Sarcastic Lutheran

Red-headed God

There has been a fair amount of conversation at House for All Sinners and Saints recently about the use of inclusive language for God.  Now, in all fairness I should say that I have really no problem with using “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen” in liturgy.  It feels solid and ancient and beautiful. I use “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer” as well, but it kind of clumsily reduces God to a job description.  Having said that, I must admit that I do, however, have a problem with the exclusive use of the male pronoun when speaking of the Almighty.  I have the same problem with the exclusive use of the female pronoun when  speaking of the Almighty.  Here’s why: While we as humans are limited in our ability to understand and speak of God, I think we might do well to admit that how we speak of God impacts how we speak of each other.  In other words, we naturally are going to use anthropomorphized images; it’s almost unavoidable to conceive of God as having human attributes. But there are several dangers with this.  One, we tend to make God in our own image by projecting human attributes like control, vengeance, and power-over onto God and then we worship our projection.  Pete Rollins in his book How (Not) To Speak Of God puts a fine point on this by calling it “conceptual idolatry”. By taking some aspects of being human, blowing them up really big and calling that God we in turn attribute God-like-ness to humans with those same characteristics.  I believe it was Mary Daly who said “If God is male then male is God”.  This is all pretty boiler-plate feminism and not in any way original to me (and honestly I’m kind of a lousy feminist). But here’s what really got me thinking recently – in certain Christian circles prayers so often go like this, “Father God, we just praise you for being our Father.  We just thank you for being such an awesome Father God….”.  So in effect we are attributing to God a human trait (in this case, male-ness). The problem is that we are attributing to God a human characteristic that only half of us share.  So growing up, I basically heard “God is male, but you are not.  But little Jimmy over here is!”  So humans who have the trait “male” are made in the image of God.  Humans who do not have the trait “male” are not.  It’s like if a little blonde child heard prayers like this for their whole lives: “Dear red-headed God, We just want to praise you for being such an awesome red-headed God….”  “Dear able bodied God, Dear North American God, Dear penis-having God, Dear (enter something human that only some of us share here) God”.   It makes you realize why the Hebrew people called God Ha-Shem, meaning – The Name.  Anything else is fraught with danger.    

ps - i know Jesus called God the Creator, "Father" but if you need to leave that in the comments, go ahead.

Sermon on the Sinner Woman

 

Luke chapter 7

36One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table.  37And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment.  38She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.  39Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him — that she is a sinner."  40Jesus spoke up and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher," he replied, "speak."  41A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  42When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?"  43Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly."  44Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  45You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  46You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  47Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."  48Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."  49But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"  50And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

 

“Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks.

Um, the one crying and wiping your feet with her hair?  She’s kind of hard to miss. She is not invited.  She is not male. She is not behaving properly and she is not about to stop.

Luke serves us up a tasty story today.  The ingredients may remind us of the stories in Matthew, Mark and John of a woman who anoints Jesus feet in his final week of life.  But cleanse your palate of those stories.  This one in Luke, set near the beginning of Jesus ministry has a very distinct flavor.

It reminded me of our Easter vigil in 2009.  It was our first big event and I was nervous.  I wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable. I wanted everything to go well and knowing there were going to be a lot of visitors I wanted us to look good.  Then HE came in. Homeless, stinking of liquor and murmmering under his breath. He was not invited.  He was not sober. He was not acting properly and he was not about to leave.  The hope of everyone being comfortable and us looking good went out the door when it opened to let him in.  And when I say he was not about to leave trust me on that.  He stayed.  He stayed through the readings and the litany and prayers and baptism.  And then he stayed through the post-vigil dance party.  At one point while our uninvited guest was actually teaching Judah some moves on the dance floor, Andie comes up to me and says “O my gosh.  Do you think maybe that’s Jesus?”  To which I replied, “yeah.  I’m pretty sure”.  Then when the dance party ended Jesus stayed to help clean up.  We loaded him up with the left over crackers and bite size brownies and said farewell. We having been changed by an uninvited guest who loved much.

Do you see this man? Jesus asks us.  I’m not sure, because sometimes our ability to really see others is hindered by our need for them to reflect something about ourselves.  As though we don’t really see them as much as we see ourselves in relation to them.

In our Gospel reading for today, Simon the Pharisee, an upright religious man, has Jesus the prophet over for dinner. Perhaps Simon was wondering how Jesus might commend him for his religious observance.  Perhaps he was preoccupied with how he was being perceived by his guests…with how this dinner party was reflecting on him  …when SHE shows up.   With her bangles and hair and smelling like oil.   As though she has no shame whatsoever. As though she has completely forgotten what category of woman she is, she just barges in.

So Simon of the category “Pharasee” takes one look at this woman of the category “sinner” and thinks that Jesus must not be of the category “prophet” or else as the text says,  Jesus would know who  what kind…what category of woman is she.

 Of course Simon’s absolute certainty about this particular woman’s sin begs the question “how DID Simon know what KIND of sinner she was?” Perhaps he has one hand extended to her in accusation the other hand extended in payment for services rendered. 

It’s like if we had a dinner party for our version of Jesus wondering how he might commend us in our coolness and creativity and liberalness we sit in our jeans and ironic t shirts listening to Sigur Ros and eating sushi with Jesus.  When SHE walks in.  And ruins everything. SHE is not young.  SHE is not cool.  SHE is not behaving properly and SHE is not going to stop.  Where will our progressive emerging church reputation be with the likes of this business woman hanging out here. With her Armani suit and hermes scarf and oil on her hands.  As though she has no shame. As though she’s forgotten that she is of the category “BP executive” she cries at the feet of Jesus.  And we have one hand extended to condemn the BP executive, while the other reaches again for artificially low priced unleaded.  It’s what we do.

         The important thing about knowing who the identified problem in a family or church or community is, knowing who the so-called “real” sinner is is that it conveniently keeps the heat off of us. Being clear about the taxonomy of sin is quite useful.  It helps us know what Kind of people we are.  It helps us know what kind of people they are while helping us determine our place in the spiritual meritocracy. But it’s  hard to pull that off  when people like Homeless Jesus Of The Dance Party show up and won’t stay in the category,  “those less fortunate than ourselves” but instead insists on teaching us to dance.

It’s exhausting. Maintaining the categories of a spiritual meritocracy.  Yet we use categories, however damaging they may be, to finally understand ourselves.  We have internalized the very things that demean us, but somehow we cannot escape their siren song.  We go back to them for comfort and assurance of who we are. We constantly seek the approval of categories who will never yield the kind of forgiveness and wholeness that we seek. Some categories we occupy are flimsy and can easily be escaped with time, distance, or  a good bottle of Clairol. Nobody is forever sentenced to being seen as a C student in High School.  But some categories are like enforced steel.  Once you’re a felon or the winner of American Idol, or the guy who holds up the John 3:16 sign at football games  you’re always that person to everyone you meet, and finally to yourself.  Other categories are less visible. They are like little shrimp nets in our souls and were usually placed there when we were young. You can’t see them from the outside. They come from words like “you’re not straight enough for the church, you’re not wealthy enough to attract a partner, you’re not hip enough, smart enough, pius enough, thin enough or enough enough.   These are the categories we spend our whole lives  attempting through dieting, workaholism, sleeping around, drinking too much and therapy to prove wrong or prove right.  Either way.  It’s still bondage. 

 Do you see this woman? Jesus asks.  The woman of Simon’s dinner party who showed much love as the uninvited guest…her whole existence and identity is bound in a reinforced steel category and yet she so clearly has escaped.  TO behave with such bare and embarrassing physicality – to show such an elicit lack of restraint by covering Jesus’ feet with your tears and hair and kisses is to be nothing less than a free person.  And free people are what the Gospel creates. So to say she is shameless is exactly right.  Her shame given by others and reinforced by herself is gone …replaced by what is finally the only real category in the presence of Christ: that of forgiven, beloved, named and claimed child of the Most High God.

Because when we encounter Jesus, categories tend to be rendered useless.  Instead Jesus says come to me you who are heavy laden with sin and shame and the bondage of categorizing and being categorized and I will give you rest.  For only in the wideness of God’s mercy can we finally stop spiritually holding in our stomachs.  Here we exhale with all the other forgiven sinners and broken saints and rest in the Grace of a God who claims us without category. Do you see yourself in that?

 

Sermon on the Widow of Nain

    

Luke 7

11Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.  12As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town.  13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep."  14Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!"  15The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.  16Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"  17This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

As awkward as this feels, I need to admit that a friend of mine kinda wrote this sermon.  Some of you know that Hans Peterson, a good friend of mine died 2 months ago in a work related accident. Hans was this compact little distance runner with white blond hair and a smile so bright that even the very best clichés couldn’t describe it.  I had coffee with Hans while I was in San Francisco 2 weeks before his death and part of me still can’t believe he’s gone. And a really big part of me doesn’t understand why  he’s gone.

But this past Monday night I dreamed of Hans.  It was one of those dreams so real it takes awhile after you wake up to realize it was a dream.  We were just sitting around chatting like normal when all of the sudden I remembered he had died.  I walked up to him, kissed his scruffy blond cheek and said “Sweetie, I’m so sorry you’re dead.” To which Hans simply looked me in the eyes and replied “It’s ok.  I lost myself in a collision with God’s grace.”  Then I woke up.

 

It’s ok that I’m dead because I lost myself in a collision with God’s grace. I have no idea what that means.  But I think it’s beautiful and maybe true.  So it feels like Hans wrote this sermon on the Widow from Nain. 

 

We only hear of her in Luke’s gospel, this Widow of Nain.  She is a nobody from a nowhere. What we know is that her husband has died.  What we know is that she has but one son and now he too is dead.  What we know is that without husband or son she has no real place in society.  Without a man to define and defend her she is now barely visible.  And it is from this nobody status in the midst of her grief for her dead son that she is joined by the townspeople in a funeral procession.

Of course the entirety of the Gospels is about this Jesus of Nazareth.  What we know is that he was born of an unwed virgin.   He is a nobody from nowhere.  What we know is that he has left his mother and her guardian.  He has left his home and siblings  and has no real place in society.  It is from this status of outsider that he has gone about the country side healing the sick, raising the dead and always touching things he shouldn’t in blatant disregard for biblical teachings .  And he is joined everywhere he goes by the crowds and hangers on in a march of mercy. This day is no different. 

 

 For it is on this day that the childless widow of Nain is  joined by a swarming crowd of townspeople in a funeral march as they move toward the city gate - her dead son carried on a plank of wood.  Walking with the crowd I imagine her looking up to heaven and wondering why has God abandoned me?  Where now is my God? Knowing that there is no one left to protect and provide for her I imagine her questioning why this had to happen.  From her isolation in the midst of the throng she searches the heavens for answers to why God has abandoned her. Yet the crowd keeps moving.

Meanwhile coming toward her,  a crowd following  Jesus makes their way closer and closer to the same city Gate.  They just keep following this God-man who heals on the Sabbath, insists we should love our enemies and then backs that ridiculous claim up by raising a Roman Centurion’s servant from the dead.  Like flash mob of grace this great multitude following Jesus move from outside the town toward inside the town while at the same time a great multitude of the funeral procession move from inside the town to outside the town. Like an epic battle scene, two great forces, two formidable armies move Braveheart style toward one another.

I wonder if the crowd following Jesus that day knew they were about to collide with a death march?  I know that we ourselves make such brave attempts in our death-denying culture to avoid the inevitability of death.  As though we can all live forever with the right combination of positive thinking, herbs, diet, exercise and elective surgery.  Then when death happens we wonder, like the Widow of Nain, where is our God now?

But here’s the thing:  as she walked with the multitudes in a march of death searching the heavens for answers, she suddenly walked smack into God in the flesh. Death and Grace collided.

And at the moment of impact Jesus sees her.  He sees this husbandless childless widow and the text says he has compassion on her - only that’s an unnecessarily polite translation of a Greek word which means something closer to “his guts churned for her”.  He looked upon this woman who has lost everything and his reaction was intestinal in nature.

And at this same moment of impact the widow does not receive answers to her questions.  But she receives God’s own self. We too might have a lot of questions in our grief and isolation and despair but the faith is not where we find answers to questions.  The Christian faith is where we have a collision with God who insists on being in the places we are sure are God-forsaken.  Andrew Root says that “Christianity is faith in a God who enters death”

See, Jesus can never seem to just keep a safe distance from death and impurity. The funeral procession and the march of grace collide, he sees the widow, his guts churn for her then he totally ignores the rules in the Bible and reaches out and touches the wooden plank holding the dead body of her only son.  Jesus defiles himself by touching death.  Now ritually impure, Jesus hands the young man back to his mother foreshadowing when he will give his own mother a new son from the cross.  So in this collision, rather that Jesus fighting death, which death would expect, he simply touches it.  Like on the cross, Jesus enters death as though to say “I will even be found here… death will not keep me from you.  I will not stand above this earth indifferent to your despair and dying.  I will reach out and touch death itself.”

So as we might either deny our mortality or despair in the inevitability of it, Jesus is being present in it – having been the one to take on death mano y mano. And he continues to pull life out of death in a gut-churning compassion for the world.

         So while people keep dying and life keeps happening and questions keep forming, maybe the church, Christ’s body on Earth, need not pawn ourselves off as some kind of answer dispensary when what people really need is God.  But as Christ’s body may our guts churn for those who suffer and may we extend our own hands to touch what the world calls impure for the sake of compassion.  And may our outstretched hands point to nothing but the light that shines in the darkness - a God who comes to us in cradle and cross touching death until it too rises to new life.  Because God brings more life than answers.

Holy Trinity Sermon 2010

Proverbs 8

Does not wisdom call,
    and does not understanding raise her voice?
  2On the heights, beside the way,
    at the crossroads she takes her stand;
  3beside the gates in front of the town,
    at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
  4"To you, O people, I call,
    and my cry is to all that live.
  22The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
    the first of his acts of long ago.
  23Ages ago I was set up,
    at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
  24When there were no depths I was brought forth,
    when there were no springs abounding with water.
  25Before the mountains had been shaped,
    before the hills, I was brought forth —
  26when he had not yet made earth and fields,
    or the world's first bits of soil.
  27When he established the heavens, I was there,
    when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
  28when he made firm the skies above,
    when he established the fountains of the deep,
  29when he assigned to the sea its limit,
    so that the waters might not transgress his command,
    when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
  30then I was beside him, like a master worker;
    and I was daily his delight,
    rejoicing before him always,
  31rejoicing in his inhabited world
    and delighting in the human race.

Happy Holy Trinity Sunday…or as I like to call it: Unexplainable Church Doctrine Sunday.  This week I began to realize that it’s kind of perfect that Holy Trinity Sunday fall right after Pentecost.  Because the early followers of Jesus had just experienced the absolute whirlwind of his ministry on earth.  And after the dust and confetti of Pentecost had settled to the ground and after the tongues of fire had been extinguished they had to have looked at each other and said “um…what just happened?” After years of following this Jesus of Nazareth they had a few questions … because they had seen the seemingly impossible with their own eyes: paralyzed men walking strong, dead little girls sitting up and having a snack. At the time they were simply caught up in the sweeping a-rationality of it all. And when it finally settled down a little I think they started to do a bit of what we like to call “theology”. 

You are all theologians you know.  If you have asked questions about God then you are a theologian.  We like in the church to try and confine theology to seminary class rooms…taught by approved people and to approved people but I’m here to tell you that if you have spoken of God, then you are a theologian.  Congratulations.  But don’t get too excited you know,  it doesn’t pay well. 

Anyhow, the poor disciples had no time while it was happening to try and makes sense of it all but I’m pretty sure that they started asking some difficult questions not long after Pentecost.

And the question that haunted the disciples wasn’t the obvious one.  The question that haunted them wasn’t “Was Jesus such a good guy that he was like God?”  The question that cooked their noodle was “Could it be that God is like Jesus”  Because I suspect that the concept they had of a wrathful angry God didn’t exactly mesh up with how they experienced Jesus – who was, you know…an actual human being.  They wondered what does it mean that God refused to be confined to some remote heaven … refused to just politely stay seated on a throne of harsh judgment removed from the distastefulness of humanity - but instead came down and became incarnate as a baby born from a human woman.

And so the early church did the only thing they could do: they searched their scriptures for help with how they might understand such a mystery.  They only thought they understood God.  But then this Jesus thing happened which changes everything. Yet this is what the people of God have always done: with questions in hand we search the scriptures for how to make sense of all of it.  We, like our 1^st century brothers and sisters read the Bible and do theology together.

 

This week I read the Lady Wisdom text from Proverbs to Jim who, as many of you know, grew up in a very conservative evangelical context. I read it to him and he was scandalized.  Saying “Whoa.  Wisdom as a woman who was the first of God’s creation?” he said “Why didn’t I ever know that was in the Bible?” 

Probably because the crazy thing about Sophia (the Greek word for wisdom) the crazy and beautiful thing is that to a lot of readers over the last couple thousand years the figure of Sofia in these passages is actually Jesus. (although in all fairness some think that Sophia is the Holy Spirit while to many she remains something embarrassing that we just try and pretend isn’t really in the Bible) But some believe the Wisdom of God that is personified as the perfect woman is also the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Word of God made fully human and know to us as Jesus of Nazareth.

I totally understand why some people don’t like this idea as it’s mixing up the linen and the wool and the pork and the milk and the lady-parts and the man-parts and generally just messing with our heads but Jesus confused our precious categories from day one so in a way it’s kinda perfect. You see, while Jim and maybe some of you had never heard of Sophia from Proverbs it’s certain that the writer of John’s gospel did know it and knew it well. Listen again to proverbs and think of those first disciples reading this text with questions in hand searching to understand what they had experienced.

         Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?

⁵

 

The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.  Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.  Then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world

and delighting in the human race.

         Delighting in the human race.  Not wrathfully condemning the human race…loving them.  So then what does it say about the human race if Sophia dwelt with God and God said “go. Go and make your dwelling with the people in whom you rejoice”

         It was actually decades after that first Pentecost that the followers of Jesus began to write things down.  Having searched their scriptures with questions in their hands trying to make sense of the Christ event they finally wrote down what they learned. Here’s how John begins to tell the story see if you don’t hear Sophia.

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

These early followers knew that if Jesus was man and also God that this changed everything so together they searched their scriptures together. And all the while there was within their hearts this driving Spirit saying, “Keep going! The God you’ve always longed for is the God you have! The God who looks like Jesus is God the Father”

All of a sudden the things that the disciples had always known about God just didn’t quite fit. These people soon theologized asking  What does it mean that God would have a body? These weren’t abstract theoretical question which don’t have anything to do with real lives.  These questions about Jesus were also questions about what it means to be human. Because if like us salty tears would come out of the eyes of God…if God’s skin could also sunburn, if also God could throw God’s head back and laugh inappropriately loudly? If God became flesh then what does that say about my flesh? If God could have a human body then maybe we should not hate our own bodies . Maybe if God had a body then we should begin to see all human bodies as sacred.

 

If Jesus ate with roust-abouts and prostitutes and with the bureaucrats no one liked and he seemed completely unworried about how such unbounderied love and acceptance might look to the respectable folk. …If this Wisdom of God made flesh told sacred stories about mundane things like dirt, and if the Jesus always insisted on touching impure people then what does that say about bureaucrats and lepers and dirt and human women and prostitutes and all the other things we assumed God just as soon stayed far away from?

These are the questions I hope we have in hand as we search our scriptures to make sense of this world which is held in the love of a Triune God.  Because as we do this work of theology and reading the Bible together, we do so while there is within our hearts this driving Spirit saying, “Keep going! The God you’ve always longed for is the God you have! The God who looks like Jesus is God the Father.”  And yes, that changes everything.