Maundy Thursday Sermon

There was such a sweet, gentle spirit in church this evening.  Though attendance was light, the Holy Spirit was present.  Here's my sermon...

Where can we go?

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter.  Amen

Mark chapter 14 starts off with a pivotal event that happened two days before the text from tonight, but it is essential for setting the scene of the last days of Jesus’ life.  He is eating a meal at the home of Simon the Leper, and a woman comes in as they are dining and anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume (which was an average worker’s yearly wage)!  Some there protested at the expense and extravagance of this act, but Jesus tells the gathered, “…She has done what she could; she has anointed my body for its burial.” 

I wonder if anyone at that dinner questioned what Jesus was talking about. 

On the day of the Passover, Jesus gives specific instructions to the disciples as to where to prepare this sacred meal of remembrance and celebration in an upper room in Jerusalem.  They do just as Jesus instructs and the disciples and Jesus share this meal that begins with the youngest person in attendance asking this question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” 

From John’s gospel we are given the story of Jesus, after the meal, taking off his robe and washing his disciples’ feet, as we will do in a few moments here.  They are silent (except for Peter) as he moves the basin down the row.  This night is different, that’s for sure!  The teacher has performed the lowest of servant’s duty and then we are told to go and do likewise. 

And then, according to the text read this evening, Jesus makes it REALLY different…by instituting a meal of remembrance…not a meal of Passover from slavery into freedom…but a meal of Passover from death having the last word, into the kingdom of God’s forever love and life.

Jesus changed the wine into his blood, part of a new covenant.  The old covenant…it began with blood…blood on every doorpost.  And…when the covenant was renewed at the foot of Mount Horeb; and again when the covenant was renewed again after the temple was built in Solomon’s time, blood was splashed on the altar and spattered on the people. 

Every Jew, including the disciples and Jesus himself knew these words from Leviticus 17:11 --  For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.

Jesus’ blood, poured out for many, given freely for all, begins on this night that is not like any other, a new covenant where blood will no longer be required.  Jesus’ blood poured out as he was beaten, and as it was spattered on those standing around as his body is pierced…this new covenant began with these words that Mark records for us, spoken in that upper room on the night before his betrayal.  While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

How many times do you suppose we have heard these words?  How many times have we received these gifts – and forgotten? – forgotten that these words were framed by betrayal and denial, as Jesus gives to us the Sacrament of Lord’s Supper…as Jesus gives to us himself, again, tonight? 

Too many, I am afraid…too many.    

As Jesus and the disciples leave the upper room they go to the Garden of Gethsemane, full of olive trees, on the Mount of Olives.  As a matter of fact, Gethsemane means, “place of the oil press.” 

It is here that Jesus begins his most agonizing prayer time ever recorded. 

Deeply grieved, he leaves his beloved disciples to pray – earnestly, fervently pray – for God’s will to be done – for the cup to pass so he doesn’t have to die – for God to bolster him up as he faces what is to come. 

And his beloved disciples?  His best friends?  They are found fast asleep.  The night is far gone and their bellies are full and their minds are numb.  Sadly, the betrayer doesn’t sleep. 

What would we have done had we been a disciple that night?  I would like to think that I would have stayed awake seeing the deep agony of Jesus as he prayed, placed ourselves with him, arms around him, and prayed, too.  My own tears mingling with his, as he cries out to his Abba, Father. 

But I am pretty sure that I would have been like all the others…mindlessly, numbly, sleeping away while Jesus prayed. 

Tonight, as we sit here, where can we go when we leave this place that will bring us what we need?  What can we do?  How shall we be as we leave here with feet washed and bellies full? 

We enter these Three Days with our minds full of pictures of brutality and death.  Images from Belgium,  Palestine/Israel, Syria, and countless other places where faces and names flash across our computer and television screens. 

We know death.  We know brutality.  We know how it happens.  What we don’t seem to know is how to make it stop. 

So we stand, dear Jesus, with you in the Upper Room, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and soon – oh too soon – at the foot of the cross, and cry out, “Where?  Where can we go?  What can we do?” 

We can pray.  We can pray for peace. 

We can look to you and follow your example of radical love and inclusion, Jesus who loves us. 

Loves us to death…

Sermon from February

Just What Belongs to Whom?

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter.  Amen

Today’s lesson from Mark needs some help…contextual help.  It’s always best to know context before we get to content.  So, let’s set the context!  In Chapter 11 of Mark, which we have totally skipped, and will get back to in a month, Jesus has entered Jerusalem on a donkey and people were so excited that they broke off palm branches and laid down their cloaks for him to enter!  They were shouting hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 

So, the religious authorities are on HIGH alert!  This Jesus dude is causing a lot of commotion…and they want him dead!  Lucky for them, he has just played into their hands – he’s on their turf so they can plot, plan and scheme to get him killed!

Question 1, just who is “them”?  For that information we need to back up to verse 27 of Mark 11, and see that the “them” is: the chief priests, the scribes and the elders.  They came to Jesus with questions about his authority to do the things Jesus was doing, and say the things Jesus was saying.  And being a typical Rabbi, he answered their questions with a question, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” 

They refused to answer because they saw that they were trapped…so Jesus refused to answer their question about authority. 

Instead, he told them a parable about a man planting a vineyard.  This vineyard imagery  (Context point #2) comes straight from Isaiah chapter 5 where the vineyard stands for Israel and the landowner for God.  But the imagery doesn’t stop there for those who listen (point 3)…absentee landlordism was a reality for them…a minority of the people owned the majority of the land – kind of like the 99% and the 1% of recent political speech. 

All which flew directly in the face of the Torah teaching of ownership…that everything belonging to God alone! 

The abuse of the slaves, goes right back to the way that the authorities, political and religious, had treated nearly all of the prophets of the Old Testament who spoke for God and God’s ways (point 4).  To be a prophet meant that those to whom you spoke would most likely NOT enjoy your words, or your teachings.  But, to speak for God was what they must do. 

So, finally, God (who owns everything and is far from absent) decides to send the beloved son.  For those chief priests, the scribes and the elders, and those listening, this would evoke images of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, and for those who loved Jesus, they would remember the voice from the heavens at his baptism and for Peter, James, and John additionally, the voice from the cloud at the transfiguration (#5). 

Killing the Son seems so irrational to us, but then, as now, possession is 99% of the law.  If the heir is dead, and the land is ownerless, the property goes to those who can claim occupation!  Reminds me of Abraham having the conversation with God before the birth of his sons, “Will Eliezer of Damascus be my heir? (point 6)

The verses that Jesus quotes comes from Psalm 118.  You gotta listen to this, there’s no way I can make this up!

²²The stone that the builders         rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

²³This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

²⁵Save us, we beseech        you, O Lord!  O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!

²⁶Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  We bless you from the house of the Lord. (point7)

So, being called out in public by Jesus, knowing that his popularity was far bigger and stronger than theirs, they went away and sent some Pharisees and Herodians to him to try to get Jesus from another angle – since the religious one didn’t work!

Let’s try the governmental angle! 

Now, Pharisees are the group of Jews from which modern Judaism stems.  They were interested in obeying Torah so thoroughly that they created 613 additional laws to the 10 Commandments, or to the two that Jesus explained earlier in his ministry: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; love your neighbor as yourself.  (8)

The Herodians were those Jewish leaders who supported King Herod and his dynasty, which means they were fully vested with Rome and all the trappings that came with it.  Can you think of a more opposite-feeling coalition heading to test Jesus on taxes?  (9)  And, in Jesus’ usual way, he amazes them at his answer, and they go back with even more anger and readiness to kill him. 

Has Jesus surprised you in your walk with him?  Do you know who belongs to what? And who belongs to whom?  Have you put Jesus to the test in your own faith life and had answers beyond your own understanding?  I know I have!

Who would have thought that when I stood railing against God, and the unfairness that our family was experiencing over 25 years ago that I’d end up as your pastor?  Who could ever have thought that as our family went through those dark times, that God was leading us to a new life?  Not me.  

Jesus stands, in the final week of his life, and makes time to teach and to open hearts to God’s plan for salvation.  It’s true.  Life isn’t always easy; life isn’t always fair; and it’s also true that we do NOT go through life alone! 

The God who owns the earth and everything in it is not some distant landowner.  God is with us…Emmanuel is with us…every step, every breath, every tear, every laugh…with us…

For we have been marked by the cross of Christ.  We are sealed by the Holy Spirit.  We feast at Jesus’ table of forgiveness, life and salvation. 

Why?  Because we belong – for today – for tomorrow – and forever! 

In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Leadership in the Age. Sermon from March 13, 2016

Leadership in the Age

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter.  Amen

I have been so thrilled with the Narrative Lectionary, having longer readings from the main lesson of the day…until this Sunday!  Ugh!  There really isn’t much narrative to go on…and so…what to do? 

Well, it never hurts to be reminded of context!  Jesus has in been in Jerusalem several days after his Triumphal entry – which we will read and remember next week on Palm Sunday.  Jesus, in Jerusalem during his last week of life, keeps going to the Temple to pray, to teach, to worship as any Rabbi of his age would do.  We are in the preparation days for the Passover in this text, and everyone who can make it is journeying to Jerusalem, to celebrate that historical moment when God opened the Sea for Moses – and their ancestors escaped from slavery in Egypt – by walking on dry ground to freedom! 

We’ve already seen in Mark Chapters 11 and 12, that Jesus has had encounters with all of the religious leadership:  the chief priests, the elders, the Scribes, the Herodians, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees – and has been able to show them that he truly is one sent from God to bring about a new understanding of the Kingdom of God! 

And, just what is this understanding?  God is love and God sees and welcomes everyone into God’s love.  There is no hierarchy – the rich are the same as the poor in God’s eyes of love.   Those who have much are to use what they have to care for the lost, the least, the last and the little.    

This is radical stuff Jesus is teaching.  And he not only teaches, he feeds people… and gives them…not only physical food, but spiritual food as well…making body, mind and spirit whole.  He heals people of diseases and casts out demons.  He sent his disciples to do the same!  Huge crowds are following him – for as many reasons as we can imagine! 

And, Jesus is no dummy.  He sees what is going on as he teaches in the Temple and encountered those in authority.  They are threatened, frightened, and angry. 

And we’ve seen what happens when people get threatened, frightened and angry just this past week in the news.  People get hurt.  People die. 

We know that is just what those leaders are planning, plotting and scheming to do…to get Jesus killed. 

He tries, once again, to warn the Disciples and followers that his final days are coming…and no matter how impressive the stones are of the Temple, one day, they too will be disrupted and the Temple will be no more.  Bad things are going to happen.  People will be afraid and anxiety will go through the roof. 

Sound familiar?

As I was thinking about this text and the upcoming two Sundays of Palm Sunday and Easter, and as I have been watching the political process here in the US, I can’t help but hear Jesus, “Keep alert, Keep awake, Keep alert!” as something we should be doing as well. 

We hear people making all kinds of big promises – and people making fun of each other in a political arena. 

We are scared as a country.  We get sensationalist news reports and are on high alert for terrorists.  We are buying guns to arm ourselves against the “bad guys,” whoever they may be. 

Our country’s anxiety is high – so high that we, as individuals and as a nation, aren’t thinking with the whole brain we have been given.  We cower in fear behind locked doors.  We don’t know our neighbors.  We stick to people we know and refuse to get to know others who are not like us. 

We are in a societal regression.  Rabbi Edwin Friedman from his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix shows five signs of societal and family systems regression as:

1) Reactivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another …and in American society today an intense quickness to interfere in another’s self-expression, to overreact to any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets. . . this hardens hearts and leaves little room for forgiveness or balanced accommodation. (64-65) …there is a lack of playfulness all around.

2) Herding: in chronically anxious America [we experience] the effect of…adaptation to the least mature, to those who are most unwilling to take responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny.  Its influence on leaders is several-fold.  It discourages them from expressing “politically incorrect” opinions and encourages them to play it safe generally; it undermines excellence by encouraging society to organize around its most dysfunctional elements; it forces leaders to engage in countless arguments that are dilatory (negligent); and it makes it more difficult for leaders to be clear, much less decisive. (70)

3) Blame displacement: an emotional state in which [society] focus(es) on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny.

4) A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change…the desire for a quick fix throughout the greater American family evidences a search for certainty, a penchant for easy answers, an avoidance of the struggles that go into growth, and an unwillingness to accept the short-term acute pain that one must experience in order to reduce chronic anxiety. (87)

5) Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four…The major regressive effects on leadership of chronic anxiety…in the greater American family are these:
Leaders lack the distance to think out their vision clearly.
Leaders are led hither and yon by crisis after crisis.
Leaders are reluctant to take well-defined stands, if they have any convictions at all.
Leaders are selected who lack the maturity and sense of self to deal with sabotage.

These are in stark contrast to the major principles of leadership mentioned earlier that were characteristic of the great Renaissance explorers, (and before them, to Jesus – even in the light of his immanent death).
The capacity to separate oneself from surrounding emotional processes;
The capacity to obtain clarity about one’s principles and vision;
The willing to be exposed and to be vulnerable;
Persistence in the face of inertial resistance; and
Self-regulation in the face of reactive sabotage.

It’s not easy today to be a person who follows Jesus – there is so much out there that wants to pull us from his message of love and acceptance.  He was able to keep to God’s plan for himself and our world because he stayed centered in God and focused on his mission to share God’s love for everyone!  So must we, or we will be blown about by every wind of doctrine…scared by every war and rumor of war…frightened to share God’s love with the world…and forget

Who we are as God’s beloved children and Whose we are as those saved by grace and What we are to do; which is to: share God’s love with the world, stay focused by worship, prayer, and study, stay alert as members of the body of Christ, and be generous because of God’s amazing generosity to us! 

It’s a lot, dear sisters and brothers!  Remember!  We are never alone!  Jesus is with us! 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The Widowed Prophet

Last Sunday's Sermon.  

The Widowed Prophet

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter.  Amen

I am so very excited by the way this Narrative Lectionary is opening up things I haven’t seen before in the Bible!  I cannot believe how often I have both read and studied the Gospel of Mark, and it was only this week, when studying that it occurred to me that Jesus, after his entry into Jerusalem, methodically works his way through all of the religious leaders who were at the Temple that week of his death.  We found the first trio to be: the Chief Priests, the Scribes and the Elders.  Then Jesus moved onto the Pharisees and the Herodians; and in this morning’s text he takes on the Sadducees.  Plus, we move back around to encounter a sincere conversation with a Scribe who as Jesus says of him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” 

Who?  Who is next?  No one!  It says…After that no one dared to ask him any question.  Does this mean that Jesus is done?  Oh no!  He goes on to have conversations with the crowds about David’s line and his standing in it and finally he has a conversation with the disciples before he leaves the temple that day.  Jesus observed a widow.  Debi Thomas shares some of her insights in this story in such a new way, that I am happy to share them with you this morning.  She says:

[i]"The Widow's Mite" is a classic Gospel story — a go-to for churches during Stewardship Season.  Who hasn't heard the moving account of the widow who slips quietly into the Temple, drops her meager offering into the treasury, and slips away?  Who hasn't squirmed when a well-meaning pastor saddles the story to its inevitable "so what?" question: "If a poor widow can give her sacrificial bit for the Lord's work, how can we — so comfortably wealthy by comparison — not give much, much more?"

I'll admit it; I've squirmed, but not because the question indicts my giving.  I've squirmed because this woman's "mite" haunts me; her story is harder-edged than I'd like to admit.  And yet something in me doesn't want her reduced to a moral, or exploited for the sake of capital campaigns and annual budgets.  I wish I knew her name.  I wish I knew for sure that her real-life fierceness exceeded the piety we've imposed on her.  I hope — I hope — she died with dignity.

Died?  Yes.  Died.  She died, probably mere days after she dropped those two coins into the Temple treasury.   In case that's a surprise, consider again what Jesus said about her as she left the Temple that day: "She out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

As far as I can tell from reading the Gospels, Jesus wasn't given to exaggeration.  If he says the woman gave everything she had, well, she gave everything she had.  We know she was an impoverished widow in first century Palestine, a woman living on the margins of her society.  She had no safety net.  No husband to advocate for her, no pension to draw from, no social status to hide behind.  She was vulnerable in every single way that mattered.  Two pennies short of the end. 

If I'm getting the timing right, Jesus died four days after the events in this story.  I wonder if the widow did, too.

Here's what makes me squirm: what does it mean to applaud a destitute woman who gave her last two cents to the Temple, and then slipped away to starve?  Is this really a story of selflessness, or is it a cautionary tale about naiveté?  Should we cheer or weep? 

Let's complicate the question further.  St. Mark prefaces the story of the widow with an account of Jesus blasting the religious leaders of his day for their greed, pomposity, and crass exploitation of the poor.  "Beware of the scribes," Jesus tells his followers.  "They devour widow's houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers." 

Their piety, in other words, is a sham, and the religious institution they govern is corrupt — not in any way reflective of the God the Psalmist calls a "Father of orphans and protector of widows."

Indeed, in the days leading up to the widow's last gift, Jesus offers one scathing critique after another of the economic and political exploitation he witnesses all around him.  He makes a mockery of Roman pomp and circumstance when he processes into Jerusalem on a donkey's back.  He cleanses the Temple's money-mongering with a whip. 

He refuses to answer the chief priests, scribes, and elders when they demand to know the source of his authority.  He confounds religious leaders [the Pharisees and Herodians] on taxes, indicts them with a scathing parable about a vineyard and a murdered son, defeats them [that is, the Sadducees] on the question of resurrection, and bewilders them with riddles about his Davidic ancestry.

So why on earth would he turn around and praise a woman for endangering her already endangered life to support an institution he condemns?

The simple answer is, he doesn't.  Read the story carefully; he doesn't.   Centuries of stewardship sermons notwithstanding, Jesus never commends the widow, applauds her self-sacrifice, or invites us to follow in her footsteps.  He simply notices her, and tells his disciples to notice her, too.

This is a moment in the story when I'd give anything to hear Jesus's tone of voice.  Is he heartbroken as he tells his disciples to peel their eyes away from the rich folks and glance in her direction instead?  Is he outraged?  Is he resigned?  What does it mean to him, mere seconds after he's described the Temple leaders as devourers of widows' houses, to witness just such a widow being devoured?  And worse, participating in her own devouring?

Here's a telling postlude: immediately after the widow leaves the Temple, Jesus leaves, too, and as he does, an awed disciple invites Jesus to admire the Temple's mammoth stones and impressive buildings.  Jesus' response is quick and cutting: "Not one of these stones will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."

Ouch.  I wonder if the widow is still on Jesus's mind as he predicts the destruction of the Temple.  He has just watched a trusting woman give her all to an indefensible institution, one that refuses to protect the poor.  No edifice steeped in such injustice will stand.

Back to my earlier question: should we cheer or weep in the face of this story?  Or — here's a third alternative — should we call out (as Jesus did) any form of religiosity that manipulates the vulnerable into self-harm and self-destruction?

Jesus notices the widow. He sees what everyone else is too busy, too grand, too spiritual, and too self-absorbed to see.  For me, this is the only redemptive part of the story — that Jesus's eyes are ever on the small, the insignificant, the hidden.

What did Jesus notice?  I don't know for sure, but I'll hazard some guesses.

I think he noticed the widow's courage.  I imagine it took quite a bit of courage for her to make her gift alongside the rich with their fistfuls of coins.  Even more to allow the last scraps of her security to fall out of her palms.  And more still to swallow panic, swallow desperation, swallow the entirely human desire to cling to life no matter what — and face her end with hope.

I think Jesus noticed her dignity.  Surely she had to steel herself when widowhood rendered her worthless — a person marked "expendable" even in the Temple she loved.  Surely she had to trust — in the face of all the evidence piled up around her — that her tiny gift had value in God's eyes.

And finally, I think Jesus noticed her vocation.  Whether she knew it or not, the widow's action in the Temple that day was prophetic.  She was a prophet in the sense that her costly offering amounted to a holy denunciation of injustice and corruption. Without speaking a word, she spoke God's Word in the ancient tradition of Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and other Old Testament prophets.

But she was also prophetic in the Messianic sense, because her self-sacrifice prefigured Jesus's.  Perhaps what Jesus noticed was kinship.  Her story mirroring his.  The widow gave everything she had to serve a world so broken, it killed her.  Days later, Jesus gave everything he had to redeem, restore, and renew that world.

And, he still does.  Amen

---

[i] Journey with Jesus.  By Debie Thomas. Posted 01 November 2015.  For Sunday November 8, 2015  Lectionary Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B)