The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B - May 10, 2009 (John 15:1-8)

By the window in our kitchen in Pittsburgh grew an ivy plant in a hanging basket. I had bought the ivy plant a few years earlier just before my wedding when it was a few small branches. It had been part of a concerted effort to bring beauty, to bring life to my dull bachelor apartment since Melinda would soon be moving in once we got married. The ivy had struggled for a few years, never seeming to have the right light—first in a spot on top of the bookcase and then on the back of the toilet—but when we moved to our house we hung it by an east-facing window and it started to thrive. By the time we moved to Richmond, it was a large, sprawling mess of leaves and branches, too large, in fact, for the mantle in our new living room. So on the weekend we were moving in, one of my family members lopped off several of the longer branches and stuck them in a vase of water. Within a few weeks, they had sprouted roots.

When I went to transplant the clippings into a pot of soil a few weeks ago, I discovered that some of the branches had actually been placed upside down into the vase, the clipped part sticking up in the air and the new growth submerged beneath the surface of the water. Roots had sprouted there instead of leaves, nonetheless, or instead of killing the branch altogether, and when I stuck those new roots into the soil, the plant grew just fine! Much to my fair bride’s delight, we now have two ivies, both of them with branches and leaves sticking out randomly in all directions, shoots of new and old growth intertwined together.

Branches, it turns out, naturally seek nourishment and life. It is what they do…English ivy, grapevines, Virginia Creeper, kudzu…take your pick of vine. Though they appear to have life unto themselves—extending outward, sprawling all over the place, shooting upwards, downwards, sideways sometimes deceiving us with their interconnectedness—somewhere, somehow they connect to a source of life. Somewhere each branch is joined to the main vine, and from there the nourishment comes.

In John’s gospel, Jesus explains that’s how it will be with his community of disciples. Reaching for yet another image from Mediterranean agriculture, Jesus describes how organic and yet how interconnected their growth together will be. The various branches of his communion may twist and sprawl all over the place, sometimes deceiving us with their meandering nature, but the source of their life will be none other than the main vine, Jesus. Clip them off, and they won’t be able to make it on their own. As it turns out, these branches wither when they are disconnected from the source.

It is a key point for Jesus to make on this evening before his crucifixion, for Jesus will not always be with them in the way he is now. The community that follows him won’t always be able to travel along with him from village to village, to reach out and tug on his tunic when they need to clarify a point or ask a question. Up until this point and for a little while longer, he has stood and worked and prayed among them in human form, a distinct man who bears a special relationship with God the Father. Both he and the gathering of people who have assembled around him have been easy to pin down and locate among the hills and towns of Judea and Galilee: it walks with him, eats with him, consults him in time of crisis and trouble: “Jesus,” a grieving Martha had once said to him, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Yes, Jesus had been there, in an undeniable sense, and even when his words were difficult to swallow, his words still came from a mouth that could be unmistakably seen and heard. Now, he was speaking of leaving, of going away, and was impressing upon the disciples the necessity to stay yet with him somehow—to remain in him—and not go out on their own, like dozens of individual seeds sprouting up all over the place. They would be a vine; that is, a single plant, and God their vinegrower, and God would tend the vine to make sure it was continuing to produce the fruits of Jesus, those unforgettable acts of sacrifice and love for which he was known. Here and there it would involve and cutting off and removing parts of ministry and growth that were no longer serving producing fruit. And, here and there, even the parts that were fruitful with works of love could expect to be cut back from time to time so that they could be made stronger. But whatever kind of clipping and cleansing the vine underwent, its fruitfulness could come naturally as long as they stayed connected to what Jesus was, as long as they maintained that association with the love Jesus made known on the cross.

The word Jesus chooses to describe this being connected was “abiding,” a funny word that we don’t use very much anymore. To abide, especially its connotation in the Greek here, conveys a sense of remaining with someone, of sticking by them over the long haul, of having patience that growth will come with time. As such, abiding is a bit of a paradox. Although it involves remaining, knowing growth may not happen overnight, it also entails hard work. It takes energy and effort to stay put and abide, to express loyalty and deep attachment. I think of Jesus, hanging rather stationery on the cross, hanging with us in our stubborn, self-imposed isolation from God, hanging with us in our slow-moving moments of sorrow and grief, and yet I also think of the effort and patience he puts forward to abide in those places.

Perhaps one of the most enduring images I have of this abiding, the importance of this deep and yet conscious connectedness to Jesus, the source of life, is not my English Ivy, but a woman by the name of Leslie Yarger, one of the older members of my former congregation. Leslie was approaching 90 when I became her pastor, but she was—and is—anything but homebound. Still blessed with good health and good eyesight and quite the adventurous spirit, Leslie would drive every day to the nursing home to spend time with her daughter and her aged sister. Her sister, Mazie, was past 100 and bedridden, and her daughter, Leslie Ann, was confined to a hospital bed and a feeding tube, rendered immobile by the advanced stages of a debilitating disease.

When I’d walk in for a visit, there would be Leslie, sitting between their beds on a folding chair she had set up, holding Leslie Ann’s hand with her right hand and Mazie’s with her left, content smiles of life across their faces. All day long. She’d, of course, get up once or twice to reposition a pillow or change the television channel, but then Leslie would return to the chair and grab their handsand once again, make that living connection.

Leslie was healthy and active. She could have gone anywhere, but there she abided. There she remained, ‘tween daughter and sister like some sort of mini-vine, as if it were the most natural place in the world for her to be, showing them—showing me, showing us—what hard work it is to abide, what it’s like to be pruned into self-giving faithfulness.

When we get right down to it, it won’t completely matter whether Jesus’ community of disciples is planted on top of the bookcase or on the back of the toilet, whether we’re doing ministry in an affluent suburban neighborhood or in a re-gentrifying inner city, in an old stone gothic cathedral or an abandoned storefront. When we get right down to it, it won’t matter all that much whether we’ve got a 5-year plan or a 5-day plan, because when we get right down to it, because our life is not going to come from where our branches are pointing, but from where they’re rooted.

We do not find our source of life, for example, in some principled claim to make a difference in the world, or the merit of some social or political agenda, jazzy youth and children’s programs, or even the style of worship we prefer. Our life comes from him, and there is no other reason for our meeting and doing ministry together than to feed off him.

On the other hand, it will matter quite a bit to our growth if we, like Mazie and daughter Leslie Ann, are holding the hand of the one who abides with us. It will matter when we are grafting our new and old branches into the word and sacraments of the one vine who opens up his veins week after week, prayer after prayer, to sustain us. It will provide growth when we continually find ourselves held to this love that abides, our clippings shoved into the water—the baptismal water—of that vine. It will provide growth when we measure our ministry alongside the self-sacrificial example Jesus gives.

So that when people see our tangling, sprawling interconnectedness—(Mazie-Leslie-Leslie Ann-Phillip-Jesus)—fruits of love and mercy flowing from our own branches, they will know that Jesus is nevertheless with us, that somewhere, at the center, the vine is there. He is the only vine who keeps living, you see, the only vine who abides and keeps living, even after he himself has been whacked away by our sin and thrown into the grave.

Now, aren’t we a right pretty plant, bought to bring life and beauty to these dull surroundings? He, the vine. We, the branches.

Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday of Easter, Year B - April 19, 2009 (John 20:18-31)

On the cover of the edition of Newsweek magazine that came out last week—the week of Easter—was a large cross made up of the words that said “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” It’s no coincidence that most major newsmagazines choose the week of Easter or the week of Christmas to grab us with a religious-themed article. This one in particular seemed dramatically titled and designed to get our dander up in such a way that we’ll read what the article has to say:“The End of Christian America.”

In the article, the writer, Jon Meacham, prattles on for four or five pages, giving his assessment of the recent political elections and the results of several recent polls on religious tendencies that have indicated that the number of professing, church-going Christians is down. Most interestingly (for Meacham, at least), the percentage of those who claim to have no religious affiliation at all is up: from 5 percent of the population in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008. In addition, one survey he discusses pointed to a four-fold increase in those claiming to be agnostic or atheist from 1990 to 2009.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the article was the photography. In amongst the text were various staged photos meant to highlight our supposed flight from religion: one was a photo of a pulpit microphone stand…but both the microphone and a preacher were conspicuously absent. Another shot was of a Bible lying open on an empty pew in a deserted church, as if there were no one there to read it anymore.

Whether or not America was founded as a Christian nation and purports to be one now is not the main theme of the article. Rather, the focus is on the prevailing sense of doubt that, at least numerically-speaking, seems to be growing in our culture and how the Church might deal with it. Fewer people seem to be believing our story, the one we claim to be The Story—the story that frees us and makes us people of God. And therefore Meachum points to a sense of hand-wringing, despair, fear, a feeling that (gasp) we’ve never been here before.

Or have we? From the looks of John’s gospel, it certainly seems that we have. In the episode we’ve read this morning, which always forms the gospel reading the first week after Easter Sunday, we encounter the disciples first on the evening of Jesus’ resurrection and then again the week after. The news is fresh. Jesus is alive and well, no longer in the grave, and yet doubt has already set in. Thomas goes down into history unfairly as the one who doubts, when a closer read of our text reveals that Jesus must show his wounds to all of the disciples before they recognize and believe in him. Yes, doubt has prevailed since the first evening after Jesus was raised, even among those who first heard that incredible story and sought to spread it. In fact, the disciples’ sense of hand-wringing and despair and fear is so great that they’ve locked themselves away. Not only are they bearing some skepticism as to what they’ve heard, but they know there are plenty of people in society who won’t believe their story.

This is crazy! On the very night after death has been conquered, on the very day the grave has been opened, on the very evening God has totally upended the powers of darkness once and for all, the disciples find themselves practically conquered by doubt, shut in a room, and cowering in the darkness of fear.

I always think of the second Sunday of Easter—that is, the first gathering of the Easter people after the news of Easter as somewhat of reality-check Sunday. It is one week after we’ve celebrated the resurrection of Jesus and we are forced to reflect: is anything different? Once our ears have stopped ringing from the trumpet fanfare, the amplified alleluias, once we rub our eyes from the dazzling white and settle down a bit, has the news of the resurrection done anything to us? Are we believing and living according to its promise? Or have we oh-so-easily slipped back into doubt, a lack of trust that God has indeed wrought something new for us with the raising of his Son?

The early Church grappled with this, question, too. For centuries the practice was that those who had been baptized on Easter wore their baptismal robes all week long and showed up to church on this Sunday still wearing them! This was part of a faith-inducing effort to underscore for the newly-baptized—and all those who came into contact with them—that they were now different. They were cleansed, forgiven and free, living the new life in the hope of the resurrection.

Lyndsay and Kyle, how would you like that? Imagine dressing Parker in nothing but that baptismal gown all week. No cute Baby Gap clothes or those onesies with clever little sayings on them like, “Party at my crib: 2am. Bring your own bottle.” Only her baptismal gown, every day. And she can remove it when she comes back to church next week.

That was the church’s practice, for a long time. Just as an article’s photograph of an open Bible on an empty pew in a deserted church could suggest that no one is listening to the story of Jesus anymore, a host of Christians wearing their new baptismal identity in an unmistakable fashion on the outside could proclaim that the life of faith is alive. It is real. The resurrection has, indeed, made a difference in the world’s destiny, and we are called to testify to that difference. Pretty clever practice, if you ask me, and yet, I’m sure doubt still crept in. As Bono (lead singer of the rock band U2) says in the New York Times this morning,

“of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith—the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end” (New York Times, April 19, 2009, "It is 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?).

The main issue with Thomas and the other disciples as they deal with this "far-reaching idea" is that Jesus does not abandon them in their doubt. He mysteriously makes his way through the locked doors—twice—and invites them to look at his wounds, even to touch them if they need to. Unlike some leaders which equate doubting with treason, the Risen Jesus lovingly confronts their doubts and fears and seeks to address them.

More significantly, he breathes new life into them. That is, before their doubt can erode all the exciting elements of this new story, before their community becomes one primarily of hand-wringing and fear, before they begin to believe that nothing really is different, Jesus himself enters their presence and bestows upon them his Spirit, giving the story they’ve heard shape and form.

Shape and form like this: “The Lord’s peace be among you.” “Just as my life was one of mission, so will yours be one of mission.” “Receive the very Spirit of God and live by it.” “Forgive others, and do be careful with the sins you retain.” …“And many other signs which are not written in this book,” John adds.

Oh, they might not be written down, but we know them. Their shape and form are familiar to us. We know these signs when we hear of them, and they combat our fears and they break us out of locked doors and they strengthen our faith in a world that is always drifting, always, to some degree, doubting.

It sounds like a people who embrace a life of forgiveness, over and against the world’s wisdom of holding grudges. It sounds like a community that understands the necessity of loving people rather than simply tolerating them. It sounds like a group of people who live as though they are free from sin, who freely give of their own resources to care for those in need. It sounds like a gathering that has the courage to reach its own hands into the wounds of the world over and over again with the hope of healing, whether it is giving up a beautiful Saturday to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, or finding ways to send underprivileged children to summer camp, or going out of their way to comfort those who have lost loved ones.

Through all these ways and more, we know it will be him—the risen Jesus—active by the Spirit in the life of his community empowering his people to be clad in the joy of new life, assembling them once again and lovingly and patiently addressing their doubt. It will be him—the risen Jesus—bidding them to unlock the doors and live this new story. And when it comes right down to it, it will be the life of this community, with its unmistakable shape and form, through which others will understand and come to believe the news of the resurrection. And it won’t matter if the headlines say we’re declining or falling, or that the Bible is open, but people just aren’t listening anymore, or that we should be wringing our hands and writing our epitaph, because the risen Jesus will be there, offering his wounded body and poured out blood once again. And we will be strengthened to carry on.

Therefore, my sisters and brothers, deck yourselves out in your baptismal best. We have a story to tell. We have a risen life to live. For you may not have realized it before, but you—you and me together—we may be the only empty tomb some people ever see.

Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

April 5, 2009 - Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion

Palm Sunday several years ago found me waking up at 4:30 in the morning to wait outside the mud walls of a small village in the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt for the bishop to appear. He would symbolize Jesus, and his arrival in the village would commence the yearly procession of the palms. I was on internship that year, and my supervisor had led a group from our congregation in Cairo on a pilgrimage-like tour to several ancient Coptic Christian sites during orthodox Holy Week.

On that particular Palm Sunday morning, we had arrived in this small Christian hamlet not simply to observe but to participate in this ritual they had performed on Palm Sunday literally for centuries. It was to be, I reckon, the most nearly realistic of all my previous Palm Sundays. We waited outside, waving real palm branches that had been torn down the night before from the date palms along the Nile banks. Some had woven their palm fronds into elaborate mats. Our village hosts were native middle-eastern farms-people, people who worked the fields for their livelihood, and whose drab cotton tunics were not costumes but their actual daily clothes.

We had only been given a two-hour window for his possible arrival, and so everyone had all arrived early so as not to miss it. The procession of the palms would wind its way through the narrow city streets, and end in the village church. Once inside, the Palm Sunday parade would flow seamlessly into the beginning of their first Holy Week liturgy. The bishop eventually showed up, although not on a donkey. He was in a mid-90’s-era red Fiat sedan, already fully robed and ready, but as soon as he jumped out of the car, the whole town erupted in shouts of “Hosanna” and we waved our palm branches as he led us through the mud streets of the town, into the courtyard, where children shouted from rooftops. Holy Week had now begun in that village, the way it had for roughly sixteen or seventeen centuries straight with a level of realism that cannot be duplicated by many places.

We like do this with Holy Week. It arrives each and every year with the Christian faithful assembling in churches, public places, on cathedral steps to re-create to some degree the events of Jesus’ own last week before his death. We strive for some level of drama or realism, for we know that these events make some sort of difference to us. You and I may not actually be from the Middle East, and we probably don’t have palm trees in our yards, yet we each clutch in our own hands today a palm for waving, a token of realism to connect us to things that happened on a week centuries ago. Jesus goes to Jerusalem at the time of Passover and is hailed as King of the Jews on the streets of the city. Yet basically by the time the week is over he has eaten his last supper in the Upper Room, been betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, crucified on Golgotha, and left dead in an empty tomb.

They are a shocking and stirring string of events, and each year, whether in isolated villages in the Middle East with processions and palms or in suburban Protestant churches in America with their dramatic readings and mournful hymns, we gather to remember them and travel the path of Jesus. We come to Holy Week, palms in hand, bread and cup in hand, to walk lock-step with our Lord.

Yet I wonder if Holy Week is not better thought of as the time our Lord walks lock-step with us—not that we’re the center of the universe, and that God is trying to catch up with our pace, but that in these events we see the desire of a God so driven to love and save that he will not withhold his Son from living the human condition, every step of the way. Jesus, God’s Son, walks lock-step with humankind, and suffers everything that goes along with that, which means God ends up knowing betrayal, the fickleness of fame, the desertion and denial of friends, the violence of hatred, the bitter coldness of the grave. Jesus, the much-anticipated Messiah, does not cling to his royal, divine status and choose a way of life and death that befits a God, but empties himself, as Paul recites in Philippians, “taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness and being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

When we enter into the events of Holy Week, we are not simply trying to re-create the somber and, at long last, uplifting events of that whirlwind last week. We are claiming something dramatic, something incredibly profound about the God we worship. French Dominican theologian Jean Lacordaire once exclaimed in a sermon, “God on a cross! That is all my theology!” That is, of all that we might say about God and what God is like, that he empties himself to walk this way of sorrow and be handed over to his death somehow captures all that we would need to say.

The events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week show us that God is inextricably bound to his creation and the sore length of its experience, and he is bound to it with love. God will not back out of or back down from this love. God will not find another route into the city, or weasel his way out of its nastier parts. God will not receive our fair-weather shouts of “Hosanna!” without also bearing the angry demand to “Crucify!” Jesus, once and forever in the form of God, once and forever free from sin, will thoroughly show his solidarity with his creation by succumbing to the worst that sin has to offer.

Jesus, once and forever in the form of God, once and forever triumphant over sin, will thoroughly grant salvation to his creation by rising from the tomb.
And so, when we grip our palms today, when we find ourselves moved by the readers’ rendition of Jesus’ last week, when villagers half a world away await once more for their robed bishop to leap out of a small car and start the somber procession let us remember that all these things chiefly proclaim God’s love for us, not our love for God. We don’t just give thanks for the opportunity to reflect with Jesus in his final moments but we praise a God who dies to be with us in all our moments, a God who knows the sting of a friend’s betrayal, and we could add…the depth of a widow’s loneliness, the fear of a refugee’s lifestyle, the despair of a cancer patient’s days, and the loss of a parent’s only child. In each and every situation where it seems we walk painfully alone, God is, in fact, there. Nothing is off-limits for this God, and the farther we stray, the more earnestly seek the ways of death, the more determined he is to walk right there with us.

And, as we learn this week, he walks much farther still…on the cross, going the length of where our sin would eventually take us.

So, here’s to a dose of reality, here’s to music and drumbeats and palms to give the drama a little more impact. And here’s to a God who decides to be real with us, taking the form of a slave.

Here he comes! Get those palms ready! Shout “Hosanna! God save us!” Watch his steps. Here he comes. To walk with you. To walk for you. To walk…with love.


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

"A Land of Holy Questions" - at Gethsemane: "Are You Asleep? Could You not Watch One Hour?" Mark 14:32-42

And there they sleep. Can we blame them? At some point the human body has to give in. It has already been an intense week for them, as Passover usually tended to be, anyway, with all of its running here and there making preparations, visiting relations. But this particular Passover had taken it up a notch or two. They had followed Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, finding the donkey for his strange parade. They had stood by at the temple as the conflict surrounding him grew. They had no doubt dealt with the rumors that must have been circulating about the anger Jesus was stirring up among the religious leaders. The conversation in the Upper Room the night before had been particularly heavy, requiring constant thought and attention, and there was the constant worry that someone in their intimate circle would break ranks and deny him or, worse, turn him in. All in all, there was probably not much sleep to be had that week. Lots to be considered, contemplated, but eventually the body and the mind give in.

I know that my body eventually gives in. I tell people that with a house containing an infant and a two-year-old, I have a completely different relationship with sleep than I did just a few years ago. I can get up and respond to a whimper or a cry, mix a bottle with one eye still shut, but eventually some voice inside me says, “Put your pillow over your head and drown it out.” And I’m strangely proud to say that I’ve learned to sleep with one pillow under my head and one pillow over it. It sounds unfair, but I guess I’m just resigned sometimes to letting Melinda can deal with the middle-of-the-night issue alone.

I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t really point a finger at the disciples. The going has gotten tough, but the disciples just aren’t going. Even Jesus’ closest three, Peter, James and John—the same three he had chosen to climb the mountain for the Transfiguration, the three who had been there when he had raised Jairus’ daughter, the three who had been given the special briefing about his upcoming suffering—even they have either had enough or do not realize just how serious things are and have chosen to pull the pillow over their heads. Furthermore, Mark tells us they press the snooze button not once, but three times, as if to underline their utter inability to stay awake. “Are you asleep?!” Jesus asks, in frantic disbelief, “Could you not stay awake—could you not watch—one hour?”

And for what are they watching? In the parable Jesus had told the day before about the necessity for watchfulness, the doorkeeper had been told to watch vigilantly, for he would never know when the master would return. It was a reminder that the end of things was to come soon and that falling asleep, letting the mind drift to other subjects and the hands to idleness was not a wise use of time. The Lord could arrive at any minute and usher his kingdom in fully. Had they so soon forgotten that lesson? Had the whirlwind events from the week been so bewildering that it was still better just to pull the pillow back over the head?

Or might Jesus have told them to watch for the betrayer, who would certainly be followed by the guards come to arrest him? The words of Jesus’ anguished prayer, echoing the psalms of question and lament, certainly seem to suggest that Judas’ deed was on his mind. Maybe Peter and James and John had been brought like a lookout for danger, highlighting how this is a conflict of wills within Jesus’ own soul: might Jesus, at the last minute, be tipped off to Judas’ approach by watchful disciples so that he may flee?

Perhaps he just needed their ministry of presence. So deeply agitated and worried about what was to come, he needed them as friends, as people who could help him bear his torment a little easier just by being there? Disappointed, let down, he asks, “Are you asleep? as if to say, “How could you do this? Was staying awake too difficult a task?

Although I’d always envisioned this dialogue taking place in a serene garden, a place designed for quiet contemplation, in reality we learn it is a place of work, monotonous toiling and turning. Yet, to a large degree, the proximity of a large oil press seems actually to make sense, helps paint and even better picture: the heavy weight of God’s will imposed upon him, the grinding of this cold, hard reality squeezing in on him. One nineteenth-century theologian actually compared the kingdom of God to a giant wheel that Jesus set in rolling motion by his preaching and healing, but that eventually got out of control and crushed Jesus, unable to get out of its way fast enough.

Jesus prays at an oil press for the stone to stop turning, for the cup to pass, for the kingdom to continue rolling without any suffering—and asks you and I to have the common decency to stay awake with him. Jesus requests that we keep him company, that we keep each other company, that we keep the community of the baptized as our primary company.

He bids us to be on the lookout for temptation, to keep our eyes peeled for those things that do harm to God’s people, to be vigilant but vulnerable in the midst of turmoil.

He asks us stay alert for the ways God is calling us to serve, to keep the team or committee meeting on task, to respond to his call at a moment’s notice.

And yet there we sleep. In prayer, our minds drift so easily into daydreaming—at least mine does. In the grind of ministry, we let the pointless details derail and destroy us. We get burned out, stressed out, we tune ourselves out, tired and frustrated to the tasks of faith at hand. We prize the feeling of community, but we stop attending worship, we stop serving. We want our relationships to be whole and sound, but devote little energy at real acts of forgiveness and reconciliation. And the church, as a whole, sleeps through its share of opportunities of being Christ’s willing disciples in mission and outreach. In ways large and small, when it comes to being Christ’s willing disciples in each and every tough situation we look for the opportunity to pull that pillow over our heads time and time again. But can we blame ourselves? Absolutely.

At the oil press we have named Gethsemane, we see the essential tension that embattles the life of every believer: that conflict between the spirit and the flesh, the will that is in bondage to sin and the desire to be better. And, at the oil press we have named Gethsemane, we also see the grace from an incredibly patient God claim once again even our sleepy heads for his kingdom. Even after three instances of falling asleep on the watch, after three times wondering, “Are you asleep?” Jesus still asks us to accompany him. “Get up,” he says, “let us be going.” Once more being beckoned—being called from our slumber, our slackness, our sin we are invited to continue with him—invited to be with the man who has striven hard in the night with his Father, and now takes up the cup of suffering to be crushed hard for us against the cross and usher the kingdom in fully.

“Get up,” he says, “And let us be going.”


Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Third Sunday in Lent, Year B - March 15, 2009 (1 Corinthians 1:18-24)

The hymn we just sang as the hymn of the day, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory,” was written by a young Englishman by the name of John Bowring who eventually, toward the end of his life, became Governor of Hong Kong. As the story goes, Bowring was moved to write the words to the hymn upon seeing the bronze cross that sits atop the ruins of the Cathedral of St. Paul in Macau, China, when he was just 33. The Cathedral of St. Paul in the Portuguese territory of Macau, once the largest church in all of Asia, was damaged by a typhoon in 1835 and all but the façade and its large bronze cross burned to the ground. The intricate carvings on the stone façade were fashioned by Japanese Christians in exile in Macau, and bones of other Japanese martyrs have been discovered in the crypt. One of the remaining uppermost carvings depicts Christ’s conquest of death. Never to be reconstructed, thanks to a decline in the Christian population due to the demise of colonialism, this façade now looms over the town of Macau, a mere shell of the glory and grandeur it once possessed. With that back story in mind, one can perhaps better appreciate Bowring’s opening lines:

“In the cross of Christ I glory, tow’ring o’er the wrecks of time.
All the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.”

But, before we get too carried away, we must remember that people have not always gloried in the cross of Christ, nor have folks recognized that all sacred story gathers round its head, sublime, or otherwise. In fact, Paul tells his congregation in Corinth that the message of the cross is foolishness for those who don’t believe or understand it, like local pagan Gentiles and Jews. The Greek word for “foolishness” is where we get the word “moron.” In the eyes of non-believers, Paul says, only a moron would allow himself to be identified with Jesus’ crucifixion, and who would want to be associated with a moron God? For a world that has learned almost from its birth to measure strength in terms of the ability to inflict violence and injury, to assess intelligence in terms of the ability to outsmart the opponent, to award success to the brilliant and the beautiful, Jesus’ death on the cross makes absolutely no sense at all. And if God’s ways have their culmination around this event, much like a bronze cross adorns the pinnacle of a grand cathedral, then God himself runs the risk of making no sense at all. “Will the wise debater please stand up and take the mike?” Paul jokingly picks a fight. How about the one with all the fancy credentials behind your name…B.A. B.S., M.Div., why don’t you give this a whirl? Can any of you smartypants make heads or tails of this?” “I don’t think so,” Paul answers his own rhetorical question, because using human wisdom as the standard, God’s going to just look moronic.

Yet, even in that, God is wiser. And God, even at his weakest, at God’s sorriest, at the point of God’s most stinging defeat is still somehow capable of victory.

Paul is very direct with his style and language here, right off the bat, because, surprisingly, the Corinthians had begun to forget this plain fact. They shouldn’t have, given that, as Paul points out, none of them had gotten into the family of God with their smarts or their looks or their powerful connections. Yet they were apparently beginning to be enamored with things other than the gospel—things like social status and economic privilege and intellectual pedigree—and it was even creeping into the way they related to each other. Paul points out that if they weren’t careful, the Corinthians would run the risk of contradicting their own message of the cross. That is, allowing these external measurements of wisdom and wealth and status to creep in and infect their community and how they related to one another would necessarily infect their message, their proclamation about the Jesus. It’s not just that division and conflict would set in, but that they would begin to proclaim human wisdom and human power as the gospel, and that would be far inferior to God’s wisdom and power made known in the cross. What made that wisdom and power so life-saving, so world transforming was that it was built on weakness.

I always hesitate to make a reference to a movie for a sermon illustration because these days there are fewer and fewer movies that everyone has seen, but there is a clip from the 2006 film “We Are Marshall” which has stuck so clearly in my head that I can’t help but share it. The movie “We Are Marshall” tells the true story of the athletic department of and the community around Marshall University following the horrific plane crash in November of 1970 that all but wiped out the football team, the coaching staff and key alumni.

The plot centers on the university’s reluctant decision to rebuild the team from nothing and the obstacles they face in a struggling town whose main pride is linked to the fortunes of the football team. When they win, times are great. When they lose, people grow restless and depressed. From the start, the new coach brought in for the task, Jack Lengyel, played in the movie by Matthew McConaughey, faces an uphill climb in his attempt to form a team with no scholarship players. His most formidable criticism, however, comes from his own assistant coach, Red Dawson, played by Matthew Fox, who is embarrassed and mortified at the weekly trouncings the new Marshall team is taking. Red, who was not on the plane that went down, is convinced that continuing to play, even though they are by far the weakest team in the conference and therefore completely unable to win—much less score on a regular basis—is a desecration of the dead players’ memories and of the former head coach’s philosophy, which was “winning is everything.”

At the turning point in the movie, Coach Red has abandoned the team, humiliated by the team’s loss and convinced that Coach Lengyel is doing the wrong thing by continuing to field the team. One night, Coach Lengyel tracks down Red on campus to talk him back into returning. In a moving scene, Coach Lengyel concurs that for sports teams, winning is important, if not primary. But in the circumstances of Marshall’s situation, he explains, he has realized that winning looks altogether different. Rather than defining winning by the tally on the scoreboard at the end of the game, Coach Lengyel suggests that their team wins just by stepping onto the field, in a way, by acknowledging their weakness. For their situation, embracing the team’s obvious weakness will be victory, in and of itself.

The setting for this conversation between the coaches is what makes the scene totally effective: they are sitting together in what appears to be the university chapel. And, as their talk draws to a close and Coach Lengyel has said all he can about redefining the concept of winning and he gets up to leave Coach Red in prayer, the camera pans out over their shoulder to focus on the wall behind the altar where there hangs, plain as can be, a cross.

I’ve been meaning to look up to see if that cinematographer was Lutheran, because the message of grace is so blatantly clear. Winning does look different now. Not necessarily in football…but in a life lived by the message of the cross. When we take to heart the message that victory is won when Jesus fully embraces his weakness—our human weakness—and dies on the cross, then all our attempts to appear powerful or clever or connected really fall flat. “Where is the debater of this age? Where is the one who is wise? Could someone take the microphone and give it a go?” Paul’s old questions ring out, but we know the answer.

My sense is that the world still hasn’t quite made sense of the cross, present preacher included. It’s not like two thousand years later we’ve suddenly realized what the Corinthians hadn’t. We try to talk down the importance of the message of the cross, thinking there surely might be other reasons we should hang out together: it’s a great place to network, it’s a social club; it’s entertainment. We clutter the route behind Jesus’ footsteps with all kinds of gimmicks and programs that we think will help the community of Jesus win in the surrounding culture but in the end which do little but hide the fact that we all stand in need of this grace. We set up all kinds of ways to impress each other, and, we hope, in the process, God. We forget that because God won victory in handing over his Son to weakness and brokenness, the way of that victory involves simply stepping on the field of life, in all our human weakness, and letting the power of the resurrection have its way there, too. Most of all, we neglect to consider our own calls, that no matter who we think we are, we all started—perhaps even kicking and screaming like I’ve heard I did—in the same wet marble basin, with the same words, “you’ve been marked with this cross of Christ…forever.”

In the end, that will be the cross that towers over the wrecks of time, gathering the light of sacred story. Not a bronze cross that adorns a fallen cathedral, no matter how shiny…not even a bigger wooden cross that towers over the end of Monument Avenue, but the cross that marks the lives of the people who have been chosen purely for their losing status. The people who broadcast, primarily through their own weakness and lack of wisdom, that God has won. It is an odd way of winning, perhaps. It has been called foolish before. But God is victorious, indeed.


Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year B - February 22, 2009 (Mark 9:2-9)

I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t like to have a story spoiled for me. If there is a movie I know I might see but haven’t had the time yet, I tell my friends who have seen it not to mention anything at all about the story—even if they think the nugget they want to share is not going to spoil the ending. I’ve found that any little detail they might divulge could ruin the effect of the story on me. Likewise, when I’m reading a novel whose plot has really pulled me in and I’m finally in that last twenty or so pages where everything’s going to get resolved, I find that I have to place a piece of paper over the pages I have yet to get to so that my eyes don’t curiously wander over to the end. The pull to ignore what’s happening in the plot now and concentrate on the end is so hard to resist. I want to preserve the effect of the story, but at the same time I have this almost irrepressible urge to know that everything will turn out OK.

Perhaps you’re the same way. Perhaps we’re all the same, especially about things more serious than books and movies. We stand there, like Elisha, gazing at our future as it whizzes out of our grasp, scared for the present and desperate that God will give us in the end what we’ve hoped for. I was speaking recently to a mother who just gave birth her second child four months premature. Inexplicably, her body went into labor after already having announced it to the world, delivering a little baby girl who was too frail and small to survive. Heartbroken and emotionally unmoored, the mother struggled to put her grief into words over the phone. “All I wish,” she said, “is that it were already a year from now.” She knew, almost instinctively, that in a year the pain would be less sharp, the future a little less bleak, her emotions a little less raw. She, like many of us, would rather skip to the final page of that book to glimpse the reality that all will turn out OK.

It occurs to me that the Transfiguration of our Lord—by many accounts one of the odder things that happens to Jesus—is a glimpse at the end of the story, a brief look at the future reality for an assurance that it will all turn out OK. The transfiguration is not simply a biblical version of TLC’s “What Not to Wear,” with Jesus flanked by Elijah and Moses, two Old Testament Clinton and Stacy’s, explaining how the addition of one dazzling white tunic can transform himself and therefore his life. Jesus’ transfiguration is a bright flash of glory and hope—a light at the end of the tunnel, if you will—that serves, in some way, to sustain through the dark days ahead. And those days—those long pages in between—are going to be dark, very dark, especially for Jesus.

According to Mark’s account of this mountaintop experience, Jesus’ transfiguration falls right in between two of his predictions of his death and resurrection. In fact, it is six days prior to this event, in Caesarea Philippi, when, together with all of his disciples, Jesus lowers the boom on them that following along is not going to be all fancy healings and zinging the Pharisees with sharp teachings. There’s sufferin’ in them thar hills, and Jesus means to go there. Those who come along will need to expect to lay down their life, too. And as Peter, James and John come down off the mount of Transfiguration, we overhear their nervous conversation, thanks to Mark: “What in the world does he mean,” they ask, “with all this ‘raising from the dead’ talk?” And they’re thoroughly confused, and they speculate that Elijah may be coming back, and Jesus tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to explain it all again. But before too long, conversation returns to the bits about dying and rising and Jesus spells out once again that the pages in the upcoming chapters will be full of betrayal and violence and murder.

And so, it is not clear from the story whether the disciples realize this glimpse for what it is. What they do see on the mountaintop is surely amazing. Jesus’ figure is somehow altered or changed before their very eyes. It is a mystery exactly what this means—the Greek word is essentially metamorphosis (think: caterpillar to butterfly)—but no matter what happens to his appearance, the disciples are still able to recognize him as Jesus. And his clothes become brighter than any experiment with a Clorox bottle. And the two most significant Old Testament figures—Moses, a stand in for God’s Law, and Elijah, representing all the prophets, appear to confab with him awhile.

It is more than the three former fishermen can take. The white light, the changing appearance of their friend and rabbi, and the unprecedented arrival of two Jewish heroes who disappeared off the planet long ago all leave them speechless. The only thing Peter can think to say is, “Let’s build some tents and camp out awhile here.” And then, before they can put their heads together to come up with a well-thought-out social statement on the matter, to be passed by a simple majority, a cloud covers the whole crowd up and they hear a voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” On the way down the mountain, Jesus explains that no one should speak a thing. Don’t want to spoil the ending for everyone else, remember?

This is really the first instance in Mark’s gospel where anyone has any idea that Jesus might have something to do with the divine. The thunder of a similar heavenly voice had occurred at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, but at that point, only Jesus had heard it. Up to this point, demons have recognized him as the Son of God, but no human has claimed him thus. And the only thing Jesus has directly mentioned about himself has been…the dark chapters of suffering and dying ahead. Inexplicably, yet totally in-line with the surprising instances of grace a surprising God is prone to visit upon us, the transfiguration becomes a sneak-peak into Christ’s heavenly nature. In Jesus’ transfiguration, God gives Jesus’ followers a grace-filled glimpse of the greater glory that awaits Jesus at the end of the story, when the radiance of the resurrection will show that everything does turn out amazing. There will be white clothes at that point, too—empty grave linens—and also a command about telling others, except this time the command is to spread the news, not to remain silent. Ironically, fear and speechlessness will grip the disciples then, again, but by then the plot will have really been settled, once and for all. Death and darkness and suffering and injustice thought they had conquered. But God had other plans. God ruined the end of that story by raising him up.

So, welcome to the Great Story, James Edwards and Greyson Castle! It’s a good one, but it has its ups and downs. You and your parents look just as unsuspecting as the rest of us today—unsuspecting to those ups and downs that accompany the life of every disciple. As we paraded you down the aisle after your baptism, we couldn’t help but reflect on our own journeys with Jesus: how our days began in the joyful wonder of baptism—happy beginning—and then carry on through who-knows-what. Eventually, there will be death. We often wish it weren’t like this—we often wish we could just pitch a tent in the fun parts and let the world go by—but it’s a fact of redeemed life in a broken world.

As James and Greyson grow in faith and obedience to the will of God, they will likely reach points at which they realize, as you and I have, that following this Jesus guy is no walk in the park. They’ll encounter those days we wish it were already tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now. When this happens for them—heck, when it happens for any of us—let us not forget to remind each other of the glory for which we’re bound. Let us not forget that Jesus has stood on the mount, transfigured, with a glory and a story that transfigures you and me. When it is difficult to go forward into the dark days, when we feel our life slipping away despite our every effort to hang on, let the foretaste of that feast be placed in our hand and on our lips to remind us our eyes can, indeed, drift to the end of the story, once again.

Yes, they’ll need to drift over there, gloriously spoiled ending that it is: He is risen. That transfigured guy? Yep, he rises from the dead!

Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.