Sarcastic Lutheran

Good Dirt. Bad Dirt. House's liturgy for the Parable of the Sower

Sunday House's liturgy was based on the lectionary readings of Isaiah 55: 1-13 and Matthew 13:1-9 and 18-23.

Here's my sermon:

It’s been a difficult few weeks for us at House talking about this parable.  We almost called this service: Good dirt bad dirt a liturgy based  on a parable we don’t like.  It just seems so…unfair. Like what about that part “when anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches it away”.  Which sounds like its somehow our fault for not understanding. 
 For those of us raised in super duper religious homes, the question of what kind of soil we are still looms in our spiritual imaginations…calling out for us to give the obvious Sunday School answer like Rod and Todd Flanders:  “I’m good soil”.  Even if we don’t understand what “I’m good soil” means or we think we know what it means and we suspect that we might be the rocky kind or at least prone to thorns, we answer “good soil…we’re definitely the good kind” all the while harboring the notion that God seems to judge our soil without having the decency to give us the ability to really decide what kind of soil we’re going to be .  If soil is stuck with what it is: rocky, thorny, good, whatever -- then why can’t God’s word change it into what it should be?  It’s like an unfunded spiritual mandate.    Even if I start to think that maybe God’s word has born fruit in me I’m then being prideful and certainly God’s word can’t do a whole lot in prideful soil.  So even if we are good soil we can’t say that or else by doing so we become the bad soil so when asked “what kind of soil are you?” I really just want to hide under the covers, or maybe convert to a religion a little less crazy, like branch davidianism.  All that is to say, we decided that we don’t like this lousy parable of the soil.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote once that original sin is choosing the knowledge of good and evil over the knowledge of God.  What we want is what the disciples wanted – the knowledge of good and evil.  We want to be judgers of soil for ourselves and others.  Like in the passage that immediately follows this gospel text we want to be able to above all else know for sure what is weed and what is wheat rather than know that God is merciful and just, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  And because of this,  we heard this reading today as the parable of the soil.

Until, that is, we realized that this isn’t actually the parable of the soil at all.  It’s the parable of the Sower.  Shockingly this parable isn’t about me after all.  Here, instead of a standard by which we must judge our worthiness to receive God’s word we are offered a lush image of how God extravagantly, wastefully, wantonly sows the Word of the Kingdom.  Isaiah reminds us that God’s Word does not return empty but fulfills its purpose.  So maybe the fact that the evil one snatches the seed from those who don’t understand it is a good thing considering the role of birds in the whole process of reseeding.  They might snatch up seed but only to replant it somewhere else now perfectly encapsulated in it’s own fertilizer. 
Again and again in the midst of a thorny and rocky and good world, God sows the life-giving Word.  All we do is show up.  We hear the story again and again as it works in us, interprets us,  and despite ourselves even bears fruit and yields a hundred fold not because we’ve managed to make ourselves good soil through piety and being really really good.  No.  That would be the parable of the soil.  God’s Word lavishly scattered around us bears fruit because God’s ways are not our ways and God’s word does what it intends without even the slightest amount of soil management on our part because this is the parable of the Sower.

In my tradition, the Word – God’s Word - is first and foremost the Christ principle – the logos- God’s own self made flesh – Emmanual, God-with-us-and-for-us  - The Word, as one of my favorite theologians says- is the God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. This is the Word to whom the scriptures bear witness.  The one who always comes to us again and again.  This God who pursues you beyond time and beyond rock and beyond soil and angst and confusion and pride.  This pursuing God, while we seek only knowledge of good soil and bad soil, in the cross this God proclaims, arms wide to the suffering of this beautiful creation, this is who I am.   Making all things new.  Making all things new.  Extravagantly sowing Christ in with and under all things, even the things we least suspect: rock, thorn, weed – us, them, you, me, good, bad….God’s inverted first shall be last, last shall be first kingdom defies our attempts to domesticate the agency of God’s Word. This is the God spoken of in Isaiah.  A God who establishes an inverted economy of free wine and milk.  A God who is continually redeeming the world and even us. God’s word does not return empty, but comes to earth enfleshed in the Christ dies and returns, scattered and sown for the good of the world endlessly pursuing you even in the midst of all the forces that would defy it. 

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  For the interactive piece, we had set the chairs in a semi circle around a green cloth on which sat an empty, very large bowl in the middle - surrounded on 4 sides by somewhat smaller bowls filled with -1.  "soil" 2. "seed" 3. "thorn" and 4. "rock" Around the whole circle sat cushions.  Following the sermon ambient techno played while people were encouraged to sit and feel each of these things in their hands and reflect on what they represent in their lives, after which they were to toss what was in their hands into the large bowl at the center.  All of the soil, rock, thorn and seed then ended up together in the large center bowl.  This then housed the candles for our the prayers of the people which followed.

Matthew 10 sermon

Sermon from the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, year A

Exodus 19:2-8

  ...Indeed, the whole earth is mine, ⁶but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

Romans 5:1-11

5Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. ....

Matthew 9:35 - 10:23

³⁵Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

10Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, ⁶but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons....

Jesus looked out over the crowds – the rabble, the huddled masses, the sheep with only wolves to care for them – sheep left to be flayed - and he had compassion for them.  Only in the Greek the word is a bit more like his gutts churned for them.  It is to these crowds of the helpless and harassed that he proclaims the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
This good news that the reign of God is here and now was good news indeed for those suffering under the oppression of being shepherded by wolves.  The wolves of foreign occupation along with a priesthood in bed with the ruling aristocracy and imperial forces. Jesus cast out the demons of foreign occupation.  Rome occupied their land and demons occupied their minds.  I wonder how related these two things were?  Like cancer did the Roman occupation, and other forces which separated them from their child-of-god selves and from each other – did these forces act like invasive cells, gathering up bits of the host organism making them sick…did these masses toward whom Jesus felt such gutt wrenching compassion, had they internalized false ideas of who they were?  It is to these harassed and helpless that Christ tells the good news of the Reign of  -not Rome - and not the elite - but the reign of God,  The reign of God which casts out false identity from foreign occupation. 

But there are so many of these harassed and helpless.  There are so many of the poor to whom good news must come, there are so many of the captive to whom release must be proclaimed.  Maybe more than he ever realized when he started this teaching and healing campaign.  There were so so many that his stomach churned.  Like that scene in Gone With the Wind where the camera pans out to show the streets of Atlanta so filled with the wounded that your gutt churns when you realize there’s simply not enough of the living to care for the dieing.…there’s more suffering than Jesus can see to himself, so what other option does he have really but to send others.
So, he sends out people who really were every bit as bad off as those they were sent to proclaim the kingdom to. The disciples.  Here’s an interesting little group, we have: a political extremist, a tax collector, a backstabber, a doubter, couple of fishermen and two brothers with anger management problems. Not to mention the two guys we know nothing about which in and of itself is remarkable. He sends them out fully acknowledging the fact that the world will be very hostile to this good news because this Word kills the old self and raises us to new life.  This is who you are, he says, Now go.

It is good news indeed that God’s reign is here and now in the midst of our own empire, in the very vortex of self-interest known as American culture; that God would reign here and now in the face of our own foreign occupation – forces that lie to us about who we are. I like to think of Christ casting out our own demons; the loneliness and isolation of rugged individualism; the gluttonous lifestyles which promise sa-tay-i-tee but simply create more hunger; the addictions, the hatred toward self and others, the unquestioned and unearned privilege, the living blindly in the face of child poverty (grown 76% by the way, here in Colorado in the past 8 years)  These are unclean spirits, the foreign occupations that divide us from both our Child-of-God selves and from each other - but even still, when the good news of God’s reign breaks into our fractured lives we cannot help but hope. We are to go into the world with this hope spoken of in Romans not to spiritually feather our own nests but for the sake of the world and God’s reign.  Because we are part of a larger story which tells us who we are.
I recently had a conversation with a relative of mine by marriage who was defending her “Spiritual but not religious” identity.  She said “You know, I just really don’t need something outside of myself to give me comfort or meaning”  My response was “Really?  I am in desperate need of something outside of myself, because seriously, if this is all it’s about….well, I can’t think of anything more depressing”
In this Gospel text for today the disciples (meaning those who learn) are quickly made apostles (meaning those who are sent).  Perhaps we too are both disciple and apostle.  We come here as the gathered body of Christ to hear and to learn and to enact the larger story of which we are a part.  It is this story of who God is and who we are that is told again and again through out the world for thousands of years. This Word - sweet as honey - is what we learn as disciples.  This Word of a gracious gentle God who comes to us in the incarnated Christ  - who defeats the forces of death and evil – never lifting a finger to judge or condemn even his executioners.  This story of a light who shines in the darkness is the source of our utterly perverse hope in the face of the world’s despair and the foreign occupation of false identity.  This greater story of which we are a part – casts out the unclean spirits of false identity – identity based on what we buy, where we live, who we are richer than or poorer than or smarter than or thinner than.  Here, gathered as Christ’s body broken and blessed we hear who we really are:  a beloved and royal priesthood of the unqualified sent out for the sake of the world. A 2000 plus year legacy which started with the calling of the disciples from today’s text.
Mons Teig, my worship professor at Luther Seminary asked his students on the first day of class:  What is it we do in worship? “We praise God”, one answered.  “We gather around Word and Sacrament” said another.  “We pray for the whole world” someone else said.  And after we had exhausted the obvious Dr. Teig said, “We raise the dead”. We come here to raise the dead, for it is we who are dead – the old self drown in the waters of baptism and daily raised to new life in Christ- filled whether we believe it or feel it – filled with God’s love which has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
We are equipped with what Christ’s weird band of misfit disciples have always been equipped with:  Story.  We hear this story and tell this story and look for ways in which our own stories intersects with it.  This good news of God’s reign is what we,  the beloved royal priesthood of the unqualified, have to offer the world.  We have this gospel of who God is and who we are which comes to us in the Word, and at the font and at the table where God casts out the false identities of foreign occupation and names and claims us as God’s own beloved children.  It is with this new life given us in baptism that we are sent into the world, a crew as motley as the first - sent out for the sake of the world to raise the dead.  So that is who you are.  Now, go.

Areopogus Sermon

Easter 6A

  1 Peter 3:13-22
(3:15-16) Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and reverence

Acts 17:22-31
(Acts 17:16)While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols... (Act 17:22-23)Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. ²³For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you

As a good Jewish boy, Paul has been almost hard wired to be offended at the sight of idols because the Hebrew scriptures are full of cautionary tales against idolatry. 
In my Old Testament class in seminary I remember laughing about how the Hebrew people would be going along just fine with HaShem …who would be providing them with signs, and miracles, and prophets to speak God’s word, all pretty convincing stuff, but then it seems like 20 minutes later their neighbors would show them a statue of a cow or something and inevitably they’d be like “ oooh sparkly!”, dropping Ha-Shem like a bad habit. It can be hard for us today to see the appeal of a cow statue really. 
So anyway, Paul, who’s kind of just sight seeing in Athens until his buddies can catch up with him, is a little creeped out by the idols that populate the city.   
I imagine the Athenians (as our epistle from today says)  demanding from Paul an accounting of the hope within him.
It is here that Paul, that crazy thorn in the side eccentric afflicted to the core with the dangerous beauty of the gospel, encounters the Epicureans and the Stoics. 
The epicureans – for whom pleasure is the greatest good, not easily dismissible, libertine, anything goes pleasure, but measured moderate pleasure that endures.
This is we who tend to mask self-indulgence with virtue.   Perhaps in the form of a brand new Prius, or hording away all our wealth in socially conscious investments, or maybe through believing in salvation through “self-care”. 
And then there are the stoics seeking to be dispassionate.  This is us who engage mightily in spiritual and personal disciplines as though they were a sin management program providing the avoidance of suffering through detachment.

So perhaps it is actually us before whom Paul stands saying:
People of Denver, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.  For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship: the flagship REI store to the God of outdoors based fitness, the Invesco field to the Orange and Blue horse God, and the smaller shrines dotting the landscape of the city dedicated to Starbuck the God of corporate coffee to which the devout offer small offerings daily, sometimes 2 or 3 times.  You are indeed, religious in every way.

Perhaps we are also too easily distracted by our own sparkly cow statues. 
And if this is true, how then can we ever account for the hope that is within us when we construct our own images of God?
It can feel inevitable, this impulse to construct the shapes which we feel comfortable having God fit into, but in the end, they offer little hope. There’s the red white and blue God that unexplainably blesses America and not Darfur.
There’s the dollar sign God who wants everyone to be as rich as Joel Osteen. 
And there’s the liberal academic God, sitting in heaven in his elbow-patched tweed blazer nodding his head in agreement with us. 
But here in Acts Paul doesn’t give us any of these. 
Instead Paul comes to us here in our own areapagus to bring us again to the simple elegance of a God who defies being known through these objects of false hope, and yet is never far from us.
Paul, wild and unleashed in the midst of the stoics and epicureans proclaims that God has provided our boundaries and limitations as a way for us to grope for God. 
So maybe our own inability to define the boundaries of God is just what draws us to the cross.
The very inadequacy of our own reason and imagination is perhaps just where God is to be found. 
A God found in the very self-giving folly of the cross.
If God indeed were to be found in the confines of human construction the shape we chose would never be cruciform.
Yet it is at the foot of the cross that our groping ends.
Here we find this God of whom Paul speaks.
This God who is so with us and for us that God enters into this messy life, pisses off all those who seek to exercise power over, and dies a scandalous, innocent death. 
How does Paul account for the hope that is within him?  In the resurrection.  That outrageous punchline at the end of the greatest joke in history.   
It’s the utimate plot turn at the end of the story which makes you rethink all the events that led up to it, only for you this resurrection doesn’t happen at the end of the story but at the beginning in your baptism, because as our epistle today tells us,  we are an Easter people baptised through Christ’s resurrection. 

In our baptism God calls to us - the gropers.
Even in our stoic efforts to transcend attachment and our epicurean impulse toward self-obsession we cannot contain the one who calls for us through the wild and unbidden gospel. 
Here we find the stark lushness of a God who pours out God’s self. 
A self-emptying God who shows up in cruciform ways we ourselves would never choose, or imagine, or create.
It is this God and not the ones we create who has given us life and claims us and names us in our baptism. 
And it is this new life granted daily by the One in whom you live and move and have your being in which you CAN account for the hope that is within you.  A hope more real than even the  sparkly-ist of cows could ever offer.

Maundy Thursday Sermon for the House Retreat

I imagine in the room that night the friends and followers of Jesus enjoying each other’s company, glad to be away from the crowds.  They have no idea at the time that this is the night they will never forget.  When I was working as a chaplain at the hospital, I noticed that the family and friends of those who had suddenly or unexpectedly died would in a grief so thick it sucked the oxygen out of the room, they’d gaze off and say “Just this morning we were eating breakfast and talking about baseball”  or “We were just walking the dog, laughing about the kids”  The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane.  The quotidian wrapped around the profound like plain brown paper concealing either a bar of gold or an improvised explosive devise or sometimes both.  In a slice of a moment we discover the gold beneath the paper or the bomb and then absolutly everything changes, but when we recall it in our now forever changed life, from this side of the event we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looked like every other package, every other morning every other walk.  We were just eating dinner upstairs in some guy’s house, when ...everything changed.
It had been quite a couple of weeks really. Jesus had outdone himself with that whole raising Lazarus thing.  The leaders at the temple were so pissed.  Especially with that totally cool entry into Jerusalem.  Whoever thought of that palm branch thing was genius.   Hosanna in the highest indeed. That’s our guy. 
But there they were just eating dinner upstairs in some guy’s house when …all of the sudden Jesus, the teacher, messiah, LORD is taking off his cloak and as though he completely lost his mind is wrapping around himself not the mantle of a mighty ruler, but the towel of a servant girl.

Well, you’re not getting anywhere near my nasty feet Jesus.
To have one’s feet washed, to be served by another is for them to see and to know that you are covered with grime and filth. I’ll just keep that to myself, thank you very much.  But the dirt is inevitable and not the result of anything but our journey as the broken.  To not have the dirt is to not have been on the road at all.   Dirt is simply the inevitable experience of the ambulatory.  Yes we too need to be washed of the buildup of being simply ourselves in the world.  As Jesus tells Peter, we are washed in God’s grace and yes entirely clean yet still in need of washing off that which has clung to us, the dusty daily remnant of brokenness.  But just the feet, and it comes off pretty easily, with the hearing of the word with the nurishment of Christ’s body and blood, with the proclaimation of forgiveness, with the power of reconciliation.  It comes off of us in beloved community.   This community gathered around Water, Bread, Wine.  The brown paper of human existence, yet wrapped around God’s own self. 

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.  If you have Agape for one another. Agape, the derivative love which is only possible from the indwelling of God’s spirit.  Agape one another.  Not try and manage a deep fondness for the irritating.   Not try and create warm feelings toward the unlikable, the socially awkward, the unlovely.  Jesus knew better than to imply that if his followers could only muster up enough niceness they would be up to the task of following him.  Instead here in plain brown paper wrapping is God incarnate wrapped in the towel of a servant girl washing us from that which separates us from self, neighbor and God.  Here is Christ poured out for the sake of the world, offering God’s own self as nourishment for the journey.  God’s self-giving provides us a source for the love we share, a love of the servant God poured out for us and for the sake of the world. 
AMEN.

Lazarus and the Valley of the Dry Bones Sermon

   

Texts:  Ezekiel 47:1-14, John 11: 1-45

Just when this Lenten desert seems too much to bear, today we walk through a graveyard.  And what awaits us but a little Easter.  A foretaste of the feast to come  surrounded by corpses and a boneyard.  Here amidst the dusty remnant of a wasted humanity we see God’s spirit breath life into a valley of dry bones and raise the dead.  Ezekiel had prophesied to Israel for some time, but still the temple lay in ruin like bones bleached white in the unmerciful brightness of humiliation, conquest and exile. At the beginning of the book Ezekiel is told by God to eat the scroll and after eating it he was THEN told to go speak God’s word to them because God’s word does what it says.  We too get to delve so deeply into this word that we practically are EATING it.  God’s word made flesh.  God’s word proclaimed.  God’s word in holy text.  The word of God that raises the dead.  Maybe it looks like tasteless paper, simple wafers and wine, a boring preachers but , as Ezekiel tells us in chapter 2,  the Word is as sweet as honey. 
    God did not insist that Ezekiel agree with God’s word or that he even understand God’s word.  He was simply told to eat the word, then proclaim the word.  DO not pass go do not collect.  Just eat it and preach it.  And when he did, death was made to become valley dancing life.
     This word is life too for us today.     We need these boneyard tales of resurrection - where two sisters weep over their brother dead now for 4 days.  Exhausted by grief and anger they have no idea what will happen only that if Jesus had been there Lazarus would have lived.  They do not know what Christ’s words will do.
I am the resurrection and the life Jesus says to Martha asking  (before he raises her brother), do you believe this?  Yes, she says.  She does what I never seem to be able to pull off, she says Yes to God, Yes you are the messiah the one coming into the world.  The temptation is then to say that this, this is what God requires of us, this little yes.  But the problem is that we can’t.  Left on our own we cannot choose God, we are too turned in on self for this to happen….and from this sclerotic posture we can only choose self.  As Luther says in the Small Chatecism, I cannot by my own understanding or effort come to my Lord Jesus Christ or believe in him, but I have been called by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.  We cannot choose God, but God chooses us.  God’s Spirit comes to get us through the word.
So we come here, to again hear the word proclaimed.  We come and hear it in the readings, and the proclaimation and it is sweet as honey.  We hear God’s word in the hymns and the liturgy and the meal and the benediction….like a spiritual special needs class we have to experience God’s word in so many learning modes, tactile, visual, oral, aural, sometime olfactory.  To be reminded that Jesus raises the dead, to have God’s own spirit breath the life giving breath that makes even the driest of bones dance.  And we, like Ezekiel’s dry boney congregation do not have to understand the word, or agree with it, or get anything perfectly right for God’s word to do what it says.  Jesus did not stand at Lazarus’ tomb issuing him an exam to test his doctrinal or liturgical purity.  Jesus did not ask his permission.  Jesus did not give him the chance to say yes or no.  You know why?  He was DEAD.  God made a choice not based on the response, potential acceptance, or worthiness of the recipient, but based on the loving nature of God.   And it is the same choice God makes about us.  To be washed and fed with the sacrament of God’s own life giving self.  Provision for the rest of this journey toward the cross and tomb and then another stone rolled away.  And lest we rely too heavily on our own ability to get it all right, there next to that rolled away stone we again see the hope of our limitedness in the presence of God  - when even sweet Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener. 
We like Lazarus need this word of God to call us out of the tomb daily to live as resurrected people, maybe still stinky from the grave, yet still raised to the new life that has already been accomplished by the one of pierced flesh whose word indeed does what it says.
He says of the one who has died unbind him, and let him go.  We too have these strips of that which bind us, our self-centeredness, our self-hatred, or self-grandiosity, and all of it unwraps at God’s word spoken.  Unbind them Jesus says, and like the bones in that dry valley flesh comes on us again, while  strips of cloth fall away like molting sinners. “I will cause my breath to enter you and you shall live” and the linen starts to unwind itself.  “This is my body given for you” unwinding further we see coils of our own bondage drop at our feet.  “You are forgiven”, and again life is restored and our freedom secured.    The Word breathed, proclaimed, the spirit calling us again through the Gospel to new life, water of life, bread of life, word of God made flesh again we daily die and rise in this perverse hope of a God who dies only to be raised, who weeps for our suffering while offering provision of God’s own self for our wholeness. This Lenten boneyard is for us, as sweet as honey.

 

Woman at the well

Sermon outtakes:
I'm not preaching it, I might as well post it:

The text is the Samaratin woman at the well from John 4.

Woman of Samaria, when you woke that morning, like every morning thirsty from want and loss., did you know that God in flesh would enter into that thirst pouring out living water? Did you come to that well at mid-day hoping to dodge the gaze of all the women still on their first husbands?  In the unmerciful brightness of midday did you think that you would escape the gaze of the others?   And that moment., when it clicked, when you knew.  When the thirst you sensed was not your own but HIS thirst for YOUR wholeness.  When that moment of recognition lit your eyes, did you laugh thinking of your “but you have no bucket” comment? Did it seem silly then how you tried to theologically trump him by name dropping Jacob as your ancestor?  Did this Christ throw back his head and in the solidarity that only the incarnate God could muster, laugh along with you?  A laugh of recognizing the beautiful absurdity of humanity’s encounter with the infinite?  How it’s always funny and messy and gloriously familiar? 

Epiphany 2A

I promise to post something other than sermons soon....

John 1:29-42

 

²⁹The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³²And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” ³⁵The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, ³⁶and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

³⁷The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” ³⁹He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o”clock in the afternoon. ⁴⁰One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. ⁴¹He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). ⁴²He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

About 15 years ago a dear and very new age-y friend of mine talked me into joining her in a guided meditation to “meet our power animals”. I consented not really knowing what in the world “meet your power animal” could possibly mean, but even so, I started thinking “I bet my power animal is cool.  It’s got to be a lion or jaguar at least a bear or something.  Settling into the meditation despite a very busy mind,  I began to envision the words of our guide, and saw myself at the shore of a lake surrounded by forest now aware that the moment of meeting was drawing near I think oh this is going to be great this is going to be great, and then . . . up walks . . . a duck.  Apparently my power animal is a mallard.

How…inelegant. 

Here today we meet God’s “power animal” and I’m certain that God too couldn’t possible know what “power animal” means or else surely the almighty one would have made a more fitting choice.

even so, Here we are.  29 verses into John’s gospel and what a set up we’ve been given.  There are no charming birth narratives here.  No shepherds keeping watch or wise men bearing gifts.  No . . . drummer boy.  This beginning ends up being an “In the beginning”  Let there be no mistake this gospel of this Jesus Christ is of a cosmic order:  from the beginning of time, all things made through him, the light of all people of which the darkness can not comprehend.  Word of God made flesh.  Pure glory. Pure magnificence. 

But see, the world did not know this magnificence of God so we must have one who will point.  A strange but wonderful calling: "The Pointer"  And here John the Baptist, void of the questionable dietary habits and wardrobe choices of the other gospels, here he is free to simply be the testifier, the witness, the pointer.
The medieval church recognized the simplicity of John’s vocation. Amidst the religious orders, the glorious art and music, and of course the mystics, the medieval church really out did itself with relic veneration. Now I don’t want to just point from our vantage as rational modern Christians to our forbears in the church and snicker at their pre-enlightenment ignorance, but one of my favorite relics is of John the Baptist and you know what it is?  Yeah, it’s his finger.   It’s in Russia.   If you see images of John the Baptist in Christian art you can recognize him because he’s the pointer. 

But the problem for today is that this famous finger points to the word we didn’t see coming.  Still, with the world on trial as we’re certain it must be we need this testifier, this expert witness to identify the one in this courtroom, to point to this word made flesh who will make the case – finalize the inevitable judgement of the other, the unclean, the infidel, the not-us. This witness, this finger pointing baptizer calls out to us of the true light who enlightens all, of one who is close to the heart of the father, of one who gives power to become children of God.  We’ve been waiting generations for the one who will close the case, God’s own expert witness to start this vindiction  process once and for all.  At the stand we demand “Baptizer, point to this word of God who brings this magnificent judgement of unquenchable fire.”   This drum roll of anticipation builds until we implore this Baptizer point already point!  Show us this pure glory, pure magnificence.  He starts to raise his hand.  An unnerving hush falls.  His now famous finger extending as he declares: Look! here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” 

I’m sorry, did you say Lamb? 

The courtroom slowly fades blurring prosecution and defense until there is only us and this lamb of God “Not a lion?  Not at least the tiger of God?  Bring the courtroom back, we cry “mistrial”….a lamb?  What possible good to us is this tiny little soft helpless one, except . . .maybe. . . . as sacrifice…a lamb to slaughter.  One on which to place the wrongs of the world, who will innocently stand in our place. 

That might just work.

But the thing is, we realize, lambs are not used for sacrifice.  Bulls, goats, sheep, yes, but not Lambs.  Lambs are used as feast.  Feast of remembrance.  Feast of God’s fidelity to the infidel.  Feast of God’s love to the unloved.  Feast of God’s cleansing that which was unclean.

Left with no other option, we gaze upon this lamb of God and realize the Baptizer was right.  Here before us now is a folly so pure that it could only come from God.  Absurd and a-rational, this lamb has God’s name written all over it.  Before we realize what’s happening we’ve left the baptizer and follow this folly of a God-with-us human being. Not expecting to be noticed we’re caught off guard with the question “what are you looking for” and can only answer with the silliest question for which we will laugh in years to come “remember when we met the Christ and all we could think to say is where are you staying”.  And his answer that is not answer so much as promise “come and see”  and here this gentle lamb like word lets us in on what the Baptizer knew all along: that from his vulnerable God-with-us word-made-flesh we become heirs of the lamb, children of the most high.  The courtroom be damned because there is no God as divine child abuser here willfully sending off his boy to be murdered.  There is no God as vengeful cigar champing loan shark demanding his pound of flesh.  There’s just an enfleshed and vulnerable God who reveals God’s self as the Passover lamb for all. A feast with no end that we are about to partake in which this broken and poured out God is, like the Passover lamb to Hebrew people infinitely divisible by the number of those who come.  Lamb enough for all. 

This is the body of Christ the lamb like Word of God, given for you.  And fed by this grace and truth of Christ you again, without knowing you are doing it, you realize your arm is rising up, that your finger is now that of the Baptizer pointing to the Lamb of God who has in an act of pure folly traded sin for feast so that you might know that this is the pure glory and pure magnificence of God.

So brothers and sisters, Come and see.   Come to the table of this lamb who was slain – a feast of God’s self broken and poured out for you.  Come and see the Word made flesh.  God’s feast of self-giving.  Come taste and see that God... is..... good.
AMEN

Baptism of our Lord Sunday

For those hard-core church geeks who like to read sermons:

Matthew 3:13-17

 

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ¹⁵But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. ¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

Poor John the Baptist. I know for myself, I’d never want to be in public trying to talk Jesus out of something Jesus wanted to do.  That’s gotta be an uncomfortable situation.  How’d John get to that point anyway because you’d think that of all people HE would be on the right page…because as a prophet he DID have, like, an inside line to the truth about Jesus.   But in our gospel reading for today John the Baptist is a bit baffled.  So, I wonder how it happened that the very prophet who was to prepare the way of the Lord got it so wrong?
SO maybe John the Baptist was a bit eccentric with his questionable wardrobe and dietary habits, but you have to give it to him, he was dialed into the whole Jesus thing way before anyone else.  But maybe it’s also important to realize that he was still human and every bit as flawed as the rest of us.   In my imagination  I wonder if he got just a little bit cocky.  I would have.  Maybe he got a little bit prideful of his insider status. 
See, John had been telling people for awhile now that he only baptizes with water but that the one coming after him baptizes with the Holy Spirit and that this new guy is so powerful that John’s not even worthy to untie the thong of his sandal… Now this is totally conjecture obviously but I kind of wonder if John’s prophet script only read say with conviction:  I baptize with water but he baptizes with the holy Spirit, but he just got totally carried away and added  “he’ll baptize with the Spirit and he’ll baptize with fire, and separate the chaf from the wheat and BURN the chaf with unquenchable fire.”
In any case, the point is that John’s been playing this guy up…he has the whole shtick down.  He might have gotten into a bit of hyperbole  with the whole unquenchable fire thing, but what he was really trying to do is play himself down and play Jesus up.  He wanted people to realize this guy coming after him was immensely more important and powerful and that John was just a humble messenger.

Which makes me wonder  just what John might have been thinking as Jesus walked up-   maybe he thought he could make just a little bit of show of his own humility.  “My Lord, please let your servant have the honor of being baptized by you”….I mean, come on, you have to admit, that would be amazing later on in terms of bragging rights.  I imagine a couple years on when Jesus is a big name , famous in the region and John’s star is fading a bit how he might try and impress his mates by saying “Jesus, oh yeah, I was a fan way before he got big. You know, I was actually baptized by him, yeah it was really wild.”
Because if this is the case, the very first line of our text for today is really funny….
(read from Bible) Then Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized by John….
Oh man. Poor John.  He was just telling everyone “I’m not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal” and here he is stuck having to baptize him. Awkward.  He even, and you gotta give it to him here, he even tries to talk Jesus out of it, yeah, good luck with that.  He must have been thinking Where’s the power of fire and the winnowing fork and the smoke and mirrors and you know, the mightyness???         Not here.          No.  Jesus simply says to John “we gotta do this to fulfill all righteousness” why?  Because this is the way of God. 
You see, Jesus, Emmanual, God with us is in the habit of showing up in ways that we frankly find objectionable.  But these God-with-us ways, these glory-in-the-messyness-of-human-existance ways are gospel.  The very God-with-us ways of Jesus at the Jordan are good, good news indeed.
Maybe John did mess up.  I kind of hope so because it’s a great example of how God can use that.   You see, We are just as much the beloved and just as much the sinners who mess up our assignments as John.  We too want Jesus to show up with a winnowing fork and burn the people who don’t agree with us.  Separate those with bad doctrine and bad politics and well, frankly anything that we don’t agree with and BURN them with unquenchable fire, or at the very least, if we’re being just a little more gracious, we want the people who are different from us to know that God is God with us, but maybe not with them.   But God doesn’t work that way.  God shows up in ways we find objectionable.  You see, God shows up in the hospitality of a Jericho prostitute, and in the fecundity of an elderly woman’s dusty womb, God shows up in table fellowship with sinners, and here God shows up in the Galilean glory of a muddy river.
Maybe John mistakenly thought that the power and promise of God must come in the form of something rare and mighty, something untouchable and distant from the muck of real people and real life.  John certainly knew that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but he wasn’t and I know that I too am not ready to accept what emmanual, God with us, really means.  In Christ the God-man, God enters fully into this broken and beautiful human existence, born in the most earthy, fecal glory Jesus enters the world in the midst of our muck and here at the shores of the muddy Jordan Jesus doesn’t show up in some sort of gleaming white divine glory, he comes and in an act of real solidarity, in an act that lets us know just how with us and for us God is, he humbly enters the watery Jordan, this river filled with Jesus’ favorite people, the repentant sinners.  There is no burning chaff with unquenchable fire, just a beautiful act of God with us.  What follows is the proclamation of the belovedness of Christ, a belovedness that we share in our own baptism.   Our Psalm for today says See, the former things have passed away and new things I now declare - before they spring forth, I tell you of them.  God tells us in baptism that we are the beloved of God.  In baptism God’s word is joined with the water which gives us the promise of what already is, namely that we are not us for God, but God is God for us.  And given the choice of the two I’ll take the latter.
You see, in baptism God’s word of promise is present in a thing and the most ordinary of things, water.  This is how you know that God is a God for you.  You know this because this God of promise comes to you not in some expensive and rare oil like myrrh (whatever that is) baptism is not done with Dom Perignon it is done with water, simple, pure, and common, the same stuff that we wash our dishes with, and the same stuff without which we would die.
You know the one thing I love the most about the Baptism of our Lord is not just that God the Father says “This is my son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased”, but that God says this - before Jesus had really done much of anything. Think about that. God did not say “this is my son in whom I am well please because he has proved to me that he deserves it, because he does all the right things, because boy can he heal a leper.”  Nope. In baptism God proclaims that in us God is well pleased.
Listen to these words that are about to be spoken in our baptismal liturgy: Baptism signifies that God takes the initiative with people, creating an opportunity for response and raising up faith in us.  Before we are even able to respond in faith, God loves us and desires to claim us as children.
Today in these baptismal waters you, Chase swim in this wideness of God’s mercy. You, all of you, are sustained by this same promise in your baptism - that you are the beloved of God.  In these life-giving waters know again and again that God is a God for you and with you and that indeed, .  Before we are even able to respond in faith, God loves us and desires to claim us as God’s children.
AMEN

(*the term "fecal glory" was stolen from Kae)

Ruth and Mary Magdalene sermon

I know that sermons are a bit long for blog posting...but for the half a dozen people out there who actually read sermons on line....

The lectionary reading are from the 1st chapter of Ruth and the 20th chapter of John...I also refer to this text from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene:

The disciples were in sorrow, shedding many tears and saying: "How are we to go among the unbelievers and announce the gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man?  They did not spare His life, so why should they spare ours?"

Then Mary (Magdalene arose, embraced them all, and began to speak to her brothers:

"Do not remain in sorrow and doubt, for His Grace will guide you and comfort you.  Instead, let us praise His greatness, for He has prepared us for this.  He is calling upon us to become fully human."

Thus Mary turned their hearts toward the Good, and they began to discuss the meaning of the Teacher's words.

Picture if you will the perfect cliché’wedding.  Bridesmaids in garish matching taffeta.  The sweating groom,  Pachebell’s canon, or if the church will allow, perhaps the shrill, endless vowels of Whitney Houston's “Iiiiiiiiii will always love youuuuuuuuu”,
and a reading from Ruth:
Where you go I will go
Where you lodge I will lodge
Your people shall be my people
And your God my God.

  When these words are spoken in the context of a wedding, a man and a woman pledge their love to one another and they become one in the eyes of their families and friends and society. 

But these rich love filled verses were not from a wedding, and not spoken between a man and a woman, they were from one woman to another.  More specifically, these words are said from a young Moabite woman to an old Hebrew woman.

Ruth and Naomi’s story starts in the time of the Judges.  The Hebrew people have settled in Canaan, but the time of King David has not yet come about.  There is a famine in the land.  Famine in the promised land.  Famine in Bethlehem, which in Hebrew ironically means the “house of Bread” wow. Naomi, her husband and 2 sons go to Moab where there is food. Moab.  Moab is not exactly spoken of kindly in the rest of the Hebrew Bible.  I can’t imagine what this must have been like.  Perhaps not unlike if we  in America, this land of plenty had a famine and were so desperate for food that we had to go to Saudi Arabia because their crops were growing like gangbusters.  I think perhaps this type of situation would make it difficult to maintain our idea that WE had “Most Favored Nation” status in the eyes of the Almighty.  So the House of Bread is pretty much out of bread, but the Moabites who are not exactly best friends with the Hebrew people, much less with their God ha’shem, apparently are doing ok.
Famine.  In the Promised Land.  Famine.  In the House of Bread -
So, where  exactly is God? 

After having to leave Bethlehem because of famine and after having to go and live with the Moabites,  Naomi’s husband dies leaving her a widow, but at least she has her two sons.  Still, where exactly is God?

So,then Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women. The Hebrew people have continually been told to not intermarry.   Isn’t this a big deal in the Torah that they not marry pagans?  That should settle it shouldn’t it.  This type of marriage is ok, this type is not.  I secretly wonder if they ever claimed to love the pagan, but hate the paganism. 
So Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women and then, after famine in Bethlehem, and after having to flee to Moab, and after her sons marry Moabite women, and ten years after she became a widow, she becomes childless.  All she has is her sons and her sons die.  So, Where exactly is God we ask? Still no mention of God.

So now there are three husbandless women and let me tell you, Life is not friendly to widows.  The fear must have been unimaginable.  It’s not like today when Naomi could “go back to teaching” or even work at Starbucks for the health benefits.  Being a widow meant throwing yourself on the mercy of your kinfolks and hoping...hoping they take care of you.  So Naomi decides to go home after hearing that the LORD had recently  “considered his people” in Bethlehem and given them food again.  OK so, God finally shows up, but only in rumor really and if you ask me, maybe too little too late.  In Naomi’s place I know I would have wondered if it would have been too much to ask for God to have “considered his people” before the famine that caused me to go to Moab where my husband and children died.

So, Naomi has no choice but to return home ... the 3 set out for Bethlehem together - Three childless widows, two were Moabites.  Naomi feels as though God has turned God’s hand from her.   And who can blame her really?  Famine has forced her from her land.  Her husband is dead.  Her sons are dead.  Her value in life is dead.  From this diminished, hollow, dusty place she does what I and perhaps you have done when feeling particularly unlovable and entirely without value.  She tries to push people away from her so as to not feel the pain of being loved while feeling unlovable  To the only 2 people she had left in the world she says “go away from me.  save yourselves for God has turned his hand against me.    I am of no value to you.  maybe the LORD will be good to you if you leave me” and when they protest, when they say, no we want to stay with you, she’s like “Why?  I am only the mother of your dead husbands  - my value to you is only as your provider of husbands, and I have no husbands left in this belly for you.  and look, even if I found a husband tonight and bore more sons for you, be real...it’s a long wait till you could marry them....that’s a long time for a gal to be...you know... unmarried, don’t you think you’d get I don’t know, a bit cranky waiting that long?”  You see, Naomi is barren in more than one way.  Naomi is barren in spirit.    SO Where exactly  is God we ask?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the famine?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the death of her husband and sons?
Why didn't God show up and stop hurricane Katrrina?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the massacre At Virginia Tech?
I don’t know.
But I do know that in our text, God does show up.
God shows up in these words:
where you go, i will go
where you lodge I will lodge
your people shall be my people
and your God, my God.
God has not turn God’s hand against her, because God’s love is right there, revealed in Ruth’s love for her.  Sometimes God’s presence isn’t felt until we cleave to one another.

@@@@@
Naomi’s primary identity was as “one who bore children”, and when those children were gone, she was bitter, and hollowed out and sure God had turned against her.  Now, lest I judge her too harshly, I have to admit there have been hollow times in my life when I too have been bitter and wondered “where exactly is God”, which always seems to be the time when some act of love from another person completely breaks me open till I see that God lives in these sometimes small, sometimes great acts of love toward one another.

In these words of love from Ruth, Naomi’s primary identity shifts from “widow” to her true name of beloved of God where it belongs.
And these shifts in identity due to acts of love happen for us too.

So where exactly is God we ask?
God is in love that gives a new primary identity.  In love shown to oneanother which then returns us to our true identity, beloved of God

Mary Magdalene whose feast we celebrate today...her identity shifted from demon posessed woman to beloved of God through the love of Christ.  In our reading from John today we see her weeping at the empty tomb.  She’s been on a bit of a wild ride the past couple of years.  I imagine that she had been posessed for such a long time...dealing with her demons...filled with despair...being alienated from herself, from her God and from her  community.  Then she met this teacher from Gallilee and everything changed.  He called her by name.  He called her Mary,  not demoniac.  He called her into the fullness of her humanity, into her new primary identity as beloved of God.  But then he was gone. tortured. crucified. dead. buried. gone. “so where is God” she must have asked.  Is it really all over now? They have taken him away and I do not know where he is.   But then it happened again.  While she was in despair weeping for her disappeared Lord she, in a foux pax of historic proportion,  mistakes him for the gardener...how exactly do you live that down?  In her pain and sorrow she mistakes him for the gardener UNTIL  .....he speaks her name.  “Mary”.  He speaks her true name “Beloved of God”  His love for her shifted her primary identity.  In a culture where she was not only a woman, but one who was posessed of demons, one who was outcast, one who was the ‘Other’, he loved her into becoming fully human.  And then chose her to be the first witness to the resurrection and to be the apostles to the apostels.  It is Mary who is given the task of proclaiming the risenChrist, while the boys were arguing about “which one of us is greatest?  who is going to be at your right hand in glory?  Who is first in the kingdom?”  God chooses an outcast woman to tell them that they are beloved of God, that they are called to be fully human and to turn their hearts to the good.
So where is God we ask?
No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God’s love lives in us and is perfected in us.
Isn’t that what the church is in a way?  A group in which our value comes from being the beloved of God, children of the Most High and not our jobs, or bank accounts or status in society, or sexual orientation...ideally speaking?
There are plenty of times in life when we wonder “Where exactly is God?” when the events of life are painful, or unjust or downright devastating.  When we too are barren of spirit.  Sometimes there are no miraculous healings, or partings of the seas or raising of the dead.  Sometimes there is just us asking where is God.  But Sometimes God is that still small voice of gentle kindnesses toward one another.  Sometimes God is the roaring wind of our mercies undeserved.  But always God is revealed in acts of love toward one another.  No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us. 

So, my friends, close your eyes if you choose and visualize above your head some of your most primary identities : mother, husband, elderly, lawyer, high schooler, ...whatever they may be.  And as I say these words of love from these women of God, visualize these labels being erased and replaced boldly with the words beloved of God

Where you go I will go
where you lodge, I will lodge
Your people shall be my people
and your God my God

Do not remain in sorrow, for God’s grace will guide you and comfort you.  God is calling us to become fully human.  God had prepared us for this.   Turn your hearts to the good.
You are the Beloved of God

AMEN

Sermon I preached at Holden Village

I was shocked, thrilled and horrified to be asked to preach at Holden Village.  I had just a day and a half to write a sermon, which I balked at, but that Holy Spirit showed up and she kind of rocked my world.
The lectionary texts were Galations 5: 1-25 and Luke 9:51-62, The Galations reading deals with Christian freedom and the workd of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit.  When folks entered the worship space they were met with a table with two bowls filled with bits of paper folded in half.  The bowl on the right  was filled with the fruits of the spirit "Take one"  the bowl on the left, the works of the flesh "take one"  above the bowls was written: Simul iustus et peccator (Simultaniously sinner and saint) "reflect."  So every one got a random paper from each bowl.  My favorite was Pastor Eric who got "fornication" and "faithfulness". hmmmm. 

Here's the manuscript:

Grace peace and mercy to you from the Triune God. Amen.
So Jesus is kinda harsh in this gospel reading, but
Honestly, I love these Gospel texts like this one which are called “problematic texts”, which is greek for “ones we’d never voluntarily preach on but which come up in the lectionary so we’re stuck with them.  But the Hebrew translation of  “Problematic text in the lectionary” is just “guest preacher”, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Pastor Eric for the invitation to preach today....i think.

It’s kind of a weird little story in Luke...
At the beginning of this chapter Jesus has just given the 12 power and authority to cast out demons and to cure diseases and has sent them out to proclaim the kingdom and to heal. This is kind of an important point.  Jesus gave them power and authority, power and authority did not come from them- they weren’t born with it, they did not stumble upon it and the certainly didn’t earn it.  It was given to them from Jesus. 
               So, what do they do with this freedom and this gift they did not earn? If we put this text in conversation with the Galatians reading, we could say that the disciples used their freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence an certainly did not become slaves to one another.  Instead, It totally goes to their heads, they forget that all their mojo comes from God and not themselves and so they start arguing about which one of them was the greatest. ok so that’s strike one.  Strike 2 is that soon after this they come to Jesus and say "so we were out using our power to cast out demons when we came across some guy who was also casting out demons in your name....and we don't know who this guy thinks he is, but we tried to put a stop to that real quick."  to which he answered “give me a break! whoever is not against you is for you.” The very next verse is where we enter in today’s text. 
           So he’s stuck with this ridiculous band of followers who are totally full of themselves and acting like jerks while he has set his face to Jerusalem and what awaits him there, namely the cross.  The passages about the would-be followers we just read are a bit harsh because come on, let’s not forget that Jesus was fully divine AND fully human...the guy has to be already a little irritated: he gives the 12 power to heal and proclaim the kingdom which immediately goes to their heads and they end up arguing, of all things,  about who is the greatest when in fact the only greatness they might have comes not from themselves but from Jesus who granted them power in the first place, so it’s kind of no surprise when in our gospel reading for today strike 3 happens: James and John come back rejected by the Samaritan village and ask “ so, should we rain fire down from heaven to consume them?” Jesus just had to of rolled his eyes.  These guys were a real piece of work.  I read this and thought “so exactly when did raining fire down to consume the villages of folks they don’t like become an option for them"? I even went back to the first verses of the chapter to check...power and authority to cast out demons is there, healing and proclaiming the kingdom is there, but strangely enough, incinerating an entire village because they made you look bad...hmmm...strangely absent. 
         So maybe in these harsh proclamations about what it takes to be a disciple: - that you won't have a place to sleep and can't bury your poor old dad,  or even take a minute to say farewell to your family... maybe what we see here is Jesus indulging in a bit of hyperbole in order to knock some sense into his disciples about what it means to be a follower of Christ.  So he responds to these three would-be followers we meet in today’s text by raising the bar for what it means to live a radical discipleship and I kinda like to imagine that he did this with his voice raised just enough so that he was sure James and John were in earshot.

     Barbara Rossing talked this week in Bible study about  our society’s escaltology...the ideas of the fullness of life, what is the culmination of human potential, which for us might be that that I should buy Loreal shampoo because I’m worth it, that the right car can bring me to the height of what it means to be human, that the fulfillment of all my wants will bring me all I need, that immortality can be obtained through consumption.  She then showed us images from the Roman Empire which portrayed their escatology: a belief that they would always have dominion over other nations as a imperial force, that they had the Gods on their side and they were living into the eschatological fulness of life where they had forever been destined to be the victors and other nations had forever been destined to be the conquered on whose backs and labor the empire rightly stood ...  victoriously in the fullness of time - world without end.
     Standing as we are in the 21st century knowing the rest of the story, namely the deterioration of the Roman Empire ... we snicker at them, knowing it is a farce and that they are just the dead burying the dead... that they are simply whistling in the graveyard.  From there it's almost effortless for us to turn to the empires of our day, the multinational corporations, the military industrial complex, Halibuton, Pepsico etc..Do you, like I, recognize Rome in their flawed and deceitful message of victory, entitlement and dominion?  We see environmental devastation and know that the planet cannot possibly sustain this empire for much longer.  We know that these empires are not the life giving gospel but are the death dealing forces.  They, like the village in Samaria are rejecting Christ and the Kingdom of God. They are the works of the flesh on a global scale.   And with fingers pointing to these death dealers we too say “Absolutely, let the dead bury the dead".  We see Rome burning and we want to hurry the process asking   “do you want us to command fire down from Heaven and consume them? “  And I wonder if we listen for the answer... if we might also hear Jesus rebuking us.    Because to turn from  empire we turn not to a victory party of righteousness where we, like the disciples,, can become drunk on self-congratulations, but we are called with Christ to turn our faces to Jerusalem and what waits there.... namely the cross. Yes we are called to let the dead bury the dead and to turn from Rome and our yoke of slavery to the lies of our culture's escatology - but I guess I wonder if, like in our Galatians text,  we simply are trading one yoke for another, if maybe we become slaves to self righteousness because by having our fingers pointed to the obvious evils we are drawing a line between them - the works of the flesh and us, the fruits of the spirit.  When in reality, we are all simultaneously sinner and saint. 
    Jesus is calling us, like the would-be followers in this text away from comfort and security perhaps even the comfort and security of our own confidence in our righteousness.  But that calling is not just from something but is also to something.  To a life of radical discipleship where we are free from the bondage of self and this freedom allows us to be slaves of one another  This Christian freedom is in self-giving in which we receive much.  This freedom allows us to love one another as we love ourselves.

             This all sounds kind of nice and fluffy, doesn’t it?  A Christian community of folks who are all self-giving slaves of one another?  How exactly does the math work on that?  If we are all set to serve one another, then who is getting served?  How exactly do we, as Paul suggests, “through love be slaves of one another”?  what does that look like? “you go first, oh no you go first, oh no really you go on” 
    In my blog I recently wrote about Christian love and how we are called to this radical loving of one another which is transformative and how this is so beautiful  and I'm totally onboard with the whole Christian love thing except for one little problem: and that is the annoying people.  Seriously, being slave to the annoying or the mean or the manipulative....this is a problem.  But Paul is pretty clear on this one: “Through love become slaves to one another”  So when it comes down to it, I just don’t think I can muster up that much love.  Seriously.  When it comes to Love and for that matter we might as well include joy, peace, patience, kindness,  generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and  (for sure) self-control, I and perhaps you can come up pretty short.  But here’s the good news - these are not the fruits of Nadia.  These are the fruits of the Spirit.
        Maybe that love is not from us but from Christ through us.  If our faces are set towards Jerusalem, then they are set towards the cross and God’s reconciling and redeeming work in the world, not our work in the world...so maybe the love by which we are to be slaves of one another is already accomplished and thankfully does not rely on our own efforts.
Perhaps is this new economy of sinner saint servanthood we all fall short to be fit for the kingdom.  I mean seriously.   Look at the poor would-be disciples in our text who wanted to follow Jesus - the bar gets set pretty high:  it's a bit of a set up really, there's no way to pull it off through our their own efforts, and maybe that's the point, because the good news is that we don't have to.  God's redeeming work through the cross provides for us a source which is an endless source.  Truly world without end.  If Luther is right about Christian freedom and that we are lord of all subject to none and at the same time dutiful servant of all, subject to everyone, then - this source, this power we have is a spiritual source....and it comes from ascribing glory and honor not to ourselves, but to God which then reckons us honorable and glorified through the beautiful paradox of II Corinthians that  “Power is made perfect in weakness”
         So while we should by all means turn from the bondage of empire and the death dealing powers of society with the false eschatology, the false messages of what it means to be fully human, we should  have faith that we are also free from the bondage of self - from idolatry, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, envy and the like.  So here’s the other word of good news:  I not only cannot overcome these death dealing forces within myself, but I am not expected to because it was Christ who set his face to Jerusalem and the suffering of the cross.  He says Follow me...he says to us, come and see.  He does not along this road ask us for directions or ask us to lead the way and thanks be to God for that,   But he set his face to Jerusalem and the inbreaking of God’s reign on earth through the suffering on the cross - where the false eschatology of earthly empire was inverted by the perfecting of true power in weakness.  So if we are called to "Through love be slaves to oneanother", then the good news is that this redeeming work of God and not ourselves is the source of love that makes it possible that we might be free from self and slaves to one another.   This source from which we drink is an endless source, truly world without end.  And this table to which we are about to come is simple bread and wine, but is the most abundant feast.  A feast in which we are called to freely partake.  And the good news is that we don’t all have to show up with our own bread.  And we don’t receive amounts in accordance with our goodness...we are all fed this broken and poured out Christ which gives us freedom and nourishes us to be as Luther says the most free lords of all and subjects to none; and the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.   Christian freedom brothers and sisters- come and taste, come and drink, come and see.

AMEN