expensive, and there is a whole pound of it. It’s not the smell of it that gets Judas worked up. It’s the cost. Some biblical historians have estimated that a pound of pure nard would have cost the equivalent of one full year of wages. A little bit probably would have gone a long way, but Mary uses it all.

icon of the raising of Lazarus
(note the person holding his nose) 

But…can we blame her? She has her brother back. Thanks to Jesus, this visitor in her house, Lazarus is alive again! Thanks to Jesus, the tomb and four days of decay did not swallow up her brother forever. Through the resuscitation of her brother, Mary has come to a deeper understanding of just how valuable Jesus is. What is a pound of nard compared to the presence of a man who can conquer death? What is a year’s worth of wages compared to the man who can call forth life from a tomb?

Last week at our youth group gathering, a panel of adults from our congregation who ranged in age from mid-40 to mid-70 was invited to talk a little bit about the ways they serve the congregation and how they find joy in serving. Among them we had a pair of council members, a former Sunday school teacher, the church gardener, a women’s circle member, community service team member, and the financial secretary. One question the panelists were asked in front of the youth was, “How is your service an expression of your faith?” I really hadn’t thought through how I’d respond to such a question, but one of our panelists, however, didn’t hesitate with her reply. She looked up and said with humility and honesty, “God has been so good to me and it is the way I say thanks,” before her voice broke with emotion and she passed the microphone on.

I think that’s the kind of connection is what’s going on with Mary here. God has been good to her. She is truly, deeply thankful for the presence of Jesus in her life, and she wants to respond by giving her best. The fact that Jesus won’t be around too much longer makes her act that much more sacred and meaningful. Ironically—because Mary doesn’t know yet—Jesus’ is about to become even more priceless. In the moment of his own death—when he himself pours out everything he has—God’s glory will finally be fully revealed.

All of this is lost on Judas, one of Jesus’ own disciples. The wonderful aroma wafting through the room, Mary’s moving act of devotion, the dinner celebrating Lazarus’ new lease on life—Judas essentially dismisses it all because of greed, cynicism, and fake concern for the poor. It makes us think about how close one can be to Jesus and still not fully get who he is. It makes us ponder how near one can be to the gift and still not value it—how one can see the things that Jesus does and not realize why he matters. Perhaps our own lives fluctuate between the examples of Mary and Judas. At times we are deeply devoted, spending the best of what we have (or at least wanting to), emptying all of what we are, as our guest panelist said, because God has been so good to us. Yet at other times we step back from our Lord maybe even rationalizing what is really a lack of faith in terms of how much good we do in the world, how "relevant" we think we’ve made the church to the world’s needs.

I’ve been fairly intrigued by some of the early remarks made this week by the newly-elected bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. As the first Jesuit Pope and the first from the global South, he is being hailed as a leader who might understand the reality of poverty, who believes the church should be “poor and of the poor.” It remains to be seen what kind of leader he will be, but for what it’s worth, he has already waived off the use of the papal limousine and carries his own luggage. In the homilyat his first mass in the Sistine Chapel, he said, "[We, the church] can walk all we want, we can build many things, but if we don't proclaim Jesus Christ, something is wrong. We would become a compassionate NGO [non-governmental organization] and not a Church.” To let this morning’s lessons put a spin on that: without primary attention to Christ, we would become an organization that lavishes attention on the world’s problems, but neglects the very One who has given all of us life. We would become a group of committed followers who idolize the thought of “making a difference,” but who somehow forget the Lord who has made all the difference for us.

Mary sacrifices her pound of nard to Jesus feet and participates in the sacrifice of Jesus life on the cross. In losing it all, she gains everything. How are you pouring out your life for the glory of God? How are your days devoted in thanksgiving toward the one who has rescued you from death? How are your riches, your heart, your talents, being given up at the foot of the cross so that, as the apostle Paul says, you “may be found in him.”

Saturday mornings, as I have come to know, are a valuable commodity in the life of a teenager. They may not equate with an entire pound of nard…but maybe a decent sliver of it. It’s the one day of the week to sleep in and rest up, eat a nice breakfast, veg out. Saturday mornings can also be cashed in for any number of sports activities, or even spent with the family. All of those are good uses of time, I suppose, in their proper amounts. Several Saturdays ago a group of Middle School- and High School-youth chose to pour out their precious Saturday morning here at Epiphany performing various service projects like volunteering through HHOPE pantry and with the quilters’ group. And they did all that on empty stomachs as they were fasting to raise awareness for world hunger.

One small group of youth ended up going off site and volunteering at a homeless shelter downtown. Their task involved throwing a birthday party for the residents of the shelter who were born in February. The youth baked cupcakes, blew up balloons, decorated the place, and then when the guests arrived, sat at the tables with them and helped them celebrate their special day. It wasn’t exactly strenuous labor, but at one point during the party, one of the guests, a middle-aged woman, leaned over to one of our high school boys and said, “No one has done anything for my birthday in twenty years.”

I believe that was the moment that youth realized he had broken open a jar of perfume and was bathing her feet in it, the feet of Christ. It was a party, too…and the fragrance of a sacrificed Saturday morning filled the room.

Maybe that’s our goal: to let our lives be like that fragrance that fills the air in every room, as if it’s the Yankee Candle Company store in every room we enter. In thanksgiving for all God has done, our actions and our words and our choices—and, yes, our care for the poor—are poured out, and we become breath of fresh, new life, an aroma which that proclaims death will not have the day. In Jesus Christ, we say, there is life to be had!

And that would be no little detail at all.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Watermarks: Faith Conversations (John 4:1-14)

 

Today in our Lenten series we explore a third Watermark, a third basic faith practice that draws on the promises made by God in our baptisms that enrich our lives as children of God. The first week we focused on Bible study, and two weeks ago the Watermark we discussed was prayer and the ways it forms faith of a Christian. In one simplified view, we could say that Bible Study is like God’s conversation with us. Revealed in Scripture, the living God speaks to us through his Word that we may grow deeper in our understanding of his Son, Jesus. Prayer, by comparison, is our conversation with God. As we pray, our hearts and minds become open to express our thanksgiving, awe, and confession in words that are spoken by the power of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Watermark, faith conversations, focuses on the dialogues between us, the children of God. Faith in God becomes even fuller and stronger as we take the conversation that goes on between God and us and begin to share it with one another. But how does that happen? What does that look like, especially if you’re Lutheran and typically keep that kind of stuff to yourself?

About two years ago I had to travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to attend a training and orientation session for the servant trip our youth group was going to make there later that summer. The orientation was run by the mission organization that was setting up the service experiences for our youth—things like building handicap ramps and putting new roofs on small houses. At this orientation I was surrounded by youth groups and leaders from different denominations. In fact, I was the sole Lutheran, and Epiphany was the only Lutheran youth group signed up that summer. I learned that the organization itself, although it served all kinds of youth groups who wished to do mission projects, had deep Southern Baptist roots. I also learned that while Epiphany was going to be performing construction projects for our mission work, all of the other groups were registered for trips where they would be directly interacting with people on the beach or in strip malls and sharing the gospel through conversations. After we devoted a whopping 10 minutes to the particular details of our work duties, we then spent the rest of the orientation listening to presentations on how to finesse methods of approaching total strangers and begin having cold conversations about Jesus and faith.

Now, I don’t know how you would have reacted, but I sat there in that room, I thought, “Well, this is interesting, but…nope. I think I’d rather build ten handicap ramps than have to talk to someone about my faith.” It’s a stereotype, perhaps, but we Lutherans prefer to share our faith with our hands, not out mouths. For example, we make quilts or distribute food to the hungry, or clean up after a hurricane. We write checks, raise foster children, we build houses. To be sure, there is absolutely nothing wrong in such an approach to sharing one’s faith. These real, concrete expressions of God’s love in Jesus are the things we’re compelled to do because of what we know Jesus is alive and doing in the world. Yet, at the same time, we could all be challenged—not just our Baptist brothers and sisters—to finesse our ability in conversation and dialogue to draw attention in to the faith that helps us build those handicap ramps. The occasional voiced connection between belief and action is important both for deepening our own faith and passing it down to future generations.

Is your family, for example, diligent about recycling? Do you explain your practice because the world’s energy problems are leading to global warming and future generations will be doomed?  Or do ever mention something about God’s call to be good stewards of creation?

The mention of Jesus or God or church does not always need to be so explicit, so in-your-face, nor do Scripture verses need to be constantly quoted or referenced. However, it is probably easier than we realize to let a foundational understanding of God’s grace inform many of the conversations we have, to let a perspective of faith and hope in Christ shed light on many things we do and say. If not, we run the risk of sending the message that faith is purely private, something almost to be ashamed of, a light to be hid under a bushel.

Annibale Carracci "The Samaritan Woman at the Well" (16th c.)

Sometimes we just need the right entrée, the right setting for these kind of conversations to occur. One of the aspects of this scene between Jesus and the Samaritan woman that has always stood out to me is their location. In Jesus’ day, wells were not only public spaces, but gathering places where people—usually women—congregated to draw water for their families and livestock. People would rest at wells and spend time catching up on local news and share community concerns. While, as a Jewish male, Jesus’ approach of a foreign woman during the middle of the day would have crossed many social boundaries of the time—certainly a very eyebrow-raising entrée—the fact that he uses a well-known but welcoming public space to begin a conversation is significant. The well in this story, of course, becomes not just a location, but a metaphor for the living water that Jesus brings, but the point remains that in Jesus, God finds ordinary occasions to enter our lives. We don’t need to limit our faith conversations to places like the sanctuary or even the church parking lot. Home, work, and school include many different “well” occasions where Jesus can drop by, often incognito.

What are those “wells” in your life? Where might it be easy for you to strike up conversations with your loved ones or close friends—and maybe even strangers—that could deepen relationships and appreciations for each other’s perspectives? Just before bedtime? The weekly card game with your buddies? The gym?

As a child, I remember the car was one place where conversations happened. We were often taking trips every summer that involved long stretches on the highway. Sometimes we would read or listen to the radio. Once Walkmans became affordable, my sister and I would listen to tapes and CDs. However, every once in a while, books would be put down and the music would be turned off and we would just talk. This happens to be precisely why I discourage iPods and personal music listening devices on youth group trips. They significantly impede conversations and sharing.

I distinctly remember one occasion when we were in the car as a family returning from church. My parents were in the front seat and my sister and I were in the back. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I tuned into what my parents were saying and realized they were discussing the day’s sermon and what the pastor had said. I figure I was only eight or nine years old at the time, but I to this day I still remember exactly what they talked about and how they commented on the structure and content of the sermon. I hadn’t even listened to the sermon, but I eagerly eavesdropped on my parents’ discussion of it. It wasn’t an in-your-face faith conversation, per se, and they didn’t really get into a debate, as I remember, but it did make a mark on me—a Watermark, if you will—that my parents were listening and taking home something they’d heard. That day I realized Jesus could show up just as easily in my dad’s blue Buick as he could at the altar and pulpit in worship…or by a well in Samaria.

It goes without saying that faith conversations don’t need to be so overtly about faith. Relationships, identity, and character can be built and strengthened whenever meaningful conversations can occur, when people are allowed to scratch beneath the surface of superficial interactions. The point is to seize those opportunities when you can, especially when the pressures and schedules of life in this age make us feel as if we’re bouncing off once another, always moving in opposite directions. Family and youth ministry experts Paul Hill and David Anderson have uncovered research showing one of the few common denominators among National Merit Scholars is that they tended to come from families that ate dinner together.^[1] I imagine learning the nuances of a faithful discipleship could be the same. The high school Sunday School class here at Epiphany regularly begins by going around the circle and giving each student the chance to rate their week. I know some families in the congregation find some point during the evening simply to share highs and lows. They may sound like simple, ordinary entrées, but isn’t that the type of place we should expect Jesus to show up? I can say from experience that you never know how deep some of those conversations might actually go. All these are all examples of what Martin Luther termed “the mutual conversation and consolation among the brethren [and sistren,]”^[2] ways through which the power of the gospel heals and restores the soul and human relationship.

That day at the well in Samaria, Jesus reveals his identity incrementally. Only as their dialogue continues do they reach deeper levels of understanding and authenticity. By the end, she has rushed off to city to share with others in their traditional networks of communication and gossip what she has learned about the visitor at the well. Conversations about God’s love in Christ and his activity in our world may take many forms. But one thing is for certain: this faith that we’ve been given is something to be shared. You have drunk from his gracious well, and been claimed in the conversation between God and creation through the waters of baptism. A hammer and nail on a youth service trip, a needle, thread, and donated fabric pieces on quilt-making day…these things certainly leave a mark of God’s kingdom in the world. But so do the words of the faithful…so do the words of people just like you…maybe every once in a while wielded like a hammer at the appropriate moment, but also woven delicately like one of those quilt threads through the heart of any conversation.

Give us, Lord, the courage to do it.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] David W. Anderson and Paul Hill. Frogs Without Legs Can’t Hear Augsburg Fortress, 2003. p 119.

[2] Martin Luther. The Book of Concord, “Smalcald Articles” Part III, Article IV

The Second Sunday in Lent [Year C] - February 24, 2013 (Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Luke 13:31-35)

 

At the beginning of his Large Catechism Martin Luther tackles the First Commandment by offering his definition of what a god is, or who God is. The First Commandment is, to remind you, “You shall have no other gods before me.” A god, Luther says, “is that from which we are to expect all good and to which we run in times of trouble.” I have always found that to be a very insightful and helpful description of a god, because so often “god” just gets defined as some transcendent higher power that people may or may not believe in. As in: you either believe in “big-G” God or you don’t…or maybe you claim to be agnostic about it. But Luther is very perceptive: everyone, he would say, has a god—or, in fact, many gods—whether they admit it or not. Everyone is bound to worship something, or many things. Everyone is bound to look for good in some source, or many sources. And, most critically, everyone is bound to run to some place or person or value system for shelter and refuge. For some, that may even be the sanctity of their own self. Whatever those things and places are, Luther writes, they are essentially idols. Actual belief has little to do with it. Instead, it’s more about trust: “Whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is your god.”^[1]

"Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan" (Jozsef Molnar, 1850)

The challenge of the God of Israel, the one Jesus calls, “Father,” is that this “big-G” God expects to be trusted and obeyed and loved over all of those other ones. Just as God commanded Abram to rise up from his homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans and leave behind all other allegiances in his search for a homeland, God calls each of his children to respond in faith to his covenant of love and everlasting life before all others. Just as God asked Abram to look up at the stars and believe in the promise of posterity and blessing, God asks you and me to look at his Son Jesus alone and believe in the promise of mercy and forgiveness. And just as God sent prophet after prophet into a vocation of rejection and sometimes death—Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Micah—to remind the lost and wandering tribes of Israel to repent and return, God sends his Son right smack into the midst of the human experience to heal and cure and cast out demons today and tomorrow with the hope that we will see that his mission alone is what gives the world hope. All good will come from this “big-G” God. To this God may we run for true refuge in times of trouble, whether we actually can articulate belief in him or not.

It is precisely in this light—as an agent of this God who calls people to himself—that we view Jesus this morning as he makes his decision to ignore the Pharisees’ false warning about Herod and continue with his ministry in Galilee. Jesus is a prophet, too, sent to remind the people—painfully remind the people—that they are running to the wrong things. It is a false warning from the Pharisees because they are trying to see if Jesus will save himself. If he heeds their warnings, playing it safe by getting out of Herod’s domain, he will expose himself as a fraud.

In the end he ends up ignoring their advice, keeping at the things that embody God’s goodness for God’s people despite the fact that he will meet resistance: healing, casting out demons, and preaching about the kingdom. For the time-being, he will remain in Herod’s territory, but eventually it will lead him to the same place that had meant a gruesome end for other prophets before him: Jerusalem. Anyone who came in the name of the Lord would, at some point, have to contend in Jerusalem—much like any serious NASCAR driver has to contend at Daytona, or any politician who wants to affect American politics has to contend in Washington. It was the seat of power, the location of the Temple, the pulsing heart of God’s people. Re-establishing his Father’s status as the one to whom people would run in times of trouble and to which they would look for good would mean venturing to that holy city. It would mean clucking around right there to the middle of the farmyard and spreading his wings for the chicks to gather underneath.

On Friday I was running errands with my 4-year-old and we stopped at Southern States for some things and discovered they had their spring chicks out for sale. Right in the middle of the store were four bins of cute, fuzzy little hatchlings. Laura was mesmerized and asked me to pick her up to get a closer look. Then she wanted to touch them, and who wouldn’t? To her frustration, however, when she reached her hand into the bin to pet them, they scattered. Sensing possible danger, they ran from her. Having no mother to which to run for protection, they looked and felt vulnerable and exposed. That is Jesus’ frustration as he looks at Jerusalem. It’s the only time Jesus compares himself to an animal. He longs to be that mother hen who senses her chicks’ danger and raises her wings for protection.

This maternal image of the mother hen gathering her chicks to her downy breast fits into this understanding of how we turn to God in faith because I really don’t think chicks actually “believe” in their mother hen. They trust her. They run to her because that is where they instinctively know to go for safety, for refuge. Any first century Middle Eastern man or woman would have been familiar with stories of mother hens even dying as they sheltered their babies. There should be something almost instinctive, something natural and loving about our turning to God. There should be…but often there isn’t. Our sin and our brokenness and our doubt and our pride prevent us from doing it. Rather, we scatter everywhere, running all over the place and often right into the jaws of other gods that will chew us up.

However, the thrust of this story of Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem and of this image of the mother hen and her peeps is not on our returning but rather on the wingspan of God. What I mean by that is even more natural and loving and more instinctive than the path of our return should be is God’s desire to stretch out his wings and save us from what harms. It is in this God’s very nature to love us even when we don’t deserve it, to reach out to us even when we resist him. So often the focus of Lent becomes our failings and our sinfulness. We think of our Lenten disciplines and our ability or inability to follow through on them. We ponder our confessions about our shortcomings so that we can concentrate on our growth in faith. Some of that is perfectly fine. We need the occasional reminder of our propensity to seek other gods, even ourselves. But perhaps the emphasis of Lent—indeed, the focus of any faith practice and discipline—should really be on God’s graciousness. The emphasis for growing faith—that instinctive but yet heartfelt impulse to trust—is best placed on Jesus’ desire to raise those wings in spite of what kind of danger it may present for him. Because Jesus wants us safe.  Jesus wants us home. Jesus wants us to learn to trust and run to the God who has called him to bring about the kingdom of mercy and healing and love.

That’s where the focus of this text and this Lent should be, to my mind, because the funny and tragic thing is, so often we don’t really learn to run to Jesus…and yet he still dies for us anyway. He still goes into Jerusalem and lifts up those strong, bloodied arms on the cross and dies anyway. God’s care for us will never be based on our ability or desire to respond to him. It will certainly not even be based on our correct beliefs about him. It will not even be based on our faith, our trust in him. Instead, God’s care is based on God’s own eternal promise made good in the call and death of mother hen Jesus. And one day, that will dawn on us fully. And we will run there. All of us.

Speaking of feeling exposed, my hunch is that we’ve all been feeling that way lately, like we’re a bunch of chicks in a Southern States bin whose first hen has decided to go announce his retirement and whose second must someday resign this call. That’s what I hear in your comments at men’s lunch groups, at youth group gatherings, in the Commons between worship services. Pastoral transitions are tricky times. Congregations feel exposed to all kinds of anxieties and dangers. Who will we run to? How much will we scatter? But as much as it tickles this bird-lover to be in some way compared even to a hen, or a chick, the reality remains: a pastor is not the Lord. The one who has always watched out for this congregation and every other hasn’t left and won’t ever leave.



St. Andrew's United Church of Cairo

As it happens, I’ve been thinking lately about the matriarch of my internship congregation in Cairo, Egypt, who was never known to mince words. A story was told of her at one leadership transition, when a well-loved pastor ended his term and returned stateside. The council at its next meeting began to panic, worried about their survival in such a precarious mission outpost. Becoming fed up with their anxiety, and reflecting on the years she had spent affiliated with that congregation, through the uncertainty of World War II, the regimes of Nasser and Sadat, Dr. Martha Roy stiffened her back in her chair, sat up as straight as her 84-year-old vertebrae could manage, and announced into the fray of comments: “God takes care of this church.”

I think she was talking about the “big-G” God, don’t you?

And so he does.

Cluck, cluck…in word and sacrament he rushes in at the moment when things get most scary, opens his wings, and becomes once again the One we can run to.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Martin Luther, Large Catechism.

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany [Year C] - February 3, 2013 (Luke 4:21-30)

My wife, Melinda, and I are pretty much constantly engaged in vocabulary lessons these days. With a four-year-old and a six-year-old in the house, Melinda and I spend a good deal of time reading books, going over flashcards with new words, and explaining on a very elementary level what things mean (and usually failing), It can be a tedious task, but every once in a while, it can get a little humorous, too.

One evening just a few weeks ago, for example, I was helping our four-year-old, Laura, get ready for bed. We were in the bathroom brushing her teeth and I apparently did something that made her angry. I can’t remember precisely what it was, but I remember that she was fairly worked up over it. At one point she stiffened her whole little body in rage and stared at me with piercing eyes and shouted, “Daddy! You’re such a…genius!” She had no idea what “genius” meant, of course. I suppose she had heard it somewhere and thought it sounded like an insult. Normally we correct them when they misuse a word, but we just let that one slide.

Yet for all the times we all laugh at the improper use of language and words, in our house and elsewhere, we also find ourselves drawn into their power to move and inspire, to call whole worlds into being. I think about the title character in a book by Wendell Berry named Jayber Crow, which is about a boy who grows up as an orphan in rural Kentucky just before and then during the Great Depression. As a child from hardscrabble origins, little Jonah has almost no possessions to speak of except for a small tablet he carries around. Every time he comes across a word or a phrase he likes he gets out his tablet and writes it down. He keeps this list throughout his life and continues to add to it: not simply words that bring him comfort or delight, but words of things and names of people he wants to remember. Some of the words phrases are common and some are rare but together they are words that end up explaining who he is. If you were to keep a tablet of words you want to remember—words you like the sound of and that tell your story—what would be in it?

As it turns out, one of the first things that Luke tells us about Jesus is his use of words and the effect those words have on people. Luke explains how Jesus goes around the region of Galilee, preaching and teaching in their synagogues and drawing attention and praise everywhere he goes. We finally get to see this power in action when he gets to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He stands up and reads from the prophet Isaiah words that are full of grace and hope. He declares release for those in captivity, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, good news for the poor. Then Jesus rolls up the scroll and says the most amazing thing: he announces that all those things are about to take place now that they have heard them from his lips. They think he’s a genius! They are amazed at the gracious words that come out of his mouth. They probably all want to get out their little tablets and scribble down everything he says.

In doing so, Jesus, you see, has named a new reality…. right there in those Galilean synagogues. Fading away is the old time of poverty and despair and captivity and darkness. With the speaking of a few powerful words, God’s new age of freedom and mercy and blessing has begun. That’s an indication of the power that words can have. He has named the new reality of redemption, and it gives them hope. He has named a new world of freedom and peace, where the captive goes free and the poor hear good news, and it moves them. And now that he has spoken this new kingdom into existence, he will go about living it. He will go about calling people to take part in it, to learn to speak it and bear its hope on their own lips. There is a new set of vocabulary to master and believe: one where God’s salvation is made real for each and every human being, one where creation’s brokenness and decay is truly named but also where it is finally rightly healed by grace and put back together.

But just as these new words begin to establish their power, there is immediate pushback, immediate doubt from the hometown crowd. As things sink in, they begin to ask themselves, “Isn’t this just Joseph’s boy? Where’d he learn to talk like that?” Just as quickly as they are amazed at his ability to announce the reign of God, they become suspicious of the things he says. They demand, in fact, that he back up those words of power with deeds or power. They don’t want simply to hear about the new reality be brings; they’re ready to see it, and if he truly is the prophet he makes himself out to be, then they’d like a piece of the action.

modern day Nazareth

Jesus’ response to their disbelief involves reminding them of two stories from the Hebrew Bible which seem a little foreign to you or me, but which would have been readily recognizable to them. Both stories, however, are illustrations of times in Israel’s history when deeds of power occurred outside their kingdom’s boundaries and to people who weren’t of the household of Israel. Story one: In Elijah’s day, famine swept all across Israel’s land, creating many a widow and orphan, but the only widow who received food miraculously was an outsider in Sidon. Story two: And during the prophet Elisha’s time, plenty of Israelites had skin diseases, but the one who got healed was a commander in the Syrian army.

The upshot of these stories is that the new reality that Jesus names and then brings about with his life, death, and resurrection is not just intended for one people, or one village, or one nation. When he announces freedom to the captives and sight to the blind, God intends that freedom and sight for all people. When Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor, God intends that favor for all folks on earth. And when Jesus breaks the bread of life and pours the cup of forgiveness with his disciples on the night before his death, God intends that life and that forgiveness to extend to everyone. And when Jesus is nailed to the cross, all the words he has ever uttered about God’s justice and God’s peace and God’s mercy will reach their clearest definition…for every person on earth. Sin keeps God’s people captive no more. Death’s darkness keeps us blind no longer.

That crowd in Nazareth has heard enough, however, and in their rage they run Jesus out of the synagogue and attempt to kill him. At least for them, and at least for that moment, the reality of Jesus’ words is too difficult to learn.

However, for the people who do hear and believe, who are transformed by Jesus’ self-giving life, speaking this new reality becomes possible. In fact, it becomes our duty. The Holy Spirit empowers us to be prophets in the manner that Jesus was the day he stood in that synagogue and preached the good news. Beginning with those who “think like a child, reason like a child, and speak like a child” right on up to the ones who speak with tongues of mortals and angels, this is the task: to keep learning a new language that reminds people that God loves them. Now that God has given us those words, they are never to be kept to ourselves. They are for all people.  They name a new reality of forgiveness and freedom that we all live into.  They become the words in a story that doesn’t just include us and our little tablet. God’s kingdom becomes the story of everyone.

A colleague of mine tells a story about a pastor who came to serve an urban church and quickly came to realize that while the neighborhood around the church was mostly low income and people of color, the congregation was almost exclusively upper middle class folks from the suburbs. So the pastor began some outreach ministries into the neighborhood. Before long there were many community members coming to the church and getting involved in things. Some weeks later, a woman who had been a member of the church for a long time made an appointment to come see the pastor. And she explained to the pastor, "Pastor, there are a lot of members of the congregation who are just not comfortable with all these people from the neighborhood being here in our church."

And the pastor said, "Well, I am doing this because I don't want these people to go to hell."

The woman said, "Now Pastor, don't say that! We know that God loves everybody, including the people in the neighborhood."

And the pastor replied, "No, you don't understand, I'm talking about the members of this church."

By virtue of your baptism you have been given a new vocabulary on which the life of the whole world depends. Open your mouths—for God’s sake!—and begin to speak. Name the reality that Jesus is risen. Death does not win and forgiveness abounds! Give shape to it with your words, your speech, and then live it in your actions.

Like the folks in Nazareth, some may look at this plan to take ordinary, broken people like you and me and enlist them as prophets, proclaimers of the word that changes the fate of the world. They’ll look at our propensity to screw it up and they’ll say that therefore God is foolish, that God’s wasting his time. That God’s starting in the wrong place with the wrong people.

But judging by the hope and release from captivity we can see lived among us, I’ve got just one word for it:

Genius.

 

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany [Year C] - January 27, 2013 (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a)

Last Sunday I ran into a group of our high school Sunday School students who were ranging the halls of the church on a class assignment. Apparently they were supposed to look all around the church building and reflect on what the church means to them. The three particular students I ran into were especially curious about seeing a part of the church they’d never seen before: the boiler room. They had walked past its unassuming, brown door dozens—who knows…maybe hundreds?—of times, but they’d never had the chance to go in there and see what it was about. Knowing I carried a master key, they prevailed upon me to let them in. As I opened the door, they got instantly quiet. I don’t know what they were expecting to see. For a few seconds, none of us could see anything because I couldn’t remember where the light-switch was. I fumbled around, flipped something I thought might be the lights, but nothing happened. When I finally found the real light-switch, I realized that I had accidentally shut off the master switch to the boiler…Oops!

You see, I rarely go in the boiler room myself. It remains that damp, closed-off, room that is shrouded in dark…even for those of us who work here every day. As they looked around, I wasn’t able to tell if the three youth were impressed or not. I told them about the time the sewer lines got backed up during one of the weeks we were housing the homeless and how the whole boiler room flooded with raw sewage because that’s where the main overflow drain is located. I showed them that the large ladders we use for hanging things on the sanctuary cross are kept there, too. And then there’s the boiler, of course. I guarantee we’d all notice it immediately if that stopped working properly, especially on a week like this. It’s a crucial room for the church building—its existence affects our everyday functionality in here, its upkeep is critical to our mission, its proper usage costs us more money than just about any other room—and yet the door stays locked and hardly ever has any visitors.

It’s the kind of room that the apostle Paul would have found fascinating and probably would have used as an example in his letter to the Corinthian church, if he could. “The body does not consist of one member, but of many,” he says to the conflict-ridden and often-divided congregation in Corinth. He goes on to say, “the members of the body that seem to be weaker—or darker, or damper, and less often used, we might add—are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect.”

Of course, Paul was not talking about a physical building and its different rooms when he was talking about the body of Christ and its many members. He was talking about people and their gifts. And if there were ever a congregation who needed to learn to think of themselves in that way—that is, as a body with many different members, some of whom seemed dispensable but, in fact, weren’t—it was Corinth.

map of the ancient Corinthian isthmus

Corinth was a very diverse and cosmopolitan city. Because it was situated right on an isthmus, a bridge between two major land masses with a double harbor, it became a major trading and merchant center. A lot of commerce flowed through Corinth, as did a lot of travelers. The result was a very eclectic community that contained a strong element of social climbing. People in ancient Corinth were easily impressed by signs of visible status and intellect and usefulness. And so, even within the Corinthian churches, Paul found that people were easily impressed by…signs of visible status and intellect and usefulness. The people who possessed gifts, even spiritual gifts that, for whatever reason, were viewed with greater respect were prone to try to dominate and belittle the others. And, surprisingly, those who possessed lesser-desired gifts would actually go along with it, to some degree. Gifts that the church in this age doesn’t seem to have much use for these days, like speaking in tongues, were held in high regard at Corinth. In fact, that gift in particular seemed to be the one everyone wanted, and the way they were prioritizing it was harming their entire community and mission. Things like this ne-e-ver happen in the church nowadays, right?

Paul thinks the metaphor of the church as Christ’s body will help them understand how they must function together, that the effectiveness and success of the whole community is dependent on the participation of every one of its members. Even though people in the church may look different and occupy different roles, there is no one person or part that is more important than any other. In fact, God has arranged the body that the greater honor is given to the inferior member. Those who look and feel like a boiler room—dark, locked up, never visited, never worshiped in—actually possess some of the most vital functions of the whole church. In the end, however, no one is indispensable.

Other than the naturally intuitive aspect of this image of the church as a body that works together, Paul knew the Corinthians would latch onto this metaphor for another reason. In ancient Corinth there was a large temple to the god Asclepius, who was believed by many to be the god of healing. People would come to the temple of Asclepius there in Corinth to pray for healing and cures for different diseases and injuries. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of clay body parts in the area where that temple stood. Noses, arms, hands, feet…worshippers either bought or made themselves clay replicas of whatever part of their body needed healing and offered it to Asclepius there at the temple. In the shops that surrounded the temple, these earthen body parts could be purchased for worship, and historians imagine that the inside of the temple of Asclepius was typically littered with hundreds of disconnected clay body parts haphazardly strewn everywhere.

body parts excavated from a temple of Asclepius

You see, for the Christians in Corinth, that disconnected mess in that pagan temple would have been one of their main associations with the body. Paul means to tell them that they are a body, too, with many different parts, but put together in a whole, arranged carefully so that everyone can see their functioning depends on everyone else’s full participation. Can everyone have the same gifts, or occupy the same position in the congregation? Naturally, no. But that is not all. Another important end result of this body image is that each member’s well-being is somehow mystically connected to everyone else’s. “If one member suffers,” Paul goes on to say, “all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Just as the pain of a wounded or injured hand would radiate throughout the rest of the body, so should the hurt and pain of one church member be felt and borne by everyone else. And, by the same token, joys are also shared. A healthy and well-functioning congregation is not only one where all people are present and sharing their gifts for the good of the whole, but one where prayers for each other and service to each other, especially in times of hardship, are flowing like the blood of a circulatory system. Paul’s image does not mean that the church exists to make members feel appreciated.

We should pause to notice that nowhere in this letter’s twelfth chapter does Paul mention feelings, and yet so much of our modern-day participation in and commitment to the body of Christ seems to depend on our feelings about it. While feelings of worth are important, they are not the sole reason for the church’s ministry. Paul is more concerned here with the fact that the body is learning to understand and assimilate the contributions of each and every member for the mission of the church. Whether or not you feel you are important doesn’t mean you aren’t, and each member bears some of the responsibility for contributing even when they have not been properly appreciated. Interestingly, Paul does have quite a bit to say about certain gifts that are greater, gifts that do have a lot to do with making sure everyone is taken care of and functioning at their best. Paul will want members of the congregation to strive for those particular gifts…but we’re going to come back to that next week.

I ran across a video clip the other week about the pair of brothers who have been recognized by Sports Illustrated as the 2012 Sports Illustrated Sportskids of the Year who I think do an excellent job of illustrating Paul’s lesson to the church. Conner and Cayden Long, both in elementary school, compete in triathlons. Cayden, who is seven, was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy and is unable to walk or talk. His nine-year-old brother Conner had the idea to enter themselves as a team in a triathlon event in order to connect better with his brother. When Conner swims, he pulls his brother behind him in a raft. They’ve devised a system, of sorts: when Conner bikes, he pulls Cayden behind him in a trailer, and pushes that trailer in front of him when he runs.  It may seem that Cayden doesn’t contribute much to the effort, but when you watch them even for a second, you’d see that really isn’t true. He clearly enjoys it. One of his gifts is his smile and his laughter. Another is his bravery at undergoing such a potentially dangerous situation for someone who isn’t really mobile.

At one point in an interview Conner says concerning Cayden: “He’s the same inside as you or me…and he understands what you say about him…and if people could race with people who can’t walk or talk or have any kind of autism…it might open the eyes of people” who need to learn to care more. The brothers never really cross the finish line first, but they finish first in another sense, an unlikely lesson to the community of Christ’s followers about sharing one another’s burdens, about honor and function within the body, and about the true growth that comes from including everyone’s gifts within the accomplishment of the whole.

Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not the exact lesson that the high school Sunday School teachers were attempting to teach last Sunday as they sent the students out to roam around the church building, but it is nevertheless what I ended up getting out of it after I bumped into Mark, Amanda, and Emma in the hall. It was a gift of happenstance, planned by the Spirit and enabled, quite frankly, by our communal life together—bone to bone, flesh to flesh, heart to heart—designed, you see, to bump into one another and learn from one another on this great big triathlon because we are, after all, one body. And individually members of it.

Boiler room.

Or Sunday School classroom.

Or sanctuary.

Or Cayden’s triathlon trailer.

All a part of Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God.

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany [Year C] - January 20, 2013 (John 2:1-11)

Right in the middle of our Christmas day celebrations this past year the water main burst in our front yard. We discovered the issue in the middle of the afternoon, just as we were getting ready to put all the food on the table. As you can imagine, it quickly became priority numero uno. The soil between our sidewalk and the water meter (yes, it was “our problem”) was rising fast as if it were a large, wet, bubble of grass. Water was beginning to spill into the street and onto our sidewalk. We had no idea how much damage the leak was doing or how much it was costing us by the minute. We had a house full of company and they were beginning to research hotel options for the night in case we lost all water. And as far as the celebration at hand was concerned, we couldn’t finish cooking, we couldn’t wash dishes—heaven help us, we couldn’t even make coffee!—we couldn’t, quite honestly, focus on Christmas until we find someone who could solve the problem. But who? I didn’t know where to begin. And on Christmas day, of all days? You don’t have to be a genius to know that Christmas day isn’t the ideal time to have a major outdoor water problem.

As it turns out, some plumbers do work on Christmas day…for a pretty penny. After calling around a bit, I finally found our savior of the day: a guy named Steve who had just started working for one of the local plumbing companies. For about three hours he labored with pipes and an acetylene torch in our cold, dark, wet front yard getting the water to flow again, and—need I say it?—saving Christmas.

Jesus finds himself at a wedding in Cana that hits a similar snafu, except, believe it or not, the emergency is even more severe. They’ve had a wine bust; that is, there wasn’t any more. At a first-century wedding, if the wine runs out, things start to wind down pretty quickly. The party is essentially over, and people start to research hotel options, if you know what I mean. It is difficult for our twenty-first century minds to comprehend what a major deal this was, but like our broken water main, it is an issue that must be addressed immediately.

Weddings in those days were pretty much the biggest celebrations anyone was ever a part of. Regardless of the size or wealth or status of the families whose offspring were being united in marriage, all weddings involved enormous parties. They typically lasted for a week or more. The wedding hosts, the bridegroom and his family, were responsible for lining up all the food and drink that would be consumed. In a small village like Cana, that would mean enlisting all your friends and connections, calling in all your favors, and asking them to deliver, ahead of time, jugs of wine. So, if you ran out of wine, especially only two or three days into the occasion, it didn’t just mean that your guests would leave. It basically announced to everyone that you didn’t have a whole lot of friends, that you hadn’t provided people a lot of favors in the past. It did a number on your honor, an embarrassing situation that your family might never recover from.

Jan Cornelisz "The Marriage at Cana" c. 1530

Mary, Jesus’ mother, would have understood all this right away. As a guest at the wedding and a woman from the area, she would have likely been involved in food preparation and distribution. Like I said, weddings were a whole-town affair. But unlike me on Christmas day, Mary immediately knows who to turn to. Another guest happens to be at the party who can, shall we say, transform things: Jesus. His initial reaction to her request may catch us off guard. He doesn’t seem willing to respond and save the day, and, in the end, save the honor of the bridegroom throwing the wedding. This isn’t the ideal time, he says—meaning that the hour for showing the real transforming power of his life has not yet happened. There will be a time when it will become clearly evident just what he is able to change. There will be a time when it will become plain as day just how he really is able to save and to restore. That time is not now at this anonymous wedding in podunk Cana. Nevertheless, he gives in to his mother, has the servants fill up six huge stone jars with water, and somehow by the time the ladle makes its way to the steward’s lips, all that water has become wine…good wine. The party lives!

John tells us that this is the first of Jesus’ signs, which is his word for miracles. John calls them signs because, in his mind, they don’t just display Jesus’ power; like a sign, they symbolize or say something in particular about who Jesus is or what he does. For John, they communicate something specific about the nature of Jesus’ life and how his life interacts with ours. God is revealing God’s glory through Jesus incrementally—shining the light on him from a different angle each time—and when we read them the way John unpacks them we can better understand how precious Jesus really is.

You see, for the guests at that wedding party, the members of that village and those families who were gathered there, the amazing thing that happened was that the water turned to wine. For the bridegroom, the astonishing, marvelous occurrence was the rebirth of his party. For the steward, the miracle was that the generosity of the bridegroom: he had saved the best wine for last.

But we know that the real miracle, the real sign, was the guest who made this transformation happen. His presence, his love, his grace has the ability to take what is a bleak and dire situation and make it new and hopeful again. His death on the cross—the hour of his ultimate glory, the hour he really came for—will transform the bleakest of situations, the deadest and most macabre of parties into an experience of everlasting life and renewal for us. In other words, Jesus is God’s glorious new wine that is poured out for everyone at just the right moment. It is being poured out now. Any time sins are forgiven, relationships are rebuilt, hope is restored, or pain is shared…there is Jesus bringing new life to an urgent situation.

There are a lot of characters in this story all running around...Mary, Jesus, of course, but also the disciples, the steward, the bridegroom, dozens of guests. What if the church were to see itself in this story as those stone jars? What if the church, the body of Christ, were to serve in the world as the vessels through which the world can taste the life-giving wine of Christ? In fact, that becomes the basis of my prayer for the church today, especially during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: that we can learn to understand ourselves not so much as people who are trying to keep an institution afloat or an organization up and running, but instead as a vessel, a trough, that presents to everyone the transformation that is Jesus’ love. My hope is that we can learn on an ever deeper level that we do not exist for ourselves and our own self-betterment but that we are offered up in the glory of Christ to be present in the midst of a suffering world.

There has been so much talk in wider church lately, and even in the Virginia Synod about our mission and our relevance (whatever that means) to the world and society around us. In my mind, Jesus will always be relevant to a dying world, just as good wine will always be relevant—and life-giving—to a dying party. The question then becomes not who will save our party but how will we present his wine? How will we be active in faith and love for the community around us, to the friends and strangers we know and meet on an individual basis?

Times have changed, my friends. People, by and large, don’t just look for congregations to join. They’re looking for something that tastes good.  They need to know that life can be transformed, that the ordinary can really become extraordinary. And everyone here this morning is one of these vessels. Together, we are one big vessel that can present gallons upon gallons of faith to the world. In what ways are you being ladled up? How is the urgency of this moment calling us into action? Do we stand there like stone jars that think they can only be used for washing “because that’s all they’ve ever been used for?” Or do we hand ourselves over to the One who transforms, the One who gives us signs of the glory yet to come, so that the world will know what we know: “Hey, there’s a party going on here. Don’t go looking for a hotel just yet! Now is the time. And the best wine has just started flowing.”

                                   

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.