The Third Sunday in Lent [Year C] - February 28, 2016 (Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9)

 

It’s been another bumpy week in the news for Starbucks. On Monday the Seattle-based coffee chain made a lot of folks unhappy when they announced major changes to their rewards system, which is one of their gimmicks to cultivate lots of repeat customers. Beginning in April rewards will be earned based on how much money a customer spends each time they visit, rather than on how many times a customer simply visits. This means those who purchase the really expensive—and unhealthier—drinks on a regular basis will have a much easier time earning reward stars and the freebies that come with them. Those who stick to plain coffee come up shorter. They will spend and spend, just the same as they always did, but it will take longer to rack up new reward stars. I figure under the new rewards system, it will be next August before I get my free drink that I so clearly deserve.

It’s funny how successfully enticing those little rewards systems are, aren’t they? Not just for Starbucks, but for everything! They hook you right in, making you spend far more money than you normally ever would simply because they dangle some free rewards treat out there in front of you. You usually get a card, along with some distinction of privileged status like being called a member or a premier client. Starbucks calls them members—gold-level members, even—and the chain reveals that Rewards members spend three times as much as non-members.

Contrast all this with God’s Rewards system, announced, as it is, with such gracious openness by the barista Isaiah:

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
Come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!”

There is no special card here, no elite privileged status that you must earn or maintain. God is simply prepared just to give it out, the best there is around. It’s always free. Loyalty is valuable, but God’s got no gimmicks to keep us interested. It makes no sense, especially for the business-minded. And that’s quite alright, for God reminds us,“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” That is, “I don’t do things like Starbucks. This gracious and open-ended anti-rewards program of goodness that I offer is intended wholly for your well-being. Like a feast of foods both delicious and nutritious, it has been offered for us you to thrive and grow.”

Early church giant St. Augustine once said to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Isaiah would have worded it, “Our souls are continuously hungry, and they do not find nourishment until they feast on God.” This is the way we stand before God from the time we are born until the time we take our final breath: a thirsting, a hungering for the God who gives us life. And even though we are prone to go searching for things which eventually leave us empty, and sink our roots into soils that never really nourish us, God still stands there offering his goodness for free. God still draws near, hoping we will notice we can turn to the Lord and listen that we may live. The rewards in this relationship is the relationship itself. There is no manipulation here, so salvation latte dangling on the edge of a stick. We are created to receive God’s mercy and, as we receive it, grow in the faith and love of God.

In Jesus’ day, then, it was tempting to think that when bad things happened to people, then it must be some form of divine retribution. People were prone to believe that one stood before God in terms of whether or not they were getting what they deserved. That is, if one did not turn and listen to receive the mercy and pardon God granted, that person could expect some form of just desserts. Luke tells us about some people who come before Jesus to ask him how God might have been at work in a tragedy involving some Galileans who Pilate ordered killed during their trip to the Jerusalem temple. Did they somehow get what was coming to them? And Jesus not only answers, “No,” but he adds on another story that people of that time would have probably known about, a story about a freak accident involving a tower that fell and killed eighteen people. In neither case, Jesus clarifies, was God somehow at work handing out justice or revoking rewards points because of something those victims had done at some point.

It may frustrate us to hear this, but Jesus doesn’t seem concerned with the question of why bad things happen, whether they’re the result of human deeds of evil or seemingly random acts of nature. What Jesus is concerned about is our repentance, His point is this: we do not stand before God in terms of whether or not we’re getting what we deserve. Jesus certainly didn’t get what he deserved, and he stood before God blameless. To paraphrase Bono, front man for the band U2 says, love has interrupted any type of system of karma we might believe the universe ever had.^[1] We stand before God in terms of listening and living, of seeking and searching; that is, we stand ready to receive him as nourishment, or as medicine, or as sunshine that tilts the head of a flower towards it so that it may grow.

Jesus doesn’t reach for the image of a sunflower to illustrate this, however. Instead he uses a fig tree and manure. There is a fig tree that isn’t producing any figs. It’s at least three years old, which is the traditional length of time that even a young fig sapling would take to grow some fruit. Sadly, it just sits there, using up a valuable spot in the vineyard, wasting precious soil that could be used for another plant. If the fig tree truly got what it deserved, the landowner would rip it out immediately, but love interrupts. The gardener still sees potential, in spite of its reluctance, in spite of its age. It was made to grow and produce figs. Maybe one more year and an extra helping of free, nutritious fertilizer will wake it up to a life of fruitful repentance.

A couple of weeks ago Epiphany hosted a one-day conference called, “Engaging Adults in Faith Formation.” Geared towards church professionals and volunteers responsible for leading things like Sunday School for grown-ups, it challenged us to think of adult faith formation as the primary emphasis of a congregation’s ministry. So often all the resources and attention go into faith formation of children and young people. Congregations beef up offerings for their youth group. They look at our numbers of children’s ministry and Sunday School. And while the conference reaffirmed that all of those things are important and good, it also pointed out that learning about faith and growing in understanding of God is something that continues lifelong.

The presenter pointed to the work of John Bowlby, a British researcher whose pioneering work on orphans in the 19^th century showed that children can literally die of loneliness. He further demonstrated that we never outgrow our need for human contact and deep emotional bonds. The thought that we reach some point final maturity, at least in terms of our need for growth in our relationships, isn’t really true. Likewise, our ability to grow figs is always there. And yet it is so easy to harbor this thought that our bond with God is something that kind of stops growing once we get confirmed or when we think we are too old to go to Sunday School anymore. For whatever reason—perhaps fear, perhaps apathy—we neglect our desire to engage those roots and wrestle with deeper questions within the community of our brother and sister faith travelers as we get older. Studies show that by the time our children are age 10 or 11 they have figured out if faith practice is really real and important to their parents or if they do it only for the sake of the kids.

 

I must say that this congregation is blessed to have so many people of all ages who have felt that continuous interruption of God’s love and who are regularly searching and seeking, who aren’t participating in worship and other activities out of a sense of obligation or duty but because of a desire to grow and learn. Last summer our minister of faith formation, Christy Huffman, planned a week of Vacation Bible School for whole families in addition to the one we traditionally offer for pre-school and elementary aged children. The children had a blast, but it was the adults who requested we do it again and maybe expand it. A new fellowship group for those who are in their 50s and 60s who may now be empty-nesters has formed and is getting ready for their second event next week. Adult Bible studies are full and growing, and Dr. Westin’s class on the history of the Reformation has almost been standing room only. Over the past year, we have supported three members who have been pursuing seminary studies.

Numbers are nice, of course, but it is not the only way to measure the growth God gives us. Even if just one fig tree suddenly produces a fruit it is something the landowner would look on with pride. There is one gentleman in his 80s who is hear on a regular basis whom I regularly hear saying after a Men’s lunch gathering or a Bible study, “You know, I had never thought of that Scripture in that way before.” Still growing. Still admitting the need for wisdom, still listening so that he may really live.

It’s another instance of that love that interrupts, a grace that offers itself again and again, without money and without price. It’s another gracious run-in with the gardener who still believes in that fig tree, who intercedes with his life and says, “Nuh-uh. Not so fast. I like this tree. It just needs a little more attention.”

Yes, it’s another surprising encounter with a most rewarding God who tells us there is no need for points. “Throw away that silly member card. You, my child, are my star.”

 Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas. Michka Assayas

The First Sunday in Lent [Year C] - February 14, 2016 (Luke 4:1-13)



(photo cred: USA Today)

Well, another Super Bowl is in the books; another winning team has been crowned. Another quarterback’s legacy has been validated, and…another coach has endured a Gatorade shower. Gary Kubiak, coach of the victorious Denver Broncos, was doused last Sunday evening with orange Gatorade as the final seconds of the game ticked down. Those who watch football may understand the significance of the Gatorade shower: it’s that moment when victory seems definite and the winning team “sneaks up” behind the coach to pour a whole cooler of Gatorade on him.

For many people, the Gatorade shower is the real end of the game, meaning more than the clock actually reaching zero  or more than the referees’ final whistle. At some point in history it was probably some team’s spontaneous reaction to a hard-fought win. Now it’s become a necessary ritual that signals the real end of the battle. In fact, the Gatorade shower is such a traditional part of American football that bookies now take bets on what color the Gatorade will beat each Super Bowl. I’ve never had anyone dump a cooler of Gatorade on me, but I imagine it’s quite a rush. All the bumps and bruises of the long season are in the past, all the self-doubts and second-guessing are washed away. You are named and claimed as the winner. Everyone gathers around you, supporting you, congratulating you, and you are free to do nothing but beginning to bask in the glory.

Jesus’ life is like a football game in reverse. His Gatorade shower comes at the very beginning of everything—when he is baptized in the Jordan River—and the struggle only intensifies from there. He is named and claimed as the winner—the Son of God—but there are no shouts of joy to accompany it, no basking in glory, no sudden end to the self-doubts and second-guessing. Immediately after his baptism, which all four gospel writers mention in some way as the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Spirit leads Jesus into solitude in the wilderness where he does battle with his enemy. The bumps and bruises are just beginning. He eats nothing and is weakened by hunger. He undergoes a series of temptations where the devil tries to lead him astray. His baptismal shower has freed him from nothing. Instead, it has initiated a life of challenges.

In Luke’s version of this story, those challenges begin with three tests which include just about every type of testing a person of faith can experience in life. One test tries to lure Jesus away through his body by offering to diminish his intense hunger. Another test attempts to strike through his heart and sense of ego by laying before him the kingdoms of the world. And a third test battles his intellect by using Scripture to argue against God’s power. Strength, soul and mind are all find themselves under siege in the wilderness.

Here’s the thing: these challenges make it very tempting to look at the account of Jesus’ temptation and think it primarily tells us about how human Jesus is. That’s a common reaction. We read it and think, “Look! This shows Jesus knows what it’s like to be human. The One we call Savior feels temptation. He struggles with hunger. He understands the lure of power and control.” And that reaction is not all wrong. Jesus’ undertook baptism, in part, to show solidarity with humankind, and the fact that he has to contend with temptation, with being hungry, for example, is part of that solidarity with us.

But the temptation of Jesus does not ultimately show us how human or ordinary Jesus is. It shows us how godly he is. It shows us he is not your ordinary human being. He is something extraordinary because he contends with evil and evil does not defeat him. The great Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky is credited as saying that if the whole Bible were somehow to be lost and only the account of Jesus’ temptation were to remain, it would be enough for us to have hope. A Savior has arrived. Someone has appeared on the scene who can contend with temptation, even in his weakened, isolated state, and stand down the dark forces that draw us from God.

That’s who, after all, this devil character is: the one who draws us from God. Those who constantly want to debate and wonder about what the devil looks like or whether the devil is a real physical being are missing the point. Scripture talks much more about things like voice and strategy when it talks about evil. There are voices and influences and ideas that try to lead us away from the good. There are influences that tell us lies about the strength of our own autonomy. And in the wilderness Jesus somehow manages to hear those voices and feel those influences and not believe them.

The account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness traditionally kicks off the Sundays in Lent, this time of the year when the Church pays special attention to Jesus’ sacrificial way of the cross. Modelled after Jesus’ own time of temptation and fasting, Lent is a season of forty days of special prayer and other spiritual disciplines. It has several purposes, but one of them is to have us pause and reflect more intentionally on what it means to turn to God. And this morning we remember that we are only able to turn to God because Jesus has contended against the forces of evil for us. He is the gift. He is the way. He stands up to the voices and influences that would separate us from God and, ultimately on the cross, puts them to death for us.

None of this is done for us because we deserve it, or because we are distinctly loveable, wonderful people. God rescues us in Christ Jesus out of God’s great love and desire to have us back, to grant us a future that of communion with him. Just like the ancient Israelites stand at their first harvest in the land God promised them and recount how God brought them out of Egypt into a land flowing with milk and honey—how God heard their cries of affliction and  saved them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, not by any power of their own—so do we stand in God’s promises of life because of what Jesus has done for us. The battle has already been won. The gift has already been given. Our life, our journey, is now one of repentance; that is, learning to receive and re-learn what this great gift means.

I don’t know if you heard the story this week out of California about the couple who were getting ready to buy the boat that they’d always dreamed of, that they’d saved up all their money for, but had a change of heart and ended up instead using the money to send an entire kindergarten class to college. Navy veteran Marty Burbank estimates that it will take about $1 million to accomplish this, so he’s set up a private foundation for Ms. Ashton’s class at Rio Vista Elementary School. All twenty-six kids speak Spanish at home and arrived this year not knowing much English or what college even was. Many of the families at Rio Vista would never even be able to afford college, and for many of them it may not be the right thing to go to college, but Burbank, after something he heard one Sunday at church, of all places, decided to take all the money he was going to spend on himself and instead offer it in some way to the school he had been volunteering at for several years. The gift is theirs.  All the kids have to do is draw a picture or write an essay every year about what going to college will mean for each of them and their families.^[1] Now someone needs to buy Marty a boat.

It occurs to me that that’s an illustration of repentance: a conscious reflection on the fact that the gift has already been given what it means to you, and how you plan to receive it. Repentance, especially in the church, often gets reduced to just meaning your sorry or asking for forgiveness, but really it’s far more interesting—than just that. Repentance is a process, or a frame of mind, or a series of movements of the heart and mind that are far too complex to summarize in one image or action.

In fact, repentance is the way of Christian life. Martin Luther, in his first line of the 95 Theses, which is the document he posted to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg as he attempted to reform the church, says, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Just as thankfulness, for example, may take look different depending on the situation and the thankful person’s specific circumstances…just as Valentine’s Day involves different gestures and celebrations—or lack thereof—depending on the beloved’s mood…so does repentance take on different aspects throughout the life of a believer.

Sometimes it does involve apologizing for and confessing sin, but sometimes it entails something different, like a dimension of realizing your potential for growth in ways you’ve never noticed before. Sometimes repentance may look like coming to terms again with your overall helplessness and weakness in this scary world. At other times it may look like the practice of learning to desire and treasure the right kinds of things in the right way, and seizing a chance to do so. Each of the gospel readings this Lent will focus on a different aspect of repentance, offering up two opposing examples of the choices we might make as we learn to receive the gift. Regardless of what the life of repentance looks like today and again tomorrow, it is always a reflection on what Christ has already done for us, a rejoicing in the triumph over death and sin that Jesus has already accomplished and handed to us.

No, I don’t know a thing personally about what a Gatorade dump feels like at the end of a game I’ve fought hard to win. Nor do I ever want to. But I do know what baptism feels like, and what it’s like to hear that the battle has already been won for me. O Lord, may I, like a fresh little kindergartner in Ms Ashton’s class, always be ready to sit down and at least draw a picture or say a prayer of what that means to me.

 

Amen.

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Katie Lobosco, CNN Money, Feb 11, 2016 http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/10/pf/college/free-college-kindergarten/index.html

 

Ash Wednesday - February 10, 2016 (Joel 2:1-2, 12-17)

 

 

When my sister and I were little, there was a book in the toy bin at our grandparents’ house in Winston-Salem that my sister loved to have read to her. It was a little Golden book in the Rocky and Bullwinkle series called something like Rocky and Friends. It was only about twenty pages long, and, being a children’s book, its very simple storyline was driven more by big, colorful pictures than by sentences with words. But my sister loved the story, and whenever we were over at their house, she would inevitably end up on granddaddy’s lap at some point and he’d read it to her, over and over and over.

I was never involved in the listening or telling of Rocky and Friends—I would always be occupied with something else that I thought was less baby-ish—but the plot had something to do with a camping trip in the woods which seemed to be going wrong. One by one, Rocky’s friends would leave the tent where they were all sleeping and disappear into the dark night, never to return. Every time a new person left the tent, the words would go, “One second, two seconds, three seconds went by.” For most little kids, that kind of stuff is suspenseful. My sister ate it up. As for me, I would get so put off by repetition of that middle part, the way it droned on and on, that about halfway thought I’d tune it all out. Bored by the monotony and frustrated with the tension, I never actually listened to the end to hear what happened to Rocky and his friends in the woods. I must have heard granddaddy read that book to Katherine a hundred times. I can hear his kind voice and see her legs dangling under the edge of the book. I never paid attention to how it ended.

Today is about paying attention to the end. That’s what the ashes soon to be placed on our foreheads are all about. Our lives are a story that can be, especially in the long middle stretches, boring and monotonous, tedious and filled with tension. We can get caught up in the repetition of certain aspects or distracted by things that don’t really matter. And even if we are successful at tuning it out for a while as we worship the idol of youth or burnishing the impact of our legacy, we ultimately won’t be able to ignore where it all winds up for us. We are dust, and to dust we will return.

Today, tonight, throughout the world, friends and strangers gather in worship to be reminded in stark fashion that we will disappear back into the woods at some point. It’s unavoidable. It happens whether there is suspense in our lives or not. It happens whether we are surrounded by worldly success or not. God formed each of us from the same raw materials of his universe, and that is the direction our bodies eventually take. Ash Wednesday is considered by many to be the most jarring, the most solemn time of worship of the entire year. It reminds us that we are not in total control of what is happening to us and that we have inherited a human story that ends in death. Pope Francis has said, “Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.” Indeed, call it the lull of “one second, two seconds, three seconds going by.” We need to be shaken to pay attention to the end of our story.

That appears to be one of the motivations for the people of God during the time of the prophet Joel. They too, are confronted with a great darkness on the horizon that promises to wipe all of them out. They see the day of clouds and blackness approaching, which we think may have been a swarm of crop-devouring locusts, and they contemplate their end. It could mean massive famine, disease, war between those who have and those who have not. No matter what, it is their end, and in contemplating it through the acts of repenting and praying, even mourning for their impending demise, they remember that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Because just as they become aware of their story of sinfulness and decay, they are also aware of God’s story. It is a holy story that began with their very creation out of dust and continues through the mighty acts of that loving Creator, each time pulling them out of the monotony and tedium, sorrow and boredom of their human story and making them aware of another end that God has in store for them.

And that, we remember, is a story of salvation, not of ultimately clouds and thick darkness. It is a real history of God working among God’s people to love them and restore them to blessing. This God had once called their patriarchs and matriarchs like Abraham and Sarah, in order to become a holy people that would be a blessing to the earth. God’s story continued as God heard the cries of suffering of the slaves in Egypt, the offspring of those matriarchs and patriarchs, now stranded in a strange land. God brought them out, delivering them through a great Exodus into freedom that would renew their covenant with God and allow them to shine once again as God’s treasured people.

As God’s story for them continues, they plead for a leader who would be able to unite their bickering tribes and help them maintain their treasured status among so many other diverse peoples. And God renews his covenant once again, and makes of them a real city on hill. Unbelievably, God would come to reside with them in that city, taking up residence in a holy temple. But unlike other holy shrines elsewhere, God’s temple would not contain God goodness and glory in one place. Rather, God’s light would stream out from there to be embodied in the relationships of the people in the kingdom where grace and love for the neighbor would rule over all else. 

The Flight of the Prisoners (Tissot)

When their efforts at that began to burn once more into ashes, God would draw near, this time forming them through a period of great hardship and sorrow. In foreign Babylon they would become like slaves again, scattered from their holy city and the temple that inspired them so. Into exile and then back, they’d yet come to realize God was still with them, honing them to be people who lived according to his Word, no matter where they were.

Then, to fully link the human story of death and sin to God’s holy story of life and freedom, God gave his Son, Jesus of Nazareth. His birth, life, and death among us unites our story as mortal creatures with God’s story of salvation and life eternal. This is the story, the great history of hope, that we have inherited through our faith in Christ. When a person receives the water of baptism, the pastor stands at the font and sometimes says, “We are born children of a fallen humanity; by water and the Holy Spirit we are reborn children of God and made members of the body of Christ.” Though our human story is broken by sin and ends with the ashes of death, we are now also united to God’s story in Christ who is risen from the dead.

The traditional disciplines of Lent are designed to awaken us and help us pay attention to that story, to that hope. Fasting, the giving of alms, and prayer all, in different ways, jolt us out of the humdrum of a normal, self-centered existence and help us re-learn and receive this new ending in Christ’s life. We become living and breathing—and even dying—reminders that our story of decay and sin has now overlapped with God’s great salvation. Devoted to God and to neighbor, we can bear God’s image, answer the call to be God’s people, enjoy deliverance from sin, build God’s kingdom in our presence, and be molded by God’s judgment of slow anger and steadfast love. The life of faith helps us remember that everything—everything—comes to an end except for the love, grace, and peace of Jesus Christ.

My own grandfather reached the end of his earthly story last October at the age of 93. As we sat gathered with close family in his final days, the subject of that old Rocky and Bullwinkle book came up. As an act of remembering him and honoring that time together, my sister hunted and hunted for a copy of it somewhere. It’s out of print, of course, so it wasn’t on any of the major booksellers on-line, but eventually she got it from an obscure Etsy seller for a whopping $3. It arrived the week or so after he died.

I was curious about the end, and as it turns out there’s a little surprise. Rocky’s friends disappear one by one in the forest not to meet some terrible demise, but because they’re throwing him a secret surprise birthday party. After so much worry, or boredom, or tedium, or suspense, the story ends in a celebration of life and thankfulness.

Huh. A story with a surprise end of joy and thanksgiving. Well, now how to you like that?

Granddaddy (Bob) and my sister (Katherine)

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany [Lectionary 4C] - January 31, 2016 (1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:21-30)

 

The Apostle Paul often catches a lot of flak for being very long-winded and wordy. And rightly so. Even though the things he writes are important, and sometimes really profound, in reality his New Testament letters are chock-full of complicated, convoluted sentences that go on and on and on. As a result, many people find his writing hard to untangle and follow, kind of like...sermons. As someone once said, there is a fine line between a long sermon and a hostage situation. But that’s how Paul writes so much of the time!

"Paul Writing his Epistles" Valentin du Boulogne (17th c.)

That’s what many people feel like as they read the Apostle Paul—like they’re hostage to horrible writing—until they get to the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the church in Corinth. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he waxes poetic. He trims his sentences down. He follows a clear pattern. Choppy, awkward phrases disappear and flowing, lyrical lines take their place. And the result may not be any easier to grasp, but at least it’s pretty to listen to. The thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is considered by many people to be the most beautiful piece of prose in all of Scripture. Couples often choose it to be read at their weddings simply because it sounds so nice, even though it doesn’t really have anything directly to do with weddings. This short chapter and then the book of Ruth from the Old Testament were the only examples from the Bible that made it into my 10^th grade world literature class textbook. I have to think, though, that it’s not simply Paul’s graceful language that adds to the beauty and charm of this beloved chapter. It also probably has a lot to do with the fact he’s talking about one of everyone’s favorite subjects: love.

Ahh, yes, love. Now, I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes and wondering to yourself those words of another famous Paul. You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, that the world is full of them. But even though we might get the point that the Apostle Paul and Sir Paul might approach the same subject a little differently, they both agree on one main point: love isn’t silly. It isn’t silly, it isn’t silly at all.

It isn’t silly because, at least for the Apostle Paul, love is the gift, the tool, which becomes the key for using all other gifts in the Christian community. Without love, Paul says, nothing else works. It is the mortar which helps bricks form a building. It is the musical staff which allows the notes to be arranged in a meaningful melody. It is the heat that turns the batter into a delicious cake. Without the application of love, any one of these things would just turn into a mess, no matter how strong the bricks are, or how original the notes are, or how high-quality the ingredients are.

This lesson on love was particularly important for the Corinthians to understand because, as it happens, they’d been arguing over who among them were the “best ingredients,” which individuals in their community had the best gifts. There were several gifts that they were particularly enamored with, like speaking in tongues and displaying great wisdom and prophecy. Congregations may not exactly argue over particular gifts anymore, but every community tends to rank certain attributes and skills on a scale, consciously or not. Paul wants his congregation in Corinth to know that the strength or depth of each skill is not nearly as important as the love with which that skill is applied, because love, as he says elsewhere, builds up.

I’ve been told that one of this congregation’s former associate pastors, Mark England, had a question he would often get people to ask themselves in order to gauge the effectiveness of an idea or activity for ministry. He would ask, “How does this idea or activity we’re doing build up the kingdom of God or the body of Christ?” If that question was too difficult to answer, then they would hold off or change the idea. That is the question that love asks. Paul would have liked that question a lot, because he goes on to talk about love not just as a thing, but more like a person who has feelings and thoughts and abilities. It’s helpful to know that love is critical to community life, but only if you know what love is like. And so Paul anthropomorphizes love, using a style of writing that was typically used in the ancient world for praising people. It’s been translated differently through the years. Here’s how Eugene Peterson puts it in his contemporary language version of Scripture, The Message:

“Love never gives up.
Love cares for others more than self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
doesn’t have a swelled head,
doesn’t force itself on others,
isn’t always, ‘me first.’”^[1]

As the Corinthians continue to rank themselves according to the level of gifts they’ve received, Paul wants the church members to understand that love always involves the other. Brilliant prophecy may be nice, wisdom and knowledge may get you far, inspiring displays of faith are wonderful at times, but only love can really bear all things and endure all things. It hopes and believes all things, too, which doesn’t mean love turns a blind eye to abuse or manipulation, but that it always has an eye out for God’s future, confident that justice and mercy will ultimately rule.

Many people find this to be the really poetic part of an already poetic chapter, but interestingly enough, the particular kind of love that Paul is talking about, the kind of love that does the building up and bringing together, is often anything but poetic or lyrical when it’s acted out. The kind of love that never gives up, that cares for others more than self, that doesn’t keep score of others’ wrongs is most often painful and unpopular and even ugly when it’s demonstrated.

Ina recent opinion piece on the website Medium discussing the extreme polarization of our public discourse on political and social topics, writer Sean Blanda talks about the necessity of being humble enough to lay down our opinions on any given contentious issue so that we can accurately phrase and understand the viewpoint of someone who is on what we’ve often labeled the “Other Side.” This lack of arrogance and boastfulness is essential to growth and maturity, he says.  “We won’t truly progress as individuals,” he writes, “until we make an honest effort to understand those who are not like us.” He issues a dare for the next time we’re in a discussion with someone we disagree with.  “Don’t try to ‘win,’” he says. “Don’t try to convince anyone of your viewpoint. Instead, try to ‘lose.’ Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it.”

What he is encouraging is a practice of painful, unpopular love, which Paul reminds us, isn’t rude and doesn’t insist on its own way. And it’s not just good for the progress of individuals. It helps the whole community. And eventually it grows outward, not just inward, which is important: the quality of the church’s internal life together is almost always its greatest tool for reaching new people.

That, in fact, appears to be the problem with the Nazareth crowd’s reaction when Jesus attempts to bring them God’s Word and demonstrate how God’s love works. Initially, the message Jesus brings them sounds good, but immediately, Jesus recognizes, they think of themselves first and insist on their own way. They want to keep score, wondering why Jesus won’t perform for them the same wonders the other towns in Galilee got. But the love that Jesus comes to bring, the love at the center of his Father’s very being, is never given to self-preservation. It is directed outward, even towards those on the margins, those with the gifts, Paul would say, that everyone looks down on. And after he gives the Nazareth synagogue a few real-life examples of how God’s kingdom is often built up from the edges, bringing outsiders in, they rise up to silence him by throwing him off a cliff.

But they forget that love endures all things, that this love of God never ends. It’s not pretty and it’s definitely not silly when this love eventually goes to the cross and does die. It’s not poetic and it’s not aesthetic when love stretches out its arms and breathes its last, reminding us all that this kind of self-giving love lies at the center of everything God is.

That is why Paul can say this love is the greatest…even greater than faith and hope. Love is the thing that God does. God doesn’t believe things or need hope, as important as they are for us. God loves…and there will come a day, you see, when we will see that this love is completely victorious over all, when we reside in nothing but God’s eternal presence. There will be no need for belief in things we can’t see or for hoping in good things that haven’t happened yet because we will finally see them and they will be happening! Love will be all in all, and all will somehow be built up in Christ, and all will somehow, in God’s grace, be brought together. Full-grown in Christ, we will have learned the true value of listening to one another and trying to “lose” to them so much so that we realize there really isn’t an Other. There won’t be “them” and “us,” people with awesome knowledge and people who can’t speak in tongues. There won’t be folks from the hometown and folks from the other side of the tracks…there won’t be anger about widows from distant Zarephath who get the special attention or frustration with Syrian outsiders. There won’t even be a need for our different wonderful gifts anymore, because the kingdom they are to be used for building up will be fully built up. We will know everything about him, just as God has already, all along, known everything about us—and still loved us and claimed us—since the time we were formed in the womb.

Now that’s truly beautiful, my friends, no matter how you put it. That’s truly beautiful. Love never ends…especially when a silly love sermon really needs to.

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] The Message//Remix, NavPress 2003 p 1683ff

The Baptism of Our Lord [Year C] - January 10, 2016 (Luke 3:15-17, 21-23)

 

 

I could be wrong, but I’m almost 100% positive that the people who determine the schedule for the National Football League never consult the church calendar when they set up the playoff schedule. Every year, the Baptism of our Lord falls on Wild Card weekend. It’s a perfect match, if you ask me, because whether you sit in a church sanctuary or whether sit in front of the gridiron, lots of folks are thinking about expectations.

Some of those here today are full of expectations that a season will culminate in a Super Bowl appearance. They can barely contain their excitement or their anxiety. Trust me: I live with one of these people. I lived it last night in my family room, in fact. Every excruciating second. It’s almost like the long regular season behind us doesn’t really matter anymore. All the focus is on the future and, for better or worse, hopes of glory and dreams of honor are pinned on a particular player or coach. People are questioning in their hearts: is destiny calling for Kirk Cousins this year? Are the Packers washed out, or might they be the ones? These Wild Card games, you see, involve borderline candidates, teams who didn’t exactly dominate this season but who now have been given the chance to claim victory. In thirty years, only 6 of them have gone on to win the whole thing, but, oh, the expectations! With liturgical devotion, somewhere around 30 million people will be watching each game this weekend with them in mind.

And so the Baptism of Jesus is an uncanny backdrop for this tension in our popular culture. When Luke tells his version of this important event, he makes sure we know that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are watching with pulsing expectation at another set of wild cards who appear by the River Jordan: John the Baptist and Jesus. They’ve assembled there because John has been preaching and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He’s kind of wild about it, too, calling people out for their sinful behavior and warning them of the wrath to come. He’s a long shot, perhaps, but the people wonder and question in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah. They’ve been waiting for centuries for the right person. The hopes and dreams of all of Israel, the people of God, are searching and waiting to rest on the right person. Is destiny calling him?

"Baptism of Jesus" (Joachim Patinir)

Messiah is a Hebrew word that means “anointed.” The Greek translation of Messiah is a word we use all the time but probably think of it as Jesus’ last name: Christ. Finding the Messiah was a big deal for God’s people because it meant that God’s kingdom was breaking in. It meant that God’s Spirit has selected a specific, special person who would inaugurate God’s reign of justice and peace. After centuries of oppression and dealing with foreign powers, after a long series of corrupt kings and priests, the people of Israel desperately wanted this to happen. They wanted The Anointed to show up. It’s all about those expectations.

John’s answer to those expectations might have been a bit of a let-down, but you can’t blame him for being clear. John is not the Anointed One, but, as he says, that person is coming. That person will be truly great, truly powerful. This Messiah they await will have the task of sifting through everything like a wheat farmer sifts through the harvest on the threshing room floor. He will lead in such a way that all of the chaff in our lives and in our world, the empty husks of meaninglessness, will be done away with. He will lead in a way that purifies people, much in the way that fire and powerful wind do away with things that are weak and impure.

John is pretty clear, though, he is not this leader, and unfortunately for John, Herod the ruler is even clearer. Luke tells us that pretty soon John the Baptist is arrested and locked in prison. Tough spot for any potential Messiah to be. However, apparently in the midst of those people John was preaching to out by the Jordan, the true Messiah had been baptized. Almost like a flashback in a movie, we find out that Jesus had, in fact, been anointed through this powerful experience where the heavens opened up. It’s not even clear from this story whether or not John the Baptist was there when all of this happened.

"Baptism of Jesus" (Rosalind Hore)

What is clear is that God is present. In the form of that dove that descends upon him, and in the sound of a voice from the sky, God’s Spirit and God’s presence make known that the people’s expectations are finally being fulfilled.

Historically-speaking, the baptism of Jesus is when the church year really begins. For centuries, this event kicked off the cycle that helped the church talk about and celebrate Jesus’ life and ministry. Things like Christmas and Advent were added later. The baptism, Jesus’ anointing was the primary focus. It is the first event in Jesus’ life that is attested in some way by all four gospel writers and is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus’ appearance in Judea in those waters of the River Jordan does something, means something, to God’s creation on a level that nothing beforehand had. In Jesus, God has found the leader that will assemble the people of God and purify the hearts of humankind. In Jesus, God has selected God’s very representative on earth. In fact, it is not just any representative, but God’s own Son, one whom God loves and with whom God is pleased. It is God’s way of saying that it is time to really pay attention to what this Jesus is going to do because God himself is present in him, revealing what God is like.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure Jesus always fulfills our expectations in this regard. We often want one thing from Jesus the Messiah and we get another. As a matter of fact, some of John the Baptist’s own expectations seem a little off-base when it comes to Jesus. He talks about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Messiah like it’s a consuming, powerful fire, but when it actually shows up, it’s a gentle dove. And any expectations we might have that God’s selection of Jesus will preserve and safeguard him or raise him up on a mighty pedestal come crashing down once we start to watch how his ministry plays out.

Jesus is claimed in his baptism, but not claimed and then set away like a king in a castle for a life apart from everyone else, protected from the dangers of the world. Jesus is chosen in his baptism, but not chosen for elite political or military service, surrounded by a well-connected entourage. Jesus is selected, but he is selected so that he may serve and suffer, to seek out the lost, and to save. These are typically not the expectations we always come to Anointed, Hoped-for leaders with, which is why the cross is always such a tragic shock.

It turns out John is right-on about one thing. Jesus will purify and cleanse, for sure, but it will do it because he is called “Beloved” and he has a fiery passion to love us all. A Messiah, a Savior, who dies for the very people who turn their back on him is precisely, however, the kind of Messiah we need.

Coptic Orthodox baptism

That we have been so claimed and chosen and loved by God in our baptisms and then given over to follow Jesus into the world is always demonstrated very vividly by this congregation’s longstanding tradition of walking newly baptized children and babies down the aisle after they’ve been anointed with the oil by the altar. At first it struck me that this little stroll was just a fun and practical way to show off a cute baby in a gown, like we’re at a baptismal fashion show and the aisle is a catwalk where we do our little turn. But I’ve come to realize the practice is more profound than that. When that baby is taken from the parents arms and walked down the aisle, we are witnessing and demonstrating what baptism does to all of us.

Our baptism, like Christ’s own, pushes us into the world. It places our lives, which are certainly claimed by grace, into service and mission. Each of us, with the blessing of the Spirit and all its gifts, brought through the waters by a God who has died for us, is sent right out into the expectations of a desperate, anxious world. Of course, we hand the child back to the parents at the end, but always with the hope that they, as primary caregivers to that child, model that this is the life of faith: God says “You are Mine. You will always be mine. But you belong in the world.”

Two weeks ago we baptized a three-year-old, Abbie. As we had discussed beforehand, we decided I would not carry her, but that she would hold me hand and walk side-by-side. When we finished and climbed the stairs to the chancel, we turned around to face the congregation and, of all things, she waved. She waved to the congregation! Speaking of expectations, that was something that caught us all off-guard!

When we leave this place each week, we encounter a world that is longing for the hope we’ve spoken of here. Wouldn’t it be powerful if the church, at the very least, waved back, as if the water were still dripping from our heads, confident that Jesus, the Messiah, the Hoped-for, is walking with us?

Come to think of it, don’t you show us, Epiphany, how to keep on walking? Haven’t you shown me, Epiphany, the church named for making Christ known, how you gather and feast here, grow here, babble in the pews here? Don’t you model so well—lost and found, desperate wild cards that you are—how to keep on walking right out there, held tightly the arms of the one who loves you?

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.                                 

The Second Sunday of Christmas - January 3, 2016 (Jeremiah 31:7-14 and John 1:10-18)

 

Covering some ground.

I suspect that for a lot us, that sums up how many of us feel, one way or the other, about a change in the calendar. Some of look back on 2015 and think: I covered some ground that year. Others may look into the future, into the new year that is already upon us and we’ve resolved to cover some ground. There’s something very satisfying about covering ground, going the distance, “bringing things home.”

Jewish captives returning from exile

God who likes to cover some ground. That’s one of the things we learn over and over about God through God’s history with the people of ancient Israel. God likes to cover ground, go the distance. The prophet Jeremiah, who is normally a doom and gloom kind of guy, explains this in one of his prophecies to God’s people. He says that their time exile would eventually end, that the great distance they feel from God would one day be over. God would accomplish this by helping them cover some ground…and I mean literal ground. After years of being dispersed on account of their faithlessness to what felt like the far reaches of creation God was going to bring them back to the place they belonged. This was the hope of a shattered and scattered Israel: that no matter where they had been flung to by the invading armies, no matter how distant God had let them get through their punishment of exile, God would, in fact, remember who and whose they were and gather them back together.

And so the word goes out, as Jeremiah says, from coast to coast. It covers ground! The word is declared in distant islands, to the edges of the known world. From the farthest parts of the earth God would gather them, and not just the young and healthy, either. The most vulnerable among them—the lame and the blind, the pregnant and those even in labor—would all make this journey, walking together. And upon their return there would be great rejoicing. The young women will dance and the old men and young will throw huge parties. The land will be like a watered garden.  Grain, oil and wine everywhere. The future was going to be great. It would be a time of grace upon grace…all because God likes to cover some ground.

This also is the God we come to see in Jesus, the Word made flesh, as John’s gospel calls him. God wants his word to go to the distant islands and coastlands, except this time it will not just be announced there and declared there to bring people back to God. This time the Word itself will go there. This time the Word will become human and, out of God’s great love for us, cover some serious ground. That is the miracle of what people of Christian faith call the incarnation, a heavy-duty theological word that intimidates us, really just means to be embodied in the flesh. It is God is going to be covering some ground for us, but not really in terms of geography, traipsing off to the lands of the north and the distant islands in order to perform a rescue. It means God is going to travel the length of the human experience, as broken and lost as it can get.

This is a fundamental understanding of Christian faith: that the very essence of God, the very substance of whatever God is, chooses to descend into our midst and live as one of us. And that one person, Jesus of Nazareth, will come to God’s own people and, in a sense, bring them back to where they belong. Those who receive him by faith he will give the power to become children of God.

And this is how this incarnate Word will cover ground: He will go from appearing at his birth, which other gospel writers will tell us about, and living among God’s people, showing his glory through some pretty terrific signs. He will call some followers to assist in this ministry of rescue, of bringing the word to the people. Eventually, however, he will travel the same route that all human flesh must travel: the path to death. However, in his case it will be a death of great humility, one where he goes as far away from God’s presence as one might imagine: hung on a cross as a common criminal. This is what the real “distant islands” and the farthest reaches of humankind looks like: the darkness of sin and death, the despair of hopelessness and abandonment. Just as ancient Israel was redeemed and brought home, so to will this Word made flesh redeem the children of the earth by suffering and dying and then, miraculously, rising again.

One of the things that the incarnation of God’s Word in Jesus teaches us is that no distance is greater than the length it takes to humble oneself to learn what another is experiencing. There are fewer paths in life for us longer than the path it takes to empty ourselves, like the Word did, and somehow take on the experience of another, to learn what another’s life might be like, to meet them where they are, to understand them as another human for whom Jesus has covered this ground. In an opinion piece that ran in the New York Times on Christmas Day, Peter Wehner wrote that “The incarnation…reveals that the divine principle governing the universe is a radical commitment to the dignity and worth of every person, since we are created in the divine image.” Wehner goes on to quote a secular humanist (someone who isn’t even a person of faith) who credits Christianity with introducing the notion for the first time in history that “humanity was fundamentally identical.”

When people who follow Christ cover ground in Jesus’ name, it does not matter how far we travel geographically to spread his word. Sometimes the greatest ground we must cover is sharing the experience of the person who is sitting right next to us, the family living down the street from us, the neighbor we are at odds with, the friend who is going through a rough time. And it can be difficult and involve suffering on our part. We end up having to empty ourselves, or lower ourselves, like Jesus did, in order to make that connection. Covering that ground—choosing to meet us in our experience—is how God interacts with the world. It should be the way those who have become children of God choose to interact with the world.

One of the most vivid lessons I received on this was on a Foursquare court. It was with the Epiphany Youth group three summers ago when we travelled to the farthest reaches of Appalachia, to one of the little towns that are still struggling with the aftermath of a played-out coal industry. One of our group’s tasks was to work with the youth in the town of Logan through a summer enrichment program. Without going into detail, we could say these kids were growing up in very, very different circumstances than our youth. Those differences made forming meaningful relationships very challenging.

Thankfully, there was a Foursquare court in the middle of the camp area and whenever there was some down time action drifted pretty quickly to some games of Foursquare. One of the local kids would pick up a ball and start playing. Now, anyone can play Foursquare. It draws people together. It’s played in P.E. classes across the country and its rules are pretty much the same everywhere. The Epiphany kids would line up and join in to play too, except they never got to win. No matter what, the local kids, whose court we were on, would find a way to get the Epiphany kids out every time. We were pretty sure they were just making up rules as they went in order to ensure that our youth would never advance in the game. And our youth took a beating. It was demoralizing and frustrating for them. It felt like the Logan youth were just taunting us. I couldn’t believe our youth wanted to keep playing, but the Epiphany youth realized that’s how they were going to get to know these local kids. They were going to have to stick with it. Our kids were playing on their court and they realized the point wasn’t winning the game, but winning those friendships. They had to cover some ground that week, humble themselves, and they succeeded.

Learning to play our crazed game…covering some ground…humbling himself from manger to cross…from life to death and back again. In each and every year. It was what God is all about, God’s very essence. It is the nonstop motion of the Word made flesh. When God’s people, those who have received him and been made children of the Father, learn to cover ground like this, there will be no stopping the gospel. When those who have been gathered by a gracious God become people of the incarnation, fed at the table and washed in the Word, travelling the great distance between another person’s story and their own, still more will be gathered from all kinds of distant coastlines.

Declaring the Word.  Indeed, living the Word…the Word made flesh that has lived among us. We will see God’s glory. From this fullness—this great distance— we will all receive grace upon grace. No matter what ground you've resolved to cover for the new year that is already upon us, may it be grounded in the promise that God, in the Word made flesh, has already brought you home.

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.