Sarcastic Lutheran

Sermon for Lent 5b

Jeremiah 31

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John 12

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ...

... ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. ³

I am a sucker for old school sailor tattoos.  Anchors on the forearm.  Diving Swallows on the chest.  A big heart with like, Sheila scrolled across it.  Those always make you cringe don’t they?  Yeah, I get that you loved Sheila at the time, but…what about when your leave is over?  What about the next port of call when you love…. Betty?  Humans are fickle after all.  At least that’s the story get in Jeremiah.  God sets up a covenant with God’s people that involves them being faithful to God and God being faithful to them and well, it’s  a long story but let’s just say that it didn’t really work out that way.  Basically they wrote “Yhwy” on their arm and kept their end of the deal for like, 20 minutes until they were like “oh somthin sparkly” and went after other Gods.  Soon Baal’s name covered YHWY’s.  And lest we judge them too harshly, let me remind us that we all have our somethin’ sparkly distracting us from God.
So anyway, the God of Jeremiah is frankly fed up with how the whole quid pro quo of the original covenant has panned out.  It ends up that folks can’t manage to teach God’s law to each other much less keep that law and be faithful to their God.  So in Jeremiah God says fine…
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. 
I imagine those who heard this the first time were all like, and?  What do we have to do?  When’s the other shoe gonna drop and God’s like, yeah.  there is no other shoe.  I’ve got you covered.  But where does that leave me and my choices?  The God of Jeremiah isn’t waiting for God’s people to decide that God will be God for them.  The God of Jeremiah isn’t loitering outside the doors of our hearts waiting till we invite Jesus in.  God writes God’s word on our heart.  It’s like a divine tattoo.  And it’s by God’s initiative, not ours. You don’t choose it or invite it.  God has made that choice for you.       ……..Which can be kind of uncomfortable.  For several reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that my heart is a bit of a dubious place for God.  Like,  I wish God would call before coming over so I could pick up the place first.  You know? Get my heart all nice and cleaned up for Jesus?  Cause it’s kind of a mess in there.  Sometimes my heart is full of love but it feels like love…envy…greed…resentment…are ALL in there….like they have some sort of time share arrangement or something.
 But still. God writes God’s word in conflicted, messy human hearts saying I am yours…you are mine.  From the least to the greatest…which happens to be problem #2.  Couldn’t God be a bit more discerning? I mean I would be if I were God.  I’d enter only the cleaned up hearts of the greatest leaving those filthy hearts of the least to fend for themselves.  The thing is….God isn’t like that.  It’s like in the reading from John … Jesus says, When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself.  It is this indiscriminate Christ who God writes on our hearts.
It is Christ the man of sorrows, Christ the one who says follow me.   Christ, friend of sinners and threat to the powers that be.  He is indelibly scrolled upon our inmost being. This is to have our creator make a claim on us which is foundational. It is the claim of a God who will go to extraordinary lengths to say I am yours and you are mine.  God, so desperate to reach us, came in the form of a servant to write God’s word in the hearts of those who would journey to the cross.
This is different than me inviting Jesus into my heart.  Because here I have no choice.  It’s felt that way.  Especially when I came back to the church after a 10 year…furlough.  I had no choice.  There was a time when I felt like if I could be something other than Christian I would….but see I can’t get away from him, it feels as though Jesus keeps drawing me to himself – which is beautiful but isn’t always pleasant. Several of you are the same way.  I’ve heard your stories.  One of you who was raised Unitarian and had a crisis of faith last year.  When we met for coffee you described it to me like this: “I think I believe in Jesus”.  That was your faith crisis.
Another of you searched every other spiritual path before realizing that Jesus was there like hiding under your bed the whole time.  See….sometimes Jesus just hunts your ass down and there’s nothing you can do about it.  He is written in your hearts. Some of you have been deeply wounded by the church.  You have every reason in the world to stay away and frankly no one would blame you.  But Jesus foils our plans of independence.  Here you are – the gospel boldly written in you and you walk this road to the cross like Jesus has you in a tractor beam. This is Jesus Lifted up drawing us all to him again and again.
See, Jesus lifted up doesn’t draw all nice people to himself.  He doesn’t draw all people with pure hearts to himself. In our reading from John today these Greeks come and say: We want to see Jesus. These outsiders.  Pagans.  Non-believers.  In all their  un-circumcized glory walk up to the very Jewish Phillip and say “Well, we want to see Jesus too”   It’s like there has been a small cyclone circling around Jesus and now it’s getting bigger…even pulling in the Greeks. And where is this whole “all people” thing gonna end? A more discerning God would have the sense to limit the guest list a bit.
But it gets better because in the Greek it’s not really even that he will draw all people to himself.  It’s all things.  See, Jesus in his true glory, that is, Christ crucified will draw all Things to himself. I imagine it being like the tornado scene in Wizard of Oz – everything swirling around her house – as in everything – an old cow, miss gulch on her bicycle….pure hearts and poluted ones…from the least to the greatest.  God doesn’t wait for our hearts to be pure to write Christ in them.  And on the cross to which we have been journeying during Lent, Christ doesn’t draw all nice things to himself.  He draws all things to himself.  In the glory of his innocent death He says “It’s mine now.  You don’t get to choose because in this death I draw all things to myself: Magdalen and Barabas, 501c3’s and 401k’s, Ted Haggart and Mother Teresa, organic kale and cheese whiz”  That’s Jesus for you ..embarrassingly indiscriminate drawing all things to himself.  Even us.

Sermon from Lent 3b

Lectionary texts:
The Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:10-17
Jesus "cleansing" the temple by overturning the tables of the money changers(John 2:13-22)
and this little gem from Paul (1 Corinth 1:18-31)

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. ²⁶Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no one might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

My friend Ryan from Church of the Beloved reminded me this week that what passes for most sermons we hear is the following formula
#1) what is the problem
#2) what you can do about it.

This is often called “Christian Moralism” or sometime “Biblical Teaching” or if you are a cool emerging church person then it’s called “Living in the Way of Jesus”   But the desire for me-based solutions is not exactly limited to church folk.  Sometimes when I first meet new people and they find out that I’m a pastor they say “I’m not into organized religion.  I just hope that being a good person is enough”.   I’m like,  “yeah, it’s not”.  But I can see where they are coming from - if you obey the 10 Commandments then you are covered, right? Of course that would make you the first person to pull it off - basically our record as a species is like 125 Billion and – 0 but hey, knock yourself out.  And we do.  We try really really hard.  Why?  Because when sinners hear the law – what sounds like demands from God, we have exactly 2 choices.  Pride.  Or Despair.

Pride in this realm is the empty comfort of being right.  On one end of things Pride under the law looks like a focus on purity and personal morality and upholding so-called family values.  It is approaching the word of God as a rule book and spiritual self-improvement policy. On the other hand pride under the law can be political correctness and the tyranny of being more anti-oppresion and more inclusive and more multi-cultural than anyone else.  It is to look at the word of god as nothing more than a public policy manual with nothing to say to me as a sinner.

 The other option of course, if we do not look at the demands of God with self-congratulations, is to look on them with despair. Jesus helped to up the ante here for those of us who think “just being a good person is enough” To those who feel self-satisfied that out of virtue they do not commit adultery (check)  he says anyone who has lust in their heart has committed adultery.  (oh.  Maybe un-check) To those who are prideful that out of our virtue we give to charity (check) Jesus says oh yeah, sell all you have and give it to the poor (ok, maybe un-check).  It can feel like a set up. Looking at how impossible it is to really fulfill God’s demands leaves us with a tortured conscience.  I wonder if moving from vice to virtue isn’t a really a lousy salvation plan namely because it’s not actually possible to pull it off. The thing is, me-based solutions don’t look very hopeful.

So if we are all hoping that “being a good person is enough” then now is as good time as any…. to see that it’s not. We’d prefer to have it be about laws that we can cling to as a plan for salvation or a way to know who is in and who is out, but in reality it’s not like that.  Paul reminds us in his letter to the Corinthians that ours is a God who chose what is foolish the world to shame the wise.  Our wisdom says that religion, when properly practiced should get us something. Our wisdom says that the solution should be a market system for making our way to God.  But that’s not it.  And the solution also isn’t to just try harder.  If trying harder worked some of us in this room would have arrived. Although honestly several of you would have no hope whatsoever. 

Well, there is a solution but there is good news and bad news about that.  The bad news is that it’s not a me-based solution.  The good news?  It’s not a me-based solution.  Even still,  my wisdom holds out for a me-based solution that I can either boast about or despair in.  But the solution isn’t me-shaped.  It’s cruciform.  This cruciform solution doesn’t earn us glory and power and status.  It actually levels our pride and inverts our sense of spiritual accomplishment.

The solution is Christ. See, when I think that my efforts toward fulfilling God’s demands or being virtuous or trying harder is what will earn my salvation then this means that I no longer really need Christ.  He is for all intents and purposes left idleing in his van on the corner.   Virtuous self-made market system rule followers just don’t end up having a great need for the cross.  Maybe because at the cross Jesus messes with all our ideas about rules and worthiness and power; here we see a messiah who is foolish enough to allow himself to be killed and not even in a neat or noble way.  The solution is for God to be made flesh and walk among us, God’s own beloved sinners. Because this changes everything.   See, Jesus isn’t a new Moses bringing a better law we’ll never live up to.  Jesus isn’t just sitting in heaven waiting to see if we can pull off the impossible and then condemning us for our inevitable failure.  Jesus subverts the entire paradigm.  Jesus actually IS our righteousness. This righteousness we have is not our own, but that of a Merciful and gracious God who comes to us in vulnerability and suffering. And the thing is….with the righteousness of Christ there is no extra credit to be obtained.

 So we offer no me-based solutions here.  Not if we preach Christ and him crucified.  Then you know what we have to offer?  Divine foolishness.  But to the weak and the cynical and the socially awkward and the gays and those injured by religion and the parentless and the unemployed and the alcoholics Christ crucified – the foolishness of God – is life in a way that our own wisdom can never be.  Only a God who intimately knows such pain and sorrow can take on all our crap at the cross and exchange it for Christ’s own tender blessings. To preach the foolishness of Christ crucified is to say ok, we can all stop clamoring our way to God.  We can all stop bringing our petty righteousness to God in some sort of market system or as Peggy preached last week, some sort of Spiritual pawn shop.  When we think we are buying our way to God through our own virtue, then we might out of the corner of our eye see Jesus making that whip out of cords.  Jesus upturns our tables of personal righteousness.  And dumps out the jars filled with coins of our virtue with which to trade for our own salvation.

A professor of mine at Luther seminary says that this whole thing isn’t about moving from vice to virtue.  We actually move from virtue to Christ.  We can stop all of it because in Christ God has come to us.  The direction is decidedly from God to us, not from us to God.  So it ends up that it actually is good news that “just being a good person” is not enough.  Because the cross is enough and perhaps we should remind each other of that whenever we slip in to pride or despair.  We should remind each other that you do stand in righteousness before your God, not due to your virtue, but due to the cross. Only a God who slips into skin taking on flesh in all it’s broken glory – only this God of foolish love who dies a scandalous death without even lifting a finger to condemn the enemy – only this God can love you where you are.  Right now.  Because in the world according to God that’s how things work.   And it’s beautifully, bafflingly foolish.
Amen.

these last days of Lent

ring the bells that still can ring

forget your perfect offering

there's a crack in everything

that's how the light gets in

-Leonard Cohen

Urban Servant Corps, Carlos Vierra and Lent

I just spent the weekend on a retreat with The Urban Servant Corps in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The USC has been described as "The Real World" for do-gooders. The volunteers sign on to live in intentional community for one year while doing social justice and advocacy work at non-profits (homeless shelters, outreach to sex workers, English as a Second Language clinics, Legal aid etc..); in solidarity with their clients they also live in voluntary poverty for the year. Their expenses are covered and they get $75 a month for a stipend. For the most part these are young people who have just finished college. I fell in love with these guys. I was there to talk about emerging church and to learn from them about their experiences. The weekend was spent at a Lutheran Church and everyone just slept on the floor or in pews.
I have an old friend who lives in Santa Fe who allowed me to stay in the guest house of her father's property which she recently inherited. It ends up that this place is pretty famous. It's called The Carlos Vierra House, named after the artist who designed and built the house from 1918-1920 as a demonstration of a new style which Santa Fe is now famous for. It is for sale for $3.2 million dollars in case any of my readers are looking for a cozy little property in the American Southwest. I also got to see my friend's house outside of town which she is going to great expense to create as sort of a modern design opus (her home includes an adjoining chapel).
I'm still trying to process the distance between the two experiences of voluntary poverty and voluntary wealth, especially in light of Lent and my desire to look at my own habits around spending money. I'm not purchasing new personal possessions during Lent and am giving away one possession per day. Before you start thinking that I'm too spiritually healthy just know two things: first, this has been harder than I anticipated which means that I buy stuff for myself a hell of a lot more than I realized going into this deal and second, that I have failed. Not hugely failed, but failed nonetheless. I bought this Mary Magdalene magnet that says "Patron Saint of Fallen Women", and an icon of the Trinity. These purchases were justified as business related expenses. How funny is that? I guess what I'm getting to is that I cannot feel smug about tithing or living simply because when it comes down to it, I love stuff as much as the next gal. Just because I give away more than 10% of my income doesn't mean that I then am justified in buying whatever I want with the rest, moreover it doesn't give me permission to judge how others spend their money. Perhaps I could get away with the latter if I lived self-sacrificially, but in reality I don't.
I'm trying to remove the language of justification from my vocabulary. Why did I buy a 30 gig iPod last year with my birthday money (plus $80)? Because I deserve it? Because I tithed first and the rest is mine? Because I'd been wanting one for so long and since I waited it's justified? No. I bought it because I wanted it and I was indulging myself, pure and simple. Was it wrong to do so? Maybe not, but it sure as hell wasn't a virtue, which the previous justifications try and make it out to be. I guess I'm learning this Lent that I want to not only be more honest about why I spend money on myself but to also just do a lot less of it., this would mirror my values more. I never feel empty or regretful after giving money away, but I do after wasting it on stupid stuff, it's kind of too bad that I really love the stupid stuff! I want to be more like my sister who seeks to live extremely frugally so that she can be extravagantly generous. Gimme some of that!

Dear God,
Forgive me when I think that I deserve the abundance of wealth in my life. (we both know that If I did get what I deserve I'd be pretty screwed) Help my to not mask indulgence as virtue. When I am tempted to judge the wealthy gently remind me that to almost every other person on the planet I am the wealthy.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

What I'm giving up for Lent

It's that time of year again. I love Ash Wednesday, it's my favorite worship service of the year...Easter vigil being a close 2nd. Walking around the world with ashes on my forehead makes me feel like I've just returned from another place and time and am walking through this life with an other-life orientation, not in the "I can suffer through this world because I'll have mansions and crowns and streets of gold in heaven" type of way, but in an up-side-down now and not yet eschatological way.

For each of the 40 days of Lent (and Sundays) I will strive to rid myself of one personal possession, and to not buy anything other than food and gas. The point is is that I love stuff, especially of the clothes, shoes, jewelry and yarn variety and I have WAY too much of it. Maybe by ridding myself of 40+ items I can create a space to breath deeper.

Dear God,
Help me look to you during these forty days and not to the false security of stuff. Forgive me for my inordinate love of things. Forgive me for my hypocritical judgments of other people's materialism and excess; when the truth is that if I had the kind of money they did I would likely buy just as much stuff. Save me from the pride of less and the pride of more.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN