The Fifth Sunday of Easter [Year A] - May 18, 2014 (Acts 7:55-60 and 1 Peter 2:2-10)

 

Today is Confirmation Sunday. For those of you who may be new to our Lutheran tradition, this is the day where our high school youth stand before the congregation and make public profession of their faith. For those of you who have been Lutheran since before you can remember…this is the day where our high school youth stand before the congregation and make public profession of their faith. It is not a graduation “into” adulthood in the church, although we Lutherans can often slip into that way of thinking. The technical term for confirmation is “affirmation of baptism,” because everything they and we say and do today is actually a response to the promises God made to them in their baptism—the promise to love you without reserve, the promise to forgive you of your sin through the mercy of Jesus Christ, the promise to be there for you at all times, even after you die.

Confirmands, when you were baptized, your parents and godparents made promises to raise them with the knowledge that God had said these things to you. And so now, today, we arrive at that point where you will stand before the congregation and say publicly, “These promises are for me.” Almost everything your parents and your congregation have done in fulfilling their end of the baptism promises was, in a sense, to get you ready for this moment when you will say “these are my people.” As Peter’s letter puts it this morning, today, in this moment, you’re agreeing with the belief that “once you were not a people, but now—through union with Christ in your baptism—you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” You’re agreeing to the belief that God’s grace has claimed you out of no merit of your own and set you free to serve him. That makes it a public profession of faith.

Is this the first time you’ve somehow publicly professed your faith in God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I doubt it. In fact, in some way, shape or form we’ve watched you do it before, even though you may not have realized that’s what you were doing or that people were watching you while you did it. This may have been at a youth group event or in Sunday School or before a football game or when you’re just hanging with your friends. To be quite honest, every time we face this font or this cross on a Sunday morning and confess our sins or say a Creed out loud we are making some kind of public profession of faith.

Will today be the last time you’ll make public profession of your faith? Well, we certainly hope it isn’t. While it’s good to choose this day and make a big deal out of it, while it’s helpful to have a day when you’ll put on the white robe and the red boutonniere and stand in front of us and say, “I am one of this royal priesthood”—let’s get real for a minute—the real public professions of faith will come when you leave this place. When Monday comes, are people going to know where you’ve placed your trust and hope? The mercy you’ve been shown by this God—will you somehow show it to others? This unconditional love you’ve experienced from this God—will you practice it with others? Those are the public professions of faith that God empowers us all to make.

However, we need to be very careful here. As good as it is to stand up and say from time to time, “These are my people and this is my God,” none of this is never supposed to be about us. Our faith—no matter how strong or weak it is—is never the most important thing about this moment…or about any moment, for that matter. The key point of any profession of faith is not our bravery or what we’re doing but about what God is doing in the world. We can lift up the promises we make as we respond to God’s love and mercy, but our identity, our purpose, is always based in the promises God makes to us.

We see an extreme but prime example of how a public profession of faith gives glory to God and not to the person professing it this in our first lesson this morning. It’s one of Scripture’s most chilling and most daring witnesses to Christ. You can think of it as Stephen’s confirmation, that moment in his life when his witness to the love of God was more brilliant and bold than any other. To give you some background, Stephen was one of the church’s first deacons. (Incidentally, “deacon” is essentially another word for “diaconal minister,” which is our Christy Huffman’s official job title). Back in the old, old days of the church, a deacon was a special servant who brought food to and tended to the needs of those the church was serving, maybe a little like our LAMBs Basket and HHOPE volunteers. The Christian faith had grown to the point that they decided they needed to have some people set aside to do those specific tasks, lest it get too confusing. Stephen, however, was also very gifted in preaching the Word, and people started to listen to him so much that people who didn’t trust Jesus’ followers thought it would be better if he were silenced. Even though Stephen and the others preached and embodied God’s love for all people, they felt threatened by them because it would upset their hold on power. They brought him before a council and basically asked him to recant his faith.



"The Stoning of Saint Stephen" Rembrandt (1625)

Instead, Stephen put on a white robe and a red carnation boutonniere and recited the Apostles’ Creed.  Actually, he didn’t quite do that, but he stood up and recited a very eloquent description of his faith. At the end of it, his opponents get so angry that they stone him to death. Stephen becomes the first martyr of the Christian faith. His confirmation is his point of death. In dying, he points to the power of the God who claimed him and loved him and set him aside as deacon. Notice how even as he dies, as the stones fly in at his breaking body, he chooses to let God’s promises, rather than his own bravery, shine through. It is still about God and not about Stephen. “Lord,” he says, “do not hold this sin against them.” Right up to the end he chooses to emphasize God’s mercy, not his own courage.

The account of Stephen is profound enough right there, but what makes it even more profound is that we’re told one of the people there at Stephen’s stoning was a man named Saul. Saul hates the followers of Jesus and even approves of Stephen’s killing, but later, even after Stephen’s profession of faith, goes on to realize that he, too, is claimed by God in Christ and empowered to be a witness. Paul goes on to be one of the church’s greatest leaders and witnesses.

No one here hopes that you ever end up having the type of public profession of faith that Stephen does. No one here prays that you will have to undergo a painful, public death on account of your faith in God’s promises. However, we do hope that the Lord will lead you into situations where you can testify to his glory, where you will be able to say with actions and sometimes even with your words that you were once no person but now you are one of God’s people…that once you had no mercy, but in Christ you have all the mercy you’ll ever need. We pray that you will be strengthened in your faith in such a way that others—maybe even other Sauls—will not primarily see you but through you that God is a forgiving, loving God and will want to know more about this Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.

The book One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of a little town named Macondo that sits somewhere in the remote swamps of Colombia, South America. At the beginning of the novel this isolated little town is an idyllic kind of place where everyone basically gets along. At one point, however, a strange insomnia plague sweeps through the town. For weeks on end, no one can sleep.  At first, the people of Macondo are kind of happy with it, because there was so much work that needed to get done and people were happy to do the work. They sit around and tell stories when they’re done with that.

However, after a while, they begin to realize that the lack of sleep was causing their memory to fade. Their brains are getting so fatigued—even though they really can’t feel it—that they are starting to forget things. Pretty soon, they realize they are starting to forget even the most basic things, like how to feed their livestock and how to repair things that got broken. The memory problem gets kind of dire and at some point one town resident realizes that unless they get over the insomnia disease, they are all going to forget even the most basic things they need to survive. They get worried, and so to help them live, to help them make sense of their surroundings as their memories deteriorate, they write down labels for everything. They also put up two signs put signs up in the town: “At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said MACONDO and another larger on one on the main street that said, GOD EXISTS.”^[1]

Their memory was disappearing, their energy was waning, but the things they wanted to know and remember most—the things they thought would help them survive—were their location and that God did exist. It wouldn’t be always be obvious and discernable from looking around at the world that God exists, so they knew they’d need a reminder. And it’s true: when the stones of violence and general meanness are raining down, it’s hard to intuit that there is, in fact, a God.

So, while we don’t pray that you may face a stoning over your profession of faith, our prayer is that you will be one of those signs. We pray that with your life you will become one of those simple and profound sings that stands in the midst of the world…a world that works and plays so hard most of the time that it loses sight of its identity and that there is even a Creator of it. This world has some kind of insomnia, but we have come to remember that, in fact, there is one…and this God does not merely exist but also loves us and, in spite of our forgetfulness, makes us his people. In your actions and even your words, may you be given hundreds of opportunities to be another sign that proclaims not yourself, and not the purity of your own faith, but rather the God who gives us Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. P47

The Fourth Sunday of Easter [Year A] - May 11, 2014 (John 10:1-10)

 

“So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.’”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that when most of us think of a gate, we think of something very different from what Jesus is talking about with the people of his time, whether they happen to be eager followers or fearsome detractors, who in this case happen to be the Pharisees. When people in our day and age (and in our socio-economic context) think of a gate, I imagine we think of something large and imposing—something with big iron bars or maybe a long wooden arm painted with orange and yellow reflecting paint. We think of something that excludes and denies admittance. That is to say, to most of us a gate is a stopping point, an awkward place where you either need to know the correct code so you can punch it in on the keypad or—better yet—someone on the inside who can wave you in. Regardless of the good kinds protection they offer, gates are essentially barriers that differentiate between those who are in and those who are out or those who have paid the proper parking fee and those who are still trying to figure out how much they owe. A gate is, after all, the defining feature of a gated community. So, when Jesus is talking to the Pharisees who are disagreeing with him and the disciples who are interested in him, is he saying those who follow him are members of a gated community?

Granted, there were plenty of gates and even gated communities in Jesus’ day, maybe even the kinds with large, imposing iron bars, but those are not the kinds of gates to which he is referring when he compares himself to being a gate. Jesus is not trying to say that he is primarily something that excludes or denies admittance or that he is the friend on the inside who has the power to wave people in or leave them out. Rather, the particular gate he is talking about is the gate to a sheepfold, a gate that was not very formidable and probably didn’t even have a lock on it. All it had to do was stay shut during the night or when the shepherd was busy doing something else so that the sheep wouldn’t wander aimlessly around and fall into danger. The gate that Jesus compares himself to was more a doorway than it was a barrier, a doorway that actually remained open most of the time and was shut only when—and here’s maybe the most important thing—all the sheep were inside.

In fact, we know that in the shepherding traditions of Jesus time different flocks were often kept together inside the same fold. That may seem strange to us, but it worked for them and conserved space and resources. Villages and communities housed their sheep together overnight and then often let them graze separately. Each morning when it was time for the sheep to be taken out to pasture, the gate would be opened and the various shepherds would stand out back from the fold a ways and call to their flock. Sheep could recognize their own shepherd’s voice and run away from ones they didn’t know. Eventually, the sheep would assemble around their correct shepherd for a day of grazing and resting among the open countryside. At night, the process would repeat itself in reverse, the sheep somewhat instinctively returning back to their fold, and the shepherd closing the gate after them. That was the pastoral image that Jesus listeners would have had when he told this parable.

Depending on which part of the teaching you focus on, Jesus sees himself as either the shepherd who opens that gate to let the sheep out to graze or the gate itself. Either way, it is this action of opening, releasing and gathering that Jesus relates to himself and his ministry. He sets himself in contrast, then, to the trapping, stealing, and scattering that others might try to do. Thieves and bandits are those who ignore the gate altogether and climb in over the side of the fold to grab or harm the sheep or perhaps strange shepherds whose voice the sheep don’t recognize. These harmful people pay no attention to the relationship between the shepherds and the sheep or the well-being of the sheep themselves. They do what they do out of a sense of their own gain.

Although Jesus never explicitly names them as such, he certainly insinuates that the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his time are the thieves and the bandits. These are the ones who fail to recognize that God is calling his people together through the ministry of Jesus, the Son. For whatever reason, they refuse to believe the signs that he performs and the lessons he teaches. Furthermore, they corrupt this tender relationship between shepherd and sheep and pillage the flock. Sadly, this was a real danger for the people of Israel. It is a real danger for God’s people at any time. They had known many shepherds throughout their history, and most of them had fallen into the thief and bandit category. Jesus sets himself up as a contrast to those previous leaders, and clearly as a contrast to those who are trying to silence that shepherd voice in his own age.

The bottom line of all this opening, releasing and gathering that Jesus, gate, leads to is the flourishing of the sheep—the flourishing of God’s people—and the way they flourish is to go through the gate into the hills and valleys where the shepherd leads them. God wants them to have an abundant life, and a gate that functions properly as a doorway and not a big, imposing barrier will do this.

It makes me think of how I learned to relate to my bawwab when I lived in Cairo. Every building, public and private, in Cairo has a bawwab, an Arabic word that roughly translates as “doorman.” Bawwabs are typically Muslim peasant men from the surrounding countryside who come and live at the door of the building they watch in the city. These posts are usually hereditary—they’ve been passed down from father to son for decades—and wholly unregulated by the government. They receive some cut of the rent and receive a place to sleep for free, usually a small bed right at the door.

Omr, my building's bawwab

In order to live somewhere and work somewhere one must develop a relationship with the building’s bawwab. My bawwab’s name was Omr, and it dawned on me about halfway through the year that I was only using Omr for about half of his bawwab’s function. You see, I thought he was there chiefly as a bouncer and nightwatchman. The apartment building had no security system other than him, and so I thought he was there to keep the wrong people from coming and doing harm. Little did I realize that Omr was actually my gate to the rest of the community on the street! As it turns out, bawwabs were also the ones who went out and created connections for you between the cleaners, the greengrocers, the handymen, if you needed one.

There was an intricate system of relationships along our corridor in downtown Cairo, and the key to knowing how to flourish there was using the bawwab as more than a barrier. It was using him as an open gate.

How often do we, as God’s flock, form Jesus as a barrier that walls us off from the world, keeping the undesirables out unless they can be waved in or as if we speak a certain code they need to know in order to belong? How often do we fall into the trap of viewing our own church buildings as fortresses designed to keep the flock safe and secure so that the only ministry can be done on the inside? Can we learn to see Jesus as a true bawwab who does protect and nourish us, who stands ready to offer his life for our eternal protection, but who also opens us up to form relationships with those in the world around us? For true security does not consist in being locked in the fold behind the gate. True security is being with the shepherd.

Jesus’ whole ministry and life, after all, can be summed up in those basic functions of a gate and shepherd: opening, releasing, and gathering. And it is all done so that we may have life abundantly. I was just fine when Omr was nothing but my door guard, throwing the latch each morning and checking guests’ credentials when they tried to come see me. However, I really began to live abundantly when I let Omr show me what he could do.

The same goes for Jesus, our gate. And he wants to show us what he can do. In fact, he is dying show us what he can do…opening, releasing, and gathering us to the shepherd. Jesus wants to throw open his arms in love on the cross and, in so doing, open the way to God, open the way to salvation, open the way to new life.

He wants to release us—release us from the sin and worry and anxieties that come from living as sheep in a terrifying world. He wants to release us from the fear of that which would do us harm, release us from the desire to lead ourselves or listen to any other voices that would lead us astray.

Foremost, he wants us to be gathered. Jesus wants us to be gathered us with all the flock that the Shepherd has called and is still calling. He wants to let us out into the abundant life where Jesus leads us, for that is precisely where we belong: together and with the Shepherd whose rod and staff will comfort us even in the darkest valley.

So, today, claim your membership in this gated community. There is no secret code you’ll need to know, no moving orange arm that only lifts when you pay the correct fee. In fact, there is no fee at all. This gate is no stopping point, but a going point…a friendly, determined bawwab….a simple door that our loving shepherd opens to lead us out…to lead us with others…to lead us in safety with the sound of his voice to a great and abundant life now and forever.

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

 

The Resurrection of Our Lord [Year A] - April 20, 2014 (Matthew 28:1-10)

 

“With fear and great joy.”

That sounds like an odd combination of emotions to me, but, according to Matthew, that’s how the women leave Jesus’ empty tomb on the morning of that first Easter. He’s the only one of the four Gospel writers who records the women’s emotional state in this way, slipping it in there with all the drama and theater of the resurrection as if we wouldn’t notice. But we notice, and we think it sounds a little strange: “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” It sounds like such a contradiction, an oxymoron. Who feels fear and great joy at the same time? It seems like one would trump the other.

The fear, at least in part, is easy to understand, especially given all that’s going on in the background. First, there’s the earthquake—not all that strange given the part of the world this happens in, and according to Matthew, there had been one on the previous Friday on the afternoon of Jesus’ death. Maybe this is an aftershock, but frightening nonetheless. Then there is this angel—shining as if he were made of lightning—seen in the very act of rolling the giant stone away. We also learn right off the bat that the very people paid to be threatening, the very people hired to strike fear in the heart of anyone who would tamper with this crucified man’s tomb, were already so terrified they had apparently fainted. It must have been quite a fearsome scene, and when you add to it the general panic that occurs any time there is a missing body and that it was still dark because the sun wasn’t up—yeah, it’s not hard to imagine that even after they hear the perplexing news that the crucified man was actually risen that the women would still be a little afraid.

But then how does the joy fit in? And we’re not talking about just a small little seed of joy that may grow into something great, but full-blown great joy. By point of reference, there is only one other time in all of Matthew’s gospel when someone experiences “great joy.” It’s what the wise men experience when the star they are following finally stops over the place where they find Jesus. They’ve been traveling from the east for who knows how long and they are so excited that that they are finally going to get to see him. That’s what Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are feeling. Do they know they’re going to be seeing Jesus after their search, too?

The Two Marys watch the Tomb of Jesus
(James J. Tissot, 1884)

How then can these two feelings go together? As I pondered this question this week, I invited the homebound members I was visiting to reflect on that with me. Well, as it turns out, fear and great joy go together far more often than I had originally considered. More than one person I asked said that surgery often brought the same mix of emotions: fear about the procedure itself and the anesthesia and whether the recovery would be difficult—but great joy that a cataract could be removed or a broken hip could be fixed.

Together we also reflected on the feelings surrounding the birth of a child. Come to think of it…for sure, I was filled with great joy at the birth of my first child. I was overjoyed that the delivery had gone well, that both baby and mother were healthy, but when it dawned on me that they were actually at some point going to send us home with something I hadn’t the foggiest idea I could keep alive, I looked at the discharge nurse and thought to myself, “We really have to leave here with this thing, don’t we?” That was fear, my friends. Great joy mixed with lots of fear.

What about you? When was the last time you felt fear and great joy simultaneously, as illogical as it sounds? What about this morning? Do we still respond that way today as we greet this news of Easter? Upon closer inspection, there’s something very honest about these women’s reactions that gives great insight to the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. Maybe a complete experience with this good news is a little akin to walking out of a hospital with a newborn baby, or undergoing a surgical procedure that gives you a new lease on life.

The great joy is probably the part we know we’re strong on. After all, we don’t have scary earthquakes or guards marching around this morning in intimidating fashion. Unless you’re afraid of people marching around with hand bells, you’re probably OK this morning. The hymns, the lilies, and the Scripture readings are all imbued with joy that the one who was crucified is now risen. God has conquered death. God’s new creation of life without sin has begun and, like that giant stone, will never be rolled back. Our joy is palpable—our long journey from the east is over—but what about the fear, especially if there are no earthquakes or strange, glowing angels to frighten us?

In short, it’s because we don’t have the foggiest idea how we’ll keep this alive, do we? At some point Easter moves away from the shock and excitement of the empty tomb to the reality of entering into the world, of carrying this new creation into a world that still thinks it can kill it. At some point—maybe even as quickly as Mary and Mary leave the scene of the resurrection—we realize the good news of God’s victory over sin and death compels us to live in the world quite differently than before. At some point our faith makes us move forward, seeing the possibilities of forgiveness, cherishing the power of love, and seizing the hope of a God who is alive in all circumstances, even the most desperate.

One pastor this week on his blog suggests that the fear surrounding our faith has less to do these days with our ability or inability to put love and hope into action than it does with how we feel we might be perceived by others. While we may feel joy and excitement about the hymns and music this morning, we are also afraid, he says, that believing in the things of Easter in today’s world will cost us too much and make us seem, “laughable, simple-minded, shallow, foolish, absurdly unmodern.”^[1] Dressing up and coming to worship to hear the hand bells, the forgiveness of sins and the triumph over death is one thing, declaring to the world that God has saved its life and that recovery is going to be OK is another thing altogether.

That is frightening. It is frightening even as it is exhilarating, because there is no guarantee that others will immediately recognize our new life since it is, as the writer to the Colossians says, hidden with Christ in God.

Thankfully, though, Jesus is risen, which means he is still alive and active on the road of re-entry and will greet us there, encouraging us on our way. Just as soon as the women leave the tomb, they bump into Jesus himself, even before they’ve returned to Galilee. That is, they are comforted by Jesus’ presence as they depart even before they are told they can expect it. Do you harbor some fear about what the news of this day means, fear about how you might tell others and how you’ll be received? Then remember that the risen Christ himself is apt to surprise you, maybe even before you’ve left the parking on the way out, and certainly before you have the chance to speak about it to anyone.

Just a few weeks ago we received a solicitation phone call in the church office. We receive a half-dozen or so each week. This one was offering us some kind of help—it wasn’t really clear—in getting our new business moving. “New business moving.” I know that’s what they said. Best I could figure they had received some kind of notification through internet data that there’d been a recent change here at our congregation and I guess they mistakenly recognized me as the leader of some new venture. While the move between offices definitely took a little longer than we had hoped—embarrassingly so—I never thought someone would actually call me about it. So I assured them, nope…no new business here, no new move anyone needs to worry about.

Think again, pastor. Think again. The scary and joyful news of Easter suggests otherwise. This gathering—this pronouncement—is always a new movement, a venture that the all of creation is waiting on, a surprising move that saves us all. Jesus will surprise us on the road. As Mary and the other Mary show us, discharge nurses of the resurrection…Yes, we really do have to leave here with this thing, don’t we!

 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnshore/2014/04/dare-to-believe-that-jesus-was-god/

Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion - April 13, 2014 ("Cry of the Whole Congregtion")

 

There was a point in college where I hit a wall in my studying. No matter how hard I tried, sitting at my desk or in the library, the equations and problems and the information we were supposed to memorize and solve were just too much for my brain. Others could take their class notes or their textbooks and somehow internalize all this stuff in some way that made it make sense to them. It didn’t work that way for me for some reason.

Thanks to a friend in the engineering school, I heard about this one classroom where all four walls were huge blackboards—those old-fashioned slate blackboards that professors don’t use anymore. On one night near the end of each semester, I would get into that room when it was vacant and take a piece of chalk and slowly write out the systems and processes my biochemistry professor had asked us to learn. Starting in the top left hand corner, with large, visible handwriting, I would slowly make my way around the room. It would take a while to get each system or process written out, but once it was done, I would go sit at a desk in the middle of the room and let myself be surrounded by the Kreb’s Cycle…or photosynthesis. I’d just look at it for a while and see how it all fit together. Others could take it apart on their index cards and notebook pages; I discovered I needed to see it writ large, in one big sweeping arc.

Jesus enters Jerusalem

Every year that’s what the church does with Holy Week. Every year, that’s what this congregation (and countless others) do on Palm Sunday, or the Sunday of the Passion. We let ourselves be surrounded by the story. We lay the whole process out there, in one sweeping arc—all the pieces of Jesus’ last semester put together so that we can see them as a whole. It starts with his spectacular entry into Jerusalem up there in the left hand corner, people waving palms and smiling, and then flows from there—the Last Supper in the Upper Room, the anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas, the denials of Peter, and the trial before Pilate. As we move along we get the sentencing and then eventually the crucifixion and the soldiers casting lots for his clothing, Jesus’ final words and then his lifeless body taken off the cross. The rest of the year we get Jesus’ life on little index cards, each Sunday a small snippet that points, in some way, to the cross at the end. This week, however, we get to put it all together, see their undeniable connections, and arrive at their irrefutable result: Jesus comes to die.

The Last Supper (Coptic icon)

Yes, that’s the final solution to this giant process before us, the conclusion we must wrestle with for as long as we’re alive: Jesus comes to die. When we’re presented with the index cards of him—at Christmas, or at Epiphany, or when he tells his remarkable parables and preaches his confusing sermons—it’s easy to miss that fact. Jesus can give a lot of wisdom, and he can offer a lot of thoughts to ponder in times of worry or regret, and all of that is good and helpful.

However, seeing the events of Holy Week spread out all around us forces us to come to terms with what always happens when God’s love in Jesus Christ encounters the world on the world’s terms. When the world’s terms are involved, Jesus is going to die. When the world’s reality is taken into consideration, this is what’s it’s going to come to. And, despite all the pain and anguish it will cause Jesus, God isn’t going to encounter us in any other way than on the world’s terms because that’s where we are. This is where we live, enmeshed and intertwined with all the world’s evil and sin and brokenness. Jesus is the one who bears the brunt of this encounter, and Christians from the very beginning of our faith have gathered at this time of year to put this all together and hear it so that we don’t forget it.

He will not save humanity simply by dispensing wisdom or giving us inspirational stories to live by. Jesus will heal the world and begin to put it back together by submitting to its brokenness on our behalf. He will take the world seriously, which means he will enter into the darkest pain and isolation. But he will also do this by giving up any desire to defend himself or to use force in a way that would hurt anyone.

The Betrayal of Judas (Duccio)

If you stand back at this and still don’t quite understand, fear not: Jesus’ path has always been a very difficult conclusion to grasp, so don’t feel bad if it still leaves you speechless at some point. One 19^th century theologian who wrote pages and pages of articles and sermons about God and faith would still contemplate the sum of Jesus’ life by saying simply, as if his hands were thrown up in the air in surrender: “A God on the cross! That is all my theology.”^[1]

But there’s something strange about this horrifying conclusion that you’ve probably already suspected. As this story is playing out for us today—and as it plays out for us later in the week on Maundy Thursday and on Good Friday—at some point we make the connection that we’re not really in the middle of some classroom, or in the middle of some sanctuary, letting it play out around us. We are not simply passive observers of the process, students who are cramming at the last minute and hoping that it all sinks in. The something strange involves you and it involves me. In reality, we’re in the equation. We’re part of the cycle, that system that leads to his demise. We are not innocently sitting back and taking it all in.



No, in fact, somewhere up on that giant chalkboard that contains the world’s sin, our names are squeezed in. We are there, in all our brokenness and orneriness, another part of the world’s terms that Jesus comes to address and to heal. And the death of Jesus? Well, we have somehow helped move it along to its inevitable conclusion, too.



Ecce Homo (Antonio Ciseri, 19th c.)

In this morning’s rendition of the final days of Jesus, you will be an undeniable part of the equation. Specifically, you will be lending your voices to this scene as the people in the crowd, as one of that horde that do nothing to stop the process and turn it around. But there are times we may appear throughout our lives as someone with one of these more prominent roles. Like Peter, we may deny our relationship to the Lord, especially when put on the spot. Or like Judas, we take the path of greed and false security rather than faithfulness to God. Or like Pilate, we shrug our shoulders and wash our hands rather than make any real decision about God and truth, and in so doing make a decision to align ourselves with the powers of the world that try to kill and silence goodness. Or maybe we’re one of the disciples who are asked simply to pray, but end up just falling asleep on the job.

Whatever role it ends up being, we’re in there somewhere. We’re up on that chalkboard, and we’re helping God reach that conclusion that only humility and love can save us all, even if it means death on a cross.

It will be important for us to remember and realize all of this, but let us also keep in mind something else. As it turns out, when our sinfulness and brokenness have had its way with Jesus, when once more we listen to the whole story with Peter and Judas and Pilate all playing their parts, there will still be one last section of blackboard with nothing on it. There will be one final result, one conclusion which, on our own, we’d never be able to figure out because as far as we can figure, our sin always ends in Jesus’ death. But there is one more blank section of blackboard God is saving for the end. And it’s a doozy. It’s a surprising, amazing doozy that will save it all, make it all make sense…make it all glorious. That little part of the blackboard won’t be filled in until, oh, until sometime next week.

May I suggest you come back?

You’ll have to see it to believe it.

Crucifixion (Georges Rouault, 1937)

 

Amen.

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Jean Lacordaire

The Fourth Sunday in Lent [Year A] - March 30, 2014 (John 9:1-41)

 

I was in a play once in high school where fifteen minutes before we were supposed to go on stage for the first performance, our director called us together for a brief meeting that we thought was going to be a pep talk. The play we were performing was a tough one with lots of characters and complicated entrances and exits. Instead of giving us a pep talk, though, he reassigned everyone’s roles, just like that. We had been practicing for weeks, struggling even to learn our own lines and stage directions, much less anyone else’s. Without any forewarning, he read off a list of the new cast breakdown. Everyone, except for the main character, was going to be playing a completely different role than they had originally thought. The people who had been in supporting roles had been promoted to key players. Those who had memorized the biggest parts of the dialogue were suddenly on the sidelines. There we all stood, in full costume and makeup, our jaws on the floor. He looked at us, unmoved by our protests, and said, “You’ve got fifteen minutes to change your clothes.”

That poor audience! It goes without saying that our first performance was much shorter than it was supposed to be and probably left all those who watched it even more confused than we were.

Something very similar is going on in this story about the healing of the man born blind and his cast of supporting actors. Jesus is the director, switching up roles and confusing characters all over the place. By the end, those who are supposed to be blind end up being able to see, but those who once could see are now blind. The ones who are supposed to be marked by sin are the ones who actually show God’s glory, and the ones who should be able to testify to God’s might end up as sinful. God bless the person or congregation who understands what they’re hearing! One often doesn’t know what to make of Jesus and of the change he brings about in people’s lives, the change he brings about in the great drama of life. If this morning’s story doesn’t illustrate that for us, I don’t know what will.

Healing of the Man Born Blind (El Greco, 1570)

When the story begins, we meet a man who is born blind, and right off the bat we get a glimpse into how people of Jesus’ day viewed illnesses and handicaps. They were evidence of retribution. As far as the disciples and the other by-standers were concerned, his blindness was a result of some kind of moral or religious failing—maybe even on the part of his parents’. Jesus’ quick answer, however, redirects our focus, especially when it comes to physical or mental limitations. The point is not why this man is blind; the point is, rather, how might he show forth God’s light.  The important thing about this man is not what happened in his past that got him to his current state but how God may bring about a new future for him. The question is not how did this man get this way, but how might God’s works be shown in him anyway?

That is the important question about any of us, isn’t it, really? How are God’s works being revealed in you, even though those areas of your life you would declare terribly broken? The understanding of our lives should be less focused on why we are the way we are and more on how can God’s works be revealed in us, even in those areas of our lives we know aren’t perfect. This does not mean that we do not take into consideration a person’s disabilities or struggles with life, but it does mean we are careful about how our approaches to their situation might label or limit them. In this story, Jesus sees the blind man not as a case for debating cause and effect, but instead views him as someone who can lead others to greater understanding of God. When Jesus is the director, our lives can cast greater vision than we can we can ever imagine.

As miraculous as this man’s healing is, however, Jesus is more intent on bringing about a deeper miracle. Which miracle? The miracle of faith, the wonder of trusting in God. The man’s new vision, we understand, is only a part of the equation, the narrative hook that gets us and everyone else interested in the plot that follows. The person who started out as a focus of pity or shame is now the hero, the one with the chance to see what no one else apparently can: that Jesus is the light of the world.

Icon of the healing of the man born blind

None of us needs to be a scholar in Greek to begin to figure out that seeing has something to do with knowing and understanding. As we hear the story we begin to grasp what the people of Jesus’ time thought about the sense of sight: that is, that that the eye was a window to the mind. In fact, the verb “to see” is the same word in Greek as “to perceive,” “to regard,” or “to discover.” Think of which form of communication you’d rather use to connect with a loved one: the telephone, or Facetime? Texting or Skype? There is something about being able to seeing someone that helps us know a little more about them.

So, as the man’s eyes are opened, his mind also begins to understand and discover just who Jesus is, and that is the more important transformation of the two. On the other hand, the religious officials end up truly blind, not because they can’t see, but because they can’t understand who this Jesus really is or what really has happened.

Looking at the transformation of the blind man, we notice something very interesting: while the blind man’s physical eyes are opened rapidly, the opening of his spiritual sight is a little more gradual. At first the man born blind refers to his healer simply as “the man called Jesus.” A little later he claims Jesus is a prophet. Still later, he admits that Jesus is “from God,” and only toward the end of the story, when Jesus is speaking directly with him, does the man confess belief in Jesus as the Son of God.

There are some folks for whom belief in Jesus is sudden and miraculous, like someone has thrown the switch and the light comes on in a flash, the night of doubt dissipating almost immediately. For many, however, the journey to faith is more similar to this man born blind: the light of knowing and understanding is gradual and incremental, more like a dimmer switch that can fluctuate back and forth. Regardless of which situation applies to you, the miracle is that in this world of darkness we can see at all and come to know that the one who has created us has also sent someone to love and redeem us, to bring light into a world dimmed by human sin. The miracle is that in spite of our selfishness, in spite of our timeworn ability to use what little vision we do have to stare only at our own reflections and our own needs, God still can bring about faith that opens us up to others. At some point, by God’s grace, we look up and find our creator and redeemer has been speaking with us the entire time.

Jesus himself explains that he came into the world in order to bring judgment, to re-assign those roles in the drama of human life. Those who think they can see human destiny so clearly without any influence from Jesus’ love are the ones who continue to live blind, while those who are aware of their need for God’s grace are actually the ones who get to play the big part of visionary. The good news is that God can always break into that blindness and transform even the gloomiest night. Ultimately Jesus is the light that no darkness can overcome.

The last thing that the man born blind does in the story is worship Jesus, and there we see the endpoint, the conclusion, the final act of this story. His faith in a God who can transform the world leads him finally to live for God’s glory, to point his life in the direction of heaven. It makes me think of a quote by writer Annie Dillard in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She says, “The question from agnosticism is, Who turned on the lights? The question from faith is, Whatever for?”

Whatever for has this God created us?

Whatever for…do blind people see?

Whatever for…do we see the darkest soul come to display the most brilliant light?

It is for…his glory that this loving God’s works may be revealed among us. So, whatever role we you were assigned at the beginning of this life or at the beginning of this day, whatever character you think you’re supposed to play, or whatever costume and mask you’re wearing now, may God grant you the faith to know you live for him, that even your life can display his glory, and that you live to worship and follow him.

No worry about learning any new lines, or even changing clothes with someone else. God will take care of the change…from the inside out.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Lenten Wednesday Sermon, March 26, 2014: "Elijah flees Jezebel: A Journey in Fear" [from series: Roadtrippin': Journeys in Faith] - 1 Kings 19

 

Have you ever had a price on your head? Have you ever had to run for your life? You see, that’s basically the situation I’m in right now. I’ve been running for days trying to escape the clutches of the evil Imperial forces. They’re ruthless, as wicked as they come. At first I ran to Beersheba, way down in the south, about as far away from the northern empire as you can get.

Oh, you people probably don’t understand. You may complain about the NSA spying on your cell phone calls and monitoring your internet activity, but until your life has actually been threatened by the people who are supposed to protect you and govern you, you have no idea. I’ll admit it: I’m afraid! I’m a holy man of God, a prophet of the Most High…and I’m scared to death.

Some back-story may help here. It all started when King Ahab, ruler of Israel, decided to marry Jezebel, a Sidonian. She was not a Hebrew, which is not bad in and of itself because plenty of important people in our history have not been Hebrew, but she…she had no interest in knowing or serving God. From the start she wanted to obliterate any sign of our God she could find, which meant she built a temple to the false god Baal and got Ahab to help her! Then she started slaughtering all of Israel’s priests and prophets and replaced them with hundreds of her own priests who served Baal, too. Hundreds! Jezebel wanted to turn Israel away from God and the way of good. Her forces quickly outnumbered us, and eventually only I was left. That was when things started to get really scary: to think that Israel would be left with no priests to worship God and give God glory!

Elijah and the sacrifices of the Priests of Baal (Lucas Cranach the Younger)

Anyway, eventually this conflict turned into a showdown between all of the priests of Baal and little old me. I challenged them to what was essentially a battle of sacrifices in order to prove that the God I serve—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the God whose honor Ahab should have upheld—was the one true God and that Baal was just a worthless figment of everyone’s imagination. I’ll spare you the gory details, but our God came through with flying colors. Right there in front of all the people of Israel! It was pretty obvious that worshipping Baal looked pretty pointless. One little prophet, Elijah, had stood up to the army of false prophets. Needless to say I got a little carried away in my victory and the crowd of onlookers took to my side so quickly that we ended up killing all of the priests of Baal.

So I kind of thought it was done. God won. Baal lost. But rather than admit defeat, the empire struck back! With no other prophet left at whom she could direct her anger, Jezebel focused it all on me, and she vowed to slaughter me as we had done them.

That’s when the fear gripped me. I suppose I had been somewhat brave and confident before, but then—just like that—that trust and confidence left me. Does that ever happen to you?

Fear: it just shows up with no rhyme or reason. And takes over. One minute things are fine…and then the next minute you’re scared to death. And when fear does come, they say we have two main reactions: fight or flight. Well, in this instance, I chose flight…and I fled fast.

At first I took my servant and headed straight south to Beersheba, far away from the northern empire where they were. I left him there and went about a day out into the wilderness. There I found one lone broom tree. The sun was beating down. I was famished. That was the low point. I finally just looked up at God and just said it was better for me just to die now. No point in going on. Despair had gripped me to the core. You might have labelled me suicidal.

Part of fear is not being able to see a way out of or though the situation you’re in.

Jezebel

That’s how I felt at that time. There was no way forward and I couldn’t imagine how I could backtrack and undo what had occurred, and change the mind of Jezebel. Checking out here wasn’t a great ending, but I really figured that dying alone from starvation and exposure in the southern wilderness was better than being slain and used as a humiliating example before the whole kingdom.

But in the midst of that despair, God showed up.God didn’t show up in the way that my fear hoped he would, but God showed up nonetheless. It was in the form of a simple, basic meal, mysteriously placed by my head. My overarching needs of triumph over Jezebel and Ahab and a way back to civilization that worshipped and honored God were not met in that instant, but my most basic needs of that moment were satisfied. A cake baked on a hot stone. A jar of water. It’s like a casserole on the doorstep when the chemo treatments start to bear down.  Or an unexpected phone call from a friend when the semester at college is heading downhill fast. In the midst of despair, God will provide something, and although at the time it may seem small and puny and not an answer to your direct prayer—God knows it is enough. Looking back on it, that bread and water looks so insignificant. But it took my mind temporarily off my despair and gave me the strength to walk 40 more days until I got to Mount Horeb.

And that’s where I am now. Mount Horeb was the place my people had long had experiences with God and spoken with him. Most famously, perhaps, Moses struck the rock here and found water while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. That little bread loaf and water jar allowed me to get here, and here I’ve been talking with God one-on-one. And it was hear that my fear has finally begun to subside.

Sometimes in fear you just need a refuge, as rudimentary as that refuge may be. Here it’s been a familiar mountainside. For you it might just be your bed, or your bedroom. Or an afternoon with your loved ones. And in this refuge the word of the Lord did come to me. The Lord asked me to stand in front of this cave and wait for him to pass by. Now, only Moses had ever really seen God pass by. This was something that didn’t happen to just anyone. So I did as the Lord said and stood in front of the cave. And waited.

That’s when the strangest thing happened: this wind started blowing...the fiercest wind I’d ever heard or felt. It started blowing from over the tops of the distant mountains and swirling into the valley beneath me. It kept getting stronger and stronger until it started to move boulders around me and dropping them to places below. It was like the wind was breaking mountains apart…and I waited, ready to hear what God would say in the wind…but there was nothing. Just wind. Just noise.

Then it got silent. I started to feel some confusion, but then the earth started to shake beneath my very feet. It was an earthquake. More rocks and boulders falling to the ground and breaking. It was loud and frightening, but I stood up and waited for the Lord like he said to. But no Lord in the earthquake! Again, I was disappointed…but just as I turned back to the cave, I smelt smoke. And then I started to hear the crackling of a fire. I felt heat on my face, and I knew that a fire was beginning somewhere…it was raging all around me and I got ready to listen because it was at Horeb, too, where Moses also saw the burning bush and heard God’s voice. And I waited, with the inferno raging below and around me in the valley…but no voice. Sometimes, when you’re afraid, the thing you fear most is that God will won’t speak.

Then, just as quickly as all of this had started, it all fell silent. Absolutely, totally silent. Nothing like an abrupt change in surroundings to get my mind off my fear! As it turned out, that’s precisely where the Lord would be: in the silence, in the stillness. And so I covered my face, knowing that would show my respect for the Lord, and God’s voice said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And I said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, God of hosts. The Israelites have forsaken your covenant, but I have not! The Israelites have thrown down your altars, but I have not! The Israelites have allowed the killing of your prophets! I alone am left, and they are trying to kill me, too.”

Then, slowly, in that silence, in that moment of total stillness, God began tearing down all the rocks of fear and boulders of despair that had surrounding me. He told me that I was not the only one left. I could return in safety and in the middle of Jezebel’s dark kingdom I would find some supporters. Most importantly, I would find another young Jedi prophet like myself, Elisha. I would anoint him to help me take on the forces of evil. And…here’s the surprising part: God would show me 7000 people in the land of Israel who had withstood Jezebel’s onslaughts and were still faithful to God’s kingdom! 7000! And I was convinced I was the only one!!

Amazing! That’s another thing about fear: it often distorts our ability to see the big picture and that God is in command of it. Fear can feel like a cave, giving us such a small window to the possibilities that God can create. All this I learned in my fear, and yet, an important thing needs to be said: having faith does not mean being without fear.

Faithfulness does not require bravery at all times. Too often we’ve distorted faith to mean just that: that somehow part of being a good follower of God means never feeling despair. But it just isn’t the case. In fact, sometimes the best faithfulness will lead you into the experiences where fear is common and expected.

Just look to Jesus, too see how this is the case. He exemplifies despair in the face of faithfulness more than anyone. In Gethsemane and again on the cross he cries out in anguish. He has his own cave of death and mockery and feeling terribly alone. You already know this about him, and you know how his story goes: he does die…the empire swallows him up completely, and he is fairly horrified at the end, crying out that God has forsaken him. Yet God still finds a way to provide his way through. Like I said, you know that story.  You know all about that journey of the cross and the risen life, for you gather so regularly around the simple meal he has mysteriously left for you.

As for me and my journey…I’m through this part of my fear. God has restored my hope and brought me out of the cave. It is time to be brave and return to civilization...to return to life. It is time to show Jezebel what I know about the Force…the force of God’s grace and it’s ability to work through fear.

May that force be with you, my friends. May the force be with you.

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.