I no longer remember when I heard a clear call to be a teacher. Most likely it came while I was wandering in the woods with my college mentor, a retired botany professor who knew every weed and twig and could tell the history of every place as though he had lived there. He might have – he lived to be a hundred years old!
Growing up in a Lutheran family, I was taught that everyone has a vocation, a calling from God. So it seemed natural that I should discover that I had what Isaiah called the tongue of a teacher. At first I was never quite sure whether I became a teacher because I talked with authority, or talked with authority because I was a teacher. (I still don’t know, but I no longer care which came first.) However it happened, it seemed natural. It helped that I thought of it as a gift, because it never occurred to me that I should take any pride in being successful.
“Teacher” was one of the titles given to Jesus by his disciples. We will hear it used in Sunday’s Passion reading from Mark, when the disciples ask about preparations for the Last Supper. Jesus was much more than a teacher, of course. Jesus was the Son of God, come to us in human form. As an early Christian hymn quoted by the Apostle Paul put it, Jesus Christ was “in the form of God” yet “did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”
Jesus constantly pointed beyond himself, even when everyone was focused on him. It was always about God the Father when Jesus spoke. In speaking that way, he taught his disciples something about teaching. It is not the teacher who should be the focus; the focus is on the subject of the teaching. It is not a person drawing attention to himself or herself, but rather leading beyond, toward the subject. When the subject is God, the image Jesus gave us is one of obedient servanthood, serving God through serving others.
After many years my call changed from teaching botany to teaching theology. This tongue of a teacher no longer explains fibro-vascular bundles, but rather tries to sustain the weary with a word. Somehow it is much easier to convince people to look at God than look at plants! As we pass through Palm Sunday into Holy Week, the most emotional week of the church year, let us remember what Jesus taught us. Let us keep our focus on God. Let us walk with Jesus through his trial, through his condemnation, through his crucifixion and burial. Then let us stand a week later at the empty tomb and join with every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
[Palm Sunday: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31; Philippians 2:5-11; the Passion according to Mark.]
Listen to this as preached on Palm Sunday.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Where True Joys Are To Be Found
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Earlier this month the vestry and I spent most of a Saturday on a retreat, talking and praying about the church. As I have done before, I asked everyone what brought them to this church and why they continue to come. It did not surprise me that one of the main reasons was the people. I work with a community that enjoys being together, especially when food is involved! It is also a welcoming community that opens up to everyone who walks through the door.
Another strength came through loud and clear. In the midst of the turmoil of life, the church provides predictability. No matter what chaos happens during the week, Sunday brings a familiar liturgy with familiar prayers. For many people, that’s a rock in their lives. We do have seasonal changes so we can experience the full richness of the Book of Common Prayer, much of which is based on the Bible. But for the most part, worship is predictable.
It’s not just the turmoil of the outer world that makes us seek refuge; it is our own inner turmoil as well, what the Collect for the Day calls “the unruly wills and affections of sinners.” In that collect we pray that God will give us the grace to love what God commands and desire what God promises. That is where true joy is to be found. But how often our hearts wander away from the true path!
The prophet Jeremiah knew that better than most. He was a singularly misused prophet, once even thrown into a muddy cistern when the leaders didn’t like God’s word coming from his mouth. It’s all the more remarkable that Jeremiah presents such a wonderful vision of the future, a future when hearts will no longer be wayward because God’s covenant, God’s promises, will be written directly on them. At that future time, Jeremiah says, God will forgive all that has been done and remember their sin no more.
In the present, however, we continue to need forgiveness, for we fall short of all God desires us to be. The penitential Psalm 51 wonderfully expresses regret for sin and the desire for God’s forgiveness. Traditionally it was written by King David after he had taken another man’s wife as his own and then repented. Whether David actually wrote it or not, it remains a remarkable confession of wrongdoing and a plea that God’s saving grace will once again be offered. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me” – words that can be said at any time and any place, words that a priest can use when washing her or his hands before the Eucharistic prayer.
This Sunday at our church there will be yet another opportunity for finding grace in a broken world. We will have a healing service. After communion, all who desire healing will be invited to come to the side altar for prayers, laying on of hands, and anointing with blessed oil. All it will require is a heart open to God, a willingness to kneel and ask prayers for whatever in one’s life is not right.
A healing service is yet another way to enjoy the richness of the prayer book. The familiar will still be present, but there will be an opportunity to experience the love of God in a different way. It is God’s love that reorients us among the swift and varied changes of the world, love that comes to us through people, through prayer, through word and sacrament. May we always live in that love of God, so that our hearts find true joy.
[Lent 5: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33. The collect for this day is an ancient one, originating in the eighth century and reaching its final form in 1662.]
Listen to this as preached on the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
Earlier this month the vestry and I spent most of a Saturday on a retreat, talking and praying about the church. As I have done before, I asked everyone what brought them to this church and why they continue to come. It did not surprise me that one of the main reasons was the people. I work with a community that enjoys being together, especially when food is involved! It is also a welcoming community that opens up to everyone who walks through the door.
Another strength came through loud and clear. In the midst of the turmoil of life, the church provides predictability. No matter what chaos happens during the week, Sunday brings a familiar liturgy with familiar prayers. For many people, that’s a rock in their lives. We do have seasonal changes so we can experience the full richness of the Book of Common Prayer, much of which is based on the Bible. But for the most part, worship is predictable.
It’s not just the turmoil of the outer world that makes us seek refuge; it is our own inner turmoil as well, what the Collect for the Day calls “the unruly wills and affections of sinners.” In that collect we pray that God will give us the grace to love what God commands and desire what God promises. That is where true joy is to be found. But how often our hearts wander away from the true path!
The prophet Jeremiah knew that better than most. He was a singularly misused prophet, once even thrown into a muddy cistern when the leaders didn’t like God’s word coming from his mouth. It’s all the more remarkable that Jeremiah presents such a wonderful vision of the future, a future when hearts will no longer be wayward because God’s covenant, God’s promises, will be written directly on them. At that future time, Jeremiah says, God will forgive all that has been done and remember their sin no more.
In the present, however, we continue to need forgiveness, for we fall short of all God desires us to be. The penitential Psalm 51 wonderfully expresses regret for sin and the desire for God’s forgiveness. Traditionally it was written by King David after he had taken another man’s wife as his own and then repented. Whether David actually wrote it or not, it remains a remarkable confession of wrongdoing and a plea that God’s saving grace will once again be offered. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me” – words that can be said at any time and any place, words that a priest can use when washing her or his hands before the Eucharistic prayer.
This Sunday at our church there will be yet another opportunity for finding grace in a broken world. We will have a healing service. After communion, all who desire healing will be invited to come to the side altar for prayers, laying on of hands, and anointing with blessed oil. All it will require is a heart open to God, a willingness to kneel and ask prayers for whatever in one’s life is not right.
A healing service is yet another way to enjoy the richness of the prayer book. The familiar will still be present, but there will be an opportunity to experience the love of God in a different way. It is God’s love that reorients us among the swift and varied changes of the world, love that comes to us through people, through prayer, through word and sacrament. May we always live in that love of God, so that our hearts find true joy.
[Lent 5: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33. The collect for this day is an ancient one, originating in the eighth century and reaching its final form in 1662.]
Listen to this as preached on the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Serpents and Salvation
When I was a graduate student in botany in North Carolina, I encountered a fair number of poisonous snakes. In Duke Forest I once discovered a copperhead right next to a measuring line that I had laid down. Another time in the southern Appalachians I found a rattlesnake coiled up in the sun in the middle of a trail. I made a wide detour around him, and decided then and there that I would never again refer to snakes as “cold-blooded.” I was pretty sure that fellow had very warm blood in him, and I didn’t want to get close enough to find out. On a trip to the Atlantic Coast we were taught how to tell the difference between the poisonous water moccasin and the non-poisonous but ill-tempered water snake. All of this made me very happy that I had chosen to study plants.
It also gave me a healthy respect for poisonous serpents. In Sunday’s reading from the book of Numbers, we hear how the Israelites wandering in the desert developed a healthy respect for serpents as well – or perhaps I should say had a very unhealthy encounter with them. It’s a rather bizarre story, in fact, one that pictures a God so annoyed with their whining that he unloads a whole trailer full of vipers on them. The plague ends only when Moses prays for help and is told to make a bronze serpent and run it up a pole. The snake-bitten people are healed when they look at it, as though this were some kind of magic.
Such stories always make me cringe when they show up on Sunday morning. I’m afraid that first-time visitors or long-time members will create a file marked “Unbelievable” into which they put stories like Moses and the serpent. Then they’ll be tempted to put stories about Jesus there as well. Isn’t it all from the same Bible? It doesn’t help that Jesus specifically links the story of Moses lifting up the serpent to his own being lifted up on a cross. On the other hand, we know that the latter actually happened. Jesus really was crucified. And Jesus reveals to us a very different picture of God than the one found in Numbers.
John’s Gospel shows no uncertainty about the reason Jesus was crucified. It was necessary that the Son of man be lifted up, the Gospel tells us, so that everyone who believes may in him have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16 is a verse that many know by heart, one that Martin Luther called “the gospel in miniature” – and football quarterback Tim Tebow put on his face. In reality, we don’t know whether Jesus actually said those words or if they are part of John’s commentary. The ancient Greek texts did not include punctuation, so quotation marks are the work of a translator. But that’s not the point. John the evangelist, and the community for which he wrote, understood these words as explaining what God was doing.
“God so loved the world…” God’s desire for universal salvation is very clear here. There is no question that God desires all to receive eternal life. It is a gift given to us by the grace of God, as we hear in the letter to the Ephesians. It is the promise and the hope of Jesus Christ. At the same time, John’s community also recognized that there were people who refused to acknowledge Jesus. Most likely that community consisted of Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogue both for their faith in Jesus and their willingness to extend God’s love to Greeks and Samaritans. They took the pain of that synagogue rejection with them, pain that became enshrined in the Gospel of John as God’s rejection of “the Jews.”
God does give us the freedom to turn away from God. In John’s terms, we are free to choose darkness rather than light, to choose evil rather than good. Exercising that freedom becomes self-judgment, rejection of God rather than God’s rejection of those for whom he desires salvation. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Sometimes I think we focus so much on the love of God and our own desire that no one should be lost, that we overlook the fact that some people want to reject God. And God is perfectly willing to let them do so. C. S. Lewis, in his delightfully imaginative book about heaven and hell called The Great Divorce, put it this way: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. Those who knock, it is opened. ”
To be free from God and God’s love is to live in hell. It’s to live as though one were bitten by a poisonous serpent, and in pain and terror all one can think about is death. God offers a different way to live. Just as Moses raised up the bronze serpent in the desert so that the Israelites would focus on God rather than themselves, so Jesus Christ came to lead us toward God and one another, to freely choose life.
Since I have become a priest, I don’t wander in the woods as much as I used to. I miss it – I miss the plants, that is, not the snakes. Yet in being with people and spending more time immersed in God’s word, I experience even more of the richness of God’s loving the world. It is life that we are offered through Jesus Christ, true life, living in light rather than darkness. Doesn’t that sound like the place to be? Wouldn’t you rather live in that light?
[Lent 4: Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21.]
Listen to this as preached on the Fourth Sunday of Lent.
It also gave me a healthy respect for poisonous serpents. In Sunday’s reading from the book of Numbers, we hear how the Israelites wandering in the desert developed a healthy respect for serpents as well – or perhaps I should say had a very unhealthy encounter with them. It’s a rather bizarre story, in fact, one that pictures a God so annoyed with their whining that he unloads a whole trailer full of vipers on them. The plague ends only when Moses prays for help and is told to make a bronze serpent and run it up a pole. The snake-bitten people are healed when they look at it, as though this were some kind of magic.
Such stories always make me cringe when they show up on Sunday morning. I’m afraid that first-time visitors or long-time members will create a file marked “Unbelievable” into which they put stories like Moses and the serpent. Then they’ll be tempted to put stories about Jesus there as well. Isn’t it all from the same Bible? It doesn’t help that Jesus specifically links the story of Moses lifting up the serpent to his own being lifted up on a cross. On the other hand, we know that the latter actually happened. Jesus really was crucified. And Jesus reveals to us a very different picture of God than the one found in Numbers.
John’s Gospel shows no uncertainty about the reason Jesus was crucified. It was necessary that the Son of man be lifted up, the Gospel tells us, so that everyone who believes may in him have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16 is a verse that many know by heart, one that Martin Luther called “the gospel in miniature” – and football quarterback Tim Tebow put on his face. In reality, we don’t know whether Jesus actually said those words or if they are part of John’s commentary. The ancient Greek texts did not include punctuation, so quotation marks are the work of a translator. But that’s not the point. John the evangelist, and the community for which he wrote, understood these words as explaining what God was doing.
“God so loved the world…” God’s desire for universal salvation is very clear here. There is no question that God desires all to receive eternal life. It is a gift given to us by the grace of God, as we hear in the letter to the Ephesians. It is the promise and the hope of Jesus Christ. At the same time, John’s community also recognized that there were people who refused to acknowledge Jesus. Most likely that community consisted of Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogue both for their faith in Jesus and their willingness to extend God’s love to Greeks and Samaritans. They took the pain of that synagogue rejection with them, pain that became enshrined in the Gospel of John as God’s rejection of “the Jews.”
God does give us the freedom to turn away from God. In John’s terms, we are free to choose darkness rather than light, to choose evil rather than good. Exercising that freedom becomes self-judgment, rejection of God rather than God’s rejection of those for whom he desires salvation. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Sometimes I think we focus so much on the love of God and our own desire that no one should be lost, that we overlook the fact that some people want to reject God. And God is perfectly willing to let them do so. C. S. Lewis, in his delightfully imaginative book about heaven and hell called The Great Divorce, put it this way: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. Those who knock, it is opened. ”
To be free from God and God’s love is to live in hell. It’s to live as though one were bitten by a poisonous serpent, and in pain and terror all one can think about is death. God offers a different way to live. Just as Moses raised up the bronze serpent in the desert so that the Israelites would focus on God rather than themselves, so Jesus Christ came to lead us toward God and one another, to freely choose life.
Since I have become a priest, I don’t wander in the woods as much as I used to. I miss it – I miss the plants, that is, not the snakes. Yet in being with people and spending more time immersed in God’s word, I experience even more of the richness of God’s loving the world. It is life that we are offered through Jesus Christ, true life, living in light rather than darkness. Doesn’t that sound like the place to be? Wouldn’t you rather live in that light?
[Lent 4: Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21.]
Listen to this as preached on the Fourth Sunday of Lent.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Signs and Wisdom
For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1:22-24
One of the most challenging things for any Christian, and especially for preachers, is to take words written to first-century people and make them intelligible to those living now. There are so many pitfalls along the way that one might almost despair. One response is to preach on something other than the Bible. Another is to take those words – especially when enshrined in a particular English translation – and apply them as though there is no difference between then and now. It is true that human nature has changed little, but words have cultural context, and translators have to make decisions when faced with multivalent meanings. One only has to read a popular paraphrase like The Message to see how far a translator can stray from the original text in an effort to make the Bible appealing.
Jews demand signs. That’s what the first half of the Gospel of John is all about: signs. At Cana, Jesus turns water into wine and heals an official’s child. But these signs only occur after belief in the words of the Word. Jesus’ mother tells the wine servants to do whatever he tells them to do. When the official is initially rebuked by Jesus for wanting a sign, he simply reiterates his plea for his deathly ill son. Jesus speaks again and the man believes in the words of Jesus. These are signs freely given. But they are not enough for “the Jews,” who in John’s Gospel are those who refuse to believe in Jesus. Most likely this was the Gospel community’s own experience, as Jewish Christians expelled from the synagogue for their faith – and who, like the Apostle Paul, carried their animosity with them.
Greeks desire wisdom. In high school I had a remarkable history teacher who introduced us to the culture of ancient Greece. Not many tenth graders get to read Plato’s Republic or Greek drama! Years later, after learning to read New Testament Greek, I thought I’d try to master the older language of Plato. Wrong! It is even more complex, making Latin seem simple. I now understand why philosophy originated in ancient Greece. With the intricate nuances of their language, the Greeks thought they could explain all wisdom in words.
But we preach Christ crucified. The common factor for both Jews and Greeks was that they wanted proof – something they could either see or put into words. In that way they are not too different from people today. Some must see to believe. Others want to be convinced through logical reasoning. But that is not what Christians have to offer. We have only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to which we can point. As Kenneth Leach says in We Preach Christ Crucified, the crucified God “is either the most extraordinary and wondrous truth, or the most bizarre blasphemy.” Christian preaching is “a dangerous attempt to convey something of an experience of power and liberating grace flowing out of the heart of desolation and darkness.” The Christian experience goes against the grain. And yet somehow it makes sense. When, as an atheist, G. K. Chesterton was trying to make sense of the paradoxes of life, he discovered again and again that Christianity had been there first, embracing the paradoxes and giving them meaning. He became a believer.
The crucified God is indeed an extraordinary and wondrous truth. On the surface, it is a scandalous sign and utterly foolish. But for those who believe, it becomes the power to overcome all that is evil in the world, the wisdom that explains what we cannot put into words. It is the paradox that makes all things clear. And that is as true in the twenty-first century as it was in the first.
[Lent 3: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22.]
One of the most challenging things for any Christian, and especially for preachers, is to take words written to first-century people and make them intelligible to those living now. There are so many pitfalls along the way that one might almost despair. One response is to preach on something other than the Bible. Another is to take those words – especially when enshrined in a particular English translation – and apply them as though there is no difference between then and now. It is true that human nature has changed little, but words have cultural context, and translators have to make decisions when faced with multivalent meanings. One only has to read a popular paraphrase like The Message to see how far a translator can stray from the original text in an effort to make the Bible appealing.
Jews demand signs. That’s what the first half of the Gospel of John is all about: signs. At Cana, Jesus turns water into wine and heals an official’s child. But these signs only occur after belief in the words of the Word. Jesus’ mother tells the wine servants to do whatever he tells them to do. When the official is initially rebuked by Jesus for wanting a sign, he simply reiterates his plea for his deathly ill son. Jesus speaks again and the man believes in the words of Jesus. These are signs freely given. But they are not enough for “the Jews,” who in John’s Gospel are those who refuse to believe in Jesus. Most likely this was the Gospel community’s own experience, as Jewish Christians expelled from the synagogue for their faith – and who, like the Apostle Paul, carried their animosity with them.
Greeks desire wisdom. In high school I had a remarkable history teacher who introduced us to the culture of ancient Greece. Not many tenth graders get to read Plato’s Republic or Greek drama! Years later, after learning to read New Testament Greek, I thought I’d try to master the older language of Plato. Wrong! It is even more complex, making Latin seem simple. I now understand why philosophy originated in ancient Greece. With the intricate nuances of their language, the Greeks thought they could explain all wisdom in words.
But we preach Christ crucified. The common factor for both Jews and Greeks was that they wanted proof – something they could either see or put into words. In that way they are not too different from people today. Some must see to believe. Others want to be convinced through logical reasoning. But that is not what Christians have to offer. We have only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to which we can point. As Kenneth Leach says in We Preach Christ Crucified, the crucified God “is either the most extraordinary and wondrous truth, or the most bizarre blasphemy.” Christian preaching is “a dangerous attempt to convey something of an experience of power and liberating grace flowing out of the heart of desolation and darkness.” The Christian experience goes against the grain. And yet somehow it makes sense. When, as an atheist, G. K. Chesterton was trying to make sense of the paradoxes of life, he discovered again and again that Christianity had been there first, embracing the paradoxes and giving them meaning. He became a believer.
The crucified God is indeed an extraordinary and wondrous truth. On the surface, it is a scandalous sign and utterly foolish. But for those who believe, it becomes the power to overcome all that is evil in the world, the wisdom that explains what we cannot put into words. It is the paradox that makes all things clear. And that is as true in the twenty-first century as it was in the first.
[Lent 3: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22.]
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