The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 16A] - August 21, 2011 (Isaiah 51:1-6 and Matthew 16:13-20)

A desk drawer full of rocks: that is all I had to show as souvenirs from the places my family had visited on vacation when I was a child. My mother, not wanting to spend a dime of family money on cheap, kitschty, gift-shop trinkets whenever we were visiting different places, suggested in one of my bouts of whining for a knick-knack that I simply take a rock from each place to remind me of the occasion. She probably said it flippantly, but I complied, thinking it was the only option left. So over the course of several years, I gathered a piece of shale from here, a smooth river rock from there, a chunk of quartz from over here. They were to become my mementos, tokens that could tell me something about the places I’d been, the experiences I’d had, the person I was becoming.


But years later, when my mother informed me I needed to empty out my desk’s contents so that it could be moved with the rest of my cherished belongings to seminary, I opened the bottom drawer to find a pile of rocks that told me…absolutely nothing. I couldn’t remember which rock had come from which place, which stone was supposed to remind me of which memory. Was this purplish one from the time we went camping in the mountains of West Virginia? Was this small, white pebble from the Mall in Washington, D.C., or did I pick it up somewhere else? And there were about five flat, nondescript rocks that had obviously been worn soft by water somewhere—but which river, which beach? Looking down at them from above, they looked so scattered and pitiful. I racked my brain: from where did these rocks come? From which distant roadside quarry had they been hewn, and—for Pete’s sake—which memories should be attached to them?

The Return from Babylonian exile

This is the same message to the people of Israel, years before, as they try to imagine life beyond the hardship of exile, a life back in their blessed homeland beyond the river. King Darius has promised to free them from Babylon’s grip, and he looks down upon them from his throne and sees them, so scattered and pitiful and doubtful of his assurances that they will ever return. And so, with great encouragement, he reminds them to look to their past experiences. "Look to the rock from which you were hewn,” he calls out, “look to the quarry from which you were dug!” Look to Abraham and Sarah, he means, the flinty types that bore you long ago! They were rocks of faith who once set out, alone and wandering, yet who became a nation of great number and great blessing. These are the rocks from which you were hewn. This is the stuff you are made of, King Darius says. When I “bring near my deliverance your destiny will be little different,” he continues, “for this is the quarry from which you were dug.”

God’s people, themselves, are reminders to the world, souvenirs of God’s amazing faithfulness and improbable power. Pitiful and scattered though they may be, they are nevertheless hewn and dug from much stronger stuff, and therefore there is promise for the future, something to build upon. The “stuff they’re made of” hearkens back not only to their strong ancestors and the faith they displayed, but mainly to God’s determination to do something wonderful for God’s people. His salvation, you see, will be forever! God moved them through their wanderings and gave them a purpose. And they will dwell in their land and with God’s teachings they will live as a light to the nations, a beacon of justice and compassion for all.

What are you made of? When you dig deep down what mineral is there that determines your character, your strength, your direction? Do you feel nameless—scattered and pitiful—unaware of what hillside someone chipped you from?

These questions are not limited to Israel’s yearnings millennia ago. They shape our patterns for life now. Look at the political candidates shaking hands now in Iowa, endlessly burnishing their street cred at the beginning of the campaign trail. Or see the college students arriving on a campus for the first time at this time of year, presented with a dizzying array of academic paths as well as temptation for their social life. What about the scared patient who faces the cancer diagnosis as well as the daunting chemo regimen that goes with it, the soldier who heads into his first battle? “Show ‘em what you’re made of,” we like to say.

Are we surprised, then, when the question rumbles around in Jesus’ head as he approaches the great rock face in western Israel that holds up Herod’s gleaming new city of Caesarea Philippi. He has gone there with his disciples to escape the crowds for a while, contemplating that daunting trip to Jerusalem. And he looks up at the cliffs where ancient pagans had placed statues of their gods, and up at the new edifices that clearly spoke to the strength of Caesar’s empire and asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” as if to say, “What am I made of? What are people saying?” And receiving a list of responses, he turns to them, his closest friends, the ones who know him best: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s confession couldn’t be more right-on. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he answers, although Peter has no idea what kind of Messiah stuff Jesus is really made of.

cave at Caesarea Philippi

It is a turning point in his ministry. Here, at the base of a massive rock structure that for centuries had been used as a place for people to pin their hopes and prayers, Jesus’ own hopes and dreams begin to come into focus.

It is a turning point in his ministry. Someone has finally nailed down exactly who Jesus is, for each of those terms is loaded with meaning: Messiah. Son. Living. God. Jesus is sent straight from the Lord who delivered ancient Israel, who called Abraham and Sarah. He himself is part of God’s own creative and redeeming presence that will bring about lasting justice and peace.

It is a turning point in his ministry, for all the teachings and feedings and healings he’s been about can now been seen as tokens of that living kingdom that God is establishing on earth.

Peter’s response to Jesus’ questions about the Messiah’s identity is so right-on, in fact, that Jesus answers by telling Peter what he is made of. Making a word-play on his name, Peter, Jesus claims that Peter and his words of faith are a rock on which Jesus’ own following will be built. (Peter’s name means “rock,” both in Greek and Aramaic.) Scattered and pitiful group that they are, sitting there in the bottom of the drawer, the disciples will eventually become the granite core of a community that will embody Jesus’ life on earth. Not even the powers of death will be able to prevail against their life together as their congregation grows to include people of all nations. Like ancient Israel, they will become living reminders to all people of God’s amazing faithfulness and improbable power.

In fact, their confession and their life together will be so crucial to the world’s understanding of Jesus, he says, that he gives them keys to the kingdom; that is, tools by which they will provide access and entry to others who experience Jesus as the Son of the Living God. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,” Jesus instructs, “and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Peter is often depicted holding keys

The life of Jesus’ community of followers, the church, is given many tasks and missions throughout the course of the New Testament. Baptizing, teaching, sharing the Lord’s Supper, praying, healing, to name a few. But here Jesus connects the keys of his kingdom directly to the forgiveness of sins. There is something about practicing forgiveness and taking forgiveness seriously that relates directly to the experience of God’s kingdom. Loosing refers to proclaiming release from bonds of sin, and binding refers to the withholding of forgiveness, presumably until proper repentance and contrition is made.

It is significant that Jesus links the strength and vitality of his church with its capacity to proclaim and embody forgiveness. The strength and vitality of the church is not ultimately found in its service to others, in how many feet we wash or in the number of members who have joined. The strength and vitality of the church is not primarily found in how inclusive we think we’re being or in how diverse our membership is, but in our willingness to announce and practice the forgiveness of sin. It is a direct reflection of how Jesus deals with us in the first place: how he becomes the type of Messiah that dies on the cross to cleanse the world from sin.

Considering this point, are we surprised that “the forgiveness of sins” is one of the first things we name in the part of the Apostles’ Creed that has to do with the church? “I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Considering Jesus’ point here, we can think of how instrumental the church became in South Africa in bringing a surprisingly peaceful end of the racist apartheid regime in the nineties, and how Archbishop Desmond Tutu insisted, against significant secular opposition, that real forgiveness be a part of that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Considering Jesus’ point about the keys of the kingdom, we can think how many times we’ve sat in a worship service needing to hear, above all else, that we are forgiven.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness, you may say, the binding and loosing from sin, turns out to be the main stuff Jesus is really made of, the rock from which he is hewn, and, incredibly, he asks the church to practice it in his name. On the cross we see that it is what he is made of, and so in our baptism we become made of it, too.

Earlier this week as our family sat at the dinner table, our four-year-old looked at Melinda out of the blue and asked, “Mommy, how does God build us?” We’ve been fielding such existential questions from her for a few months now, and she’s learned to address my wife because she knows she’ll get a clearer, better answer. Glancing quickly at one another with our eyebrows raised, Melinda carefully responded by saying something like, “God builds us carefully in our mommy’s tummy when we’re a little baby.”

I was relieved Melinda let me off the hook, and the answer appeared to suffice. But, like so many musings from the younger ones around us, it really was an excellent question, one not to be laughed off. And while I do hope that all our biological parts and pieces are being stitched together seamlessly and perfectly, both within our mommy’s tummy and outside of it, my hope is that God is also building us through faith and opportunities of service, teaching us compassion and love, but, most of all, to say “I’m sorry” when we need to and to extend the hand of forgiveness when the circumstance calls for it.

So, my dear Clare, I hope God is building you the way he promises to build the rest of God’s people: carefully, yes, and with the hope that, over time, our words and actions will so closely reflect Jesus’ that it will be unmistakable—even when we feel scattered and pitiful—from which great rock we were hewn, the one over which even death will not triumph: Messiah. Son. Living. God.


Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 12A] - July 24, 2011 (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

As I was sitting in a hospital waiting room not too long ago, I picked up a local area magazine and began flipping through it, looking for something to read. The last couple of pages contained some paragraphs that some kids in an area third-grade class had written as a school project. The topic of the mini-essays was “The Most Beautiful Place I Have Been,” and the children’s entries covered locations as diverse as one could imagine in the third grade: you know…Disney World, Canada, Michigan. One kid wrote about home.

What became especially apparent as I read these aloud to Melinda later was that the third grade class had evidently used this writing exercise to practice their use of similes, a comparison—you may remember from grade school—that uses the words “like” or “as.” Almost every sentence contained a comparison, and some of them were a little humorous. One child described his most beautiful place, the beach, by saying that the ocean was a blue as a bluebird. He then followed that by saying that the sun was as yellow as a…yellow bird, and the sunset was as red as a…red bird. In another essay, a boy said that the sun in his favorite spot was as bright as…the sun beaming off the window of a car. The funniest comparison, in my opinion, was one girl’s description that the snow in Canada (the most beautiful place she’d ever been) was as white as…a white crayon.

Overall, I was impressed with their writing. After all, the world of the average third-grader might not provide the widest frame of reference for comparing things. It was clear, however, they had reached deep within their 8 or 9 years of life experience to find ways to describe something they’d seen.

When we hear Jesus’ similes for describing the kingdom of heaven, we may scratch our heads with confusion, yet he is clearly reaching within the experience of the average middle-eastern farmer or homemaker for material. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed…or a lump of yeast that a woman uses to make bread…or buried treasure…or a fishnet. Like a box of crayons for a third-grader, these are images and scenarios that would have meant something to the disciples and other ordinary folks who had gathered to listen to Jesus. As we listen in from the perspective of the twenty-first century, we might get the feeling that something has been lost in translation. After all, how many of us have gone fishing with a net? Or work with yeast and dough on a regular basis? Or breed mustard plants?

Yet, the greater issue with our unfamiliarity with Jesus’ comparisons is not that we don’t understand his similes. It’s that he’s trying to describe something that doesn’t really have a location. The kingdom of heaven is not your average kingdom. It doesn’t really have boundaries, in the proper sense. It doesn’t have regular citizens, or subjects. Unlike other kingdoms, it has no capital city or standing army or coat of arms. In other words, describing the kingdom of heaven is not like describing the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen, especially since no one can—in the regular sense—even really see the kingdom of heaven at all. The kingdom of heaven is difficult to describe and even more difficult to locate.

One thing that is clear, however, from this assortment of parables is that Jesus is not attempting to describe the place people go after they die. That’s what most of probably associate with the words “kingdom of heaven.” We are taught in this day and age—sometimes through the church but mostly through unbiblical concepts in television and popular books—that the kingdom of heaven is a place where souls go after they leave this life. In fact, it may surprise us, but Jesus is almost completely silent when it comes to describing what happens after we die. When we look closely at the words and actions of Jesus, we see that Jesus is very concerned with the here and now—with what is happening on earth currently—which might also be one reason why he uses in his teaching such common, earthy examples for the kingdom of heaven. If we insist on holding onto those other perceptions of heaven when we listen to Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven, we are most likely going to be very confused. Instead we must, as Jesus says, sort out our old perceptions and ideas and take up the ones that correspond to better teaching.

Based, then, on the example of the mustard seed, which has an inauspicious beginning but grows surprisingly aggressively to be mighty and strong, we learn that the kingdom of heaven cannot be judged on its size or strength at its outset. It can start out as something insignificant, powerless, but when left to take its course, it has surprising results.

The same type of thing may be said, too, of the yeast. In Jesus’ time, people did not bake bread with packets of active dry yeast. They kept on hand a lump of leaven which contained living yeast in it, along with the food that the yeast needed to live. It was a smelly, sticky, ugly chunk of slime. When time came to make bread, a little portion of this slimeball was added to larger amounts of flour and kneaded together so that the two became inseparable and indistinguishable from each other. Furthermore, it would multiply to make a huge amount of bread, much larger than just the leaven and the flour together. Biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ measurements in this parable—three measures of flour mixed with leaven—would have made enough bread to feed more than three hundred people. Again, we see that the kingdom of heaven that Jesus comes to bring is that which adds substance and nourishment to the world. We must remember that that first-century folk would have known nothing about microorganisms and microscopic fungus. Leaven was just something kept on hand to make bread. It may look simple and ugly and inconsequential when it starts out, but it is that which brings life and vitality to creation. It rises mysteriously and forms something marvelous.

We can pray, too, that God’s kingdom will be born in and among us through things that are mysterious and inconsequential, but that it will grow and rise and produce something capable of making a huge difference. In fact, most of Jesus’ comparisons here relate the kingdom of heaven to something small and solitary that has the ability to become something greater. Even the hidden treasure starts rather inconspicuously but by the end—and in the eyes of the right person—has somehow increased the value of a whole piece of land. And in this vein I would like to add a modern simile of my own here: the kingdom of heaven is like Vacation Bible School craft projects. What begins on Monday with a single popsicle-stick creation becomes a whole exhibit of crayon-etched papers and cotton-ball-glued sock puppets that take up every flat surface of the house. God’s kingdom come, indeed…all over my kitchen table!

But whether it is the mustard seed, or the bread leaven or the pearl of great price or the fishnet that gathers everything in its grasp, Jesus’ parables about the kingdom teach us that the kingdom is an occurrence or a happening more than it is a place or location. In fact, the word “kingdom” may actually do us a disservice in understanding what Jesus is talking about here because we’re so prone to think of a kingdom as a place. But in the original Greek, the word we translate as kingdom is actually more related to an action, like the English words “reign” or “dominion.” But even that falls short. From all of this, we may begin to understand that the kingdom of heaven is any occasion when God’s authority is made known and acknowledged. It may happen any time or anywhere, and we pray in the Lord’s Prayer—no matter which version we use—that it come to us every day.

Whenever or wherever this world’s usual cycle of decay and despair and brokenness are interrupted by God’s grace and life, there and then is the kingdom of heaven. Whenever or wherever creation’s current monotony or sorrow and greed give way to occasions of generosity and self-sacrifice, there and then is the kingdom of heaven. Whenever or wherever this earth’s ordinary systems of so-called justice and so-called peace are kneaded together with the leaven of Jesus’ forgiveness and humility, then—voila!—there and then is the kingdom of heaven!

Need a modern-day example of the kingdom of heaven? A parishioner here at Epiphany recently responded on somewhat of a whim to a small and inconspicuous magazine advertisement that sought to know how the church is serving its often neglected senior citizens. Before she knew it, this parishioner was lead into a deeper conversation with a seminary professor about how Epiphany’s Leisure Time program could be an example for other congregations. There is the kingdom of God.

When members of a youth group kindly request that this year’s mission trip to South Carolina entail more time on the job site adding handicap ramps to low-income homes and less free-time on the beach, defying the conventional stereotypes we hear about today’s youth…there and then is the kingdom of God.

This week at Vacation Bible School the children watched how one small act of bringing in a canned food donation can leaven the ministry of an entire non-profit organization, and, subsequently, how a small, non-profit organization like the LAMB’S Basket or our H.H.O.P.E. pantry can leaven a whole community.

Hey you!  Crazed Norway murderer, with your guns and bombs, worried about the rise of Islam.  We're going to hand out quilts and scarves to people of all faiths...and teach our children to love in spite of you...because it's the kingdom that's on the rise!

Jesus’ parables may seem esoteric and confusing, but we don’t really need to think too hard to know what the kingdom of heaven is like. We know it from our own faith experience. A small splash of water makes us reborn. An inconspicuous chunk of bread and a sip of wine swell within our hearts and empower us to forgive and serve others. Love and compassion grow, and we know not how. And in the middle of it all stands that cross, a promise that God’s kingdom can take root anywhere. This kingdom has grabbed us again in its embrace and we are sent out to provide more of it to the world. As if we were a farmer, foolishly selling everything we own to gain treasure hidden in a field, in joy we learn to value Jesus’ reign more than any other kingdom that is out there. We trade selfish desires for our futures and our livelihoods for the one true future and one true livelihood that is eternal: following Jesus and learning to seek his kingdom.

And we look forward to that day when all other kingdoms will finally give in and give way to Christ’s reign. We look forward to the time when we will be reunited with all those who have striven for the kingdom before we have. We lean into the future, praying that this kingdom becomes the only kingdom we know, hoping for that time when these “kingdom happenings” we so savor now will be all that is happening, and we will, at long last, be in the most beautiful place we've ever seen!

Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 11A] - July 17, 2011 (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 and Romans 8:12-25)

Well, the movie event of my lifetime took place this weekend, and I didn’t even participate in it. The final installment of the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise opened on Friday and, as expected, shattered all box office records for an opening day. It pulled in $92.1 million dollars, which is $20 million more than the previous record-holder. That’s what happens when an entire generation of youth grows up reading the same seven books in sequence.

I’m a late-comer to the Harry Potter phenomenon. I resisted reading or even watching the movies until earlier this year. For others of you who are unfamiliar with the stories, you should know there are seven books, each of which chronicles a year of a young wizard’s education in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that young wizard being Harry Potter. Each year Harry grows a little older, a little wiser, a little more proficient in wizardry skills. He also grows a little more aware of a cosmic battle going on between good and evil that somehow implicates him and, as we find out, everyone around him. That’s the genius of the series that makes it so popular: Harry and his friends have aged along with an entire cohort of our youth. As of this weekend, it is over. The tagline for this final episode that appears on the movie posters that emblazon every theater from here to Timbuktu contain three simple words: “It all ends.” Seven years at Hogwarts, eight movies. I suppose those who have followed along know what “it” is, in this circumstance. Currently I am getting ready to begin the fifth book, so “it” hasn’t ended for me yet, but I know it’s moving in that direction. (Just a point of privilege: I would appreciate it if people would not spoil any plot details for me. I’ve enjoyed the suspense of the series thus far and would like to continue to do so!).

I do not consider myself to be Harry Potter aficionado, but I have enjoyed one feature of the books that is done remarkably well. You see, the world of Harry Potter is populated with a dizzying array of creative and colorful characters—wizards and witches, giants and elves, mystical creatures of all kinds and, of course, muggles, the name for regular humans like you and me who have no wizarding powers. What is so interesting is that you never can be sure exactly who is on what side, be that good or evil. The author of the series, J.K.Rowling, has done an expert job at keeping the reader in the dark just long enough about who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. There are a handful characters about whose intentions you have no doubt, but a great many are purposely ambiguous, and the plot is driven by Harry’s attempts to navigate this world. I suppose when “it all ends” these things are revealed to us. The evil will perish and the righteous, good guys go on to shine like the sun. At least, I hope.

I suppose all this means nothing to those of you who haven’t been caught up in the Harry Potter phenomenon, but—fear not!—we have the biblical version of essentially the same thing in the gospel parable this morning. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (or, the wheat and the tares, as it is sometimes known) is like a 1st-century allegory for the cosmic battle between good and evil, between the forces that obey God’s word and respond to God’s grace and those forces that seek to undermine God’s goodness. The wheat is the result of the good seed, the words and deeds sown by the Son of Man and, presumably, those who follow him and abide in his righteousness.

The weeds, on the other hand, are the result of the bad seed sown by the evil one, the enemy of God’s plan for love and mercy for God’s people. He is a crafty spreader of lies, this evil one. He works in the dark and is rarely caught in the act, disappearing just before sunrise. Some people doubt he’s real, but evidence of his existence is all around.

And like the world of Harry Potter, it turns out there is some ambiguity in this field gone wild. For even though the slaves are aware that someone has sown weeds in amongst the wheat, the two are not as easy to tell apart and separate as you might think. The particular weed that is growing is actually a close look-alike of the good wheat. Scholarly authorities point out that this weed was likely darnel, a common agricultural pest in Jesus’ time. In fact, darnel had leaves and a stalk of grain that is virtually indistinguishable from regular wheat. Only at the time of harvest was it clear: wheat had grains that were brown and that were so heavy that they drooped. Darnel, on the other hand, had black ears of grain that stood up straight.

Under the soil, too, darnel and wheat grew together. The roots could intertwine and find nourishment together. So, even if the slaves were able to tell each plant apart before harvest time, pulling up the bad weeds could also uproot the good wheat, and that would be counterproductive. The householder, knowing all of this, of course, commands them to leave the weeds alone. As aggravating as it may sound, they are to tend the field like usual and let the two grow side by side. In due time, however, the householder will send in the appropriate workers who, knowing the difference between the good and the bad, will separate them once and for all. Interestingly, that is not the work of the slaves. Their job is to labor in that time of ambiguity, when the good and the bad are sometimes clear—but not always; when the hope of a pure field and a productive yield are sometimes visible—but not always; when the wisdom of the good householder is sometimes evident—but not always. And eventually it all will end.

For Jesus’ first disciples, I imagine this parable served to bolster their work on the kingdom’s behalf. They had likely been working alongside Jesus, even doing some good deeds of the kingdom on their own, and were perplexed that in and amongst their labors for righteousness some bad things were happening. Some people weren’t responding in faith to the good news about Jesus. Some people weren’t receiving him with hope and joy. Some people weren’t hearing of his mercy and then learning to practice forgiveness and love themselves. And if the disciples weren’t perplexed by this point, they certainly would be later on when they would make it to Jerusalem and the opposition they would meet would end up nailing Jesus to the cross.

Evil seems to work its way into the best of situations. Which of us has not experienced frustration and disappointment at the weeds that grow among the good wheat, or a desire that the field could just be purified at the outset? We picture a nation, for example, where everyone comprehends the need to cut the government’s deficit spending…or, as the case may be, where everyone appreciates the need to raise taxes. We desire a family where there are no black sheep and no personality conflicts. Or a congregation where everyone thinks and believes the same things about every issue. Perhaps those are not really examples of evildoing, but we do dream of communities where children can walk home from school or camp without fear of being abducted by people who will do awful things to them, or where we go through airport security without having to take off half our clothes.

And just as we like to dream of such a world where God’s good plans are never crowded out by intrusive evil, it is also somewhat satisfying to think about systematically going around and ridding the world of anything we know is wrong, pulling the doggone things up by the roots, once and for all. That’s what the slaves naturally want to do, and that’s likely where Jesus’ disciples will want to take this as they take up sides with his vision for a world redeemed. Yes, waiting until the end to sort this all out seems a little counterintuitive, yet if we don’t heed his command, we risk diminishing the householder’s harvest…and it is his harvest, after all.

Photo: Thomas J. Abercrombie

Jesus’ own explanation of this parable when he goes inside the house with his disciples could leave us thinking that an individual is either all one or all the other—there’s a weed here…oh, there’s another one there!—when the reality is a little more complex than that. What about the mixture of good intentions and evil intentions that each of us cultivate in our own lives? The apostle Paul happens to talk a good bit about that in his letter to the Romans, noting the endless conflict between the good he knows he should do and the selfishness and sin that come so readily. When we take a good look at our lives, especially in the light of the cross of Christ, the weed-ridden and darkest moment of God’s life, we come to realize that the task of the slaves is really the better option, for in the zeal to uproot and eradicate all sources of evil we would eventually have to turn the spade to ourselves.

And that’s another reason I find Harry Potter intriguing. By and by, even the main characters in those stories who seem clearly on the side of good realize they have the ability to think selfishly rather than altruistically. They, too, must navigate a world where the path to good and evil runs right through their own hearts.

The farming advice that the householder gives to his slaves sure might strike us as peculiar, the wisdom of letting it all grow together a little muddled. It is hard at times to keep our mind on the fact that a good harvest will yet come out of all this mess, not to mention the mess of our lives, but perhaps it’s best to leave that up to the one who raises Jesus from the dead…to the harvester who grants new life after every bit of suffering…to the Lord who promises to vanquish everything that stands in his way…to a God who prizes every good thing that can come from his people.

Eventually it all will end, as Harry Potter learns, it all will end. The final movie will come and all will get hashed out. As we, the people of God wait for our final installment, as the world groans toward that grand unfolding where good reigns and the mercy of God’s kingdom come, it’s best that we tend to the field in prayer and worship, service and encouragement. Even as the strangling weeds continue to pop up it’s best if we wait and keep the good growing, nurtured by the word, our own roots sunk deep in baptism, and tend to the precious grains of good faith in ourselves and each other. Yes, it’s best if we keep things growing, my friends…keep them growing and rejoice at the wheat that is here. As a line from a U2 goes, “always pain before a child is born, I’m still waiting for the dawn.” For, indeed, we are waiting.

I’m afraid I'm going to need to plow through the last three books to learn what Harry Potter discovers in his final chapter (remember…don’t spoil it for me!) but--thank God--because of Jesus Christ we already know ours.

Psst! The weeds don’t win.

Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 9A] - July 3, 2011 (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another…”

Jesus’ words as he addresses a crowd made up both of willing followers and skeptical accusers ring of frustration and puzzlement. Is he lashing out in anger? Is he throwing up his hands in disgust? We’re not really accustomed to hearing Jesus sound like this; that is, wandering into the risky waters of cross-generational criticism. In fact, he sounds here more like us.

“But to what will I compare this generation? They spend too much time in front of the computer or plugged into their iPod!” Or, “Those fuddy-duddies are so out-of-touch and old-fashioned! The world is changing! You better catch up, old man!”

“But to what will I compare this generation? That new music they’re always listening to sounds like pots and pans clanging together with a cat fight in the background!” Or, “That old music they listen to has no beat and no soul.”

“But to what will I compare this generation?” They want to pray a newer version of the Lord’s Prayer! How can you do that!?” Or, “They want to pray an older version of the Lord’s Prayer in language so formal and stilted!”

Choose your topic these days—sacred or secular—and it seems like so many opinions of what’s right and what’s good fall right along generational lines. Heads are shaken in exasperation and—if you’re like me, standing in line recently for a cell-phone upgrade that will drag me kicking and screaming into a new generation—beads of anxious sweat form along the ridge of the brow. New is not always improved, we know…and traditional may not always mean wiser. But the debates rage on, and from this morning’s gospel lesson we see that Jesus is no stranger, either, to the friction that occurs when generations of human beings set their habits and expectations up against one another.

In his case, Jesus is frustrated and almost irritated that the people of his day and age are so unreceptive to the message he is preaching, which is at odds with the message they’ve heard for so long from the Pharisees’ sermons and the scribes’ teachings. And it’s not just his message they’ve questioned and rejected. It’s also his cousin John’s. The crowds can’t seem to get their heads around the God who is presented in their respective messages. They can’t fathom the kingdom of heaven as it is proclaimed from the lips of these two newcomers.

And who can blame them? Both of these yokels hail from off-the-beaten-track Galilean towns, far from the traditional academy of Jerusalem. Neither has a formal synagogue training that we know of. One sequesters himself in the desert half the time, eating wild honey and locusts, coming close to civilization from time to time just long enough to dunk people in the Jordan River and publicly criticize the rulers’ morals. The other one hangs out with a bunch of tax collectors and other low-lifes, frequenting banquets and parties. Both seem to go against the status quo somewhat, setting themselves a number of times as the preferred option to the way things are. But John is too much of an extremist, like pots and pans clanging in the midst of a cat-fight, and Jesus seems too lax. John is a little too fanatical, Jesus not fanatical enough. Who would take these guys seriously, especially about matters that the Pharisees do such a good job of explaining in their sermons, convoluted though they may seem?

This is the situation which both John and Jesus confront: a populace of their own people who can’t seem to get their head around a new way of seeing God act and move in the world. To John, the people are hard-headed and ignorant. They need baptism for repentance and need it now, for the winnowing fork of God’s justice is in his hand and the chaff will be burned. (We must assume that would be John’s reaction to this, of course, for at the time he is currently in prison awaiting what will be his execution for the crime of criticizing Herod’s decision to marry his brother’s wife).

Jesus, on the other hand, compares the generation to children in a marketplace who try to do everything gentle and pleading they can to coax the people to dance or mourn. With inspiring words and uplifting promises of forgiveness he has played the flute, so to speak, to get them to “dance” along with his vision of the kingdom of heaven, and they still stand on the sidelines in their stubbornness. Likewise, he has cried the haunting mourner’s wail, reminding them of their need for mercy, and yet they remain unmoved.

Have you ever tried to explain your faith to someone who perhaps doesn’t believe? Have you ever tried to convince someone of the love of God or your involvement in the life of a congregation to a person who, for whatever reason, is reluctant to follow? To a large degree, Jesus’ experience with people’s doubt of and rejection of his message is common to people of each and every age. Whether we encounter difficulty in preaching the gospel of Jesus on a personal level or whether we get frustrated when our congregations don’t grow and gather new members, it seems as if the church will always have to live with some level of discomfort or frustration with how we’re received by the generation at hand.

Jesus’ immediate response to his own discouragement is to offer thanksgiving that the gospel message is not something to be grasped by knowledge or wisdom or sophisticated reasoning. Faith, as Martin Luther would put it, is ultimately a gift of the Holy Spirit and cannot be conjured by our own strength or power. Indeed, Jesus’ teachings are hidden from the intelligent and revealed to the young and inexperienced, the simple and pure-hearted. How many of us find ourselves more captivated by the children’s sermon than by the words preached from the pulpit? And, by the same token, I know many pastors who, like I, are as intimidated by delivering a children’s sermon as they are preaching a big people’s sermon. A religious system that rightly asks its leaders to attend a seminary and receive a post-secondary degree, can send the unintended message that brains are what’s required for a deeper faith, or to have faith at all. Pretty soon we forget how the infants see things.

St. Augustine (Antonella da Messina)

And here is when Jesus reminds us once again that it’s not brains that will lead to deeper faith, and it’s not a sophisticated understanding about how the universe works that will ultimately cause one to come to Christ. It is not brains we need, but a burden. Our attraction to the kingdom of heaven comes from the desire for an easier burden than the ones we’re carrying, a longing for rest for our souls. St. Augustine, a man of supreme intelligence who did not convert to Christian faith until fairly late in life, once said, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful, but I have never read in either of them, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’”

No, it is not wisdom or beauty—although they are there—that ultimately draws us to the way of Christ, but rather the promise of an easier way, the hope that when we cast our sorrows on this whippersnapper from Galilee we receive something far better than we’d ever imagine. It is, rather the confidence that this whippersnapper who goes to the cross for us and exchanges our a path of death and sin and guilt and shame for a new life filled with undying love and forgiveness. It is, rather, the understanding that somehow, with Jesus and his community, our way is indeed made easier, even though following him may be dreadfully difficult at specific times.

Thankfully, this was once again revealed to me this week during the Virginia Synod’s Kairos youth event at Roanoke College. One hundred seventy-five members of a younger generation than mine, including twenty-nine from this congregation, spent a six days praying and worshipping and studying Scripture. Although spending long days away from my family, sleeping on a hard mattress in a barely-air-conditioned residence hall is not how I’d ideally like to spend a week of the summer, I always return from these events somewhat renewed, not because I’ve had the opportunity to teach and lead but because the youth always manage to teach me something about trusting in Jesus.

Some speak it quietly in the comfort of a small group, while others take the opportunity to address the whole large group with a reflection on their faith. Some of them speak of heart-wrenching personal hardship and experiences with grief or abuse while others confess a relatively strong faith bred in their home congregations. No matter the method, no matter the venue, one theme is evident in every testimony: these youth desire an easier yoke than the one they carry now. They long for a Lord who is gentle and humble of heart. They seek a rest and comfort in a world that simultaneously idolizes youth and also expects them to grow up too fast. And in their prayers and concerns I detect a realization that coming to Christ is not purely an unloading and releasing of guilt and shame and heaviness of heart. I also hear an understanding that Jesus gives something in return. That is, he has a yoke, too. He longs for us to change and grow and bear his Word to the world.

But I must tell you it is not primarily at these types of gatherings that I am reminded of Jesus’ promise of an easier yoke and lighter burden. That happens each and every Sunday—indeed, each and every day—when you and I speak on the phone or share a word in the Commons, when you share your own stories of experiencing God’s glory or your own prayer concerns for those you love, when you show up for worship in the middle of a hectic and busied lifestyle to anchor your week in the community of Christ’s disciples.

I am reminded of your deep faith when you arrive at this rail, hands open, head maybe bowed or eyes lifted up in hopeful expectation taking this guy from Nazareth seriously—not too unlike the children who come up here earlier in the service for a time with the pastor—wanting what Christ will give, presenting your shoulders once again for the gracious yoke, handing over your heavied hearts in exchange for that easier burden.

And then I see you, once again—refreshed, empowered, head lifted higher, shouldering that lighter burden of the Spirit’s transformation making your way back to your seat in the pew, making your way back out the door ready to bear this faith once again this week to any generation you happen to meet in the marketplace.


Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Day of Pentecost, Year A - June 12, 2011 (1 Corinthians 12:3b-13)

The apostle Paul was the master of metaphor. To illustrate a point he was trying to make, he could employ with great skill any number of images and analogies which had a wonderful way of sticking in the imagination and standing the test of time. When you read Paul’s letters in the New Testament, you will hear him talk at times, for example, about faith with agricultural symbolism. The church, in this case, is a field where church leaders are like farmers that toil to grow faithfulness and witness. The Spirit produces fruit in the life of believers, fruits like joy and patience and kindness. This was a clever way of speaking about the activity of faith for even those in an urban setting—and some of his were—could understand how the community created by the gospel might be, in some ways, like a place where growth was supposed to occur.

In other places Paul is fond of athletic metaphors. Faith, in this instance, is a “race to be run,” bearing some resemblance to a challenge that requires practice and discipline. In much the way athletes train their bodies to perform a contest, the faithful Christian trains his or her intellect and will to accomplish great feats in witnessing in spite of hardships and suffering. Nowadays, of course, such metaphor might resonate a little differently for those who are, say, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and fans of the Washington Redskins. But, no matter where your team loyalty lies, the life of faith being related to athletic competition somehow makes sense. These metaphors—both agricultural and athletic—have stuck with us.

But of all the metaphors and descriptions Paul used to describe the life of faith, perhaps none is as well-known and easy to grasp as the church as the body of Christ. In at least four of his letters, Paul spills a lot of ink trying to explain how the community of believers is like a human body with structural features like ligaments and feet and organs like eyes. Anyone who has a body can relate to this image. You don’t need to be involved in a specific field like agriculture or athletics to understand what Paul is trying to say about the church when he uses this metaphor. That is, the community of people who believe in Christ as Risen Lord is a functioning whole; no one part is complete by itself. Likewise, the character and vitality of the Christian faith cannot be summed up in one specific believer. It is a community enterprise.

Perhaps that is why when he is speaking to his conflict-ridden and controversy-prone congregation in Corinth, Paul finds the body analogy to be especially helpful. One of the many things over which the congregation there had been fighting was the presence of the Holy Spirit’s gifts. There is no way of knowing exactly what the specific hullabaloo was about, but it seemed as if some of the congregation members in Corinth had forgotten the body-like aspect of the Christian faith. They thought that certain gifts of faith, whether uttering wisdom, or working miracles or healing, or speaking in tongues were naturally better than others, signs that some people had received more important talents and skills and therefore did not really need the rest of the community. It was a big problem, one that may have eventually torn the congregation apart.

To counter their indivualistic and hierarchical way of thinking, Paul reaches for the body metaphor: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, or one body, so it is with Christ.” Notice he does not say, “so it is with Christians,” or “so it is with those who follow Jesus.” He explicitly names them Christ. They—that is, the Corinthians—are, in some way, Jesus. They are one organism, as it were, and he drives the point home even further by telling them “for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews, Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink one Spirit.” Just as breath animate a human body, God’s Spirit gives them life. From here he goes on to explain that no one person, no matter how glorious or glamorous their gifts may be, can ever really survive without the gifts of all the other people present. The flourishing of the whole is absolutely dependent on the participation and the presence of each and every one. It is a follow up on the main lesson in the section we have this morning as our middle lesson, “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit” Paul says, “for the common good.”

For the common good. And that’s the key for this metaphor. That is, there are many different types of gifts, many different ways of serving—many different ways of skinning the cat, so to speak, when it comes to being a follower of Christ—but the gifts are never given solely for individual betterment. The gifts of the Spirit are never given for people to pursue their own happiness or their own personal path of spirituality. They are given to individuals, yes, but with the express purpose that they will be worked out and practiced within the body, whatever that body is doing.

This lesson has needed to be driven home to this slow learner countless times, but the occasion I remember most, for some reason, was by a woman named Shirley when I was working as a summer camp counselor at Lutheridge in Arden, North Carolina, where two of our college members happen to be working now. This particular week I had been assigned to work with a group of campers with mild to moderate developmental delays. They were wonderful individuals of all ages—mostly adults—who all had been diagnosed as having some significant special needs but who were not deficient in any way, (as our area director had taken great pains to remind us during our training), in regards to gifts of the Spirit. A week of working with that population always involved a talent show at some point. They could sit for hours as they, one by one, got up in front of the whole group and performed either a vocal solo or told jokes, danced or shared some other skill they were proud of.

Now, it just so happened that a group counselors and I had been racking our brains that week trying to remember all the verses of that annoying song about Noah’s Ark. (Youth group members know which one I’m talking about). It goes on and on forever:

“The Lord said to Noah, ‘There’s gonna be a floody-floody!
The Lord said to Noah, ‘There’s gonna be a floody-floody!
Get those animals out of the muddy-muddy!’
Children of the Lord.”

So, rise and shine…and give God the glory glory!
Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory!
Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory…children of the Lord!

In all seriousness, the song has something like twenty verses, and, for the life of us, we could not remember the last verse. These were the days before Google and smartphones, so we couldn’t just look it up on a computer. There were no songbooks, even. We had to rely on what people could remember and store in their brains, and in that regard we were coming up empty, which was exceedingly frustrating because the song couldn’t end (and it really needed to!) No one on camp staff could remember it!

But, as we learned that week. it just so happened to be Shirley’s favorite song. Shirley wasn’t able to do much for herself. She couldn’t eat on her own. She wasn’t able to see much because her eyesight was so poor. She needed help walking and getting dressed in the morning. But—you guessed it—she knew every single line to that song. Sometimes she’d get stuck in a loop and repeat a line or two a few times, but when she got up on that stage in front of all of us, it was one of her gifts to be shared for the common good. You can’t imagine our relief when she stood to receive her applause. She had taught us all the verses…and thankfully the Spirit had made us still enough to listen.

That example may seem somewhat simplistic in the grand scheme of things, but what I learned in that moment at that talent show goes right along with what Paul was trying to get across to the church at Corinth. And, as different as our situation may be from what the Corinthians may have been facing, it is a message that God’s Spirit is still trying to teach to the church in North America in the twenty-first century.

An article in a recent edition of The Christian Century ponders the church’s current challenges of people to join congregations in the ways that they used to in earlier decades. The challenge is especially acute in those of my own age group. Many folks these days are content with attending a congregation or various congregations, sometimes even quite regularly, without ever actually committing to membership in one particular congregation. They remain loosely connected to one or several communities of faith, never really venturing very far into the life of any one community. Some say it’s a result of our consumerist culture, where options for everything overwhelm and tantalize. Whatever the reason, people are not belonging to churches in the way they once did. Congregations are handling the challenge in different ways, some getting rid of any type of formal membership at all, others ramping up guidelines for affiliating, demanding more. Leaning more to the side of inviting modern church people to commit to definite, formal membership, one Lutheran pastor is quoted in the article as saying, “that is the secret gift that unfolds as you become integrated into something that is larger than yourself. You find yourself saying yes to possibilities that you would never otherwise imagine.”

Meredith Sizemore Photography

Possibilities that we never could imagine. Verses to songs that we never could remember on our own. Lives transformed by God’s grace that we never could fathom. Gifts of the Holy Spirit that we never could experience unless we were up close and integrated into the body of Jesus. It sounds like Christ himself is at work! For, you see, I think we get the part about each of us having unique constellation of gifts, and I think we even get the part about recognizing the gifts in others. It’s always good to hear that again and again. Where we might could use some reminding is the part about how they’re used for the common good. In Christ’s church, we find ourselves involved in possibilities we never could imagine when we begin sharing our gifts not simply for our own objectives, no matter how noble we may think they are, but for the sake of everyone, for the sake of Jesus who is now apparently loose in the world through our life together.

So for this Pentecost, as we welcome aboard two new members to this ark of salvation through the waters of baptism, let’s claim all of Paul’s metaphors for this hapless yet marvelously gifted community we call the church. We're probably going to need them: the field and the athletic field, as well as the body. The Spirit is doing something here, as it is in every church in every age in every language God has created. The Spirit is animating something here, and we are excited about it.

Yes, let’s claim all of Paul’s metaphors on this birthday of the church and then, if we may, add one from Shirley. The Spirit has given each of us our own unique verse in God’s grand song of love and redemption through Jesus Christ. It is a song that is sung with tongues of fire through the life of his community, imperfect and out-of-tune choir that we may be. You’ve been given your own verse in the song, and ain’t nobody gonna be able to sing it but you!

So, let's hear it, then! Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory, children of the Lord!

Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A - May 15, 2011 (Acts 2:42-47, John 10:1-10)

A few years ago when I first moved to Pittsburgh, before I was a husband and a father and knew how to do things like change a diaper in a grocery store bathroom, I was a member of a choir that met for supper and practice every other Friday night. Though they were informal occasions, they were fairly well-organized. Like many group endeavors, they operated on the principle that everyone should contribute in some way, either by bringing a dish or by cleaning up afterwards. I liked to volunteer for the clean-up part, but occasionally I volunteered to bring something low-maintenance, like the bread or the drinks.

One day I opened my email to discover—to my horror—that the responsibility for bringing the main dish had finally fallen to me. I thought to myself, “Don’t they realize I’m a bachelor? Are they really going to want to eat anything I make?” I know there are plenty of single people who are great cooks, but at the time I was more accustomed to eating my meals on the run in one-person servings—things like sandwiches and cans of Campbell’s Soup. Something that would pass as an entrée for a whole group of people was far beyond my ability to create.

But before my panic could get the best of me, I decided to contact the one person to whom I was closest who is adept at cooking for large groups of people—my grandmother in Walkertown, NC. She had a chicken casserole I figured I could replicate. It called for a cup of soup. I remember eating it many times on Sundays when my whole family would gather at her place after church. I probably drove her crazy asking about it, calling her three times in two days to make sure I had the ingredients and cooking instructions down pat. I finally gave it a whirl and took it to choir practice. It turned out OK, I suppose. They liked it, but it didn’t seem to taste as good as I remembered hers tasting. In any case, as she was reciting to me for the third time the order of ingredients over the phone, intermingled with words of encouragement she made mention of a principle of cooking that so many chefs and cooks and grandmothers already know, but that I was just learning: “The more you cook for,” she said, “the better it is.”

And it’s absolutely true. When you take a recipe and cut the portions down to serve on person the dish never ends up tasting as good as if you were to take that recipe and multiply it to feed a larger number.

In the infancy stages of the Christian faith, recorded in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles, we find the recipe for the church—and we discover the same principle of my grandmother’s chicken casserole applies: the more it’s made for, the better it is. The faith of those who follow Jesus is not meant to be—is never meant to be—served up as an individual dish. No matter how you slice and dice it, it is a group activity, more “casserole” than it is “personal pan pizza.”

Day of Pentecost, icon

That is unmistakable as we read the accounts as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. What the grand story of Acts shows us, more than anything else, is that the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit bring into existence a community that is steadily pulled closer and closer together and at the same time spread outward, into the world. More and more people are added comprising an ever-growing diversity of languages and cultures, but the essence of the faith is always about togetherness. Those who hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow do it together and together they are offered for the life of the world.

The recipe, if I may call it that, is included, bare-bones, in our first reading this morning. Luke writes, “the baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Five basic ingredients, and that’s it:

(1) receiving and hearing the apostles’ teachings; that is, gathering to listen to the stories that the apostles’ told about Jesus and his words;

(2) taking part in fellowship, which entails spending time together and getting to know one another.

(3) the breaking of bread,

church potluck

(4) prayers, which means celebrating Holy Communion and praying for each other. And, lastly,

(5) sharing things in common, including possessions and food, so that people may not go without.

Surely, you may say, the church is so much more than that nowadays, and is up to so much more! There are things like CARITAS and Vacation Bible School, the visiting of the sick and incarcerated. There are the car wash fundraisers and the youth retreats. Sunday School and choir practices. Christmas musicals and the stewardship campaigns…and what about keeping up the building, making sure the property is maintained? Can our common life really be boiled down to those basic five?

Is all the other stuff then superfluous? Or might these things be variations elaborations on these essentials—that is, the apostles’ teachings, fellowship, sacramental life, prayer, and communal redistribution of goods and property? My guess is for the latter, but it might be a good practice for the life of the church to continually set our ministries against this original recipe. For it is these five ingredients, given shape by our Lord’s resurrection and given power by the Holy Spirit, that form the basis of all the activity and vitality of Christ’s body on earth.

Dr. Martha Roy was woman in my internship congregation in Cairo, Egypt. When I was there she was about 89 years old and still played the pipe organ at worship every Sunday. She was an American, born in Egypt in the early 1900’s to a missionary family from the old United Presbyterian Church. Dr. Roy, as I called her, was an “old-school” Presbyterian who has spent the entirety of her life in service to the church in Egypt. The only time she lived stateside was when she was getting her college and graduate degrees. She served as a teacher and musician on several faculties in Egypt, and was a recipient of the highest honor ever awarded by the President of Egypt to a foreigner. Her unique life provided her the opportunity to worship in the churches of the Middle East and in the missionary congregations that were formed along the Nile. One of her brothers, in fact, became a missionary in Sudan, and as refugees from the Horn of Africa began pouring into Cairo in the last decade or two, Dr. Roy found herself in the position to participate in their religious communities, too. Her life’s masterpiece, perhaps, was the first-ever codified liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church. This two-thousand-year-old branch of Christianity never had a written-down form of its worship—neither words nor music—until Dr. Roy and her colleague Dr. Toth set themselves to it.

Dr. Martha Roy, center

When I’d sit with her to visit, it was like speaking with a living history book. She could talk for hours explaining how marvelously diverse she’d found the expressions of Christianity to be. But at some point she’d inevitably open her Bible to this very Acts passage and say, very ceremoniously, “Here is what it’s all based on, Phillip. No matter the diversity, these practices are everywhere, and Christians of every kind and color and history cherish them.”

I had maybe touched briefly on this during a lecture in a seminary class. She, on the other hand, had experienced it first-hand, over and over again. I was sad to learn that Dr. Roy died about two months ago 2 weeks shy of her 98th birthday.

Each of these ingredients, you see, is intended to bring us together and form us as a flock, to keep our hearts and hands and voices focused on what we share as a community. That was what Dr. Roy had glimpsed in so many different expressions of the church. In prayer, we share our wounds, our insecurities, our fears, as well as our dreams about the future. In worship we share our voices and our Lord’s peace. In service we share our talents and our skills, as well as our words of reconciliation and forgiveness with each other. In our offerings, we share our treasures with those around us. It’s a risky move, allowing ourselves to be formed by the breaking of bread and prayers and pooling of resources and hopes on such a regular basis. It can be risky…but it’s sacred.

The greatest danger is we can forget how counter-cultural these practices actually are, how unnatural it usually is to put ourselves in close relationship with so many others. We can lose sight of how transforming the Holy Spirit intends these practices to be, especially in a culture like ours that constantly exalts the value of individualism, relishing in voting people off the island and whittling panels of art contestants down to one.

We always run the danger—and, I, more than anyone else—of turning Christian faith into a head-trip, a grand chance for internal reflection. We transform the news of Jesus’ resurrection into something entirely personal, as if Jesus rose from the dead so that everyone may explore their own paths of spirituality and new life! Or we can fall into the trap of thinking that participation in a faith community is to get values that help us “get by in life.”

In Acts of the Apostles, nothing could be farther from the truth, and Jesus did not rise from the dead in order to help everyone achieve some form of individual enlightenment. Christian faith is ultimately about sharing over and against a world and a self-tendency that is about taking and gaining. And, thankfully, Luke does not fashion a completely rosy view of the early Church as they gather together in harmony with their glad and generous hearts. They don’t really “get by.” They struggle. Even as they celebrate amazing achievements, they get it wrong from time to time, and we know from our own experiences that the church can be a hurtful place where greed and selfishness play part.

I think that might be why this segment of Acts in one of my commentaries is entitled “the Community of the Uncommon Life.” It is really uncommon to live this way, to hold everything in common and to think of ourselves as bound together, irresolvably, because of a common bond in baptism. It really is uncommon to think that these five ingredients are all we need subsist on. And not just subsist…but live the abundant life.

No, the church is not about helping individuals get by in the world. It is not even about giving us values to succeed in life. The Christian faith is about transforming the world with the power of Christ’s resurrection. If it is about values at all, then it is about values that turn the world on its head, that bring the world in and love it up good, slop it with a generous helping of God’s grace, and send us all back out, hopeful and transfigured.

The church is chicken casserole, brothers and sisters, and the more we “cook” for, the more we break bread with, the more God gathers us out of our individual menus to graze with the flock—you guessed it—the better the news of the resurrection will be.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion - "The Cry of the Whole Congregation" - April 17, 2011

Four voices. Four distinct and unique voices from four people who, as far as we can tell, never knew each other or even came into contact with one another. Yes, the voices are distinct and unique, but each is uttered with an urgency and clarity untarnished for roughly two-thousand years. And, despite their differences, their individual perspectives, all four speak with remarkable similarity, especially given their independence of each other. As it happens, we know their names—at least, the names that got attached to each voice fairly early on—but we know blessed little else about them or their original audiences. The stories they told with their voices took precedence over anything they would tell us about themselves.

Mark, who probably spoke first (or at least got written down first) was most likely Greek, and most likely speaking in or around Rome in the first century to a group of believers who were unfamiliar with Jesus’ Jewish roots. The stories he had heard and assembled about Jesus paint the picture of a servant Savior who is at once swift and forceful in overturning the powers of evil. For Mark, the impact of this Savior’s words is almost overshadowed by the number of miracles and healings he performs.

Then there is Matthew’s voice, which for a long time was thought to belong to one of this Jesus’ original Twelve followers. We figure Matthew was most likely a Jewish Christian who wrote in a locale much closer to where his subject actually lived. Matthew saw Jesus primarily as a teacher—a teacher, moreover, who was skilled in interpreting Jewish law and forming a community of followers. And so Matthew’s voice presents a Jesus who tells more parables, gives clear instruction about forgiveness and church discipline, and likes to stress the moral implications of Jesus’ kingdom.

Luke is the softy of the bunch, choosing to stress Jesus’ concern for the least, the lost, and the little. He’s the one who collects and records Jesus’ parables of the lost coin, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son…and what would Christianity be without those? Luke is the most educated of the voices, most likely a doctor who travelled with the apostle Paul around the Mediterranean for a while, and his sophisticated grammar and style show it.

And then there is John, the outlier. He is the most poetic of all the voices, accomplished in the use of metaphor and irony. Unlike the others, John chooses to tell a few stories in depth rather than hashing out everything he ever heard about the man. For John, Jesus’ signs were of utmost importance. We typically call them miracles, but for John they were signs because they signaled something about God’s glory that was being revealed in Jesus. John wrote for a congregation or a group of congregations who were likely Jewish but who had been ostracized from the religious community because of their claims about Jesus. John often gets a bad rap because people find him the most difficult to understand, but somehow his voice would really be missing if it were lost.

All four had their special emphases to make, their theological points to drive home, their particular perspective. And all of them are telling the truth. Yet something profound happens to these four distinct voices when they get to the part of their story where Jesus enters Jerusalem just before the Passover. Differences in their perspectives begin to fade away and their voices start to unite. All at once, they start telling the same story with some of the same key details. Yes, there are some discrepancies in a few words now and then—signs of their distinct perspectives creep in here and there—and some of them record Jesus’ encounters with the temple authorities more fully than others, but, by and large, the four voices start to tell the same story.

Something happened—something momentous—surrounding this man Jesus from Nazareth as he came from the backwater villages of Galilee into the fevered Passover celebrations of Jerusalem during the time of the Roman army’s oppression. Something was happening—something worth remembering correctly—as he borrowed a room for one last meal with his disciples. Something significant was happening as he faced betrayal and denial from these same disciples and was handed over to his enemies. Something miraculous was happening as he was stripped and hung on the cross and treated like a nobody.

It is as if all four voices know that, regardless of what else they communicate about the man and his ministry, this part containing his last days is the most important. It is the crux of his mission, his identity. This part will define him, more than any of his teachings, miracles, signs, or parables…even the parable of the Prodigal Son. Likewise, all those parables and miracles and teachings must be interpreted in light of what transpires to Jesus in Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, these voices mean to tell us, came in to the city highly regarded by his people as a new king but ended up getting crucified instead after a charade of a trial and laid in a borrowed tomb. And somehow the news articulated by these voices changed the world and the destiny of all creation.

At our high school Bible study this week we put on our theologian hats and took a look at what have come to be called “atonement theories.” Fancy word, I know. Atonement theories are essentially assessments of these events that seek to explain just why Jesus had to die and how his death makes us one with God. In short, who was this Jesus and why did his death matter?

Did Jesus need to die, for example, because someone needed to pay the price of human sin? That is one theory. Or did Jesus die because that is how God needed to conquer evil and darkness once and for all? That is another theory. Or perhaps Jesus died because God needed to give his people an example of how they are to love one another completely; that is, by laying down one’s life for another? The youth looked at Scriptures passages and hymn lyrics and even a Kanye West song that seemed to suggest and support any number of these theories for how Jesus’ death restored us to God.

What we discovered, however, is that there is no one right or wrong theory; they all contain some element of truth and honesty, and the all kind of overlap and blend together at some point. Maybe the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is simply too profound to be wrapped up neatly in a few words, or contained in one voice. What is interesting, though, is that the gospel voices themselves never seem to be too concerned with exactly how Jesus’ death reconciles us with God. They simply get down to the facts of what happened on that fateful week and let the power of the story speak for itself. They do their best in communicating the chain of events that allows us to understand that in the person of Jesus God himself is somehow intersecting with this world in a way no one can fully comprehend. They do their best in lending their voice to a story that is so crucial to creation’s existence and future that even had they been silent, the stones themselves would have found a way to proclaim it.

For even though words to explain it often fail us, we know it is this story of Jesus in Jerusalem that lets us know how completely God loves us. We know that it is this story of Jesus at his Last Supper which compels us to serve our neighbors whether they live here in Crestview or on the cost of Japan. We know it this story of Jesus in Gethsemane that reminds us it is not our will that will eventually have sway over our lives, but rather the will of the God who sends him. We know it is this story of Jesus before Pilate that frees us from the need to justify ourselves before God. We know it is this story of Jesus on the cross that allows us to look even into the tragedies like that of Blacksburg four years ago and speak a word of comfort and promise that God does not forsake his children even in the hour of death. We know it is this story of Jesus in his last days in Jerusalem that somehow wraps up all our shortcomings and presents them to God and offers us, in exchange, a new way of living that is filled with hope.

And so this morning we hear a rendition of those events, and you’ll be asked to lend your voice to the story. The particular version we recite does not belong to any one of those four voices; rather, it is a compilation of all of them together, like they are speaking in harmony. Specifically, note what your voice does as our worship plays out. Pay attention to the particular words that come out of your mouth, how they begin with praise but end with death threats.

And when today’s reading of that story is finished…when the last nail has been pounded through weakened flesh, when the last bystander has left the scene, when the taste of that wine and bread on your tongues has begun to fade, and when, on Sunday, the women hurry to the tomb with their embalming spices, the four ancient (yet modern) voices will want to know…what will we do with ours?

Will we join our voices and our lives with theirs in the urgency of proclaiming these events and how they change the world?

Or will we shut up and be silent and leave the stones to speak in our place?

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.