Said Another Way

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B - February 12, 2012 (Mark 1:40-45)

2012-02-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

In life there are things we’ll touch and things we won’t…andsometimes things we must.

Several years ago, when Melinda and I were first married butdidn’t have any children, our close friends asked us if we’d babysit their twokids—ages 4 and 20 months—while they went away for an interview at acongregation. We were happy to help them, and I was glad to spend some timegetting to know the younger one, my godson. It didn’t occur to me until theyshowed up to drop them off with a diaper bag, that saying “yes” to this requestwas going to entail something I’d never done before: changing a diaper.

The total time they were with us was two days and twonights, and I prayed fervently that if James, my godson, had a “movement,” itwould occur when Melinda was home on duty with me. But despite my ferventpleas, it still happened. First, I smelt it. Then, he began to complain aboutit. Melinda was still a good 6 hours from arriving home from work, so I figuredI had to be the man with the plan. And if that diaper was going to get off hisbody, I was going to have to touch it. So, I did, but I confess that once Itouched the filled diaper, it was still…shall we say?...warm. I gaggedimmediately. I think I gagged about 4times in rapid succession, actually. I walked into the other room and gavemyself a pep talk. Then I decided that it had to be done, and I needed to reachdown and find whatever courage I could and get that dirty thing off him. I wasthe only option.

Jesus is confronted with a similar situation in thismorning’s gospel text, but in his case, there doesn’t seem to be any balking, anygagging, and any reaching down into his soul for courage. He’s Jesus. He simply reaches out and touches the man, who knows Jesus is his onlyoption. And the implications are much greater than touching a dirty diaper,too. Leprosy (and other skin diseases which were often lumped together under thesame title) was considered the most debilitating and alienating of conditions. People with a skin disease in those days, regardlessof how transmissible it actually was, were themselves lumped together and forcedto eke out a meager existence at the outermost margins of towns and villages, unableto approach anyone else without first yelling out, so that everyone could hearthem, “I’m a leper! Leper, here!”

In the ancient hierarchical understanding of the way thehuman body was ordered, skin disorders were considered the worst kind ofdisorders to have. They affected one’s outward appearance, which was thought tobe a reflection of what was inside. Grotesque, contorted features was thoughtto indicate a grotesque, contorted soul. On top of that, somewhatcontradictorily, those with leprosy were thought to be highly contagious. Thosedetermined unclean because of skin disorders had no hope of ever beingassimilated into society again because no one would come near them, look atthem, much less come into some kind of physical contact with them. They were one of those things that must notbe touched.

And that was precisely what I imagine sent this particularman over the edge, causing him to blab as much as he could about what hadhappened. It was one thing that he had been healed. It was another that Jesushad done it by reaching out and touching him. It was one thing that Jesus had removeda terrible affliction. It was another that Jesus had dignified the man bymaking physical contact with him. Jesus had not just cured him of a painful andincapacitating disease. He had somehow restored his humanity and restored himto his community.

The image on the front of our bulletin today shows Jesusalmost embracing the man. Perhaps that’s what it was like—that particular posturedoes suggest compassion or pity—but from what I’ve read about leprosy in theancient world, even a slight pat on the shoulder or a handshake with theinfected man would have broken all kinds of boundaries. In one simple yetprofound motion, Jesus demonstrates his willingness to “go the distance,” so tospeak, to save this man and restore him to life. So, can we blame him forgetting a little loud and excited about it? If a leper had been touched bysomeone, you can expect he’d want to announce it.

Christ Healing a Leper, Rembrandt (1657-60)

In fact, the man who is cured of his leprosy is just onevoice in the mob of people who are spreading news about Jesus. Things, as faras that’s concerned, had gotten out of hand pretty quickly. Based on the kindsof things Jesus was doing, there was a growing awareness that God’s own specialrepresentative was on the scene. That is, the flurry of healing activity thatbegins Jesus’ ministry in Mark’s gospel would have left no doubt among most aboutJesus’ power and authority. He teaches with conviction, he casts out demons, heraises the sick, and here, in a case that would have put an exclamation point onhis special relationship to God—because only God was thought able to heal skindiseases—he cures someone of leprosy and instructs that person to presenthimself to the priests so that they may make full recognition of his healing. Allin all, it is a systematic undoing of the forces that isolate and alienatehumans from God and from one another. God’s kingdom has come near.

Yet these opening scenes are meant to establish more thanjust his identity and authority. They also indicate how Jesus will use this authority and what that kingdom will looklike, and that is just as important. That’s why that touch, however slight itmight have been, is so crucial. Jesus comes not to lord over creation as somesort of divine dictator. Nor will he somehow snap his holy fingers and magicallyerase creation’s pain like some kind of traveling faith healer. Rather, Jesusshows he is willing to “go the distance” in order to reach us where we are, to bridgewhatever oceans are there that strand humankind from the wholeness God intends.

Jesus will use his identity as the Son of God to show us howhuman he is. He will use his authority as teacher and healer by humblinghimself and putting himself at great risk in order to save us. And God’skingdom will look like one where people are, one by one, rescued from thesegregating forces of sin and put back into true communion with each other, evenwhen that involves touching those we’ve determined “untouchable”—especiallywhen that involves touching those we’ve determined “untouchable.”

Yet we must resist making this story into a lesson about thevirtues of human touch, however powerful it may be. Just this week our youngestdaughter came down with an illness that, thank God, can easily be healed with around of antibiotics. We knew once we got some of that medicine in her she’dfeel so much better. But we also knew if we held her and rubbed her head she’dfeel a lot better, too. It occurred to me someone would have to have a heart ofstone to see her languishing on her bed in misery and not want to hug her, notto have compassion on her. However, it’s not entirely clear, at least in thisinstance, that Jesus was moved by pity or compassion. Some of the earliestsources of Mark’s gospel actually say, “Moved by anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper.” Thatmay sound strange to us, even a little off-putting, but in a way, it makesperfect sense. It’s not the leper or the leper’s request that Jesus is angrywith, but rather the condition that has afflicted him so, as well as themisused laws of religion that have banished him so harshly to the edges. Jesus’touch is a rebuke of that condition and that banishment—almost like a slap inthe devil’s face. Again, in this scenario, he shows he is willing to “go thedistance” to restore this man to dignity.

Whatever his motivation—be it pity or anger and frustration—weare still left with the uncomfortable information at the end of this story thatJesus doesn’t want him talking about it, that Jesus wants it kept a secret. Weare still left with the peculiar situation at the end of this account thatJesus can’t walk around openly anymore. A man who has already traveled suchgreat distance in his opening hours of ministry is left somewhat isolatedhimself, stranded out in the country. After such remarkable displays of power andsuch daring examples of “going the distance,” why wouldn’t Jesus welcome thisman’s praise and adoration? Isn’t that the point of the gospel, to share itwith others?

Night at Golgotha, Vasily Vereshchagin

It is strongly suspected that the reason Jesus wants hisdisciples and others who have witnessed his love to remain silent about it isbecause at this point they have no idea yet just how far he’s going to go tosave us and establish God’s kingdom. That is, when they see him, for example,touch the man with leprosy, they’ve gotten a big and important part of thepicture of Jesus’ identity and mission. But they still have no idea of the defining brushstroke, the one whichwill demonstrate the true depth of his love and compassion and anger at thepowers of sin. Jesus bridges a great distance when he risks his own health and scornfrom breaking religious and social taboo when he touches the leper, but itpales in comparison to the distance he’ll go on the cross. There he will die inorder to bestow ultimate life. There he will fully define his identity andreveal his authority as one who suffers inorder that God may rescue all creation from sin and death. That is the picturehe wants us to have in regards to who he truly is. That is the message we areto share with others and seek to embody as his people. Spreading the word before that picture isfully composed risks finding a short cut to the great distance he means totravel.

A couple of years ago, a member of our congregation shared astory with me about her childhood in North Carolina during the GreatDepression. Her father owned a small store in Charlotte that was not too farfrom the airport. Those were the days of segregation, when black Americans werenot permitted to eat in most restaurants or eat with whites, which meant thatmost of the employees on the runway at the airport had nowhere to eat or evenbuy a meal. Moved somewhat by the potential to increase his business but no doubtalso by compassion for them and maybe even a little anger at that system, thisman began driving his truck out to edge of the terminal where they worked tosell them some food. In the winter, his wife would cook hot soup, and he’d loadthat, too, in big pots in the back of the truck, drive out to the edge of the runway, and ladleit out to them. The men were deeply appreciative of his efforts.

But then came plans to expand the airport’s service, whichmeant a longer runway and more construction. Apparently not caring (or knowing)about the plight of the black employees, the airport cut off his access to theworkers in order to achieve the airport expansion. When he protested, theydemanded that he drive an alternate route around the perimeter of the airport eachday to reach them. He told them his soup would be stone cold by the time he gotthere. Persistent in arguing his case to the authorities and in presenting theneed of the segregated workers, they finally agreed to close down the runway fora few minutes each day at lunchtime and halt all airplane traffic so his littletruck could serve soup. Unable to figure out how they’d achieve the necessarycommunication to set that up, it was decided that his daughter, our member,Martha Gladfelter, would run across the runway every day and up the air trafficcontrol tower to tell the controllers to stop the planes. When he was finished,his truck safely off the runway, she’d scurry down and return.

Across the runway and up the tower so a segregatedpopulation could be served: I think that’s symbolic of the kind of effort Jesuswould like from his followers, followers who know and begin to understand therisky efforts Jesus has gone to for us. Aware of the human pain that stillstrands so many, outraged by injustice and all that cuts us off, and choosing,like Jesus, to go the distance, and reach out to the sick infant on the sofa,the refugee in the camp, the sixth-grader being bullied, the person feeling trappedby mental illness, indeed, all those who must be touched—so that all will knowJesus is on the scene.

Yes, the Lord of life is risen and on the scene. He has arrived, I tell you, and is out in thecountry here, healing and working. Weknow this because we, too, have been restored to life. We find ourselves compelled to tellothers.

And, considering that greatdistance, can they really blame us when we do?

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend PhillipW. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B - January 15, 2012 (1 Samuel 3:1-20 and John 1:43-51)

2012-01-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

A story is told of a gamewarden out in Louisa County who got wind of a poacher who was illegallyshooting deer out of season on his property way out in the boondocks by theriver. The poacher had been up to this for some time, but no one had been ableto catch him in the act. One morning the game warden finally decided to sneakup to the man’s property unawares, spy on him poaching, and arrest him.

Before dawn, he left his carout by the road, hiked deep into the woods, and quietly made his way into thethick brush just behind the poacher’s cabin. A few minutes went by in the stillof that morning, and then he saw a light come on in the cabin. A few minuteslater and the back door opened. The man stepped out into the cold air. He cuppedhis hands to his mouth and shouted out, “Hey, warden, you want to come in for ahot cup of coffee?” The warden was dumbfounded. He sat there for a second, butfiguring his cover was blown and there would be no use in sitting out there inthe cold for the rest of the day, he stood up from his hiding place and said, “Sure. Sounds good.”

The two men went into thecabin and sat down for coffee. After a few moments, the warden looked acrossthe table and said, “I have just one question. How did you know I was out therethis morning trying to spy on you?”

The poacher said, “I didn’t, butevery morning I open my door and call for you, just in case you might bethere.”

Every morning…everyyear…every moment…God’s call to follow and to serve comes to us and God awaitsa response…just in case we might be listening. We may not hear it. Morecommonly, we may not recognize it. Even more likely, we may be paying attentionto something else, preoccupied with ourselves and our own agendas, but God’scall is nevertheless issued, God’s Word is still sent forth with a persistenturgency and with a gracious frequency we could never expect.

I suppose that is the level onwhich many of us can relate to this story of the call of Samuel. The Word ofthe Lord, we are told, was actually rare in those days, but it certainly isprolific and patient with young Samuel! Before he has even known the LORD orbegun to study his word, like any good temple assistant would, God issues acall not once, not twice, but fourtimes—finally even coming to stand in the room with him—before Samuel rightlydiscerns how he is being called. And Samuel misinterprets the source of thissummons each time. Instead of responding directly to the LORD, Samuel firstruns to his mentor and guardian, Eli, the, blind, aging and—truth be told—ineffectivepriest, wondering what his master might need. After three of these missedcalls, Eli finally figures out that it is the LORD who is calling the boy, andso he gives him the words with which Samuel will respond: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

The young Samuel had beenleft at the temple as a toddler by his mother, Hannah, as a fulfillment of thepromise she made to God if God blessed her with a child. She had prayed day andnight to conceive—Eli even accused her of drunkenness—and when she finally didgive birth, she named the child Samuel: “I asked the LORD,” or more directly, “Godhears.” And now as a boy, living under the charge of Eli, that boy’s life comesfull circle: Samuel is the one who hears the LORD’s repeated requests.

I suspect if you were tospeak to many women and men who are in priestly vocations, pastors or otherrostered leaders who serve the church in ministries of Word and sacrament orword and service, you would find that many of them finally responded to a call afterignoring or misinterpreting it for some time. I know that is true of my owncircumstance. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you that my yearsat college and afterward were spent running to various stand-in Elis as Iwished someone could help me interpret my gifts in light of the strange,imperceptible longing most people have to serve or just be useful in thisworld. I am thankful that God was similarly patient and persistent with me ashe was that night with Samuel as he lay in the temple of the LORD. And althoughI sometimes might wish it had all happened sooner, by and large I can givethanks that I learned something about myself, the world, and the LORD in theprocess.

But this hit-or-miss call-and-responseis certainly not limited to pastors and priests. You need look no farther than yourown lives and your own paths of discipleship in Jesus’ name to see the same. Onthe one hand it may seem that the word of the LORD has been rare, that God’svoice has too often seemed silent or unclear and ambiguous, yet nevertheless youcontinue to listen and learn and follow. You are here, for example, and in themidst of your lives you consistently discover many different ways to respond toGod’s call and show forth faithfulness to the word of God that has found you.

Yes, the grace of God’s call iscertainly one of the themes we celebrate as God’s people, especially asLutherans. God calls all people into God’s service: all ages, all races, allnationalities, all educational levels…Tim Tebow fans and—blasphemy!—Tom Brady ones, too. This relentless grace is affirmedagain and again not only in Scripture (look again at skeptical Nathaniel!) butin the lives of all the saints. Yay for us! We are called even in spite of ourselves!

However, if the only thing wenote about God’s call to discipleship and service is its relentlessness, itsgracious, repetitious invitation, then I fear we’d better watch out! If theonly thing we choose emphasize about Jesus’ summons to hear the Word is itsradical insistence and urgency to have us on board, then we’ve got anotherthing coming. In fact, that’s essentially what Jesus tells Nathaniel, who isbewildered and a little excited upon his call to ministry once Jesus locateshim under the fig tree. “You have another thing coming, Nathaniel!” Jesus saysas Nathaniel bursts out with his new-found confession of faith. That is, “You will see greater things than these.”And as the gospel plays out, he will. We will too, to be sure. Believe it ornot, we will see much greater things than the unique ways in which we are beingsummoned to service to God’s kingdom.

Because as edifying as it is to find out that God hassomehow spoken directly to each of us—in the words of Scripture, in the counseland prayer of friends or mentors, for example—the point of Jesus’ kingdom isnot about us and those unique calls. No matter how wonderful it is to discoverthat our set of gifts may align with a certain mission or missions, it isimportant to remember that we are not the primary emphasis of God’s vision. God’sprimary focus and emphasis is Jesus…yes, that one from Nazareth. God does notcall us so that we may be the focus of God’s ministry, but so that we may beinvolved in some way in what God’s word is doing in the world. God’s call is notonly about hearing his word and discerning God has claimed us, but it is also aboutbearing that word…and bearing God’s word can be painful and uncomfortable andawkward.

Samuel reading to Eli the judgments of God (Copley, 1780)

That is precisely what Samueldiscovers once he finally responds and reports to the right person that nightin the temple. The set of words that Samuel must declare on God’s behalf is nota cheery, bright, pleasing pronouncement. In fact, Samuel must stand up thenext morning and pronounce a harsh condemnation on Eli’s entire family. Scripturesays that after Samuel heard God’s word, he lay there until morning. I bet hedid! I imagine all kinds of things were racing through his head. I suspect hedidn’t get a wink of sleep now that he was faced with the prospect of launchinginto a call that would begin with such conflict. How was he going to tell hisown guardian and guide—the one who had raised him and that had now directed himto the LORD’s service—that God had told him their days were numbered?

For young Samuel, hearingGod’s call and now bearing his word involved speaking truth to power. For him,that power was the corrupt priests in the family of Eli who had cheated and ledastray hundreds of people. For some, that power might be the brokers of afinancial system that empowers the wealthy and overlooks the needs of the poor.For others, those powers might be or the leaders of a system that discriminatesbased on race or ethnic group. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream,” forexample, did not just make our ears tingle because of its inspiring rhetoric thatmotivated the masses. It spoke a profound truth to powers of prejudice andracial privilege in this country that was dangerous for those in authority andhard for some to hear.

But the powers to which thepeople of God bear the truth don’t need to be so grand-scale. For some of us, the powers of injustice couldbe the bullies in the school cafeteria or the peer group that pressures othersinto cheating or doing drugs. It could be the influences of a culture thatidolizes sexual gratification and profits from the objectification of the body.Or it could be the powers of apathy that are startled when someone with visionand energy arrives on the scene.

When it comes to hearingGod’s word and responding to the call, Dr. King and other servants knew whatyoung Samuel had to learn so quickly that evening as he lay awake: that thecall to service is just the beginning. In a sense, get over it and move on. Wehave another thing coming—indeed, the world has another thing coming! We have aword to bear to the world, as difficult to share and as out of touch as it maybe.

Yet we cannot forget that theone who bids us to follow, the one who sustains us in this perilous journey, isalso the one who showed not just with words but with his very life how to speaktruth and compassion and justice to the powers of sin and death and decay. Theone who did not let any of Samuel’s words “fall to the ground” is also the one whowill lift up the Word made flesh so that the whole world will be drawn to him. Itis the One who is there in Galilee, strolling along the roads extending theinvitation to disciples skeptical and eager alike. It is the One who, in hissuffering, opens his arm in forgiveness and love so that we may learn toembrace greater things than selfishness and our own desires. It is the One whothere, rising from the tomb, walking right out into a world that is dead anddeaf to the possibility of new life and wondrous new beginnings.

And he is here, speaking fromthe font and from the altar, speaking in the words of Scripture and the wordsof selfless friends…again and again he steps out into the cold morning of theworld, cups his hands to his mouth and calls us in…

Come, my friend, and have acup of coffee.

Come, my friend, and have a cupof wine and a bit of bread.

Come and see greater things.

Come…and see.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Christmas Day - December 25, 2011 (Isaiah 52:7-10 and John 1:1-14)

2011-12-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of themessenger who announces peace, who brings good news!”

On theweeks leading up to Christmas we lovethe sound of the doorbell at our house. Itdoesn’t get rung too often during the rest of the year, but these days it’smore common, and the chime of thebell means one thing: the UPSdelivery man has done it again. Amessenger who brings good news: thereis a package—or maybe more!—on our front step. No matter how quick we are to respond, the delivery man is usually already off the porch before we arriveat the door. We catch a glimpse ofhim scurrying back to his vehicle, bounding into the driver’s seat, on to thenext stop, on to the next doorbell. In his wake, our excitement is justbeginning. We bring them in, squirrelthem away in secret, and wait for theproper time to wrap and then open them. Thedoorbell is kind of a fun by-product to on-line shopping.

And what ajob: to deliver the presents, to deliverthe news! Of course, if you arereceiving a package from the Martin family this year, that doorbell will be ringing after Christmas since we were kind of behind the eight ball in that departmentlately. And with Christmas cards. But I digress. In any case, it will be a glad sound, and those are beautiful, parcel post feet.

TheEpiphany Youth group spent some time this week as those “beautiful feet” on thefront porches of several of our homebound members. The youth were notdelivering any packages, per se, butthey were delivering good news. They went, you see, to sing Christmas carols tothem, and, so long as the Holy Spirit made it possible, to spread a bit of thecheer of that good news of Jesus’ birth. It was a wonderful evening. Theweather cooperated nicely, and our caravan of about 10 vehicles managed to makeit to three members’ homes before we had to come back here for supper. Welearned, among other things, that not everyone knows all the words to “WhatChild is This?” by heart, but we managed to mutter through on the strength of afew clear voices. We also learned that they’d like us back more often. One gentleman,confined to his house by advanced Parkinsons’, stuck out a wavering arm and invitedus to come again next week.

SingingChristmas carols to the homebound is actually something my own church youthgroup did when I was a kid. It was a yearly thing. We’d spend one night right beforeChristmas making the rounds, visiting different homes and assisted livingfacilities with our rusty-voiced Christmas cheer. Occasionally the person towhom we were caroling, although frail, would be able to make it to the door andjoin along in the singing. Sometimes, if it was too cold, they’d stand behindthe window and peer out at us, our faces barely lit by the glow of the smallcandles we held in our hands. We never actually went in anyone’s house,however. It would have been too crowded, too much of an imposition.

One year,however, our pastor took us to sing at the home of Bob Snow, an elderly memberwho was in the final stages of cancer. And by “final” I mean the last few days.He was bedridden, already on a respirator or oxygen or some other apparatus toaid his breathing. An unused bedpan or two were stacked up on his nightstand. Therewas no other way to sing to Bob than by standing in his bed room. By his bed. Wherehe was dying. And so we all traipsed in there, well past the front porch, throughthe family room, and encircled his bed. The only lights in the room wereprovided by our candles.

The lastwe’d seen Mr. Snow in church was months before, and he looked much differentnow. He was wan and skeleton-like. His weak face, which was as white as hisname, was already sunken in from the toll of the disease, and the whole scenemade me, a middle-schooler, feel downright uncomfortable. I was barely at easein my own skin in those days, and I didn’t know how to look at his. I rememberelbowing my way back from the front row. “Why did his wife bring us in here?” Ithought. “Surely he could have heard us from outside.” And there, in that room,as the breathing apparatus gurgled and hissed, we sang Christmas carols atdeath. We lifted up our candles, whose glimmer now reflected off the wet cheeksof his family members, and sang these happy songs—these songs of good news aboutsomeone’s birth—to some who was obviously dying.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing, glory to the newbornKing!...Joy to the World! The Lord is come!...Silent Night! Holy Night! All is calm, all is…bright? Indeed,although maybe not in the way I could recognize. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of themessenger of those who announces peace, who brings good news, who announcessalvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

At that time, in those teenager days of robust healthand raging hormones, it didn’t makemuch sense why we would do something like that, why we would make some of us so uncomfortable at such a joyous time of the year, why we would pull back the curtain that hid the dying from our light and think on such sad things.To sing songs of a birth while someone was dying? What kind of a cruel, insensitive endeavor is this?

Butthey—the wife, the sons, the pastor, and Mr. Snow, no doubt—were thinking aboutthis: “And the Word became flesh and livedamong us.” The good news that we were announcing—the good news that we havebrought to us this great morning—is not simply that Jesus is born, but thatJesus is born to die. And if, as the prophet Isaiah says, our God reigns atall, it is because God has reigned in places like Bob Snow’s bedroom the weekbefore he died. When we say that theWord of God became flesh and dwelt among us, we mean that he lived the fullextent of the human experience. He suffered what flesh suffers when itencounters the brokenness of creation. He endures what our flesh endures as itlives in a world prone to danger and disease. God has miraculously been wrappedin our skin, as wan and weak and pale as it can sometimes be. When we hear thatGod’s Word—God’s very essence and very happening—becameflesh and lived among us, then we hear the length that God is willing to go bearhis arm and make us his forever. We hearof the lengths God will go to restore human dignity. And that is precisely what Mr. Snow wouldneed to hear. As it turns out, maybe itis those lesser-known words of “What Child is This?” that say it best, and thatbear being taken to heart:

“Nails, spearshall pierce him through

The cross beborne for me, for you.

Hail, hailthe Word made flesh,

the babe, theSon of Mary.”

Earlier this week, as my family satdown to eat our dinner, our five-year-old daughter requested to say theblessing. She said thanks for the food, but before she said “amen,” sheinserted a final petition with the most serious inflection: “And God,” shesaid, “help us remember that we can’t open our presents until Christmas. Lord,Have mercy. Hear our prayer.”

Well, it’s Christmas! No time for holding back! Ringthe doorbell and rip open the gift, the gift of Jesus. Tell the good news…onthe porch, at the table, at the bedside, in the tomb: Salvation has come. OurGod reigns!

Orthodox icons of the Nativity of Jesus often depict his birthplace as a cave, evoking his place of burial.

MerryChristmas!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B - December 18, 2011 (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1:26-38)

2011-12-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

Melinda and I do not watch a whole lot of television, but ifthere is one show that can suck us both in like no other it is “Househunters International” on Home and Garden Television. It only takes the opening five seconds of the program to get us hooked,and then we find we have to sit down and watch all thirty minutes, even if itkeeps us up past our bedtime.

For thoseof you who are unfamiliar with the program, the concept is very simple and canbe explained in a matter of seconds. Each episode features an individual, a couple, or a family who is insearch of a new home in a new country. Areal estate agent takes stock of their purchasing price range and then showsthem three potential properties. As youcan probably guess from its title, “Househunters International” tends tofeature home searches of the cosmopolitan and well-to-do. It may be a couple who made their living inLondon’s busy financial district who are now looking to retire to a farmhousein the south of France. Or maybe it’s a youngurban professional who’s just been transferred from Seattle to BuenosAires. Whatever the case, the programbegins with a discussion about the homebuyer’s wish list for their new propertyand ends with a build-up to the homebuyer’s final decision. Along the way, the real estate agentshowcases those three fascinating properties that contain any number of cooland unique characteristics.

What I think we find so compelling about this otherwiseordinary reality show is that each time the final decision manages to surpriseus in some way. The homebuyer alwaysgoes for the property we think they’d rate lowest, either because they discovernew priorities along the journey, or because they become enchanted with someaspect of a house they hadn’t expected. But, without fail, when the show is over, I feel I’ve wasted a valuablehalf-hour of my life, voyeuristically watching the deliberations of someoneelse’s luxury.

Despite that, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch tosay that this is not too different from what the people of God experience asthey await their salvation from on high. Will their God hunt a house among humankind? If so, where might it be? What, pray tell, is on that wish list? And will this grand, sweeping episode ofreality contain a surprise twist at the end?

detail, Michaelangelo's "David"

As you might imagine, the scope of Scripture’s witnesscontains many clues as to what God is looking for as God begins to imagine ahome among mortals, and we are probably not surprised to learn that God is notin the market for a villa in the south of France or a flat in Buenos Aires,technically-speaking. Then again, wewouldn’t exactly look first to the ancient kingdom of Israel, either—a wandering,hapless group of backwater tribes who had spent a great many years rangingaround and attempting, with spotty success, to settle the land promised totheir ancestors. Yet there is God,hunting for his home among them, drifting from encampment to encampment in atemporary tabernacle that houses the Ark of the Covenant. Before a simple shepherd named David rises topower as ancient Israel’s second king—which is sometime around a thousand yearsbefore Jesus is born—God’s people were nothing spectacular. Often prone to internal fighting, they werenot a military power. With no merchantclass or fertile regions for farming, they were not an economic power. Lacking a major center of population orlearning, they were not a cultural power. They really had little going for them, but this David helps to changethat. Finding favor with God, he risesto the throne, unifies the people of Israel, and establishes a capital city byconquering the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem.

This stronghold turns out to be as much of a curse as ablessing as history plays out, but for the time-being, the kingdom begins toflourish and expand. Would God choosehis home here? While it may seem themost logical spot from our standpoint, it turns out that God has otherpriorities, other options to consider. Evenafter David decides to bring Israel’s long days of wandering to an end bygetting the ark out of the camps below and building it a permanent structure upin the city, God makes it clear that that’s not his vision. In a prophecyrevealed to Nathan, David’s prophet, God explains that he was quite contentgoing to and fro in that temporary tabernacle as Israel wandered in the wilderness:“Wherever I have moved about among allthe people of Israel,” the word of the LORD says, “did I ever speak a word withany of the tribal leaders of Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house ofcedar?’” In fact, God hadn’t askedfor that. Turning the tables somewhat,God explains further what he is looking for: David will not make a home forGod, but God will make God’s house from David. David will not be laying a foundation for God to dwell in Jerusalem, butGod will be laying a foundation in David to dwell with the people of theearth. No fancy flat or sun-drenchedvilla just yet—God’s wish list is looking a little different!

David's Jerusalem (ca. 1000 B.C.)

To that end, the LORD makes it clear that his home in Davidwill contain these virtues. First, itwill provide a great name. Second, itwill entail a place where they can be planted to receive protection and refugefrom their enemies and other evildoers. Lastly, it will ensure an eternal relationship with God, one that is firmand solid and established forever. Thatis God’s idea of a home, and a deluxe cedar suite in Jerusalem will not provideit. Somehow David and David’s familywill be that home, at least for now. Through this particular king and hisrather ill-fated line of descendants in this particularly disorganized group oftribes God will seek out a great name, a place of sanctuary and a steadfastrelationship with God’s people.

Interestingly, the intensity of God’s search for a homeseems to go cold for a while. KingSolomon, David’s successor, does end up building a temple in Jerusalem. It is a bejeweled, awe-inspiringedifice. Israel’s worship and religiousdevotion becomes centered there, off and on, for about a thousand years. Prophets come and prophets go. Commercial breaks interrupt the drama hereand there. At one point the Temple getsdestroyed and then rebuilt and eventually added onto.

It would seem that God had almost settled on that structurein that city, but one day in a very remote small town far outside Jerusalem,God finds favor with someone else. Anreal estate angel named Gabriel drops by the home of a young girl engaged to aman named Joseph, who happened to be a long, lost descendant of that ancientDavid. The town is Nazareth, a placehardly on anyone’s radar. And Gabriel’smessage is something no one ever could have expected, a surprise twist that wenever saw coming. God will hunt hishouse in her womb. If she consents—and shedoes—God will move in through a miracle of the Holy Spirit and become aresident of creation in a way only possible to a God whose love knows nobounds. God turns down a house of cedar andtemple of stone to live in a house of human skin and bones.

Try as we may, we cannot predict where or how God theCreator of heaven and earth will choose to reside with us, his creatures, justas David was unable to build a structure to house the LORD. Try as we may, we could never foresee thatGod would choose something this risky, this unprecedented, this common—to take up shop as the quickeningflesh of a young Jewish maid, to knock on the door of someone so seemingly insignificant. Martin Luther says, in a sermon on theAnnunciation, that “Mary was possibly doing housework when the angel Gabrielcame to her.” Kings and queens wouldhave died for this kind of opportunity—provided they could keep it from upendingtheir system of authority—but it comes to a woman who is put in an unlikelypredicament. David made an offer ofcedar timbers to make way for such an arrival, but God puts himself at themercy of a young unwed woman’s faith. It may seem like the whim of a finickyhomebuyer to us, but God will always choose to interact with the world on God’sown terms, not ours.

"The Annunciation," Paolo de Matteis, 1712

And that wish list, as it turns out, is still valid. It ends up being completely fulfilled throughthe womb of this Mary, once and for all. The great name will be Jesus. In Hebrew:The Savior of the people. He will planta place, on a hill right outside Jerusalem, in fact, where people will finally findrefuge from their greatest enemies, sin and death. And his life and death will establish aneternal relationship based on love and forgiveness between God and God’s peoplefrom now until the end of time. As shouldbe expected from a God as gracious as this one, those wishes on that originalwish list shared with King David were not really wishes for God, but wishes forhis people! All of them, wrapped up inhuman flesh and growing, right now, in the womb of Mary.

For when it comes to taking up residence with us, God willcall the shots. God will order the worldthe way God wants to and cut his deals on his own terms. And when that happens, a great name is givento a nothing people. The proud getscattered and the lowly are uplifted. The hungry get filled and the rich are sent away empty. A holy place isplanted in the most vulgar of surroundings. And the most insignificant, vulnerable soul, as it turns out, canmagnify the LORD. This is what happenswhen God makes his home among us.

At this time of the year, as we approach what is arguablyculture’s biggest holiday, there is a lot of talk (and sometimes whining,especially among Christians), about finding and upholding what this season isreally all about. We lament theover-the-top commercialism and crumble under the weight of the busy holiday schedule. We debate the difference between saying “HappyHolidays” and “Merry Christmas.” All thewhile, we want to re-capture some elusive spirit or “true meaning of Christmas,”as if it’s something we can grasp with our hands. Ironically, it is King David whoinadvertently stumbles upon it one thousand years before the fact: that God’sgrace it never something we can control or get a handle on. It is not something we can conjure with anyamount of doing good. God’ grace justhappens. It hunts a home where we’dleast expect it, entering at the corners, checking out property on the margins,turning down the fancy cedar gift in exchange for something more ordinary, moredelicate…like human flesh. Or bread andwine. All it is looking for is that “Yes”so graciously modeled by Mary. God’s isa rare grace that first hooks us and then promises a twist of surprise: He is promised. He is born. His is crucified. He is risen!

But be warned, you people of God, because this grace willsuck you right in. For thirty minutes…forthirty years…and if God finds favor, for the rest of your life.

Is it wasted time? Nope. It is nothing less than thebeginning of it…

Mary, Theotokos (God-bearer)

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The First Sunday of Advent, Year B - November 27, 2011 (Isaiah 64:1-9, Matthew 13:24-37)

2011-11-28T09:57:00.001-08:00

Let me tell you a story of failed expectations. It is astory of failed expectations on a grand scale, of monumental proportions—not small-claimsdisappointments like the Christmas wish list item that didn’t get fulfilled orthe Thanksgiving turkey that got burned in the oven. These are failed expectationsthat affect every outlook on life and infect every possible view of the future.

The year is sometime in the 5^th century, B.C., andit is the story of the people Israel’s return from two generations in exile totheir Promised Land and their beloved holy city, Jerusalem. For approximatelyfifty years the people of Israel had been forced to live far outside ofJerusalem with its awesome and ornate Temple in the heathen city of Babylon. Asthey struggled, day by day and week by long week, to live there as a displacedpeople, with only their stories and what they could remember of theirtraditions to keep their faith and community alive, they longed for the daythey might return. They hoped and prayed for the day when God would actually dosomething profound and unbelievable that would enable them to move back there, resettletheir old olive groves and re-farm their old sheep pastures and, most of all,rebuild their old Temple in Jerusalem.

And just when it looked as if they would always be a peopleseparated from that homeland, just when it looked like they might getassimilated into the great melting pot that was Babylon and forever disappear asa distinct people from the face of the earth, that profound and unbelievablething happened! Cyrus, the King of Persia, and then his successor, Darius, conqueredthe Babylonian Empire and—unpredictably—practically pave the way for Israel’speople to return home. It was a miracle!

Yet, when the people of Israel finally get there—aftercrossing the wide wilderness—and start to re-settle those olive groves and,most importantly, re-build that Temple, disappointment settles in big-time. Allkinds of factions form within their own people and begin to pull them apart. Familiesand houses quarrel with one another. Competing visions of the future of theirpeople rise up amongst them, and no one can seem to agree on which direction theirreborn nation should take. Selfishness and greed take over and, before theyrealize it, their hopes for a grand restoration are dashed to the ground. Theyare face-to-face with their utter inability to control their destiny, theirincapacity to put back together what was broken, their powerlessness to formsomething beautiful—anything!—out of the wreck around them. Theseare failed expectations on a grand scale. Such high hopes had become suchshocking loss and disorientation.

Israel's return from exile

And that utter frustration is precisely what gives voice toour Scripture from Isaiah this morning: Standing before their priest at theTemple they cry out to God above,“O thatyou would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence!” In the case ofancient Israel, mountains were a metaphor for everything that was beyond theircontrol, everything ominous and oppressive and overbearing. Israel looks aroundand sees nothing but its own failures. They look at their neighbor and seelittle but his own ineffectiveness and stubbornness. What’s more, they lookinside and see little but their own sinfulness: “We have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deedsare like a filthy cloth.” The translation of the Hebrew there is perhaps alittle too lenient. A better translation is “soiled underpants.” “Our good deeds” the people of God realize, “arelike poopy diapers.”

In other words, the mountains are everywhere—both within andwithout—and they have led to failed expectations. At this point, only lookingabove, to God Almighty, will bring any hope. The mountains will only quake nowif God decides to do something. Their expectations of grand restoration—livingas the people they had been created and redeemed to be—will only be fulfilled ifGod decides to take action, if God tears open the heavens and comes down to getdirectly involved.

We don’t have to look too hard to know that we still live ina world with plenty of failed expectations. We don’t need ancient Israel andits poopy diapers from 2500 years ago to remind us of the disappointment in ourhuman condition. Whether it’s the European debt crisis and the potentialbreak-up of the Euro currency, or the tents of the Occupy Wall Street movement,or the ongoing protests in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, or thehyper-partisanship of U.S. politics at the moment, one gets the sense thatthere is a palpable, if not increasing, level of frustration and disorientationwith the way things are.

And, despite the voices of optimism about the humancondition that ring out every once in a while (especially at this time of year),we then realize the other facts of the state of our race: there are, forexample, still something around 3 million children who die every year fromissues related to hunger or food stress that we could prevent. There are stillgoing to be 70,000 new AIDS orphans this year, added to the roughly 20 millionthat already eke out their sad living. While millions of people worldwide findthemselves throwing elbows in order to have access to clean water, holidayshoppers here will throw elbows to get discounted electronic goods. Thumbthrough the newspapers, catch some of the news, listen to the cry of the victimand it’s there: heaps of failed expectations. Mountains of worry and disasterand sorrow.

Advent is, perhaps more than anything else, a time for blunthonesty. We often think of it primarily as a time to get ready for Christmas, whenwe’re asked in ways subtle and strong to reflect on the inherent goodness ofhumankind and the determination of the human spirit. But, really, like ancientIsrael, we need to be brought face-to-face with our failed expectations, ourutter inability to control our destiny, our incapacity to put back togetherwhat has been broken. We need to look both around and within and come to termswith the mountains that loom large on every horizon. It helps to join our voiceswith those that cried out so long ago: “O,that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

Because when we do, we realize that if there is a wayout of this mess it will not come from inside of us. We cannot even put ourhope, as many often do, in the generation that comes after us. Despite thevigor and idealism we see in their eyes, their diapers will be just as poopy asours are (trust me, I live with two of them in my house). In fact, the prayerof the day for this first Sunday of a new church year does manage to phrase itwith appropriate Advent bluntness: “awaken us to the threatening dangers of oursins.” It is a plea that our eyes actually be opened to what we read in thenewspapers, and what we hear on the nightly news, and what we understand fromthe cry of the victim, and to pay attention to what those things say about us—thatwe are creatures of failed expectations. It is a petition through which weacknowledge that things cannot continue on like this forever. This is not theway God wants the world—it is not how we want the world, either—and that weawait a change.

Thankfully, however, we await the act of a God who is alltoo acquainted with failed expectations. We must not forget that our salvationfrom amongst all of these mountains comes from a God who has chosen to workalready once before with the stuff of utter disappointment. As ancient Israelalso had to admit: God is a potter, and therefore he works with mud.

For a brief moment yesterday I watched the Epiphany quilterspiece together another quilt in the fellowship hall. They worked in silence—no Christmasmusic playing in the background for them—steadily piecing together the portionsof cloth to form a piece both of beauty and function. On a day when they couldhave been getting good deals in the stores, they were working with scraps ofcloth so that people on the other side of the world might have warmth orshelter. And the thought occurred to me: if God is a potter who forms thingsout of muddy people like you and me, then God is also a quilter who works withscraps and leftovers, the remnants who feel, quite honestly, destined for thegarbage bin.

The beauty God comes to fashion is made, then, from the mosttattered parts of the human experience. For the last time God opened the heavensand came down he was born into a cattle feedbox. In his ministry, he surroundedhimself with relative disappointments, people who never could quite get ittogether, who deserted him in his hour of greatest need. The culmination of hisministry was not on a throne or in a palace or even valedictorian of hisrabbinical class, but rather on a cross, arms spread open in agony and withparched lips breathing words of loneliness and rejection. And he entrusts thislegacy to the hodge-podge likes of you and me. His Spirit enriches even us withgifts of every kind. He nourishes uswith a meal that, on the surface, does not look all that extravagant, but whichchanges us out of our poopy diapers each and every time. This is how God hasopened the heavens once already and come to us. And we have his word that hewill come again.

Michaelangelo, "The Last Judgment"

And so, just as our Advent began with blunt honesty aboutour human condition, it also begins with a promise of wonderful hope aboutGod’s desire to do something about it. It begins not only with a story of ourfailed expectations, but of a story with great promise: Jesus says, “heaven and earth may fall apart altogether—butmy words will never pass away.” As they stood there before thedisappointing rubble of Jerusalem, its faded glory a mere reflection of what itonce was, the ancient Israelites essentially wanted God to resort to his oldways of working. Some of them were so dumbstruck by their disappointment thatthey were unable to see the new way that God was calling them to be his peoplein the world, a people whose faith would not be centered completely in thatTemple and its religion, but in the hearts and lives of God’s peopleeverywhere. As we wait for God to comedown once more, as we wait for the return of our Lord, we should rememberancient Israel’s lesson: we are still God’s people, called to be that tapestryof warmth and shelter—salvation and resurrection—he is stitching in theworld. We have the Spirit's gifts. We have been washed and fed. We know the mountains loom, but God calls usto work through these failed expectations to trust more on him and that, becauseone day—rest assured—he will put that final stitch in this amazing quilt.

In the parable Jesus tells to his disciples and everyoneelse about his own promise to come again, the chief error of those slaves whoare caught off-guard is not their lack of knowledge about the end times or whenit will occur…or their incorrect doctrines about God…or even in theirevildoing. Jesus warns them chiefly against falling asleep, against not using the gifts that have been givento them in the tasks that he had commanded.

At a time of the year when it is so easy to fall back intoroutine, when the Christmas Muzak heard in the background of every departmentstore serves to lull us into the sentimentality of this holiday season anddeafen us to our filthiness, let us not fall asleep on our job of being God’s peoplein the world, of God’s people amidst even these failed expectations. And let usneither stand dumbstruck at what we’ve become. Let us, instead, sobered by thethreatening dangers of our sins, place our hope on him whose words will neverpass away, on God the potter who works with mud—or a quilter who works withscraps—on the promise of a day and age coming soon when the scraps of all ourlives will finally be knit together into a holy fabric that spans eternity…allaccording to God’s wonderful expectation.

Now that is a view of the future for which we can be hopeful. Get to working!

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend PhillipW. Martin, Jr.

All Saints Sunday, Year A - November 6, 2011 (1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12)

2011-11-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

Based on what we hear from this morning’s Scriptures, we maysay that to be a saint in this world is largely to be misunderstood. To livethe life of a saint—that is, to undertake the road of grace that God lays downfreely for us in Jesus—is to live the life of someone who is, to some degree,at odds with the world. It is to be someone who is constantly going to have someexplaining to do, always having to offer up, in both words and actions, adifferent view of things.

I liken this to knowing the proper lyrics to a song that ison the radio. In the days before Google, which allows you to simply check theInternet for the proper words to a song you liked, you were reduced to justlistening to a song over and over again to try to figure out what the singerwas saying. This has produced some hilarious misunderstandings. I can’t tellyou how disappointed I was when I found out that the Steve Miller Band’s song, “BigOl’ Jet Airliner” was not, in fact, actually a hymn to my home state, “Good Ol’North Carolina.” And my family stillgives my father a hard time about the Christmas morning we found him unloadingpresents from the trunk of his car, merrily singing, “Feliz La-De-Dah.” And our esteemed Director of Music, KevinBarger, apparently thinks that the old favorite hymn, “Lead On, O King Eternal,”has always sounded more like, “Lead On, O Kinky Turtle.” One musician, Seal, intentionally does notinclude the lyrics of his songs in his albums just so that people can come upwith their own understanding of whatever he’s singing, blissfully ignorant ofwhat the words really are. The words to songs and stories, unless explicitlylaid out, are often easy to get wrong.

That is the essence of what is happening between John theevangelist and his community in a letter he writes just around the turn of thefirst century after Christ’s birth. He is trying to get the lyrics straight andclear up a growing misunderstanding. By this point, only a few decades havepassed, perhaps, since Jesus has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, andyet there is already some disagreement among his closest followers as to what Jesus’life on earth meant.

All Saints icon

The particular details of this controversy are not known tous anymore, but it apparently was so critical to the understanding of theChristian faith that John found he needed to make some things very clear. Bottomline was the factions of people who disagreed with John in the early church wantedto deny that Christ came in the flesh. That is, their understanding of God wassuch that they had no place for Jesus’ wanting to be involved in anythingmessy, like birth—or death, for that matter—and the daily ups and downs ofhuman life.

And John was adamant: Jesus was real. His birth was real, hisministry among the sick and marginalized was real, and his death andresurrection—also extremely real—had really claimed God’s people from a life ofsin death. This reclaiming that Jesus had done, made meaningful for eachbeliever through the sacrament of Baptism, was so real one could say a new lifehad begun for believers on the other side of that water, right here and now. Claimedas God’s child by Jesus’ sacrifice, the believer’s life was now synched to a hopethat was not fully tangible. Creatures made of flesh, themselves, they had beensaved from a future of death and decay. With their lives and with their faith, theypointed forward to a new reality in the future that had not yet been revealed. Theireyes were set on the faithfulness of God even after their own death, and thepromise of their own eventual purity, just as he is pure.

Those were the true lyrics of the faith, but they could bemisunderstood. As God’s children, they would have some explaining to do onoccasion. That is, they were going to need to be prepared to offer up, in boththeir words and actions, this real version of things—a view where God’s love inJesus is turning things around. “Thereason the world does not know us is that it did not know him,” Johnstates, emphasizing the point that just as Jesus was and still ismisunderstood, so can his followers expect to be misunderstood as they continuein his way. If some people in their community did not understand why John andhis supporters behaved as though their lives—messy though they were—had beenclaimed for something better, it was no wonder. Jesus had been nailed to thecross for saying such things, too.

The British writer and theologian C.S. Lewis does anexcellent job of portraying this aspect of Jesus’ nature and ministry in hisseries of children’s novels, The Chroniclesof Narnia (which are really for adults, too). Those who are familiar withthe fictitious kingdom of Narnia the characters who live there know that theChrist-figure in these stories is depicted as a giant lion named Aslan who isdescribed as fierce and terrible but also beautiful and just. Aslan is oftenlurking in the shadows and mysteriously present just when someone is in need.

To us it may seem strange to depict Christ as a lion, but itwas a very deliberate and genius choice on Lewis’ part. Lions are veryfearsome. Everyone would identify them as both frightening and easy to misjudgebecause they have a mind of their own. Inthe C.S. Lewis’ books, Aslan the lion is often misunderstood, especially bythose who’ve never met him and gotten to know him. Those in the stories wholive outside of Aslan’s domain cannot comprehend how a lion can be loving orgracious. They only hear stories about him. His enemies often twist thosestories and perceive him to be a demon, or a dreadful beast who haunts hisvictims in terror and who must be subdued. Yet those who are befriended byAslan quickly learn that, while strong and fierce and all-knowing, he is, atheart, a good and compassionate lion.

Thereis a sense in which Jesus is always perceived and received in a similar way bythis world. Stories about him will be twisted. The truth will be altered. Hisfearless command over our lives will be resisted and doubted. And so if those who believe in him that theirfaith and their actions are often misunderstood, that the way of life he laysbefore them often makes little sense, they only have to look his life to seewhy.

Gustave Dore, Jesus Preaching on the Mount (1860)

And although we certainly can, we need look no further thanJesus’ first recorded sermon where he rattling off a list of qualities andsituations that no one in her right mind would call “blessed.” The poor in spirit. Those who mourn. The meek,the merciful, those who make peace. Thosewho hunger and thirst for righteousness, as well as those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Rightthere in the first words off his tongue, Jesus begins lifting up those who areoften misunderstood, as if he is giving an example of what life in his kingdomwill be like. Right off the bat, Jesus is taking those who are typically forcedto reside at the edges of the world and its ideas of prosperity and happiness, andplacing them at the center of his new kingdom. Things therefore are turnedaround from how we usually expect them and how the world often likes to keepthem.

And there it is again: to live like this—to receive theseparticular blessings—will involve being misunderstood. It will involve respondingto a call that not everyone else hears. It will entail living in a kingdom that,for some reason, not everyone else seems to acknowledge yet.

But here we must be careful, for there is but a short distancefrom being misunderstood to withdrawing from the world and rejecting it inhatred. It is a short trip from feeling constantly at odds with the world’s wayof doing things and saying “to hell with it” altogether. And that is not thelife of a saint. That is certainly not the life of Jesus. Jesus, you see, doesnot come, as John says in an earlier writing, to condemn the world, but to saveit. Likewise, a saint learns to sees the world as an imperfect place, but neverthelessa place that God loves and a place that God has filled with surprising amountsof joy. A child of God, which what John calls saints, may become frustrated andeven angered by the injustices and the mixed up priorities of the world, but achild of God finds ever new ways of loving and working to change the world, evenif it is in the lives of just a few people around them.

Come to think of it, a saint sees the world almost like alarge-scale version of themselves: full of sin, doubt, turmoil, disappointment,but nevertheless cleansed and claimed by a God who, as John would remind us, dealsin messiness quite willingly. Yes, what John the evangelist was trying to makeclear to his community two thousand years ago goes for us today: God likesmesses. It seems so unnatural that a God who is so holy and perfect—a lion sofierce and fearsome—would choose for companions those who are so fundamentallyflawed. It seems so preposterous that a God who is so powerful and wise would chooseto make himself known to people who are so prone to weakness and doubt. But hedoes. Those are the beautiful lyrics ofgrace.

Powaski Cemetery, Warsaw

On this All Saints Sunday, as we ponder especially the livesof those children of God who have died in the past year and how they may havebeen, at times, misunderstood for their faith, let us give thanks for the livesand faith of all saints that point us to the kingdom to come. But, first and foremost, let us give thanks fora God who gladly deals with things when they get messy, a mighty God who revelsin things like forgiveness and mercy and turning things around. Let us lift ourvoices and our lives in praise of a God who, in Christ, is real and really fond of reaching out to the sick and the suffering,really fond of turning over the gracious life of God even to the most hopelessof cases.

“See what love theFather has given us, that we shouldbe called children of God; and thatis what we are.” Those are the words to this eternal song, and those whohave felt this grace, those who have been turned around and have been taughtthe right lyrics time and time again—in the water, at the table—can’t help but movein that new direction, and can’t but help trying to get the rest of the world tojoin in the song with them.

Even when—Kevin, it’s “King Eternal”—it involves beingmisunderstood.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend PhillipW. Martin, Jr.

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24A] - October 16, 2011 (Matthew 22:15-22)

2011-10-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone is thinking or talking about loopholesthese days and how they supposedly make the nation’s tax codes unfair. Whatwith the economy on shaky ground and would-be presidential candidates’ toutingtheir alternate tax plans, people everywhere seem disgusted that loopholes exist, and they'redemanding an end to them. They go against our idea of fairness—lurking deep in thetiny print, buried beneath all the red tape—those areas of bureaucraticambiguity that allow the clever or the qualified to circumvent the law. We tendto be resentful of those who can find and exploit the loopholes, and yet, ifwe’re honest, we wouldn’t exactly pass up an opportunity to have them work inour favor, if you know what I mean.

There is no telling if the Pharisees and the Herodians hadfound loopholes in Caesar's tax code that demanded a yearly payment for each maleabove the age of fourteen and each woman between twelve and sixty-five. I’d betthey had, but I have no proof. Both groups were entrenched in the powerstructures of the day. The Herodians were a group that supported the reign ofKing Herod, the local puppet of Caesar. Not much is known of them, but theywere likely well-connected with people up top—like a modern-day specialinterest group, maybe. They would have supported the payment of Caesar’s headtax because it helped prop up the system that kept Herod, their fave, in power,even if they had found a way to be exempt from it themselves.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, liked to pretend theyweren’t that politically involved, but they certainly could play the gameenough to keep themselves at the center of Jewish temple life. Although theynever openly organized, let’s say, an “Occupy Temple Street” rally againstCaesar’s policies, the Pharisees probably resented Caesar’s tax because—firstof all—they knew it was a constant reminder to the Jewish people of their Romanoppression, and—second of all—dealing with the emperor’s printed and mintedmoney raised all kinds of issues regarding false idols and graven images anddisobeying the first commandment.

"Show me a coin."

So, both the Pharisees and the Herodians find the issue ofpaying taxes to the megalomaniacal leader of a foreign military power theperfect way to trap Jesus in his own logic. They consider it the question thatwill finally do him in. For if Jesus supports paying the tax outright, then hewill reveal himself to be party to the Roman law and deeply unpopular with thepeople. But if he rejects the tax, the Herodians and other local leaders willbe able to accuse him of treason or inciting a rebellion. In every commentary Ichecked, they labelled this the “horns of a dilemma.” I’d love to know the origin of thatexpression. It sounds pointy. In any case, this is a situation where Jesuscan’t win, a situation where Jesus has to choose between two equally badalternatives, unless, of course, Jesus can find…a loophole. This is a time whenwe hope Jesus might find a way out of answering directly, of exploitingsomething in the system that will get him—and us, of course—off the hook.

Already by Jesus’ day emperors and other rulers wereimprinting their images on coins to serve as currency for the empire. Thissystem of monopolizing all commerce transactions by inscribing the rulingpowers’ mottos and likeness on tokens of common exchange was one of the mosteffective methods for an empire to extend its authority into every aspect ofhuman life. Soon people would no longer barter for goods and services in themarket—(“two camels, say, for a hectare of wheat”)--but they would trade tokensand bills that could be backed by the emperors’ treasure. It’s not just that moneymade taxes easier to levy and collect; the emperor also essentially had a handin every business deal that took place, investing, somehow, in every ventureout there. I imagine that’s where the term “currency” came from: it was thecirculation of money that could keep goods and services flowing, like acurrent.

Caesar's denarius coin

When the Pharisees present Jesus with one of the empire’s coinswith which the tax was to be paid, Jesus shows them that it plainly hasCaesar’s head on it. If it contains Caesar’s image, then it must be Caesar’s. Inother words, Caesar has made this money and stamped his likeness on it, therefore,it belongs to Caesar and should be rendered to him. If this is how Caesar wouldlike to run his empire—going around minting things of value so that he caneventually control and create wealth, then so be it—keep the system of denariiflowing back to him, Jesus says, corrupt though it may be. But then Jesus addsa phrase that is much more than just a loophole in that process. He throws thewhole system on its head, so to speak: “Andgive to God the things that are God’s.”

The message? As it turns out, it is not just Caesar who hasgone around and placed his image on certain things. As the Pharisees and maybethe Herodians surely would have known, each human being on earth bears God’simage. We have been created—male and female—in the image of God, fashioned, eachin our own unique way, to reflect back to the Creator something of great value.We have each been formed and shaped with the idea that we are not justprecious, but that we bear within us some of the very qualities of God. And, inJesus’ economy, that also needs to flow back to the being who minted us, and,if the system works like it should, it will enrich the entire universe.

In Jesus’ statement to pay taxes to Caesar, we find the callto a life that is far more radical than anything we might otherwise be up to. Itis more activitist than occupying Wall Street and more countercultural than forminga new political party. What Jesus means is that we are the currency throughwhich God will deal change in the world. Created in his image, and redeemedfrom corruption through the cross of Christ, we are in circulation to God’sglory. And no matter how many other labels get attached to us, no matter howmany other images are pounded into our brains, we will always, at our core, beforged in God’s own image.

And that means, with the Spirit’s power, we have thepriviledge to interact with this world in much the same way as God does. Itmeans we have the power to love and forgive as well as the power to hate andhold grudges. It means we have been granted the capacity to show compassionrather than indifference. It means we can choose generosity over greed, andselflessness over egocentrism. This is, in part, what it means to be created inGod’s image, to bear his likeness. Sin causes us always to choose the latteroptions—the hate, the indifference, the greed, the selfishness—but in JesusChrist, God still claims us for the good.

It also means that our lives don’t just matter to us andthose with whom we share this planet, but that they matter, in fact, to God. Itmatters to God what we do with, for example, our money—all of it. It matters toGod what we do with our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our sexuality,and our ability to create new life ourselves. And while we might not completelybe set free yet from the emperor’s system of weights and balances and levyingtaxes, we can still begin direct to God’s purposes these things that arerightfully God’s. We can still rememberthat, in Jesus Christ, God once more gives us lives that actually matter amidstso many world systems that assign worth and wealth rather arbitrarily, amidst aculture that says we must really only answer to ourselves, which is a totallie.

refugee with her identification card

I can’t help but think here of the Sudanese and Somalirefugees I served in the streets of Cairo—a people who would risk almost everythingfor the chance to possess the blue refugee I.D. card issued by the UnitedNations High Commissioner for Refugees. The thing was only a little bigger thanan index card, but for some reason, in the wacky way the world operates, it bestowedupon them some basic human rights and the chance to be resettled to a new home.It would often take them years to obtain it, and the majority of them would dieor lose hope altogether before they’d get one. It was a sad system I didn’tunderstand (and one in which I somehow participated), but I did notice that inthe meantime while they waited, they’d arrive in worship, week after week, tracingthe cross in water on their forehead as they passed by the font, hearing onceagain the source and call of their true citizenship, reminding us privilegedwesterners that they knew they already had the only identity they card they’dever need in the love of Jesus Christ.

Because, truth be told, at some point everything that we arewill be handed over in death. At some point it won’t matter how many identitycards we’ve secured or how much extra wealth we’ve accrued. All that we’ve becomewill be given back, and all that we’ve kept will become someone else’s. And atthat point, God will be the final recipient, that’s for sure, and there won’tbe any loopholes that I know of.

I wonder, regarding my own life: on that day, will Godfinally get back something that was rightfully his, but had been withheld allthe while in greed, selfishness, and spite? Or will he be receiving something thathad been lovingly prepared for him out of a response to the generosity of hisSon? I shudder to answer, for I think I know.

Yet regardless, in anticipation of that day, as we eachanswer that question for ourselves, perhaps we should organize a protestcampaign. Occupy…let’s see…Monument Avenue! At least the end of it here…everyweek. For that matter, every day! OccupyHorsepen Road…and go ahead and occupy your cubicle at Reynolds packaging orCapital One. Occupy the nurse’s station at Bon Secours and Henrico Doctors. Occupythe locker at Godwin High School and your classroom at Short Pump Middle. Occupyyour breakfast conversations each morning and the dinner table each evening Occupyall these places with the news of Jesus, just as God has so graciously occupiedyour hearts and maybe we can get a little of Jesus’ currency—the kind thatmakes all things new—circulating in the process.

Play along, if need be, with the world’s system of weightsand measures, I.D. cards and head taxes, but all the while lifting hands andlives to the Lord above because “all thatwe have and all that we are all that we hope to be we give to God…

“We are an offering. We are an offering.”

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 21A] - September 25, 2011 (Matthew 21:23-32 and Philippians 2:1-13)

2011-09-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Authority is almost always a sticky issue, as in: who exactly has it?

Daily headlines and news stories tell us that this particular question and many like it are being fleshed out in many places these days with a frequency and an urgency that has not been seen for some time. Look, for example, at Libya and Egypt and other countries that have been affected by what is being called the Arab Spring. Who has the authority there now? Dictators have been overthrown, but the resulting chaos has left a power vacuum that no one seems to know how to fill. Imagine how frustrating it must be for those citizens to be free of an authoritarian regime only to have it replaced with an authority-less free-for-all.

Palestine’s bid for statehood this week in front of the United Nations only underscored our world’s own deficiencies and desperate hopes when it comes to determining who has proper authority. Is a gathering of most of the world’s recognized political leaders, some of whom have no direct relationship with each other, really capable of wielding any authority in a complicated conflict that has been raging for decades, if not centuries?

All of this makes me more thankful to live in a country where politicians and institutions may suffer times of disapproval but where there is nevertheless little question about who holds authority and from where that authority is derived. And it also makes me thankful to live in a nuclear family where the issue of who has real authority is equally unambiguous. One of our daughters will often ask a question about anything under the sun—“What time are we eating?” or “How much longer till we get there?” or “Is Cinderella friends with Snow White?”—and if I attempt to offer an answer, no matter how correct, I will get the clear response, “No, Daddy! I was asking mommy!”

Although I think that Melinda and I do a decent job of sharing responsibilities and decision-making, it is clear that our two daughters give her ultimate authority. That’s what the “Martin Spring” has established…and I’m quite OK with that.

As you can see from the exchange between Jesus and the chief priests in this morning’s Gospel text from Matthew, the issue of authority is sticky for the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, too. In fact, Jesus’ authority becomes a critical issue once he enters Jerusalem, which happens just prior to this encounter. Jerusalem was the capital. It was the seat of authority. The provincial government was based there, army divisions were headquartered there, and, most of all, the Temple was there. In the villages and countryside of Galilee and other outlying areas, Jesus was often perceived by many to be the Big Man on Campus. People there were, on average, less educated and less credentialed. They could be impressed with Jesus’ command of the Scriptures and his explanations of the law. But in Jerusalem he comes into contact with the head honchos and heavy hitters. The Temple is where they sit and posture themselves all day, preparing, among other things, Sunday school classes (like ones on the ways the Internet can influence and benefit faith formation which will begin next Sunday in the Chapel).

In the villages and countryside of Galilee, people also often experienced Jesus a fresh alternative to their rabbis and scribes. Jerusalem presents a hornets’ nest of these leaders, and pretty soon the issue of his authority is going to come up. A schooling in Nazareth and an apprenticeship in Capernaum isn’t exactly going to be enough to win over the authorities, and things are going to get even more difficult for Jesus in that department after he goes into the Temple the first time and overturns the tables, drives out the moneychangers, and begins healing and preaching there himself.

That’s when the chief priests and the elders confront him with their question of authority: What is the basis of his authority and how in God’s name did he get it? In fact, they are setting a trap for him, for there is really no way for Jesus to answer that question without igniting a firestorm. So, in typical rabbinical fashion, he counters their question with another of his own. It concerns the ministry and authority of his cousin and forerunner, John the Baptist. John had also been immensely popular with the crowds, maybe even more so than Jesus. By asking the chief priests about how they regard John’s legitimacy, he puts them in a bind. If they agree that John the Baptist had divine authority, then they’ll have to admit they goofed when they rejected him, and, ultimately, they’d have to accept Jesus, because John pointed the way to Jesus. But if the chief priests and elders say John did not somehow have divine authority, then the crowds will rise up against them, and that the authorities do not want. They’re afraid of an Arab Spring.

The parable that Jesus tells then as a follow-up serves to illustrate the bind the chief priests and religious authorities are now in with regards to Jesus’ authority and whether they will accept it. In that parable, the first son publicly humiliates his father with outright disobedience when he replies “No” to his father’s command to work in the vineyard. Even though he later changes his mind—repented—about this disobedience, that type of affront to the father in that culture was still considered very offensive.

The Parable of the Two Sons

The second son, by contrast, dutifully answers “Yes” but then never follows through with the intent in this response. He had read his father’s command—and at least verbally respected his father’s authority—correctly, but had misread how to fulfill it.

The same situation applies to those who are receiving Jesus’ authority and those who are not. Those who originally offended by essentially answering “No,” are now those who are repenting and choosing the labor of the vineyard over the directionless paths of self-seeking. People like tax-collectors and prostitutes in Jesus’ day were typical examples. These two groups often get special attention, especially in Matthew’s gospel. It is thought that Matthew might have once been a tax-collector, himself, so he knew personally the shame of that profession. However, this category could be expanded to include anyone who had excluded themselves—or who had been excluded—because of their disobedience to or transgression of the law. The chief priests and Pharisees had long ago written them off. Yet, in their repentance, in their change of mind, in their realization of their need of mercy and the promise of being called to work in the kingdom, they actually heed the will of the Father.

But the son who first answers “Yes,” who, for all we know, crossed all his religious “t’s” and dotted his spiritual “i’s,” but never actually ventured into the vineyard of grace are like those who saw John’s way of righteousness, those who knew the Scripture’s call to confession—could even teach Sunday School classes about it—but did not carry through with its promise. This is why the sinners are entering the kingdom ahead of them: it is the sinners who have come to understand their need for grace and, in Jesus, God’s overwhelming desire to give it.

I harbor a concern—it is probably ill-founded, though—that the central message of this parable can be radically misinterpreted in our churches and in our preaching. The point Jesus is making when he says that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God does not mean that, because of Jesus and his offer of grace and compassion, things like cheating and sexual immorality, for example, are suddenly OK with God and accepted in the kingdom of heaven, yet I fear that’s how it’s taken. If Jesus’ message is one of “inclusive love,” it must be a love so inclusive that it affects a change in the sinner. Jesus came to receive and love people like tax collectors and prostitutes because, at the time, no one else was. They had been excluded permanently—it was thought at the time—from any plan of God’s grace. But Jesus’ loves and receives them so that even they may repent. The good news is the kingdom is now open to them, and in that kingdom they are no longer things like tax collectors and prostitutes. They are, rather, sinners who have been redeemed, lost who have been found, offenders who have now done the will of the Father. For the fulcrum of the parable is that there is work to do in the kingdom of the Father—and by Jesus’ grace even we get to do it—not that kingdom calls us to an idleness that mirrors the world’s. The key is recognizing his authority and having the sense of mind to receive it...to have that desire to get in that vineyard and start working because you realize you get to work for that Father.

But even more important than our sense of mind to receive Jesus’ authority and more important than our decisions, late or soon, to go work in the kingdom, is the way and manner in which Jesus displays that authority. And that’s the crux of the matter here. That’s the crux of the entire Christian message. Jesus, you see, gains and claims his authority in the strangest of ways, which is something utterly lost on the chief scribes and elders, and maybe even the tax collectors and prostitutes, too. Jesus gains his authority, paradoxically, by laying it aside altogether.

Jesus, we must remember, “had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion!”

Georges Rouault, "Crucifixion" 1920's

Those are words used by the apostle Paul, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson, spoken to a congregation years ago who happened to be struggling over—bingo!—the issue of authority. They were trying to learn what Jesus will eventually show the chief priests and elders himself: that he ultimately displays his authority not in crafty word games with the religious leaders, not in defiantly reaching out to the sinners and the oppressed, but in becoming oppressed himself. On the cross, just when his effectiveness is at its emptiest, his authority, in fact, reaches its highest point. We learn there is no distance too great for him to overcome, no territory too bleak for him to conquer. This is the good authority that will claim us all.

It is the type of authority that I see modeled, thank God, from time to time, by some of the youth in our congregation, who fight the urge to form cliques and, at gatherings, intentionally leave their friend groups in order to reach out to those hanging out on the margins.

It is the type of authority you experience as volunteers when you find that those you serve through our H.H.O.P.E. pantry or CARITAS homeless shelter end up teaching you more about God’s grace than you think you’re offering them.

It is the type of authority that surprises us in each moment of forgiveness when we discover that the offense that had been gripping us with feelings of revenge and anger is disarmed by one selfless act of apology.

We know this authority through Jesus, and yet, in so many ways, this authority becomes even more difficult to receive, because it looks like the giving up of authority. It looks to us like weakness. Yet in that moment of humility, on that day of darkness, when all the world rises up to drive spikes through the hands of love, a new spring is born. And it is not an Arab spring or an American spring, but an eternal spring for every person. It is a spring of hope that rises, never again to be vanquished, from the tomb. It is the spring that brings life everlasting to all who seek the Lord’s mercy, to all who ever wonder how to find a God of grace. It is the spring of that promise that one day we will all have that change of mind and we will all go and work in that vineyard.

And that vineyard will be fruitful and beautiful. It will produce that righteousness which God desires in each and every life. The issue of authority will be decided, once and for all… "and every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth”…and there will be one truly United Nation…and, for all we know, Cinderella and Snow White will be friends…"and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is the authority, to the glory of God the Father!”

Alleluia! Amen!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 16A] - August 21, 2011 (Isaiah 51:1-6 and Matthew 16:13-20)

2011-08-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

A desk drawer full of rocks: that is all I had to show as souvenirs from the places my family had visited on vacation when I was a child. My mother, not wanting to spend a dime of family money on cheap, kitschty, gift-shop trinkets whenever we were visiting different places, suggested in one of my bouts of whining for a knick-knack that I simply take a rock from each place to remind me of the occasion. She probably said it flippantly, but I complied, thinking it was the only option left. So over the course of several years, I gathered a piece of shale from here, a smooth river rock from there, a chunk of quartz from over here. They were to become my mementos, tokens that could tell me something about the places I’d been, the experiences I’d had, the person I was becoming.

But years later, when my mother informed me I needed to empty out my desk’s contents so that it could be moved with the rest of my cherished belongings to seminary, I opened the bottom drawer to find a pile of rocks that told me…absolutely nothing. I couldn’t remember which rock had come from which place, which stone was supposed to remind me of which memory. Was this purplish one from the time we went camping in the mountains of West Virginia? Was this small, white pebble from the Mall in Washington, D.C., or did I pick it up somewhere else? And there were about five flat, nondescript rocks that had obviously been worn soft by water somewhere—but which river, which beach? Looking down at them from above, they looked so scattered and pitiful. I racked my brain: from where did these rocks come? From which distant roadside quarry had they been hewn, and—for Pete’s sake—which memories should be attached to them?

The Return from Babylonian exile

This is the same message to the people of Israel, years before, as they try to imagine life beyond the hardship of exile, a life back in their blessed homeland beyond the river. King Darius has promised to free them from Babylon’s grip, and he looks down upon them from his throne and sees them, so scattered and pitiful and doubtful of his assurances that they will ever return. And so, with great encouragement, he reminds them to look to their past experiences. "Look to the rock from which you were hewn,” he calls out, “look to the quarry from which you were dug!” Look to Abraham and Sarah, he means, the flinty types that bore you long ago! They were rocks of faith who once set out, alone and wandering, yet who became a nation of great number and great blessing. These are the rocks from which you were hewn. This is the stuff you are made of, King Darius says. When I “bring near my deliverance your destiny will be little different,” he continues, “for this is the quarry from which you were dug.”

God’s people, themselves, are reminders to the world, souvenirs of God’s amazing faithfulness and improbable power. Pitiful and scattered though they may be, they are nevertheless hewn and dug from much stronger stuff, and therefore there is promise for the future, something to build upon. The “stuff they’re made of” hearkens back not only to their strong ancestors and the faith they displayed, but mainly to God’s determination to do something wonderful for God’s people. His salvation, you see, will be forever! God moved them through their wanderings and gave them a purpose. And they will dwell in their land and with God’s teachings they will live as a light to the nations, a beacon of justice and compassion for all.

What are you made of? When you dig deep down what mineral is there that determines your character, your strength, your direction? Do you feel nameless—scattered and pitiful—unaware of what hillside someone chipped you from?

These questions are not limited to Israel’s yearnings millennia ago. They shape our patterns for life now. Look at the political candidates shaking hands now in Iowa, endlessly burnishing their street cred at the beginning of the campaign trail. Or see the college students arriving on a campus for the first time at this time of year, presented with a dizzying array of academic paths as well as temptation for their social life. What about the scared patient who faces the cancer diagnosis as well as the daunting chemo regimen that goes with it, the soldier who heads into his first battle? “Show ‘em what you’re made of,” we like to say.

Are we surprised, then, when the question rumbles around in Jesus’ head as he approaches the great rock face in western Israel that holds up Herod’s gleaming new city of Caesarea Philippi. He has gone there with his disciples to escape the crowds for a while, contemplating that daunting trip to Jerusalem. And he looks up at the cliffs where ancient pagans had placed statues of their gods, and up at the new edifices that clearly spoke to the strength of Caesar’s empire and asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” as if to say, “What am I made of? What are people saying?” And receiving a list of responses, he turns to them, his closest friends, the ones who know him best: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s confession couldn’t be more right-on. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he answers, although Peter has no idea what kind of Messiah stuff Jesus is really made of.

cave at Caesarea Philippi

It is a turning point in his ministry. Here, at the base of a massive rock structure that for centuries had been used as a place for people to pin their hopes and prayers, Jesus’ own hopes and dreams begin to come into focus.

It is a turning point in his ministry. Someone has finally nailed down exactly who Jesus is, for each of those terms is loaded with meaning: Messiah. Son. Living. God. Jesus is sent straight from the Lord who delivered ancient Israel, who called Abraham and Sarah. He himself is part of God’s own creative and redeeming presence that will bring about lasting justice and peace.

It is a turning point in his ministry, for all the teachings and feedings and healings he’s been about can now been seen as tokens of that living kingdom that God is establishing on earth.

Peter’s response to Jesus’ questions about the Messiah’s identity is so right-on, in fact, that Jesus answers by telling Peter what he is made of. Making a word-play on his name, Peter, Jesus claims that Peter and his words of faith are a rock on which Jesus’ own following will be built. (Peter’s name means “rock,” both in Greek and Aramaic.) Scattered and pitiful group that they are, sitting there in the bottom of the drawer, the disciples will eventually become the granite core of a community that will embody Jesus’ life on earth. Not even the powers of death will be able to prevail against their life together as their congregation grows to include people of all nations. Like ancient Israel, they will become living reminders to all people of God’s amazing faithfulness and improbable power.

In fact, their confession and their life together will be so crucial to the world’s understanding of Jesus, he says, that he gives them keys to the kingdom; that is, tools by which they will provide access and entry to others who experience Jesus as the Son of the Living God. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,” Jesus instructs, “and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Peter is often depicted holding keys

The life of Jesus’ community of followers, the church, is given many tasks and missions throughout the course of the New Testament. Baptizing, teaching, sharing the Lord’s Supper, praying, healing, to name a few. But here Jesus connects the keys of his kingdom directly to the forgiveness of sins. There is something about practicing forgiveness and taking forgiveness seriously that relates directly to the experience of God’s kingdom. Loosing refers to proclaiming release from bonds of sin, and binding refers to the withholding of forgiveness, presumably until proper repentance and contrition is made.

It is significant that Jesus links the strength and vitality of his church with its capacity to proclaim and embody forgiveness. The strength and vitality of the church is not ultimately found in its service to others, in how many feet we wash or in the number of members who have joined. The strength and vitality of the church is not primarily found in how inclusive we think we’re being or in how diverse our membership is, but in our willingness to announce and practice the forgiveness of sin. It is a direct reflection of how Jesus deals with us in the first place: how he becomes the type of Messiah that dies on the cross to cleanse the world from sin.

Considering this point, are we surprised that “the forgiveness of sins” is one of the first things we name in the part of the Apostles’ Creed that has to do with the church? “I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Considering Jesus’ point here, we can think of how instrumental the church became in South Africa in bringing a surprisingly peaceful end of the racist apartheid regime in the nineties, and how Archbishop Desmond Tutu insisted, against significant secular opposition, that real forgiveness be a part of that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Considering Jesus’ point about the keys of the kingdom, we can think how many times we’ve sat in a worship service needing to hear, above all else, that we are forgiven.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness, you may say, the binding and loosing from sin, turns out to be the main stuff Jesus is really made of, the rock from which he is hewn, and, incredibly, he asks the church to practice it in his name. On the cross we see that it is what he is made of, and so in our baptism we become made of it, too.

Earlier this week as our family sat at the dinner table, our four-year-old looked at Melinda out of the blue and asked, “Mommy, how does God build us?” We’ve been fielding such existential questions from her for a few months now, and she’s learned to address my wife because she knows she’ll get a clearer, better answer. Glancing quickly at one another with our eyebrows raised, Melinda carefully responded by saying something like, “God builds us carefully in our mommy’s tummy when we’re a little baby.”

I was relieved Melinda let me off the hook, and the answer appeared to suffice. But, like so many musings from the younger ones around us, it really was an excellent question, one not to be laughed off. And while I do hope that all our biological parts and pieces are being stitched together seamlessly and perfectly, both within our mommy’s tummy and outside of it, my hope is that God is also building us through faith and opportunities of service, teaching us compassion and love, but, most of all, to say “I’m sorry” when we need to and to extend the hand of forgiveness when the circumstance calls for it.

So, my dear Clare, I hope God is building you the way he promises to build the rest of God’s people: carefully, yes, and with the hope that, over time, our words and actions will so closely reflect Jesus’ that it will be unmistakable—even when we feel scattered and pitiful—from which great rock we were hewn, the one over which even death will not triumph: Messiah. Son. Living. God.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 12A] - July 24, 2011 (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

2011-07-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

As I was sitting in a hospital waiting room not too long ago, I picked up a local area magazine and began flipping through it, looking for something to read. The last couple of pages contained some paragraphs that some kids in an area third-grade class had written as a school project. The topic of the mini-essays was “The Most Beautiful Place I Have Been,” and the children’s entries covered locations as diverse as one could imagine in the third grade: you know…Disney World, Canada, Michigan. One kid wrote about home.

What became especially apparent as I read these aloud to Melinda later was that the third grade class had evidently used this writing exercise to practice their use of similes, a comparison—you may remember from grade school—that uses the words “like” or “as.” Almost every sentence contained a comparison, and some of them were a little humorous. One child described his most beautiful place, the beach, by saying that the ocean was a blue as a bluebird. He then followed that by saying that the sun was as yellow as a…yellow bird, and the sunset was as red as a…red bird. In another essay, a boy said that the sun in his favorite spot was as bright as…the sun beaming off the window of a car. The funniest comparison, in my opinion, was one girl’s description that the snow in Canada (the most beautiful place she’d ever been) was as white as…a white crayon.

Overall, I was impressed with their writing. After all, the world of the average third-grader might not provide the widest frame of reference for comparing things. It was clear, however, they had reached deep within their 8 or 9 years of life experience to find ways to describe something they’d seen.

When we hear Jesus’ similes for describing the kingdom of heaven, we may scratch our heads with confusion, yet he is clearly reaching within the experience of the average middle-eastern farmer or homemaker for material. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed…or a lump of yeast that a woman uses to make bread…or buried treasure…or a fishnet. Like a box of crayons for a third-grader, these are images and scenarios that would have meant something to the disciples and other ordinary folks who had gathered to listen to Jesus. As we listen in from the perspective of the twenty-first century, we might get the feeling that something has been lost in translation. After all, how many of us have gone fishing with a net? Or work with yeast and dough on a regular basis? Or breed mustard plants?

Yet, the greater issue with our unfamiliarity with Jesus’ comparisons is not that we don’t understand his similes. It’s that he’s trying to describe something that doesn’t really have a location. The kingdom of heaven is not your average kingdom. It doesn’t really have boundaries, in the proper sense. It doesn’t have regular citizens, or subjects. Unlike other kingdoms, it has no capital city or standing army or coat of arms. In other words, describing the kingdom of heaven is not like describing the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen, especially since no one can—in the regular sense—even really see the kingdom of heaven at all. The kingdom of heaven is difficult to describe and even more difficult to locate.

One thing that is clear, however, from this assortment of parables is that Jesus is not attempting to describe the place people go after they die. That’s what most of probably associate with the words “kingdom of heaven.” We are taught in this day and age—sometimes through the church but mostly through unbiblical concepts in television and popular books—that the kingdom of heaven is a place where souls go after they leave this life. In fact, it may surprise us, but Jesus is almost completely silent when it comes to describing what happens after we die. When we look closely at the words and actions of Jesus, we see that Jesus is very concerned with the here and now—with what is happening on earth currently—which might also be one reason why he uses in his teaching such common, earthy examples for the kingdom of heaven. If we insist on holding onto those other perceptions of heaven when we listen to Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven, we are most likely going to be very confused. Instead we must, as Jesus says, sort out our old perceptions and ideas and take up the ones that correspond to better teaching.

Based, then, on the example of the mustard seed, which has an inauspicious beginning but grows surprisingly aggressively to be mighty and strong, we learn that the kingdom of heaven cannot be judged on its size or strength at its outset. It can start out as something insignificant, powerless, but when left to take its course, it has surprising results.

The same type of thing may be said, too, of the yeast. In Jesus’ time, people did not bake bread with packets of active dry yeast. They kept on hand a lump of leaven which contained living yeast in it, along with the food that the yeast needed to live. It was a smelly, sticky, ugly chunk of slime. When time came to make bread, a little portion of this slimeball was added to larger amounts of flour and kneaded together so that the two became inseparable and indistinguishable from each other. Furthermore, it would multiply to make a huge amount of bread, much larger than just the leaven and the flour together. Biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ measurements in this parable—three measures of flour mixed with leaven—would have made enough bread to feed more than three hundred people. Again, we see that the kingdom of heaven that Jesus comes to bring is that which adds substance and nourishment to the world. We must remember that that first-century folk would have known nothing about microorganisms and microscopic fungus. Leaven was just something kept on hand to make bread. It may look simple and ugly and inconsequential when it starts out, but it is that which brings life and vitality to creation. It rises mysteriously and forms something marvelous.

We can pray, too, that God’s kingdom will be born in and among us through things that are mysterious and inconsequential, but that it will grow and rise and produce something capable of making a huge difference. In fact, most of Jesus’ comparisons here relate the kingdom of heaven to something small and solitary that has the ability to become something greater. Even the hidden treasure starts rather inconspicuously but by the end—and in the eyes of the right person—has somehow increased the value of a whole piece of land. And in this vein I would like to add a modern simile of my own here: the kingdom of heaven is like Vacation Bible School craft projects. What begins on Monday with a single popsicle-stick creation becomes a whole exhibit of crayon-etched papers and cotton-ball-glued sock puppets that take up every flat surface of the house. God’s kingdom come, indeed…all over my kitchen table!

But whether it is the mustard seed, or the bread leaven or the pearl of great price or the fishnet that gathers everything in its grasp, Jesus’ parables about the kingdom teach us that the kingdom is an occurrence or a happening more than it is a place or location. In fact, the word “kingdom” may actually do us a disservice in understanding what Jesus is talking about here because we’re so prone to think of a kingdom as a place. But in the original Greek, the word we translate as kingdom is actually more related to an action, like the English words “reign” or “dominion.” But even that falls short. From all of this, we may begin to understand that the kingdom of heaven is any occasion when God’s authority is made known and acknowledged. It may happen any time or anywhere, and we pray in the Lord’s Prayer—no matter which version we use—that it come to us every day.

Whenever or wherever this world’s usual cycle of decay and despair and brokenness are interrupted by God’s grace and life, there and then is the kingdom of heaven. Whenever or wherever creation’s current monotony or sorrow and greed give way to occasions of generosity and self-sacrifice, there and then is the kingdom of heaven. Whenever or wherever this earth’s ordinary systems of so-called justice and so-called peace are kneaded together with the leaven of Jesus’ forgiveness and humility, then—voila!—there and then is the kingdom of heaven!

Need a modern-day example of the kingdom of heaven? A parishioner here at Epiphany recently responded on somewhat of a whim to a small and inconspicuous magazine advertisement that sought to know how the church is serving its often neglected senior citizens. Before she knew it, this parishioner was lead into a deeper conversation with a seminary professor about how Epiphany’s Leisure Time program could be an example for other congregations. There is the kingdom of God.

When members of a youth group kindly request that this year’s mission trip to South Carolina entail more time on the job site adding handicap ramps to low-income homes and less free-time on the beach, defying the conventional stereotypes we hear about today’s youth…there and then is the kingdom of God.

This week at Vacation Bible School the children watched how one small act of bringing in a canned food donation can leaven the ministry of an entire non-profit organization, and, subsequently, how a small, non-profit organization like the LAMB’S Basket or our H.H.O.P.E. pantry can leaven a whole community.

Hey you! Crazed Norway murderer, with your guns and bombs, worried about the rise of Islam. We're going to hand out quilts and scarves to people of all faiths...and teach our children to love in spite of you...because it's the kingdom that's on the rise!

Jesus’ parables may seem esoteric and confusing, but we don’t really need to think too hard to know what the kingdom of heaven is like. We know it from our own faith experience. A small splash of water makes us reborn. An inconspicuous chunk of bread and a sip of wine swell within our hearts and empower us to forgive and serve others. Love and compassion grow, and we know not how. And in the middle of it all stands that cross, a promise that God’s kingdom can take root anywhere. This kingdom has grabbed us again in its embrace and we are sent out to provide more of it to the world. As if we were a farmer, foolishly selling everything we own to gain treasure hidden in a field, in joy we learn to value Jesus’ reign more than any other kingdom that is out there. We trade selfish desires for our futures and our livelihoods for the one true future and one true livelihood that is eternal: following Jesus and learning to seek his kingdom.

And we look forward to that day when all other kingdoms will finally give in and give way to Christ’s reign. We look forward to the time when we will be reunited with all those who have striven for the kingdom before we have. We lean into the future, praying that this kingdom becomes the only kingdom we know, hoping for that time when these “kingdom happenings” we so savor now will be all that is happening, and we will, at long last, be in the most beautiful place we've ever seen!

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 11A] - July 17, 2011 (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 and Romans 8:12-25)

2011-07-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the movie event of my lifetime took place this weekend, and I didn’t even participate in it. The final installment of the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise opened on Friday and, as expected, shattered all box office records for an opening day. It pulled in $92.1 million dollars, which is $20 million more than the previous record-holder. That’s what happens when an entire generation of youth grows up reading the same seven books in sequence.

I’m a late-comer to the Harry Potter phenomenon. I resisted reading or even watching the movies until earlier this year. For others of you who are unfamiliar with the stories, you should know there are seven books, each of which chronicles a year of a young wizard’s education in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that young wizard being Harry Potter. Each year Harry grows a little older, a little wiser, a little more proficient in wizardry skills. He also grows a little more aware of a cosmic battle going on between good and evil that somehow implicates him and, as we find out, everyone around him. That’s the genius of the series that makes it so popular: Harry and his friends have aged along with an entire cohort of our youth. As of this weekend, it is over. The tagline for this final episode that appears on the movie posters that emblazon every theater from here to Timbuktu contain three simple words: “It all ends.” Seven years at Hogwarts, eight movies. I suppose those who have followed along know what “it” is, in this circumstance. Currently I am getting ready to begin the fifth book, so “it” hasn’t ended for me yet, but I know it’s moving in that direction. (Just a point of privilege: I would appreciate it if people would not spoil any plot details for me. I’ve enjoyed the suspense of the series thus far and would like to continue to do so!).

I do not consider myself to be Harry Potter aficionado, but I have enjoyed one feature of the books that is done remarkably well. You see, the world of Harry Potter is populated with a dizzying array of creative and colorful characters—wizards and witches, giants and elves, mystical creatures of all kinds and, of course, muggles, the name for regular humans like you and me who have no wizarding powers. What is so interesting is that you never can be sure exactly who is on what side, be that good or evil. The author of the series, J.K.Rowling, has done an expert job at keeping the reader in the dark just long enough about who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. There are a handful characters about whose intentions you have no doubt, but a great many are purposely ambiguous, and the plot is driven by Harry’s attempts to navigate this world. I suppose when “it all ends” these things are revealed to us. The evil will perish and the righteous, good guys go on to shine like the sun. At least, I hope.

I suppose all this means nothing to those of you who haven’t been caught up in the Harry Potter phenomenon, but—fear not!—we have the biblical version of essentially the same thing in the gospel parable this morning. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (or, the wheat and the tares, as it is sometimes known) is like a 1st-century allegory for the cosmic battle between good and evil, between the forces that obey God’s word and respond to God’s grace and those forces that seek to undermine God’s goodness. The wheat is the result of the good seed, the words and deeds sown by the Son of Man and, presumably, those who follow him and abide in his righteousness.

The weeds, on the other hand, are the result of the bad seed sown by the evil one, the enemy of God’s plan for love and mercy for God’s people. He is a crafty spreader of lies, this evil one. He works in the dark and is rarely caught in the act, disappearing just before sunrise. Some people doubt he’s real, but evidence of his existence is all around.

And like the world of Harry Potter, it turns out there is some ambiguity in this field gone wild. For even though the slaves are aware that someone has sown weeds in amongst the wheat, the two are not as easy to tell apart and separate as you might think. The particular weed that is growing is actually a close look-alike of the good wheat. Scholarly authorities point out that this weed was likely darnel, a common agricultural pest in Jesus’ time. In fact, darnel had leaves and a stalk of grain that is virtually indistinguishable from regular wheat. Only at the time of harvest was it clear: wheat had grains that were brown and that were so heavy that they drooped. Darnel, on the other hand, had black ears of grain that stood up straight.

Under the soil, too, darnel and wheat grew together. The roots could intertwine and find nourishment together. So, even if the slaves were able to tell each plant apart before harvest time, pulling up the bad weeds could also uproot the good wheat, and that would be counterproductive. The householder, knowing all of this, of course, commands them to leave the weeds alone. As aggravating as it may sound, they are to tend the field like usual and let the two grow side by side. In due time, however, the householder will send in the appropriate workers who, knowing the difference between the good and the bad, will separate them once and for all. Interestingly, that is not the work of the slaves. Their job is to labor in that time of ambiguity, when the good and the bad are sometimes clear—but not always; when the hope of a pure field and a productive yield are sometimes visible—but not always; when the wisdom of the good householder is sometimes evident—but not always. And eventually it all will end.

For Jesus’ first disciples, I imagine this parable served to bolster their work on the kingdom’s behalf. They had likely been working alongside Jesus, even doing some good deeds of the kingdom on their own, and were perplexed that in and amongst their labors for righteousness some bad things were happening. Some people weren’t responding in faith to the good news about Jesus. Some people weren’t receiving him with hope and joy. Some people weren’t hearing of his mercy and then learning to practice forgiveness and love themselves. And if the disciples weren’t perplexed by this point, they certainly would be later on when they would make it to Jerusalem and the opposition they would meet would end up nailing Jesus to the cross.

Evil seems to work its way into the best of situations. Which of us has not experienced frustration and disappointment at the weeds that grow among the good wheat, or a desire that the field could just be purified at the outset? We picture a nation, for example, where everyone comprehends the need to cut the government’s deficit spending…or, as the case may be, where everyone appreciates the need to raise taxes. We desire a family where there are no black sheep and no personality conflicts. Or a congregation where everyone thinks and believes the same things about every issue. Perhaps those are not really examples of evildoing, but we do dream of communities where children can walk home from school or camp without fear of being abducted by people who will do awful things to them, or where we go through airport security without having to take off half our clothes.

And just as we like to dream of such a world where God’s good plans are never crowded out by intrusive evil, it is also somewhat satisfying to think about systematically going around and ridding the world of anything we know is wrong, pulling the doggone things up by the roots, once and for all. That’s what the slaves naturally want to do, and that’s likely where Jesus’ disciples will want to take this as they take up sides with his vision for a world redeemed. Yes, waiting until the end to sort this all out seems a little counterintuitive, yet if we don’t heed his command, we risk diminishing the householder’s harvest…and it is his harvest, after all.

Photo: Thomas J. Abercrombie

Jesus’ own explanation of this parable when he goes inside the house with his disciples could leave us thinking that an individual is either all one or all the other—there’s a weed here…oh, there’s another one there!—when the reality is a little more complex than that. What about the mixture of good intentions and evil intentions that each of us cultivate in our own lives? The apostle Paul happens to talk a good bit about that in his letter to the Romans, noting the endless conflict between the good he knows he should do and the selfishness and sin that come so readily. When we take a good look at our lives, especially in the light of the cross of Christ, the weed-ridden and darkest moment of God’s life, we come to realize that the task of the slaves is really the better option, for in the zeal to uproot and eradicate all sources of evil we would eventually have to turn the spade to ourselves.

And that’s another reason I find Harry Potter intriguing. By and by, even the main characters in those stories who seem clearly on the side of good realize they have the ability to think selfishly rather than altruistically. They, too, must navigate a world where the path to good and evil runs right through their own hearts.

The farming advice that the householder gives to his slaves sure might strike us as peculiar, the wisdom of letting it all grow together a little muddled. It is hard at times to keep our mind on the fact that a good harvest will yet come out of all this mess, not to mention the mess of our lives, but perhaps it’s best to leave that up to the one who raises Jesus from the dead…to the harvester who grants new life after every bit of suffering…to the Lord who promises to vanquish everything that stands in his way…to a God who prizes every good thing that can come from his people.

Eventually it all will end, as Harry Potter learns, it all will end. The final movie will come and all will get hashed out. As we, the people of God wait for our final installment, as the world groans toward that grand unfolding where good reigns and the mercy of God’s kingdom come, it’s best that we tend to the field in prayer and worship, service and encouragement. Even as the strangling weeds continue to pop up it’s best if we wait and keep the good growing, nurtured by the word, our own roots sunk deep in baptism, and tend to the precious grains of good faith in ourselves and each other. Yes, it’s best if we keep things growing, my friends…keep them growing and rejoice at the wheat that is here. As a line from a U2 goes, “always pain before a child is born, I’m still waiting for the dawn.” For, indeed, we are waiting.

I’m afraid I'm going to need to plow through the last three books to learn what Harry Potter discovers in his final chapter (remember…don’t spoil it for me!) but--thank God--because of Jesus Christ we already know ours.

Psst! The weeds don’t win.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 9A] - July 3, 2011 (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)

2011-07-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another…”

Jesus’ words as he addresses a crowd made up both of willing followers and skeptical accusers ring of frustration and puzzlement. Is he lashing out in anger? Is he throwing up his hands in disgust? We’re not really accustomed to hearing Jesus sound like this; that is, wandering into the risky waters of cross-generational criticism. In fact, he sounds here more like us.

“But to what will I compare this generation? They spend too much time in front of the computer or plugged into their iPod!” Or, “Those fuddy-duddies are so out-of-touch and old-fashioned! The world is changing! You better catch up, old man!”

“But to what will I compare this generation? That new music they’re always listening to sounds like pots and pans clanging together with a cat fight in the background!” Or, “That old music they listen to has no beat and no soul.”

“But to what will I compare this generation?” They want to pray a newer version of the Lord’s Prayer! How can you do that!?” Or, “They want to pray an older version of the Lord’s Prayer in language so formal and stilted!”

Choose your topic these days—sacred or secular—and it seems like so many opinions of what’s right and what’s good fall right along generational lines. Heads are shaken in exasperation and—if you’re like me, standing in line recently for a cell-phone upgrade that will drag me kicking and screaming into a new generation—beads of anxious sweat form along the ridge of the brow. New is not always improved, we know…and traditional may not always mean wiser. But the debates rage on, and from this morning’s gospel lesson we see that Jesus is no stranger, either, to the friction that occurs when generations of human beings set their habits and expectations up against one another.

In his case, Jesus is frustrated and almost irritated that the people of his day and age are so unreceptive to the message he is preaching, which is at odds with the message they’ve heard for so long from the Pharisees’ sermons and the scribes’ teachings. And it’s not just his message they’ve questioned and rejected. It’s also his cousin John’s. The crowds can’t seem to get their heads around the God who is presented in their respective messages. They can’t fathom the kingdom of heaven as it is proclaimed from the lips of these two newcomers.

And who can blame them? Both of these yokels hail from off-the-beaten-track Galilean towns, far from the traditional academy of Jerusalem. Neither has a formal synagogue training that we know of. One sequesters himself in the desert half the time, eating wild honey and locusts, coming close to civilization from time to time just long enough to dunk people in the Jordan River and publicly criticize the rulers’ morals. The other one hangs out with a bunch of tax collectors and other low-lifes, frequenting banquets and parties. Both seem to go against the status quo somewhat, setting themselves a number of times as the preferred option to the way things are. But John is too much of an extremist, like pots and pans clanging in the midst of a cat-fight, and Jesus seems too lax. John is a little too fanatical, Jesus not fanatical enough. Who would take these guys seriously, especially about matters that the Pharisees do such a good job of explaining in their sermons, convoluted though they may seem?

This is the situation which both John and Jesus confront: a populace of their own people who can’t seem to get their head around a new way of seeing God act and move in the world. To John, the people are hard-headed and ignorant. They need baptism for repentance and need it now, for the winnowing fork of God’s justice is in his hand and the chaff will be burned. (We must assume that would be John’s reaction to this, of course, for at the time he is currently in prison awaiting what will be his execution for the crime of criticizing Herod’s decision to marry his brother’s wife).

Jesus, on the other hand, compares the generation to children in a marketplace who try to do everything gentle and pleading they can to coax the people to dance or mourn. With inspiring words and uplifting promises of forgiveness he has played the flute, so to speak, to get them to “dance” along with his vision of the kingdom of heaven, and they still stand on the sidelines in their stubbornness. Likewise, he has cried the haunting mourner’s wail, reminding them of their need for mercy, and yet they remain unmoved.

Have you ever tried to explain your faith to someone who perhaps doesn’t believe? Have you ever tried to convince someone of the love of God or your involvement in the life of a congregation to a person who, for whatever reason, is reluctant to follow? To a large degree, Jesus’ experience with people’s doubt of and rejection of his message is common to people of each and every age. Whether we encounter difficulty in preaching the gospel of Jesus on a personal level or whether we get frustrated when our congregations don’t grow and gather new members, it seems as if the church will always have to live with some level of discomfort or frustration with how we’re received by the generation at hand.

Jesus’ immediate response to his own discouragement is to offer thanksgiving that the gospel message is not something to be grasped by knowledge or wisdom or sophisticated reasoning. Faith, as Martin Luther would put it, is ultimately a gift of the Holy Spirit and cannot be conjured by our own strength or power. Indeed, Jesus’ teachings are hidden from the intelligent and revealed to the young and inexperienced, the simple and pure-hearted. How many of us find ourselves more captivated by the children’s sermon than by the words preached from the pulpit? And, by the same token, I know many pastors who, like I, are as intimidated by delivering a children’s sermon as they are preaching a big people’s sermon. A religious system that rightly asks its leaders to attend a seminary and receive a post-secondary degree, can send the unintended message that brains are what’s required for a deeper faith, or to have faith at all. Pretty soon we forget how the infants see things.

St. Augustine (Antonella da Messina)

And here is when Jesus reminds us once again that it’s not brains that will lead to deeper faith, and it’s not a sophisticated understanding about how the universe works that will ultimately cause one to come to Christ. It is not brains we need, but a burden. Our attraction to the kingdom of heaven comes from the desire for an easier burden than the ones we’re carrying, a longing for rest for our souls. St. Augustine, a man of supreme intelligence who did not convert to Christian faith until fairly late in life, once said, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful, but I have never read in either of them, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’”

No, it is not wisdom or beauty—although they are there—that ultimately draws us to the way of Christ, but rather the promise of an easier way, the hope that when we cast our sorrows on this whippersnapper from Galilee we receive something far better than we’d ever imagine. It is, rather the confidence that this whippersnapper who goes to the cross for us and exchanges our a path of death and sin and guilt and shame for a new life filled with undying love and forgiveness. It is, rather, the understanding that somehow, with Jesus and his community, our way is indeed made easier, even though following him may be dreadfully difficult at specific times.

Thankfully, this was once again revealed to me this week during the Virginia Synod’s Kairos youth event at Roanoke College. One hundred seventy-five members of a younger generation than mine, including twenty-nine from this congregation, spent a six days praying and worshipping and studying Scripture. Although spending long days away from my family, sleeping on a hard mattress in a barely-air-conditioned residence hall is not how I’d ideally like to spend a week of the summer, I always return from these events somewhat renewed, not because I’ve had the opportunity to teach and lead but because the youth always manage to teach me something about trusting in Jesus.

Some speak it quietly in the comfort of a small group, while others take the opportunity to address the whole large group with a reflection on their faith. Some of them speak of heart-wrenching personal hardship and experiences with grief or abuse while others confess a relatively strong faith bred in their home congregations. No matter the method, no matter the venue, one theme is evident in every testimony: these youth desire an easier yoke than the one they carry now. They long for a Lord who is gentle and humble of heart. They seek a rest and comfort in a world that simultaneously idolizes youth and also expects them to grow up too fast. And in their prayers and concerns I detect a realization that coming to Christ is not purely an unloading and releasing of guilt and shame and heaviness of heart. I also hear an understanding that Jesus gives something in return. That is, he has a yoke, too. He longs for us to change and grow and bear his Word to the world.

But I must tell you it is not primarily at these types of gatherings that I am reminded of Jesus’ promise of an easier yoke and lighter burden. That happens each and every Sunday—indeed, each and every day—when you and I speak on the phone or share a word in the Commons, when you share your own stories of experiencing God’s glory or your own prayer concerns for those you love, when you show up for worship in the middle of a hectic and busied lifestyle to anchor your week in the community of Christ’s disciples.

I am reminded of your deep faith when you arrive at this rail, hands open, head maybe bowed or eyes lifted up in hopeful expectation taking this guy from Nazareth seriously—not too unlike the children who come up here earlier in the service for a time with the pastor—wanting what Christ will give, presenting your shoulders once again for the gracious yoke, handing over your heavied hearts in exchange for that easier burden.

And then I see you, once again—refreshed, empowered, head lifted higher, shouldering that lighter burden of the Spirit’s transformation making your way back to your seat in the pew, making your way back out the door ready to bear this faith once again this week to any generation you happen to meet in the marketplace.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Day of Pentecost, Year A - June 12, 2011 (1 Corinthians 12:3b-13)

2011-06-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

The apostle Paul was the master of metaphor. To illustrate a point he was trying to make, he could employ with great skill any number of images and analogies which had a wonderful way of sticking in the imagination and standing the test of time. When you read Paul’s letters in the New Testament, you will hear him talk at times, for example, about faith with agricultural symbolism. The church, in this case, is a field where church leaders are like farmers that toil to grow faithfulness and witness. The Spirit produces fruit in the life of believers, fruits like joy and patience and kindness. This was a clever way of speaking about the activity of faith for even those in an urban setting—and some of his were—could understand how the community created by the gospel might be, in some ways, like a place where growth was supposed to occur.

In other places Paul is fond of athletic metaphors. Faith, in this instance, is a “race to be run,” bearing some resemblance to a challenge that requires practice and discipline. In much the way athletes train their bodies to perform a contest, the faithful Christian trains his or her intellect and will to accomplish great feats in witnessing in spite of hardships and suffering. Nowadays, of course, such metaphor might resonate a little differently for those who are, say, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and fans of the Washington Redskins. But, no matter where your team loyalty lies, the life of faith being related to athletic competition somehow makes sense. These metaphors—both agricultural and athletic—have stuck with us.

But of all the metaphors and descriptions Paul used to describe the life of faith, perhaps none is as well-known and easy to grasp as the church as the body of Christ. In at least four of his letters, Paul spills a lot of ink trying to explain how the community of believers is like a human body with structural features like ligaments and feet and organs like eyes. Anyone who has a body can relate to this image. You don’t need to be involved in a specific field like agriculture or athletics to understand what Paul is trying to say about the church when he uses this metaphor. That is, the community of people who believe in Christ as Risen Lord is a functioning whole; no one part is complete by itself. Likewise, the character and vitality of the Christian faith cannot be summed up in one specific believer. It is a community enterprise.

Perhaps that is why when he is speaking to his conflict-ridden and controversy-prone congregation in Corinth, Paul finds the body analogy to be especially helpful. One of the many things over which the congregation there had been fighting was the presence of the Holy Spirit’s gifts. There is no way of knowing exactly what the specific hullabaloo was about, but it seemed as if some of the congregation members in Corinth had forgotten the body-like aspect of the Christian faith. They thought that certain gifts of faith, whether uttering wisdom, or working miracles or healing, or speaking in tongues were naturally better than others, signs that some people had received more important talents and skills and therefore did not really need the rest of the community. It was a big problem, one that may have eventually torn the congregation apart.

To counter their indivualistic and hierarchical way of thinking, Paul reaches for the body metaphor: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, or one body, so it is with Christ.” Notice he does not say, “so it is with Christians,” or “so it is with those who follow Jesus.” He explicitly names them Christ. They—that is, the Corinthians—are, in some way, Jesus. They are one organism, as it were, and he drives the point home even further by telling them “for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews, Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink one Spirit.” Just as breath animate a human body, God’s Spirit gives them life. From here he goes on to explain that no one person, no matter how glorious or glamorous their gifts may be, can ever really survive without the gifts of all the other people present. The flourishing of the whole is absolutely dependent on the participation and the presence of each and every one. It is a follow up on the main lesson in the section we have this morning as our middle lesson, “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit” Paul says, “for the common good.”

For the common good. And that’s the key for this metaphor. That is, there are many different types of gifts, many different ways of serving—many different ways of skinning the cat, so to speak, when it comes to being a follower of Christ—but the gifts are never given solely for individual betterment. The gifts of the Spirit are never given for people to pursue their own happiness or their own personal path of spirituality. They are given to individuals, yes, but with the express purpose that they will be worked out and practiced within the body, whatever that body is doing.

This lesson has needed to be driven home to this slow learner countless times, but the occasion I remember most, for some reason, was by a woman named Shirley when I was working as a summer camp counselor at Lutheridge in Arden, North Carolina, where two of our college members happen to be working now. This particular week I had been assigned to work with a group of campers with mild to moderate developmental delays. They were wonderful individuals of all ages—mostly adults—who all had been diagnosed as having some significant special needs but who were not deficient in any way, (as our area director had taken great pains to remind us during our training), in regards to gifts of the Spirit. A week of working with that population always involved a talent show at some point. They could sit for hours as they, one by one, got up in front of the whole group and performed either a vocal solo or told jokes, danced or shared some other skill they were proud of.

Now, it just so happened that a group counselors and I had been racking our brains that week trying to remember all the verses of that annoying song about Noah’s Ark. (Youth group members know which one I’m talking about). It goes on and on forever:

“The Lord said to Noah, ‘There’s gonna be a floody-floody!
The Lord said to Noah, ‘There’s gonna be a floody-floody!
Get those animals out of the muddy-muddy!’
Children of the Lord.”

So, rise and shine…and give God the glory glory!
Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory!
Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory…children of the Lord!

In all seriousness, the song has something like twenty verses, and, for the life of us, we could not remember the last verse. These were the days before Google and smartphones, so we couldn’t just look it up on a computer. There were no songbooks, even. We had to rely on what people could remember and store in their brains, and in that regard we were coming up empty, which was exceedingly frustrating because the song couldn’t end (and it really needed to!) No one on camp staff could remember it!

But, as we learned that week. it just so happened to be Shirley’s favorite song. Shirley wasn’t able to do much for herself. She couldn’t eat on her own. She wasn’t able to see much because her eyesight was so poor. She needed help walking and getting dressed in the morning. But—you guessed it—she knew every single line to that song. Sometimes she’d get stuck in a loop and repeat a line or two a few times, but when she got up on that stage in front of all of us, it was one of her gifts to be shared for the common good. You can’t imagine our relief when she stood to receive her applause. She had taught us all the verses…and thankfully the Spirit had made us still enough to listen.

That example may seem somewhat simplistic in the grand scheme of things, but what I learned in that moment at that talent show goes right along with what Paul was trying to get across to the church at Corinth. And, as different as our situation may be from what the Corinthians may have been facing, it is a message that God’s Spirit is still trying to teach to the church in North America in the twenty-first century.

An article in a recent edition of The Christian Century ponders the church’s current challenges of people to join congregations in the ways that they used to in earlier decades. The challenge is especially acute in those of my own age group. Many folks these days are content with attending a congregation or various congregations, sometimes even quite regularly, without ever actually committing to membership in one particular congregation. They remain loosely connected to one or several communities of faith, never really venturing very far into the life of any one community. Some say it’s a result of our consumerist culture, where options for everything overwhelm and tantalize. Whatever the reason, people are not belonging to churches in the way they once did. Congregations are handling the challenge in different ways, some getting rid of any type of formal membership at all, others ramping up guidelines for affiliating, demanding more. Leaning more to the side of inviting modern church people to commit to definite, formal membership, one Lutheran pastor is quoted in the article as saying, “that is the secret gift that unfolds as you become integrated into something that is larger than yourself. You find yourself saying yes to possibilities that you would never otherwise imagine.”

Meredith Sizemore Photography

Possibilities that we never could imagine. Verses to songs that we never could remember on our own. Lives transformed by God’s grace that we never could fathom. Gifts of the Holy Spirit that we never could experience unless we were up close and integrated into the body of Jesus. It sounds like Christ himself is at work! For, you see, I think we get the part about each of us having unique constellation of gifts, and I think we even get the part about recognizing the gifts in others. It’s always good to hear that again and again. Where we might could use some reminding is the part about how they’re used for the common good. In Christ’s church, we find ourselves involved in possibilities we never could imagine when we begin sharing our gifts not simply for our own objectives, no matter how noble we may think they are, but for the sake of everyone, for the sake of Jesus who is now apparently loose in the world through our life together.

So for this Pentecost, as we welcome aboard two new members to this ark of salvation through the waters of baptism, let’s claim all of Paul’s metaphors for this hapless yet marvelously gifted community we call the church. We're probably going to need them: the field and the athletic field, as well as the body. The Spirit is doing something here, as it is in every church in every age in every language God has created. The Spirit is animating something here, and we are excited about it.

Yes, let’s claim all of Paul’s metaphors on this birthday of the church and then, if we may, add one from Shirley. The Spirit has given each of us our own unique verse in God’s grand song of love and redemption through Jesus Christ. It is a song that is sung with tongues of fire through the life of his community, imperfect and out-of-tune choir that we may be. You’ve been given your own verse in the song, and ain’t nobody gonna be able to sing it but you!

So, let's hear it, then! Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory, children of the Lord!

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A - May 15, 2011 (Acts 2:42-47, John 10:1-10)

2011-05-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

A few years ago when I first moved to Pittsburgh, before I was a husband and a father and knew how to do things like change a diaper in a grocery store bathroom, I was a member of a choir that met for supper and practice every other Friday night. Though they were informal occasions, they were fairly well-organized. Like many group endeavors, they operated on the principle that everyone should contribute in some way, either by bringing a dish or by cleaning up afterwards. I liked to volunteer for the clean-up part, but occasionally I volunteered to bring something low-maintenance, like the bread or the drinks.

One day I opened my email to discover—to my horror—that the responsibility for bringing the main dish had finally fallen to me. I thought to myself, “Don’t they realize I’m a bachelor? Are they really going to want to eat anything I make?” I know there are plenty of single people who are great cooks, but at the time I was more accustomed to eating my meals on the run in one-person servings—things like sandwiches and cans of Campbell’s Soup. Something that would pass as an entrée for a whole group of people was far beyond my ability to create.

But before my panic could get the best of me, I decided to contact the one person to whom I was closest who is adept at cooking for large groups of people—my grandmother in Walkertown, NC. She had a chicken casserole I figured I could replicate. It called for a cup of soup. I remember eating it many times on Sundays when my whole family would gather at her place after church. I probably drove her crazy asking about it, calling her three times in two days to make sure I had the ingredients and cooking instructions down pat. I finally gave it a whirl and took it to choir practice. It turned out OK, I suppose. They liked it, but it didn’t seem to taste as good as I remembered hers tasting. In any case, as she was reciting to me for the third time the order of ingredients over the phone, intermingled with words of encouragement she made mention of a principle of cooking that so many chefs and cooks and grandmothers already know, but that I was just learning: “The more you cook for,” she said, “the better it is.”

And it’s absolutely true. When you take a recipe and cut the portions down to serve on person the dish never ends up tasting as good as if you were to take that recipe and multiply it to feed a larger number.

In the infancy stages of the Christian faith, recorded in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles, we find the recipe for the church—and we discover the same principle of my grandmother’s chicken casserole applies: the more it’s made for, the better it is. The faith of those who follow Jesus is not meant to be—is never meant to be—served up as an individual dish. No matter how you slice and dice it, it is a group activity, more “casserole” than it is “personal pan pizza.”

Day of Pentecost, icon

That is unmistakable as we read the accounts as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. What the grand story of Acts shows us, more than anything else, is that the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit bring into existence a community that is steadily pulled closer and closer together and at the same time spread outward, into the world. More and more people are added comprising an ever-growing diversity of languages and cultures, but the essence of the faith is always about togetherness. Those who hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow do it together and together they are offered for the life of the world.

The recipe, if I may call it that, is included, bare-bones, in our first reading this morning. Luke writes, “the baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Five basic ingredients, and that’s it:

(1) receiving and hearing the apostles’ teachings; that is, gathering to listen to the stories that the apostles’ told about Jesus and his words;

(2) taking part in fellowship, which entails spending time together and getting to know one another.

(3) the breaking of bread,

church potluck

(4) prayers, which means celebrating Holy Communion and praying for each other. And, lastly,

(5) sharing things in common, including possessions and food, so that people may not go without.

Surely, you may say, the church is so much more than that nowadays, and is up to so much more! There are things like CARITAS and Vacation Bible School, the visiting of the sick and incarcerated. There are the car wash fundraisers and the youth retreats. Sunday School and choir practices. Christmas musicals and the stewardship campaigns…and what about keeping up the building, making sure the property is maintained? Can our common life really be boiled down to those basic five?

Is all the other stuff then superfluous? Or might these things be variations elaborations on these essentials—that is, the apostles’ teachings, fellowship, sacramental life, prayer, and communal redistribution of goods and property? My guess is for the latter, but it might be a good practice for the life of the church to continually set our ministries against this original recipe. For it is these five ingredients, given shape by our Lord’s resurrection and given power by the Holy Spirit, that form the basis of all the activity and vitality of Christ’s body on earth.

Dr. Martha Roy was woman in my internship congregation in Cairo, Egypt. When I was there she was about 89 years old and still played the pipe organ at worship every Sunday. She was an American, born in Egypt in the early 1900’s to a missionary family from the old United Presbyterian Church. Dr. Roy, as I called her, was an “old-school” Presbyterian who has spent the entirety of her life in service to the church in Egypt. The only time she lived stateside was when she was getting her college and graduate degrees. She served as a teacher and musician on several faculties in Egypt, and was a recipient of the highest honor ever awarded by the President of Egypt to a foreigner. Her unique life provided her the opportunity to worship in the churches of the Middle East and in the missionary congregations that were formed along the Nile. One of her brothers, in fact, became a missionary in Sudan, and as refugees from the Horn of Africa began pouring into Cairo in the last decade or two, Dr. Roy found herself in the position to participate in their religious communities, too. Her life’s masterpiece, perhaps, was the first-ever codified liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church. This two-thousand-year-old branch of Christianity never had a written-down form of its worship—neither words nor music—until Dr. Roy and her colleague Dr. Toth set themselves to it.

Dr. Martha Roy, center

When I’d sit with her to visit, it was like speaking with a living history book. She could talk for hours explaining how marvelously diverse she’d found the expressions of Christianity to be. But at some point she’d inevitably open her Bible to this very Acts passage and say, very ceremoniously, “Here is what it’s all based on, Phillip. No matter the diversity, these practices are everywhere, and Christians of every kind and color and history cherish them.”

I had maybe touched briefly on this during a lecture in a seminary class. She, on the other hand, had experienced it first-hand, over and over again. I was sad to learn that Dr. Roy died about two months ago 2 weeks shy of her 98th birthday.

Each of these ingredients, you see, is intended to bring us together and form us as a flock, to keep our hearts and hands and voices focused on what we share as a community. That was what Dr. Roy had glimpsed in so many different expressions of the church. In prayer, we share our wounds, our insecurities, our fears, as well as our dreams about the future. In worship we share our voices and our Lord’s peace. In service we share our talents and our skills, as well as our words of reconciliation and forgiveness with each other. In our offerings, we share our treasures with those around us. It’s a risky move, allowing ourselves to be formed by the breaking of bread and prayers and pooling of resources and hopes on such a regular basis. It can be risky…but it’s sacred.

The greatest danger is we can forget how counter-cultural these practices actually are, how unnatural it usually is to put ourselves in close relationship with so many others. We can lose sight of how transforming the Holy Spirit intends these practices to be, especially in a culture like ours that constantly exalts the value of individualism, relishing in voting people off the island and whittling panels of art contestants down to one.

We always run the danger—and, I, more than anyone else—of turning Christian faith into a head-trip, a grand chance for internal reflection. We transform the news of Jesus’ resurrection into something entirely personal, as if Jesus rose from the dead so that everyone may explore their own paths of spirituality and new life! Or we can fall into the trap of thinking that participation in a faith community is to get values that help us “get by in life.”

In Acts of the Apostles, nothing could be farther from the truth, and Jesus did not rise from the dead in order to help everyone achieve some form of individual enlightenment. Christian faith is ultimately about sharing over and against a world and a self-tendency that is about taking and gaining. And, thankfully, Luke does not fashion a completely rosy view of the early Church as they gather together in harmony with their glad and generous hearts. They don’t really “get by.” They struggle. Even as they celebrate amazing achievements, they get it wrong from time to time, and we know from our own experiences that the church can be a hurtful place where greed and selfishness play part.

I think that might be why this segment of Acts in one of my commentaries is entitled “the Community of the Uncommon Life.” It is really uncommon to live this way, to hold everything in common and to think of ourselves as bound together, irresolvably, because of a common bond in baptism. It really is uncommon to think that these five ingredients are all we need subsist on. And not just subsist…but live the abundant life.

No, the church is not about helping individuals get by in the world. It is not even about giving us values to succeed in life. The Christian faith is about transforming the world with the power of Christ’s resurrection. If it is about values at all, then it is about values that turn the world on its head, that bring the world in and love it up good, slop it with a generous helping of God’s grace, and send us all back out, hopeful and transfigured.

The church is chicken casserole, brothers and sisters, and the more we “cook” for, the more we break bread with, the more God gathers us out of our individual menus to graze with the flock—you guessed it—the better the news of the resurrection will be.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion - "The Cry of the Whole Congregation" - April 17, 2011

2011-04-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Four voices. Four distinct and unique voices from four people who, as far as we can tell, never knew each other or even came into contact with one another. Yes, the voices are distinct and unique, but each is uttered with an urgency and clarity untarnished for roughly two-thousand years. And, despite their differences, their individual perspectives, all four speak with remarkable similarity, especially given their independence of each other. As it happens, we know their names—at least, the names that got attached to each voice fairly early on—but we know blessed little else about them or their original audiences. The stories they told with their voices took precedence over anything they would tell us about themselves.

Mark, who probably spoke first (or at least got written down first) was most likely Greek, and most likely speaking in or around Rome in the first century to a group of believers who were unfamiliar with Jesus’ Jewish roots. The stories he had heard and assembled about Jesus paint the picture of a servant Savior who is at once swift and forceful in overturning the powers of evil. For Mark, the impact of this Savior’s words is almost overshadowed by the number of miracles and healings he performs.

Then there is Matthew’s voice, which for a long time was thought to belong to one of this Jesus’ original Twelve followers. We figure Matthew was most likely a Jewish Christian who wrote in a locale much closer to where his subject actually lived. Matthew saw Jesus primarily as a teacher—a teacher, moreover, who was skilled in interpreting Jewish law and forming a community of followers. And so Matthew’s voice presents a Jesus who tells more parables, gives clear instruction about forgiveness and church discipline, and likes to stress the moral implications of Jesus’ kingdom.

Luke is the softy of the bunch, choosing to stress Jesus’ concern for the least, the lost, and the little. He’s the one who collects and records Jesus’ parables of the lost coin, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son…and what would Christianity be without those? Luke is the most educated of the voices, most likely a doctor who travelled with the apostle Paul around the Mediterranean for a while, and his sophisticated grammar and style show it.

And then there is John, the outlier. He is the most poetic of all the voices, accomplished in the use of metaphor and irony. Unlike the others, John chooses to tell a few stories in depth rather than hashing out everything he ever heard about the man. For John, Jesus’ signs were of utmost importance. We typically call them miracles, but for John they were signs because they signaled something about God’s glory that was being revealed in Jesus. John wrote for a congregation or a group of congregations who were likely Jewish but who had been ostracized from the religious community because of their claims about Jesus. John often gets a bad rap because people find him the most difficult to understand, but somehow his voice would really be missing if it were lost.

All four had their special emphases to make, their theological points to drive home, their particular perspective. And all of them are telling the truth. Yet something profound happens to these four distinct voices when they get to the part of their story where Jesus enters Jerusalem just before the Passover. Differences in their perspectives begin to fade away and their voices start to unite. All at once, they start telling the same story with some of the same key details. Yes, there are some discrepancies in a few words now and then—signs of their distinct perspectives creep in here and there—and some of them record Jesus’ encounters with the temple authorities more fully than others, but, by and large, the four voices start to tell the same story.

Something happened—something momentous—surrounding this man Jesus from Nazareth as he came from the backwater villages of Galilee into the fevered Passover celebrations of Jerusalem during the time of the Roman army’s oppression. Something was happening—something worth remembering correctly—as he borrowed a room for one last meal with his disciples. Something significant was happening as he faced betrayal and denial from these same disciples and was handed over to his enemies. Something miraculous was happening as he was stripped and hung on the cross and treated like a nobody.

It is as if all four voices know that, regardless of what else they communicate about the man and his ministry, this part containing his last days is the most important. It is the crux of his mission, his identity. This part will define him, more than any of his teachings, miracles, signs, or parables…even the parable of the Prodigal Son. Likewise, all those parables and miracles and teachings must be interpreted in light of what transpires to Jesus in Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, these voices mean to tell us, came in to the city highly regarded by his people as a new king but ended up getting crucified instead after a charade of a trial and laid in a borrowed tomb. And somehow the news articulated by these voices changed the world and the destiny of all creation.

At our high school Bible study this week we put on our theologian hats and took a look at what have come to be called “atonement theories.” Fancy word, I know. Atonement theories are essentially assessments of these events that seek to explain just why Jesus had to die and how his death makes us one with God. In short, who was this Jesus and why did his death matter?

Did Jesus need to die, for example, because someone needed to pay the price of human sin? That is one theory. Or did Jesus die because that is how God needed to conquer evil and darkness once and for all? That is another theory. Or perhaps Jesus died because God needed to give his people an example of how they are to love one another completely; that is, by laying down one’s life for another? The youth looked at Scriptures passages and hymn lyrics and even a Kanye West song that seemed to suggest and support any number of these theories for how Jesus’ death restored us to God.

What we discovered, however, is that there is no one right or wrong theory; they all contain some element of truth and honesty, and the all kind of overlap and blend together at some point. Maybe the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is simply too profound to be wrapped up neatly in a few words, or contained in one voice. What is interesting, though, is that the gospel voices themselves never seem to be too concerned with exactly how Jesus’ death reconciles us with God. They simply get down to the facts of what happened on that fateful week and let the power of the story speak for itself. They do their best in communicating the chain of events that allows us to understand that in the person of Jesus God himself is somehow intersecting with this world in a way no one can fully comprehend. They do their best in lending their voice to a story that is so crucial to creation’s existence and future that even had they been silent, the stones themselves would have found a way to proclaim it.

For even though words to explain it often fail us, we know it is this story of Jesus in Jerusalem that lets us know how completely God loves us. We know that it is this story of Jesus at his Last Supper which compels us to serve our neighbors whether they live here in Crestview or on the cost of Japan. We know it this story of Jesus in Gethsemane that reminds us it is not our will that will eventually have sway over our lives, but rather the will of the God who sends him. We know it is this story of Jesus before Pilate that frees us from the need to justify ourselves before God. We know it is this story of Jesus on the cross that allows us to look even into the tragedies like that of Blacksburg four years ago and speak a word of comfort and promise that God does not forsake his children even in the hour of death. We know it is this story of Jesus in his last days in Jerusalem that somehow wraps up all our shortcomings and presents them to God and offers us, in exchange, a new way of living that is filled with hope.

And so this morning we hear a rendition of those events, and you’ll be asked to lend your voice to the story. The particular version we recite does not belong to any one of those four voices; rather, it is a compilation of all of them together, like they are speaking in harmony. Specifically, note what your voice does as our worship plays out. Pay attention to the particular words that come out of your mouth, how they begin with praise but end with death threats.

And when today’s reading of that story is finished…when the last nail has been pounded through weakened flesh, when the last bystander has left the scene, when the taste of that wine and bread on your tongues has begun to fade, and when, on Sunday, the women hurry to the tomb with their embalming spices, the four ancient (yet modern) voices will want to know…what will we do with ours?

Will we join our voices and our lives with theirs in the urgency of proclaiming these events and how they change the world?

Or will we shut up and be silent and leave the stones to speak in our place?

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent [Year A] - April 3, 2011 (John 9:1-41)

2011-04-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

The sermon portion of the closing worship each year at the Virginia Synod’s event for 5th and 6th-graders, which is called “7th Day,” involves a series of skits put on by each group of youth who are attending the event. Each group (and there can be 25 or more) is given a little snippet of Scripture from one of the gospels, and they come up with a way of presenting or portraying that snippet without speaking and without costumes. Each skit usually takes about ten seconds and is performed up on the stage in front of the entire assembly. They shuffle up on one side of the stage, perform the piece of Scripture in somewhat rapid fashion, and then exit the other side of the stage while the next group is coming on stage behind them. As can be expected, the skits are often very humorous, sometimes puzzling, and occasionally very moving.

One skit at this year’s event, held about a month ago, featured a young girl who was blind cast in the role of Jesus for a healing story. I had seen the girl several times during the course of the weekend being guided by a personal aide up and down the steep hills and staircases of the retreat center. She also carried a white cane and she appeared to me to have no vision at all. As her group got ready to perform, I found myself wondering how she might be experiencing the event (especially since the sermon was silent), how challenging it must be some people to be fully incorporated into relatively simple tasks. Suddenly, there she was, hand outstretched, her aide pointing her body in the direction of the people who were pantomiming imaginary ailments. They had to stand right up close, stretching their heads out and pressing them into the palm of her hand.

Maybe she had volunteered to act out the role of Jesus herself, maybe her group members had assigned it to her, maybe they had drawn straws for the part—but, to be honest, it kind of caught me off guard. I must confess that to me she may not have been the obvious selection to play Jesus, especially because navigating the stage could have been difficult, but, man, did it work! It was a beautiful portrayal of the story, and, like all experiences with the gospel of Jesus, it contained a poignant element of surprise. I was humbled to watch from my seat on the front row as the person who probably most often dwells at the margins became the agent of healing and grace.

It’s safe to say that people with illnesses or disabilities were viewed a little differently in Jesus’ day. Rarely were they seen as agents of healing or grace. Rarely were they even incorporated into daily life. Without the aides offered by modern technology and today’s educational systems, such people were often left at the margins of life. Furthermore, their malady was often seen as divine punishment for some sin either they or someone in their family had committed. That made interaction with them even more of a taboo on most occasions. Blindness, especially, was to be pitied and feared, for in ancient Greek culture, seeing was equated with understanding, sight with knowledge. In fact, the verb “to see” in ancient Greek is the same word for “to perceive,” or “to regard” or “to discover.” It was thought that someone who was unable to see could never really comprehend anything on a meaningful level.

So, as you can imagine, the blind man in this gospel story was most of all to be pitied, left at the margins to beg. As they approach him, the disciples wonder whose sin might be responsible for his condition, his or his parents’? Jesus’ grace, however, transforms the scene, complete with the gospel element of surprise. At once, the man born blind is brought into a relationship with God’s own Son and his condition is changed into a display of God’s glory.

And, all the while, the nearby Pharisees react in a similar fashion to my callous first impression of the young girl’s skit at the synod event: surely this man cannot be the Messiah.

There are many interesting elements to this encounter between Jesus, the man born blind, and the Pharisees. Perhaps the first one is that the actual act of healing takes up such minimal space in the story. Only two verses out of the forty-one deal with the man’s gaining of physical sight. Jesus spits on some dirt, rubs the mud in his eyes, and tells him to go wash it off in the water. The bulk of the story, rather, focuses on how people deal with and make sense of the event. What is communicated here has less to do with Jesus’ ability to transform a hopeless situation (which is important, by the way) and more to do with people’s reactions to and reception of Jesus. That is, the light that Jesus brings to the world, as explained by this story, has less to do with physical healing and transformation and more to do with spiritual understanding and a restored relationship with the Creator.

When someone looks at Jesus, when someone perceives Jesus, do they see an imposter, a blasphemer, just another ordinary sinner? Or do they see the Son of God? Do they make little note of him, abdicating any judgment about how important he might be? Do they understand him to be a significant prophet, a godly man? Or do they understand him to be Lord? The entire range of reactions is presented by this gospel story. Those skeptical front-row Pharisees never come to see him as anything more than a sinner or a blasphemer. Never can they even bring themselves to mention Jesus by name! The man’s parents, full well knowing their son has forever been changed and healed, back off from any assertion about Jesus. The townspeople display pure puzzlement, and perhaps some curiosity. And even the man born blind, himself, slowly grows in understanding of just who this Jesus is. It is not until the end of this encounter that he calls Jesus “Lord” and falls down to worship him.

Pool of Siloam

Another interesting thing about this story is that it involves a critical turning point in John’s gospel. Up to this point, Jesus has performed other signs and has gotten into debates with the Pharisees and religious authorities, but here is the first time anyone is driven out of the synagogue—out of the community—because they confess Jesus to be the Messiah. Here is where belief in who Jesus is and why he matters begins to divide people for the first time seriously. In ancient Judaism, the synagogue was central to community and culture. To be cut off from them was to be cut off from life. And so it is a more than a little ironic that the man born blind, who before his encounter is cut off from life because he cannot see or know anything, is now after the encounter cut off from life because of the person who gave him sight.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, retain their position within the religious community, retain their standing in regards to God’s law, but lose out on a deeper understanding of what God is really like and how much their own sin blinds them to it. They turn a “blind eye” to the poignant gospel surprise.

For whatever reason, we can lose sight of the fact that Jesus has this divisive effect on the world, and on us. We can forget that he often creates division between people, just as we can forget that the presence of light, by definition, creates pockets of shadow and darkness. It has the ability to expose and create contrast, just as Jesus has the ability to expose sin and selfishness and the unwillingness to believe in God’s glory. I find that in both private devotion and in public worship we tend to stress Jesus’ inclusion of others who are different or outcast. We emphasize the joy and excitement of responding to Jesus, but we overlook or gloss over the fact that Jesus does cause division and sometimes conflict.

On some level, I suppose that if we were to err in overemphasizing an aspect of Jesus, concentrating on his loving and gracious embrace isn’t a bad one to choose. But on another level, if we ignore the fact that Jesus comes to bring light and expose the darkness we may fail to notice this feature of Jesus’ character and ministry that exists in our own relationships with him. We can forget that even Jesus himself was aware of this power he wielded. “I came into this world for judgment,” he admits, “so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

This does not mean that his love is qualified in any way. As he himself says, he was not given to condemn the world, but to love it, and anyone’s life—anyone’s—may be an opportunity for God’s glory to be displayed. However, Jesus’ judgment does mean that it we must be honest about our sinfulness, too, our ongoing tendency to linger in the darkness about how completely God really loves us. As New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann once put it, “in order to be grace, it must uncover sin.” And in the presence of Jesus’ grace, we can range the whole gambit of reaction, just like the characters in this story…from hostility, to doubt, to disregard, to outright worship.

Realizing the multi-faceted nature of this encounter, I decided to emphasize the healing portion when I shared this story with the nursery school students in chapel this week. But before I could even put down the Bible once I had finished reading it, one of the students blurted out, “I wish I could just jump in that story and tell those people that…that…that God is a good guy!”

As I reflected on this comment with Christy Huffman, who alternates chapel duties with me, we realized that’s the essence of the story—of any story involving Jesus. He is the light of the world, and we are invited to jump right in to the story, his judgment and all, and let Jesus speak with us. We are to jump in and find that being so face-to-face with him will make us aware of our own sin, our blindness to the ways God loves us. Likewise, we jump in and learn he cleanses us anyway. We jump in…and see he makes a habit of turning the most pitiable, most forlorn, most marginalized of situations into arenas where God’s light may shine through. His healings, his holy meal, and of course his cross, all display a God who is at work, transforming the world into a place of new life.

In the end, we are to jump into his story—jump from the front row into the skit—and prepare our own muddied lives to be an opportunity to display God’s glory. Washed, and with our eyes blinking, we press our heads up into the palm of his wounded hands and begin, at long last, to see.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

"Stirred, Not Shaken" - Lenten Reflections on the Life of Faith (Guide Our Life)

2011-03-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

Texts: Exodus 13:17-22, 2 Timothy 3:14-17

[enter to the "Raider March," complete with whip, fedora, and leather jacket]

Greetings, fellow adventurers!

I was in town to do some top-secret protection for the Picasso exhibit down at your museum of Fine Arts, and I heard about your Lenten Wednesday worship theme this year. Come to find out, it is based on a twist of one of my fellow adventurer’s martini orders. Indeed, my British counterpart, Agent 007, always orders his shaken, not stirred. I suppose I’d take mine the same way. I’ve never met Mr. Bond, but we lead a similar lifestyle: secret missions, international travel and intrigue, and the propensity to display calm, wit, and quick thinking in the face of danger (if I do say so myself). He always prefers things a little shaken up, not just stirred around.

But not you. Oh, no. You, on the other hand, have apparently ordered up a life that is stirred, not shaken. It’s a clever little reversal of wording. I suppose it calls attention to your desire to be stirred up by the Holy Spirit into service and courage rather than shaken into doubt and despair. Apparently you even pray for this type of life. That’s pretty admirable, especially to adrenaline junkies like me. In one of your worship services, the rite of confirmation, you even line up your young whipper-snappers up in front of the church to publicly affirm the promises of their baptism. And right there you pray for God’s Holy Spirit to keep them stirred, not shaken. As they are poised on the brink of adulthood—poised to grab hold of the grace that has been handed them by God—you look the challenges of life square in the eye and pray for the help that will keep them faithful.

Come to think of it, you sound like a fairly intrepid outfit that a guy like me might even fit in! And today/tonight you’re considering part of that prayer that I happen to know a little about: guide our life. Since I have a knack for tracking down my prize by following clues and sometimes raw instinct, I thought might be in order for me to swing by and give you a few pointers about good guidance. You see, I rely on guidance of all types: scholarly knowledge I’ve obtained in the academy, cryptic archaeological symbols, legendary oracles, and an internal sense of where danger might lurk. I know a thing or two about how to navigate adventure, believe you me. Maybe I can help you in your adventure to be stirred, not shaken.

Because, let’s be honest: life is an adventure. Whether you’re ranging all over the planet, attempting feats of daring and danger, or whether circumstances require that you live your whole life within a few square miles, life necessarily involves decisions, and those decisions carry with them the air of adventure. Life involves risk, choices, fear of regret, tiptoeing or diving headfirst into the unknown. What to do Friday night? Where to go to college next year? How to raise a family? What job to take? Which retirement facility to inhabit?—the adventurous aspects of life are inescapable. And for people of faith, there is the added dimension of how to live to the glory of God in each and everything you do. It is nice to know you may pray for some type of guidance in the midst of it all.

And it appears your God is not prepared leave you hanging in that department. Look at the ancient Israelites. As you know, I’ve studied their history very carefully. After God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt, God didn’t just slap them on the rear and turn them loose to their freedom. Against all odds, he found a way to guide them out of a hostile, oppressive environment into an even more hostile desert, right through the middle of a huge body of water, and, eventually, into a land God had set aside especially for them. They were dressed for battle action and carried with them the bones of their great ancestor Joseph as a reminder of who they were.

While they journeyed, of course, two pillars guided them: a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Eventually, when they would obtain the Ark of the Covenant (which, as you know, now sits forgotten in some unmarked box amidst many others somewhere in a government warehouse), the cloud and the fire would rise and fall in the air over the ark. When this cloud would fall over the Ark, the Israelites would set up camp. As soon as it lifted into the air, they knew it was time to move on.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of things on this planet, but I have to say I can’t imagine what that would have looked like. But the Israelites knew it could be trusted. They knew it represented God’s real presence, slogging with them wherever they went.

That’s pretty cool—it’s like some divine GPS device—but what I find most interesting (as a person who likes to get straight to the treasure) is that this long stint in the wilderness was a part of the deal. The wandering is built-in, right from the start. As they get started on this adventure, God is set on leading them a roundabout way. Rather than taking the direct route through the land of the Philistines, God makes them traipse into the wilderness, southward, toward the banks of the Red Sea. And the wandering does not cease once they come out dry on the other side. For a total of forty years they meander through the barren wasteland of the Sinai Peninsula and the northern Arabian Desert before they finally reach where they’re supposed to be. Nevertheless God was with them the whole time, his mysterious pillars of cloud and fire leading the way, but also involved in their own wandering.

I don’t know how you read it, but there are a few things I would take from this account if you’re thinking about guidance. For one, the people of God traveled as a group and were guided as a group. They had leaders that helped mediate the course who struck out on their own occasionally, but the journey of faith was not a “lone ranger” thing. God is clearly interested in guiding a community, not just individuals. To receive God’s guidance, you might not want to stray too far from the desert caravan of your brothers and sisters.

Secondly, wilderness is part of the adventure. In your baptismal journey, you can expect times of wandering and wondering. You can assume there will be days and years you feel lost, miles from where you want to be. You may even feel lost from God. But you should never forget that he has promised to be in the midst of that wandering with you. This is where the sacraments are so important. Tangibility is part of your faith. You’ll need something to hold onto.

Another thing you may want to take from this lesson is to get rid of the idea that every single step of your life has been mapped out by God, and that it’s your job ahead of time to figure out what those steps are. It appears God doesn’t really guide like that, and God isn’t that much of a control freak. People of faith can often get stuck in that trap, though, always waiting for some special secret oracle, some clear signpost that will let them know which path at the fork in the road to take. They worry and wonder about which decision would actually be in God’s will. I mean, sometimes there may be signs, mentors, who can point away. But the danger is getting frozen in your tracks, paralyzed by the thought that your powers of decision may somehow nullify God’s ability to bring good from any circumstance.

There’s one guy who gave some pretty sound advice in this department—I think you may know him. He said, “If you are a sinner, then sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.” I believe his name was Martin Luther, and he always had a knack for pointing to the cross.

For that’s really the heart of the matter here. When you Christians are thinking about God’s guidance, about the way through the wilderness, all thinking must begin with that cross. That Jesus…man, was he an adventurer! He thrust himself—body and soul—into his trust in God, and his life and death proved God’s promise to guide his people through any situation. The cross is evidence of God’s ability to redeem any decision we make. It is that guidepost of all guideposts. May I be so bold as to suggest that that the cross is those two pillars—set together—which still lead God’s people, assuring you God is with you at all times, no matter the depth of the danger, no matter the width of your waywardness. Maybe that’s just some crazy archaeologist’s hunch, but I’d run with it. No matter what, it should give you an idea of the form of God’s guidance so that you and all your young whipper-snappers may face life stirred, not shaken.

I suppose our journeying is beginning to look a little different, yours and mine. The nature of my adventure is the recovery of ancient artifacts, the acquisition of rare treasures and secrets. As an archaeologist, my life is committed to the uncovering of truths from the past. The Lost Ark, the Temple of Doom…they all are tokens of by-gone eras. But you, you are called to things ahead. You journey on with the promise of a time yet to come, agents of a kingdom of grace that is being established as we speak.

As the writer to Timothy says, you need to know that you are equipped for every good work. Any adventurer can assure you that in order to be truly guided one must have a place to go. To receive direction, there must be a destination. And that you have! You may walk and wander with the confidence that God will always be guiding you to the place where your gifts participate in the restoration of this world to God through Jesus.

And, just like the ancient Israelites carried with them the bones of their great ancestor Joseph, reminding them of their identity, you travel with the Scriptures in your safekeeping. They are “inspired by God,” as again the writer to Timothy says, “useful for teaching, for reproof…and for training in righteousness.” Let me tell you: don’t forget your own set of ancient texts, and how important those living bones are for your adventure. You may feel sometimes that they burden you down, but don’t ever downplay their ability to guide you and remind you who you are.

Well, it has been with great honor to offer you any words of wisdom tonight. You’ve got your mission as the people of God, rooted in your baptism. I am beginning to recognize that it is far more daring—and, at times, frustrating—than mine ever have been. But also far more exciting, this life of faith. You go forth with a clear vision, drawn ever deeper with your community into God’s redemption of the world. Use whatever gifts you’ve received. And go forth. Boldly make your decisions. Lead the adventure of a lifetime.

Oh, and if you happen to run across any, uh, any snakes—which I hear lurk sometimes in your story—then don’t let them shake you either. Be stirred, stirred to action, ever confident that God has chosen to guide you.

Well, with that, I’m off. If I don't get back to my post, I can see a fifth episode: "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Picasso."

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

(as the inimitable Indiana Jones)

The First Sunday in Lent [Year A] - March 13, 2011 (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 and Romans 5:12-19)

2011-03-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be an idyllic setting. The spot of earth they had come into was almost perfectly flat, ringed by just enough tall oak trees to provide comfortable shade but containing enough open space for them to till and work the earth in a small vegetable garden. And it was a sufficiently wild but never hostile environment. Animals like squirrels and raccoons and even deer often scampered across the lawn in a somewhat friendly manner, and the woods that abutted the back of the property were home to all kind of birds.

The wildlife teemed there, but the backyard was primarily idyllic because of what it offered the children. The instant they looked at it he and his wife could see their two young girls growing up in it. First, a small sandbox. Later would come a play house in the back corner. In the summer, a pool of water would offer refreshment from the heat and the lack of a slope made rolling snowballs for snowmen easy in the winter. But always: nature’s harmony. It was a place the two of them could envision the innocence and happiness of childhood taking shape.

Until the dead bird last week. It was a Hermit Thrush, white breast feathers belly-up for who knows what reason, right in the middle of the path to the shed. I, of course, had become somewhat hardened to such a sight, but how would I explain this to my daughter as she rounded the corner? Had she encountered something this disturbing, this out-of-the-ordinary before? Would it scar her? What kind of questions might she ask that I wouldn’t be able to answer? I found myself wanting to shield her from it, as if its very presence had marred the whole backyard experience, transforming it into something less-than. At first I tried to convince my wife that maybe I should have found a way to chuck it into the bushes before it was discovered by innocent eyes. But in the end, we confronted its reality head-on, but still not 100% satisfied with their explanation. How does one really make sense of death? There is always a tendency to shield oneself from these awful realities.

The same can be said for other far more idyllic surroundings that have been marred with far worse: the pristine and picturesque Pacific coastline of northern Japan, the war-torn villages of Libya, the poverty- and AIDS-stricken villages of sub-Saharan Africa. We are speechless at the brokenness of creation, the brokenness of our lives, and we come up with any number of ways to rationalize it, or numb ourselves to it, or stitch together fig leaves to cover it up. One of the parishioners in the first congregation I served is the world’s oldest living hypnotherapist. One of his early assignments as an Air Force officer in the Pacific theater of World War II was to hypnotize soldiers who had served at Iwo Jima who were mentally and emotionally paralyzed by the gruesome carnage they had witnessed there. Wracked by those horrific scenes amidst what should also have been an idyllic setting, they came to him for a last-ditch fig-leaf shield. His hypnotherapy could never erase or undo the atrocities, he always acknowledged, but it offered some kind of relief, some kind of shield.

In a sense, this is what we all do to our gruesome human condition, a condition put into remarkably accurate and perceptive language by the ancient Hebrews thousands of years ago. The first man and first woman, set by God’s grace in the garden of Eden, transgress the law—the one law had been issued intended to keep appropriate and life-giving boundaries between the roles between Creator and the created. Tantalized, and also swindled by the tempter, that crafty spreader of lies, they seek God’s private knowledge, some false form of freedom, and they reach for power—they reach to occupy the role that the Creator fulfills.

And at that moment, as the apostle Paul explains, sin comes into the world. A force enters the idyllic backyard that immediately transforms their surroundings into something less-than. It is a force that has somehow both been unleashed by them and caught hold of them. With sin now free to spread its lies, things will never be the same. And the immediate effect is that their eyes are opened, but only to see their vulnerability. The immediate result of their temptation to sin is not wisdom or power, but shame and, eventually, fear…fear even of the one who created them.

For the apostle Paul, and for countless other people of faith, this story in Genesis explains with perfect truth the story of the human condition. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin…and death spread to all because all have sinned,” he says, tracing our condition back to the near-beginning, to the very first humans, but never taking us off the hook, either. It attempts to tell us something that we all know and feel from our own observation—by that inner sense implanted by the Creator—but that can never explained by even our best science; namely, that we look around and find ourselves in what should be an idyllic place, with life in full communion with God, with creation, with each other, and with ourselves—but which isn’t.

Theologians have long plumbed this story of man and woman’s fall to find the root cause or the main character of our sin. Is it, for example, a sense of rebellion, an urge of disobedience, as when woman and man willingly went against the law that had been established? Or is sin best described as disordered desire, a sense that we want the wrong things and turn away from the very things that are good for us? This would be suggested by the fact that woman sees the tree as good for food, a “delight to the eyes,” rather than as the deadly fare that God had maintained it was. So much of our brokenness is brought about by wanting and seeking the very things that do us in. Or is sin, at its root, pride, a craving to be like the Creator in all the Creator’s power? “When you eat of it,” the serpent promises, “you will be like God,” an offer that was—and still is—too good to turn down.

Or, as Martin Luther and the other reformers proposed, is our sin rooted in our contempt for God’s Word? When the serpent presses the woman about what God said, she incorrectly quotes what God originally said. As Luther noted, man and woman were unable or unwilling to cling tightly enough to God’s Word, and there sin has its opening—with all of us (see typescript The Faith of the Christian Church, part II, David S. Yeago, pp 42-43).

"Adam and Eve" Albrecht Duerer, 1504

Perhaps, though, sin is something so insidious that it defies a tidy explanation. Try as we may, we can never really perfectly point at what has gone wrong. Nevertheless, the fact remains that when we open our eyes wide enough, we realize that things are not as they should be. Things like greed, vanity, and selfishness rule our hearts and our relationships far more than they should. Yes, this Genesis story is the story of our condition. From Adam and Eve to Moses, it is the story of you and me. From Moses and the prophets through the wayward years of Israel, God’s people, who tried to live by earthly definitions of power and who grasped after worldly riches and who lived by testing God’s faithfulness, this brief episode tells the story of our condition. From the blood-drenched shores of Iwo Jima to the awkward conversation about a bird’s death between a father and his daughter, this is the story of our condition, the story that something is not right. This is the story of us.

But—thanks be to God—it is not the end. For now there is the story of Jesus, the free gift. Now there is a new Man among us, one who comes to begin a rescue mission that will not just hypnotize us to sin’s effects, or erase the scars it leaves, but that will that will, in fact, miraculously undo its power. There is a new Man among us, born of God himself, yet clothed in flesh like one of us, who will triumphantly withstand the guile of the tempter and unravel his lies, one who will, on our account, cling to the Word of God so tightly that he will become inseparable from it. Now we have the story of Jesus, the free gift, and he will bring about a new birth that will give us new eyes that, when opened again, will see a world with limitless potential for service and love.

And, foremost, Jesus will prove God’s love for us. His rescue will focus on our hearts, to unspoil that which we have ruined, to put back together that which we have helped tear apart, to forgive that which we could never imagine being forgiven, to raise our blessed dead.

Now, my friends, there is the story of Jesus, the free gift, and it assures us that our story does not have the final word. I suppose this is what the American theologian Frederick Buechner meant when he said, “The gospel is bad news before it is good news,” that it is tragedy before it is comedy (Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, Harper SanFrancisco, 1977, p7). We first must encounter our state of vulnerability, our state of being lost—in short, the fullness of our sin—before we realize we have been saved. We must come to terms with our need for redemption before we hear the good news of our redeeming. We must first recognize the totality of our filthiness before we hear that God loves us anyway, loves us to the core. We understand that we are wounded, and then we realize that this Jesus is also wounded for us.

It is not just the season of Lent that asks us to grapple with these two stories—the story of us and the story of Jesus. Our entire faith is based on it. Too often we are lulled by the crafty tempter into thinking that nothing is really wrong with us or the world, or, at best, that death and sin are just a permanent part of the picture. Too often we are lured into thinking that belonging to the church or participating in congregational life is simply a way to get some good values and morals, or an avenue for serving others. We must never forget that Jesus’ life and death is not, at its core, about values or morals or even serving others. Jesus goes out into the wilderness to rescue us. He endures the cross to save us, to put a different, beautiful ending on the story we keep writing.

And, in the surprising way God would have it, it is not really a new ending, but, rather, another beginning. It is a beginning that goes on and on with the power to transform creation and our lives, once more, into something good. The challenge of our faith, rooted in baptism, is to see ourselves written into Jesus’ wonderful new beginning, to take hold of this free gift, to cling to his Word that transports us to the idyllic setting of grace that God always intended.

It is about the challenge of knowing that, yes, we are lost.

But that we also have been found.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany [Year A] - February 27, 2011 (Matthew 6:24-34)

2011-02-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

“Therefore, do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’…or ‘What will we wear?’”

I hear that line in today's gospel lesson, and part of me now thinks, “Well, easy for Jesus to say. He never had to dress two little princesses.” Generally I’m not too concerned with what kind of clothing I put on my own body, but whenever Melinda puts me in charge of dressing our two daughters, Clare (4) and Laura (2 ½), you can almost see my blood pressure begin to rise. A terrible sense of which flowery outfits go with what, coupled with a mild case of colorblindness and an overall cluelessness as to what their wardrobe options are all have the combined effect of causing me a great deal of anxiety every time it’s my turn to put clothes on their bodies.

When they were just infants, it didn’t much seem to matter what they wore. I could just slap on any ole onesie and get away with it. But now that they’re actually having to present themselves in public more often, my lackadaisical approach to apparel is not cutting the mustard. How many times have I heard, for example, “Phillip, has Clare been wearing her dress backwards all day?” Or, “Phillip, did you realize that the way you did Laura’s ponytail makes her head look like the top of a pineapple?” And then there was the time I apparently got so flustered with figuring out which pair of pants—excu-u-use me, I meant capris—went with which which appropriately-patterned top that I completely forgot to put on Laura’s diaper. Melinda only realized it later when her lap got mysteriously wet. I’ll be honest: It’s not like I’m losing any sleep over it, but I can stand there in front of their dresser and break into a sweat. Yes, Jesus, I worry about what they are to wear…and something tells me this won’t be the last time this dad will face that anxiety.

And while I’m on the subject, I’ll throw in a confession for my worry about what I’m going to eat and drink, too. I always like knowing where my next meal is coming from (just ask the Timothy Ministers who keep track of my snack schedules on youth retreats). And if daily bread, like Martin Luther explains, means more than what we put on our dinner plates, then I worry a good bit about that, too. I am concerned about clothing, house, homestead, good government, good weather, good friends, trustworthy neighbors, health, and everything else Luther lumps in there. Like anyone else, I want to receive these things—in fact, I want to possess them—and am on edge when I think they may not be provided.

Who here, in fact, hasn’t wished for something like the convenience of that giant green arrow on the Fidelity commercials on television—the one that magically appears, turning here, veering there, to form a clear, safe path into a customer’s retirement? Isn’t that somehow what we’d all like to have, but for all of life: a clear, distinguishable guide that will point our footsteps down the sidewalk of the days ahead, assuring us not just of wise investments for the future, but peace of mind in the present? If you think about it, it seems like whole sectors of our economy are based on the worry each of us harbors for tomorrow and for today. Long-range planning, appropriately-balanced retirement portfolios, 529 accounts for the kids so they can step into adulthood on the right foot! Couple that with our industriousness, and pretty soon it seems that the sowing and the reaping and the gathering is all we’re about.

And that is precisely the point that Jesus is addressing here. We’re not all about those things—the sowing, reaping, gathering—nor were we ever intended to be. Life as a disciple, to be sure, is about being continuously aware of God’s providence. What we are to be about is focusing on the goodness of the Giver and realizing the needlessness of anxiety in the face of that goodness.

Yet this isn’t simply an admonition about the futility of worry. It is about the dangers of serving two masters. Jesus’ remarkably tender Sermon on the Mount pep-talk here is set in the context of his own concern that we would learn to place our trust in other things, things that actually may come from the Giver himself. For Jesus knows that at some point our concern over life’s many material necessities can actually become worship of those necessities. Jesus is aware that at some point our main role as receivers of God’s grace—even through basic things like food and drink and clothing and shelter—can be overshadowed by our status as consumers and producers of stuff.

You may snicker at my bouts of worry when it comes to clothing my girls—after all, I do want them to look good—but we all, in some form or another, fall into the trap of serving two masters. We like the security that all that daily bread provides, so why not nail it all down for the future if we can, especially in a time of such stubbornly high unemployment rates and skyrocketing gas prices? The reason is because it eventually becomes difficult then for us to live as one of God’s disciples. So focused on storing up treasure and fretting about the future, we never quite figure out how to balance allegiances between ideas of our own success and self-esteem and the life of faithful obedience to God. The lilies of the field? They’re never bothered by this competition between two objects of trust: they just sit there, oblivious to gas prices, praising God 24-7 with their delicate, ephemeral beauty.

Yet this gentle admonition from Jesus about wealth and worry is not permission for disciples to live with frivolity, as if none of that daily bread mattered at all, or that we shouldn’t devote some of our energies to thoughtful stewardship of God’s gifts. Jesus never denies that each day won’t bring some type of trouble, some concern or grievance that could make it a challenge. God knows we have needs.

Rather, Jesus words here are a reminder to live with God’s coming kingdom and its righteousness at the center of our vision. As we look for the wisdom to live through each passing day, we realize the green Fidelity arrow of God’s kingdom stretches out before us—turning here, veering there—to provide us with the strength and courage to embody the love of our Savior, Jesus. We stand in each moment, looking first to the places and times where God’s grace is breaking in...where the needs of others rise up before us, where suffering is taking place, where love begs for a chance to heal some wounds...and focus there. It means we stand at the threshold of every opportunity for worry and anxiety and remember the cross; that is, we remember the supreme example of God’s good providing—that in the very moment when we thought all was lost, when the trouble of the day (not to mention the day after that) had consumed us and all our hope, we still had no idea what God the Good Giver was to have up his sleeve that Sunday morning.

You don’t have to be a pastor or some other caregiver in the parish too long to figure out that you hear a good bit of peoples’ bad news. It can sometimes get a little overwhelming, walking with people in their grief, in their fears, in their dashed hopes. However, it is also refreshing to serve alongside people like many of you who are likewise so confident of God’s grace, who may actually have plenty to worry about—you know who you are—but who still choose in most instances to praise God for his faithfulness and display commitment to God’s in-breaking kingdom. It is inspiring to be in a community with so many folks who know we can make God’s kingdom and its righteousness our priority only because God has already, through the cross of Jesus Christ, made us his priority.

It reminds me of a meeting with one of my colleagues in Pittsburgh one day. We were in a group, discussing plans for an upcoming confirmation camp, and we had just finished business and were wrapping things up. As is the custom, we all reached for our daily planners in order to schedule our next meeting. As my colleague’s daily planner flopped open to the new month we were then in, we watched him stop and pull a small, dog-eared and faded Post-It Note from the month before and stick it randomly in the middle of the calendar. “Can’t forget that,” he said loudly to himself, and he took the side of his fist and pressed the Note firmly as if it were in danger of coming unstuck.

“Can’t forget what, Greg?” someone asked him out of curiosity.

Somewhat bashfully, my colleague peeled off the Post-It Note and showed us all that it contained the words, “Love you, Dad,” in sloppy handwriting, followed by a simple smiley face. “When she was home over Christmas break a few years ago,” Greg went on to explain, “my daughter saw my daily planner open on the kitchen table and she wrote this silly note and stuck it between two pages to surprise me. It reminds me of her every time I see it. She probably just figured I’d see it and then throw it away, but I like to keep it in here. It’s become a kind of tradition: every time I turn the page to a new month, the first thing I do is take that sticky note from the old month and put it on the current month. No matter what the month brings, that little note is there,” he said as he put it back.

A cutesy little gesture, perhaps, but for me it symbolized a life grounded in grace rather than worry, a calendar centered on the words of Jesus to his stressed-out disciples: “Don’t worry about next month. Don’t even worry about tomorrow. The smiley-face is on today. That’s enough. And strive first for the kingdom of God.” Greg’s Post-It was a tangible reminder that each day is anchored in the good news of Jesus’ love, the reality that, as the prophet Isaiah says, God has us “inscribed on the palms of his hands.”

Mike, I can give you no pointers on how to dress Sarah Stuart. You can do what I do and hand it all over to your wife, Leigh. But both of you should take heart that today you’re clothing her in the only garment she’ll ever really need. You’re clothing her in Christ, her Savior, who, you may say, has her name inscribed on the palm of his own hands. With nails. Worry about her welfare will never completely leave you alone, but today you’re fitting her with the promise that, even though you may not be there to provide for her every day, God yet will.

God yet will, and he will love her and will lay before her her own path, like a big green arrow stretching out before her—turning there, veering there at times, but always pointing straight to her Master in heaven.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany - February 6, 2011 (Matthew 5:13-20)

2011-02-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

Moving to Virginia has deepened my appreciation for a number of things. The amount of history, for example, that took place in this state can’t be beat. Pivotal events at our nation’s birth and in the War Between the States happened on practically every street corner. Jamestown, Yorktown, Monticello, Appamattox, Busch Gardens…the list goes on and on. But it is not Virginia’s unparalleled contributions to American history for which I have developed the greatest appreciation.

Eight U.S. presidents, and four of the first five, hail from this fine Commonwealth—more than any other state—making Virginia the “Birthplace of Presidents.” But it is not Virginia’s preeminence in producing leaders that has attracted my greatest attention.

Virginia has wonderful mix of both the mountains and the coast. The stunning beauty of, say, the Shenandoah Valley and the rugged hills of the Cumberland Gap are matched by the pristine beaches of the Eastern Shore. And I know beauty when I see it, because I come from North Carolina—the vale of humility—the only state in the union that outdoes Virginia in this department. But it is not the topographical charms of my new home state that has brought about such admiration from this newcomer.

It is, rather, the preponderance of personalized license plates here. That was, to be sure, the first thing I noticed when I moved from Pennsylvania. In fact, according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, Virginia leads the nation in what they call “vanity plate penetration rate,” which is the percentage of motor vehicles that bear personalized license plates. Slightly more than 16% of cars registered in Virginia—that’s one out of every six—have license plates that have been specifically worded by the driver. The next highest is New Hampshire at a measly 14%. When Melinda and I first reported to the DMV two years ago, the thought crossed our heads that perhaps we might need a personalized license plate to fit in here, but in the end a lack of creativity and a desire for anonymity held sway, and the vanity plate did not penetrate. I opted instead for XRY-6266, the plate that just happened to be next on the desk clerk’s pile.

I like slipping through traffic and into parking spaces in my otherwise nameless titanium gray hatchback. It’s just a car: there are plenty of us out there on the roads, and there’s nothing about my vehicle that will call attention to itself. But in the intervening time, I’ve come to develop an admiration for those vanity plates. In a way, they spice up the commute, make waiting at a stoplight a little more interesting. It’s nice to show up at church and park next to a minivan named “D TRICK” and contemplate the meaning of the mysterious “NO MONET.” Standing for something, they stand out. They add, you may say, a little seasoning to the ordinary task of driving.

I imagine that Jesus would have liked his disciples to go about with personalized license plates. In a way, he requested that they do, but not necessarily on their mode of transportation. Jesus wanted their lives to be seasoning and preservation for the road of life. His desire was that his followers would stand for something, standing out by the way that they lived. “You are the salt of the earth,” he said, as he addressed the crowd of followers in the sermon on the Mount. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill could not be hid.” No nameless titanium gray hatchback here, no random number assigned from the desk clerk! Jesus knew that his disciples should be known, far and wide.

salt harvest, Bolivia

Like salt, which added flavor and preservative qualities to the food it touched, Jesus’ followers bore the ability to bring out the best in the human race. Their Christ-like peacemaking and humility would be able to transform those with which they came into contact. Like a lamp, which would never be lit and then shoved under a bushel basket, those claimed by his kingdom would shine with a righteousness that exceeded that of the law-adoring Pharisees. Like a city on a hill, their relationships with one another would be a beacon to travelers in the wilderness. In fact, Jerusalem, with its temple, was a city on its hill. Jesus knows his followers will be a new mount Zion, a living, breathing Jerusalem that will be home to God’s own Spirit, blessing the world with promise of salvation. Nope, no anonymity here, like salt that has become useless, flavorless granules, or a covered-up candle. Jesus’ followers would spice up and light up the whole planet earth with good news and good works that would signal to everyone that a Father in heaven loves and extends mercy to all.

At each baptism, we light a candle and hand it to the baptized or the baptized’s parents and repeat part of Jesus’ words to his followers. “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” It is a fitting way remind us all that those who have been claimed by Christ are to lead their lives in a way that reflects the grace of God’s kingdom. That is, the word about Jesus’ death and resurrection has been spoken to us; we cling to that in faith and then show that in our words and actions. It is a powerful message to convey at the beginning of a Christian’s baptismal journey. But what has always struck me about this passage about salt and light is that it was originally addressed to a community, an assembly, not to an individual, which is how we often take it. “You yourselves are the salt of the earth,” is closer to what Jesus said. If he were from certain parts of Virginia, he might have said, "'Y’all' are the light of the world."

At this point, Jesus has just finished talking about those whom the world typically throws under the bus: the poor in spirit, the meek, those who practice mercy, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, of all things—and he has said, surprisingly, that, in God’s kingdom, those are the ones who are blessed. Those who are pure in heart, those who practice peace, who are taunted and mocked and thrown in jail for the sake of God’s cause—those are the ones who most embody the righteousness God always had in mind for God’s people. This was the essence of the entirety of God’s law and the words of the prophets. What could not be accomplished by the countless efforts of Israel through the years was now going to be fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth and bestowed on this ramshackle group who follows him. It is those people, gathered around him on that mountain that day, gathered in the various catacombs and underground worship places for fear of persecution, who hear, “You—you guys, y’all—you are going to embody these peculiar blessings of the kingdom—and that makes you, ramshackle following that you are, the light of the world.”

I wonder if the church still understands this about itself today? We take it to heart as individuals, perhaps, but what about as a community? Do we understand our light-giving qualities, our duty as earth-preservers? Do we toil and give witness as a loose assortment of religious individuals, people who think about God and show up on Sunday mornings here and there to do it together, or do we nurture our collective witness more wholesomely, by practicing, let’s say, peace and humility among ourselves? Do we lift up the importance of our life together, as Jesus so clearly does?

A major study in 2010 on religion in America conducted by The Barna Group, an organization considered to be the leading research organization focused on the intersection of faith and culture in this country, reveals some interesting themes. One of their overarching findings, in fact, was that the “influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.” While, historically, the contributions of Christianity to society have been prevalent, people of faith in modern times seem to be unable to identify, even for themselves, the ways in which Christian faith makes a difference on the world. The obstacles Christianity faces nowadays, the study suggested, had little to do with the content of Christian faith, or its styles of preaching or worship or public relations, but how Christians implement their faith in public and private. The rushed, frenetic pace of the American life, the overpowering effect of busy schedules and sound-byte media have whittled to a minimum the type of reflection that faith’s integration requires. “In a society in which choice is king, there are no absolutes, every individual is a free agent, we are taught to be self-reliant and independent and Christianity is no longer the automatic, default faith of young adults, new ways of…exposing the heart and soul of the Christian faith are required,” the study said.

The point of the study, I believe, was not to give people of faith more ammunition for railing against the prevailing culture, something that is all-too-easy for us to do. Followers of Jesus do have the responsibility to call the world’s values into question from time to time, but the power of our witness is not in our ability to break apart and cut down or slash and burn. It is in our capacity to shine—not just as lone rangers, but as a group, as a communion. Jesus instigates us, in surroundings both harsh and inviting, to wear that personalized license plate and to touch the rest of the world with our life-saving selflessness.

St. Andrew's United Church of Cairo

I confess that I have not been able to concentrate fully this week on the witness of our community here like perhaps I should. As the events of unrest and possible revolution unfold in Egypt, many of my thoughts and prayers have been with the people of Cairo and those in my internship congregation there, the tiny but fiercely salty St. Andrew’s United Church of Cairo. St. Andrew’s began in the late 1800’s as a Scottish church, but has been served by ELCA pastors and supported by our denomination’s offerings for most of the past half-century. It has survived every other major outbreak of upheaval in that country, steadily tending to its gospel tasks, and we have no reason to believe it will not survive whatever is happening now. The ELCA staff in Egypt, including the pastor, have all been evacuated, leaving the small congregation and its vibrant outreach to Muslim and Christian refugees to fend for itself a while. Unnamed perpetrators, armed with semi-automatic weapons entered the church compound this week and fired a round or two, demanding money from those who were there. I have faith that, buoyed by prayer and the tenacity of a minority people who’ve learned to live in a rough and tumble city, they’ll be fine.

I am thankful God showed me so much that year about the church’s role to be salt and light, to live by Christ’s righteousness alone. It has helped me to be able to stand in this pulpit each week and look out at you not simply as individual flames of potential, flickering one-by one, but more as a glow, together, with the power to light up much more than an outdoor Christmas display. For it’s not just your license plates that have won my appreciation, but your own unique saltiness in the ways you take care of and support one another and spur each other to bear the faith into a world that is different from Cairo, but no less oblivious to the message of peace you bear.

I fear that the studies and the researchers and the statisticians will continue to bring us what we will perceive as bad news. We can hear the threat of decline and wring our hands, shuffle our feet, claim the world around us is going to hell in a bushel-basket. We can drive around this place anonymously, as in a titanium gray hatchback, trying to slide in here and there without notice, going with the flow, all the time losing our saltiness and dimming our light.

Or we can shine. We can shine, all of us—the poor in spirit, the peacemakers, the meek, the mercy-needers as well as the mercy-givers—we can shine so brightly that others will see Christ’s great work in us and have no choice but to give glory to our Father in heaven.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A - January 16, 2011 (John 1:29-42)

2011-01-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

There is a contrast in this story of the opening days of Jesus’ ministry as recorded in John’s gospel between things said about Jesus and things said to Jesus. That is, this account with John the Baptist and the first disciples contains both conversations concerning who Jesus is as well as conversations with the person of Jesus, himself. It’s a little like the difference between reading the quotes from other famous writers and publishers about a book that appear on the back of a book jacket and then opening the book and reading it, yourself. The quotes and reviews on the back are true and helpful. Reading them helps you understand the importance of what is contained within, but reading the comments is not exactly the same as reading the book itself.

John the Baptist gives us the best examples of the former—the comments on the back of the book about Jesus. For one, John says that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. At another point, John says that Jesus is greater than he (John) is even though Jesus is appearing after him, because Jesus was actually before him. John also says that he saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and remaining on Jesus. And, lastly, John also claims that Jesus is the Son of God. A little later, Andrew, one of the new disciples, remarks to his brother that Jesus is the Messiah, which is enough to pique Simon’s interest into investigating Jesus, himself.

Many of these things that are said about Jesus are highly metaphorical; that is, they point to something else that helps us understand some aspect of Jesus and his ministry. For example, when John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God, we know he doesn’t mean that Jesus is actually a bleating farm creature whose fur is occasionally shorn and made into clothes. Rather, one thing that John might mean is that Jesus is like the unblemished lamb that ancient Israel once offered up during the Passover in order to be freed from slavery in Egypt. That remark, to be sure, had a resonance to it in Jesus’ Jewish culture that doesn’t necessarily exist in ours. Jesus will die to set us free. Likewise, when John the Baptist mentions that Jesus was before him we know he is making a statement about Jesus’ eternal nature—that the Son, long before he became incarnate as Jesus, actually existed alongside with the Father from the beginning of time.

Ecce Agnus Dei, Dieric the Elder, 1468

All of the things that John the Baptist tell us—and his disciples, of course—about Jesus are certainly true, and they help his disciples make the transition to following Jesus. They help us in understanding who Jesus is sent by God to be. However, it is the disciples themselves who model the conversations with Jesus, himself. They are the ones who, you may say, open the book and begin reading. They follow after him and wind up in the place where he is staying. They hang out with him, staying until late in the day, talking and conversing with him, asking him questions. And, as we see with Andrew, they include others in the process as they go. All along, the disciples remain with him, reading this new, never-ending book called Jesus who has come to take away the sins of the world.

Both of these types of conversations are necessary and valid. Christian faith employs them both. We need to hear the testimonies that people make about how God is active in Christ just as we need to learn how to remain in conversation with Christ, ourselves. The danger is when religious devotion becomes too focused on the former and not enough on the latter—at least, that is the trend I can notice in my own life, so perhaps I should speak for myself. A lot of effort can be put into talking about Jesus without actually talking to him. It is often easier to point to him and make claims about his identity—whether we believe in him or not—than it is to pick up our lives and follow after him for a deeper conversation.

When it comes to being a disciple, there is no getting around the need for those conversations with Jesus, of learning, day by day, a little more about him. To be sure, that is what Jesus is after. Jesus is continually drawing us into that conversation, repeatedly inviting us into that relationship. When we forget this part of Christian faith, it helps to remember that the first words from Jesus’ lips in the entire gospel are in the form of a question: “What are you looking for?” The disciples of John the Baptist run up to Jesus and he turns to see them following along. Before they even address him he asks, “What are you looking for?” It’s a question that both invites us into deeper dialogue and causes us to reflect on our own intentions, for some of the things we’re seeking at the moment may not be offered by Christ the Messiah.

And if that response isn’t open-ended enough, then come the next words from his lips. Asked where he is staying, Jesus responds, simply, “Come and see.” This all suggests to me that what we’re invited into when it comes to faith in Jesus is not always so many answers but, rather, deeper questions. It conveys that we are summoned by someone who is really most interested to learn what we’re seeking, what makes us tick, what drives us onward, what might be missing. Such an introduction implies that we are called by a God who just might be more invested in a relationship with us than in our potential for spouting doctrine and dogma.

Not too long ago one of my close friends entered a prolonged period of doubt in his faith that he describes as intense and painful. I am not aware of the details of what brought his current crisis on, but in our conversations I hear him struggling honestly and openly about some of the basic tenets of Christian faith…both the claims about Jesus and some of the claims Jesus makes. While I am thankful he shares this with me, I am also aware of my own ineptitude at how to handle his questions. It is often a struggle to put into words what I have come to believe and why, especially up against his particular questions, which, in many cases, are questions I’ve never been inclined to ask. I asked him one time, in the midst of one of our conversations (and frustrated with how I was responding to him), what had he had found helpful in any conversations with other believers in easing his heart and possibly restoring his faith. One of the first things he responded with was, “When people simply ask questions, rather than just doling out answers. Openness to dialogue.” There, in the heart of a non-believer, I found one of the truest examples of a disciple: one who understood the nature of a God who, in Christ, doesn’t just stick to doling out answers, but rather enjoys the give-and-take of questions and, at the core, deeply wants to know what it actually is that we’re seeking.

What about you? Do you hear the things about Jesus and take them (or leave them) at face value, or do you pursue him Do you reflect on what others testify about Jesus, and do you then linger with him in conversation through worship and through prayer, and through the service to others in his name?

detail, The Crucifixion, Matthias Gruenewald, 1515

What are you looking for? The nature of Christian discipleship begins here with the testimony of John the Baptist and the curious conversations of Andrew, Simon Peter, and the unnamed third disciple. As it turns out, it is not a command to decide, but an invitation to come and see. We hear the promise of Jesus and are called out of our selves into a journey that is rooted in community, dialogue, sharing, and the hope of a new identity as people who are forgiven and set free.

That is one of my dreams for the church: that we can serve as John the Baptists as well as we serve as disciples. That we can be people who boldly point to Christ as the one who comes to take away the sins of the world as well as the community who helps the world engage Christ in face-to-face dialogue. It is my hope that, by the strength of the Spirit, we can reach out to include the world in Christ’s mission of love as well as standing up in the midst of the world to testify to him.

For if there is anything which the news events of the past week have reminded me it is that the self can be a very lonely, dangerous place. Regardless of how much our society tends to glorify the power and even the sanctity of the individual, humans are wired for community and honest, open dialogue. The blame game that ensued after the shooting in Tucson only proved that point even more. It is vital in our national and personal discussions after tragedies like this that we do not neglect to recognize that, truth be told, there is some of Jared Loughner in all of us, just as there is some of Gabrielle Giffords, too. None of us is immune to the decay of sin, and all of us are vulnerable. We all have the capacity to blow things apart and to fight for life. As Bono sings in one of my favorite U2 lines, “I’m not broke [sic], but you can see the cracks.”

And therefore, it is important that in our urge to point fingers and assign fault for any great sin that we do not ignore that finger of John the Baptist, which is ever focused on Jesus who comes and takes away the sin of the world, who comes to repair the cracks and make us whole. It is important that, in our desire to have our arguments and ask our questions that we not forget to spend time in conversation with this God who comes down and personally gets involved in the tragedy of human-being and miraculously rises to new life. In the invitation to a life of self-sacrifice and forgiveness, Jesus does take away the sins of the world.

That is what we discover when we come and see.

That is what we find out when we, in times of hope and times of despair, in times of faith and in times of doubt, open the book that is Jesus and begin to read.

(And, for now, this is one pastor who has spoken too much about Jesus, and feels it’s time to sit down.)

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Baptism of Our Lord, Year A - January 9, 2011 (Psalm 29, Matthew 3:13-17)

2011-01-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, in the summer between two semesters of college, I experienced an event in nature that had a profound effect on my faith. It has never occurred to me very often to share it because I was totally alone when the event happened, and so it became a very personal—almost private—epiphany. On second thought, however, it was an experience that, at the time, so intensely deepened my understanding of God’s grace that I think it might have helped put me on the path towards my vocation as pastor. In a way, that makes that epiphany less private, like it somehow now belongs to everyone who might come in contact with me, even if I never mention it explicitly.

The event of which I speak was nothing more than the peculiarly brilliant glow of a sunset against the snow-covered side of a large mountain in the Sierra Nevada range in California. It happened while I was on a 24-hour period of solitary retreat that was a part of a fourteen-day Outward Bound course in mountaineering. I was tired and alone in my thoughts at the end of a long day, sitting on my sleeping bag on a sun-hardened snow drift, when I looked up into the distance at the perfect instant to catch the rays of evening sun glancing off this large, white mountain. It is difficult to rate sunsets, but at the time, it was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen, by far.

Yet it was more than a beautiful sunset. As I was moved by its brightness and intensity, it seemed to allow what poet Percy Shelley once called “the everlasting universe of things flow through [my] mind.” And, like all sunsets, it was fleeting. But in the minutes that it lasted, I was consumed by awe and thanksgiving: awe, not simply because of its radiance, but more because I felt something so beautiful in nature—and my appreciation of it—could never occur by accident; and thanksgiving, for the pleasure of seeing it (and that the view wasn’t obscured by thousands of blackbirds plummeting from the sky!) I felt, in a way, as if that sunset might have been a message sent from God directly to me, assuring me not only of his presence, but also of his constant care. I remember what affected me most about the experience was the realization that this vista, as spectacular as it was, was not a one-time occurrence. That kind of sunset happened every day, the world over. I was—and still am—sure that I experienced God’s glory and grace in that sunset, and I was thankful for the opportunity to appreciate it—if that makes any sense.

I’m sure many— if not all—of you have had similar experiences with the grandeur and power of nature. It may not be a sunset, but perhaps the sight of a waterfall, or the complexity of the atom, or the birth of a child, or a loved one making an unexpected recovery from illness. Occurrences with the natural, created world—both the mundane and the extraordinary—have always had a way of communicating something about God’s power and God’s wisdom. Often they catch us off guard, but sometimes we grow into these epiphanies more gradually. Whether or not we can explain the phenomena scientifically makes little difference. They are glimpses of what God is like and how God manifests God’s love to us.

Ancient Israel was no exception in experiencing this. They, too, lived in a natural world that was awesome and beautiful and difficult to explain. That, in fact, is what Psalm 29 is trying to communicate this morning. Psalm 29 is a unique psalm: no other portion of Holy Scripture so closely associates events in nature with the glory of God. In it, the psalmist has clearly experienced some natural event—in this case, it sounds like it might have been a thunderstorm—and he is moved to expound upon God’s power. The imagery is vivid: cedar trees are snapped, like those in hurricane-force winds; the desert shakes and the oak trees writhe and sway; rain and wind consume the landscape so much that the hills in the distance skip like young wild oxen.

The imagery is truly descriptive, but the particular wording of the psalm is more peculiar yet: each verse includes God’s name, sometimes twice. It is thought that this psalm might have actually been partly borrowed from Israel’s nature-worshiping neighbors. Israel, of course, adapted and re-worded it so that it was clear that the wind and the rain were not gods themselves, or tools of a vindictive pantheon of deities overhead, but, rather, manifestations of the one true God’s power. The first two lines of the psalm make clear where the people are to ascribe all this glory: to none other than the Lord, the God of Israel, whose name then rings out, quite repetitively, throughout the song.

And where are the people in the psalm? They are in the temple, praising God and crying “glory!” which would have essentially been the words on my lips as I sat on the side of that mountain years ago: “Glory!” But here Israel is together, hearing about or remembering this magnificent storm, making a public pronouncement about God’s power.

Yet for all our examples of epiphanies and for all of Israel’s poetry regarding God’s grandeur, all things pale in comparison to what happens when Jesus of Nazareth steps into the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

Imagine, for a second, bringing up Google Earth on your computer screen. There, before you, is a color satellite image of the whole earth, or maybe most of one hemisphere. The ridges of the mountain ranges are visible, as are some of the folds and creases of the ocean floor. As if offering God’s own perspective, the whole planet is in our domain…the thunderstorms, the sunsets, and everything else. Then, imagine going to the place where you type in an address or a location. What happens next? As soon as a specific location gets entered, the satellite’s eye immediately zooms in and focuses on that one particular spot. We hover, perhaps like a descending dove, just above one particular spot in God’s creation.

That is akin to what happens at Jesus’ baptism. As Jesus steps into that muddy river, and has his head breaks the surface as he comes back up, God’s glory and power and grace zoom in and become centered in one place like never before. At that point, God’s voice is heard overhead, and it is not announcing, as it was before, “This is my thunderstorm, the sign of my power,” nor does it proclaim, as I once heard, “This is my sunset, the Beautiful.” Rather, now God’s voice declares, “This is my Son, the beloved.” God is acting in a new way—a new message sent straight to us—and his glory and power and beauty and love will be visible and real to us in a way that is altogether unprecedented.

Jesus, God’s own Son, is now walking on the earth, and his baptism claims him from a private, personal existence and sets him forth as a public leader and servant. In his baptism, Jesus is lifted out of relative obscurity set forth as a God’s anointed, one who will at the same time encapsulate for Israel all the righteousness they could never muster and for God all the love for his creation. In his baptism, we not only learn to ascribe to Jesus the glory due God’s name, but God also ascribes to his Son the love and sacrifice he has for us.

For from the waters of the Jordan Jesus will rise and not go home. He will go out into the wilderness to be tempted. From there to the villages and town of Galilee of Judea, preaching God’s word and calling people to take part in God’s kingdom. From this point in the waters of Jordan, you can draw a line directly through all those things right to the judgment hall of Pontius Pilate and, from there, to the cross—and trust all along that God is still zoomed in on him.

It is a challenge to many a person’s faith—including my own—to remember that to this day there is no more positive and definitive demonstration of God’s reality, or of God’s power—and most certainly of God’s love—than in Jesus Christ, no matter how many other beautiful sunsets we’ve seen or how many loved ones we see miraculously healed. Jesus is still the focal point of God’s efforts, that Google Earth zoom effect that we can’t deny. In his small book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this:

“It is not in our life that God’s help and presence must be proved, but rather God’s presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ…The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important that the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day.” (Life Together, HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, p54)

Those have always been challenging words for me, because I have a terrible tendency to think that everything—even God’s love—is all about me. And really, it isn't. It's more about Jesus. And while my experiences with sunsets and even hills skipping like young wild oxen are good grounds for believing in God’s glory, God’s action in Jesus’ life is the “sole ground,” Bonhoeffer says, in our hope of eternal life.

Interestingly, it was solid ground that the dove was seeking when Noah thought the forty long days of flooding and waiting was over. Solid ground was needed for a new beginning, a new life. And when the dove returned, descending with the olive branch, the people of God knew that the wait was over.

A new dove descends at Jesus’ baptism, and, likewise, a wait is over. Solid ground has risen up, and we may build. Baptized, ourselves, flooded with forgiveness, we may begin anew and build our lives on the sole ground God so long intended to give us. Brothers and sisters, we may build again—not with a faith too personal and private, but with a courage to be public and prophetic for the whole creation.

In Jesus, we behold God’s beloved Son, and we may build our lives in him. Again, and again…and again. And all the people in the temple shout, “Glory!”

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr - December 26, 2010 (Acts 68--7:2a, 51-60)

2010-12-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

“Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen...”

That lesser-known Christmas carol about a Czech king from the tenth century is most likely how most of us have heard of St. Stephen, (and, for that matter, King Wenceslas). Coincidentally, the next line of the song goes like this:
“When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.”

It seems to be a common occurrence—even in Virginia—to have snow lying round about on the feast of Stephen, which is the day after western Christmas. People might find it a bit perplexing, if not jarring, that on December 26th, one blessed day after the celebration of Jesus’ birth—when we are presumably still glowing with joy and peace from hearing the story of what happened in Bethlehem—we commemorate the death of St. Stephen, one of the church’s first deacons and the very first recorded martyr of the church.

It does seem a little odd, I suppose. Stephen was stoned to death out in public, quite a contrast from the serenity of the manger birth. Stoning was a horrible way to die. People picked up rocks and pelted someone with them until he or she died, usually of internal injuries. While they did this, they typically shouted insults. This is the image with which we are presented one blessed day after Jesus was softly laid by his mother in the hay and the angels and shepherds gathered around in adoration. It’s not that we have anything against Stephen or that he died for the faith, for that matter, but maybe we need a little down-time after Christmas before we dive into all that heavy stuff.

Stoning of Stephen, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont

But whether you are fazed by the juxtaposition of these two seemingly contrasting commemorations or not, one point needs to be clarified: St. Stephen’s Day is not placed after Christmas. Rather, it is the other way around: the celebration of Christ’s birth has been placed on the day before the day to remember St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. You see, no one knows exactly when Jesus was born. Christmas did not officially end up on December 25th until the beginning of the second century, and even then that was only in churches of the western traditions, of which we are a part. Eastern strands of Christianity retained their Christmas celebrations on January 6th or 7th, the original date of Christmas, and still do to this day. The commemoration of St. Stephen, on the other hand, appears on some of the earliest Christian calendars on either the 26th or 27th of December, which leads some historians to believe that December 26th or 27th or some date around here may actually be the date Stephen was martyred. So, with that in mind, we end up with the strange and perhaps startling conclusion that before Christians were celebrating the birth of Christ, they were commemorating the deaths of their saints!

It is in the deaths of the baptized—whether they were martyred or whether they died peacefully from natural causes (but especially if they are martyred)—where we find the pinnacle of their witness to Christ. At the point when this life ends, one’s faith can cling to nothing else but God. At that moment, the hopes and fears of all their years are thrust into God’s hands in the hope that Christ, the one person who has triumphed over death and the grave, will call them to eternal life. For those in the early church, this was extremely important. Birthdays were rarely mentioned or cared about. It was one’s date of death that spurred those still living to look to heaven. Stephen’s last words in this morning’s lesson from Acts, as the stones come raining down, testify to this: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Not only does he cling to Jesus as he dies, but he also sees it as a chance to testify.

The word “martyr,” in fact, actually means “witness.” Someone who is killed on account of their faith gives the utmost witness to that faith’s hope. Stephen’s martyrdom was the first recorded martyrdom in Christianity. He was the first person to die because of Jesus’ resurrection. If I were an early Christian, or even if I had been hurling those stones, you’d better believe that would make an impression on me—watching someone refuse to back down from this assertion that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. In fact, that should have an effect on any Christian living today. One of my colleagues once called this “St. Reality” day. Perhaps so: confessing faith can lead to hard times, even death in some cases. And so we continue to commemorate St. Stephen as one way of reminding us of this reality.

The Stoning of Stephen, Annibale Carracci (1603-04)

Other than being the church’s first martyr, Stephen was also one of the church’s first deacons. What was a deacon? Well, we learn from Acts, chapter 6, that a conflict was arising in the early church over the distribution of alms and food to widows in the church. The widows of Greek descent were complaining that the widows of Jewish descent were getting a greater proportion of food and financial assistance. Therefore, the disciples gathered the believers together and hammered out a way to deal with the problem. They decided to appoint seven people and entrust them with the task of keeping the church books accurate and making sure that the money that was being collected for the needy was being distributed fairly. Those seven were called deacons, a Greek word that means, literally, to “wait on tables,” or “to serve.” Stephen was one of those original seven deacons, which essentially makes Stephen one of the first people to get pressed into serving on Church council. For that alone we should remember him and say, “God rest his soul!”

Stephen was active in the early church and helped it spread and grow. He is described repeatedly as a man full of grace and power and filled with the Holy Spirit, doing great wonders for the people. However, almost as soon as Stephen is chosen as deacon, he is arrested and brought before the council of the synagogue because of what he is saying about Jesus and about God. He is asked by the high priest about what he is preaching, and Stephen responds with a long sermon which basically recites all of the history of Israel, from Abraham all the way through Moses and the prophets, giving testimony of how God had been calling them to faithfulness. God has a long legacy of loving the people of earth. In fact, God’s is the longest legacy in the universe of loving humankind, yet his people continually have a hard time recognizing and responding to that love, instead choosing to worship other false gods and going their own way. The people get enraged at what Stephen says to them (he calls them stiff-necked, which is what Moses had also called them) to the point that they throw council procedure out the window and drag him out of the city right there and kill him.

There is a lot we may observe and remember from the account of Stephen’s martyrdom, but one of the most critical things worth noting is how sin and evil must resort to lying in order to make gains in this world. It is not by accident that the first question that used to be asked at a person’s baptism was, “Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?” They’ve changed the wording a little bit in the new hymnal, but for years that was the question put to a person who was being baptized. It was way of acknowledging that the only way the devil can advance his agenda is to make empty promises and spread deceit about God and what God has done for creation. The truth is that God has the longest and best legacy of love and justice in the history of the universe. Stephen speaks the truth as he knows it, that Jesus is the lone Righteous One who answers God’s call of complete and utter faithfulness without fault, even to death, on behalf of all people. Yet each time Stephen speaks, this truth is confronted with profound lies and falsity.

When he first starts to preach and do wonders of the truth in verse 11, this truth about God kicks up some protest. They stand up and argue with him. Then, as the scene continues, more lies. His accusers secretly instigate—that is, the start rumors—that Stephen is blaspheming. Then a little later we learn false witnesses are set up to bring charges against him before the council, even though when they look at him they see the face of an angel. Eventually, after his long, truth-filled speech, the accusers actually cover their ears in order to keep the truth out. Sin must lie and attempt to cover our ears in order to deny the reality that God loves the world and calls it to faithfulness. Sin must resort to lying and diverting attention and covering ears in order to drown out the truth of yesterday, that the word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

Cologne Cathedral

And we, even we who consider ourselves so faithful—we who love to reminisce about the birth of this Jesus—even we can and will forget this wonderful reality from time to time. We can just as easily hold the stones in our hands that will listen to the lies and try to silence and stifle the love God has for creation. C.S. Lewis, the British writer who converted to Christianity in adulthood, once said, “A true Christian’s nostril is to be continually attentive to inner cesspool.” By hearing both the story of Christ’s birth as well as the stories of the saints who lived and died telling of that truthful love we can keep our hearts open to God’s power to cleanse our inner cesspools. It helps us remember that, like it or not, this is where our Lord’s birth leads us: to public witness of his love. The biggest lie that sin will tell us is that we are to keep it private, an inner cesspool of still, silent devotion.

Therefore, let us know what deacon Stephen knew and exuded from his personality, full of grace and power: that Christ, the baby born in Bethehem is faithful for us, even through death. Just as we may still be imagining Mary and Joseph gathering up their helpless son and cradling him in safety, Jesus gathers us up and pulls us from the lies and deceit of the world—and of ourselves—and holds us to him like a mother hen holds her baby chicks. Just as Stephen looked up to see the glory of God, with Jesus standing at God’s right hand, we are promised that one day we will see him thus.

For now, see this truth in the wood of the cross, and taste it in the bread and the wine. Feel this truth in the water splashed on your head at baptism. Sing this legacy of love in the hymns of the church, and pray this truth with the might of Stephen, deacon and martyr.

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace,
Hail the sun of righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Ris’n with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glories by,
Born that we no more may die.
Born to raise each child of earth
Born to give us second birth!
Hark! The Herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Merry Christmas!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent [Year A] - December 19, 2010 (Matthew 1:18-25)

2010-12-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

‘Twas the sixth day before Christmas, and all through the city
Everybody was stirring to make sure things looked pretty.
Stockings were hung and Christmas trees trimmed.
Candlelight brightened while daylight’s glow dimmed.
Wreathes on the doors and inflatable Santas on the lawn
Proclaimed the news that the special day would soon dawn.
The frenzy to get out and string up some lights
Gave purpose and urgency to December nights
While some folks decked the halls in more subtle ways
Others gave new meaning to the term “Tacky Light displays.”
Blinking and flashing, from treetops festooned
And, of course, synchronized, and to a radio tuned.
With garland and tinsel, greenery real or plastic.
The point was to make ordinary things look fantastic.
Amid the bleak gray of winter atmosphere
Stood colonies of snowmen and moveable reindeer.
The shopping malls, too, were a sight to remember—
Nevermind that the decorations had been up since September—
Their glitzy and glamorous holiday fashion
Was a mood-setting trick so you’d spend with a passion.
For those who preferred displays of a more religious kind
Noticed that nativity scenes were not hard to find.
Drivers on Horsepen enjoyed the decoration
Set up by one particular Lutheran congregation.
Their display was more subdued. But not to be outdone,
They used life-size figures that could be moved one-by-one.
And almost as mysteriously as the Word became flesh
The shepherds and wise men crept their way to the crèche.
Yes, from Southside to Ashland, from Churchill to Glen Allen:
Christmas by the bushel. Yuletide cheer by the gallon.

The brightness and gaiety of the outside décor
Was matched by attention to detail indoor.
With ribbons and garland they carefully set their tables
With as much precision as they strew lights on their gables.
Brown paper packages tied up with strings?
Try bright-colored wrapping paper and glittery things!
Gingerbread houses and mistletoe sprigs,
Poinsettia plants and frasier fir twigs.
Decorations both outside and in went to show
The holidays were about making everything just-so.
Tradition and custom dictated the season
Every bauble had a story; every ritual a reason.
Whether the model was Clark Griswold or Currier and Ives
The conventions of Christmas consumed many folks’ lives.

But in that congregation with that moveable nativity
The worshippers shuffled in for their weekly activity.
With Kevin playing organ and Pastor Chris leading
They had just settled down for one last Advent reading.
The lessons they heard spoke of hope and salvation
From Isaiah’s pronouncements to Paul’s Rome salutation
But the Scripture that ignited the most imagination
Was the story of a man in a sticky situation.
Like their own custom-dictated Christmas condition
This fellow lived in times that were bound by tradition.
People knew that God’s statutes were part of God’s call,
And what was lawful and righteous should be followed by all.
Like boundaries and rules to a game that is played
God’s law for his people could never be swayed.
To say nothing at all of sin’s power to ensnare
The law was their assurance of God’s constant care.
Ever since those long days of wilderness wandering—
When they’d had plenty time to do some good pondering—
God’s people had known that his covenants contained
The discipline and wisdom for their life to be sustained.
From the mouths of the prophets and announced from each steeple
It was God’s way of dwelling in the lives of his people.

And this Joseph knew, as a humble young man.
He obeyed the commandments, trusted God had a plan.
Matthew calls him righteous—a high honor, indeed—
Which was a way of saying he let God take the lead.
We can trust, for example, he had his ducks in a row:
First betrothal, then marriage, then children in tow.
The contract had been signed, both families were ready
To support and provide them a life that was steady.
So imagine, then, friends, what he first must surmise
At the discovery of his fiancée’s pregnant surprise.
The law was clear in what justice dictated:
An adulteress would be stoned; the contract negated.
Life would go on. Joseph’s family would recover,
And no one would ever know Mary’s mysterious lover.
There was one more option: to call it off neatly.
A judge could be found to annul the marriage discretely.
A righteous man would bend backwards to prevent a big show,
And Mary’s transgression would be kept on the down-low.

So Joseph went to bed with the firm resolution
That a private dismissal was the most respectable solution.
But that night he had dreams as he tossed in his bed
Not of visions of sugar-plums—but of an angel instead.
A messenger from God gave him news of a birth
That would bring hope and salvation to all of the earth.
This child was the one on whom history had waited
To initiate the promise they’d anticipated
From that day when Satan had first conquered and won
Influence and power over everyone.
His name would be Jesus, which had rich connotations
For in his native Hebrew that meant “Savior of Nations.”
From sin’s dark corruption he’d set them all free.
And, redeemed by his love, God’s people they’d be.
So all this good news came to Joseph by dream
From an angel who’d been sent by the one God supreme.
But the biggest shock to Joseph’s ears—we can assume—
Was that this child was the babe in his fiancée’s womb!
She’d not been with a man, as it had been perceived,
But the Holy Spirit was the one who new life had conceived!
Mary, it turned out, had not been an unfaithful mate;
Rather God had chosen her, and this was her fate.
And thus the angel’s message as Joseph tossed in his bedding:
“Righteous one, do not fear. Go ahead with the wedding.”

"The Dream of St. Joseph," Rembrandt (1650-55)

So Joseph woke up with a whole different view.
What before was no option was now the right thing to do:
To marry a woman who would soon bear a child
And shelter her, guard her and keep her undefiled.
And the son to be born would be in Joseph’s protection.
He’d care for him too, and give him direction.
Though that child, as God’s Son, would be Savior of Nations
And belong, like no other, to the whole of creation,
Joseph would be the one who’d teach the child how to grow,
How to talk, how to work, and other things he should know.
The result of that dream was a whole future changed
Joseph’s own hopes now altered, his life rearranged.
As Joseph had learned when he had his decision resolved,
One can have things just-so…and then God gets involved.

And that was the message to those Lutherans that morning:
God can surprise with his grace and change your plans without warning.
For, you see, Joseph’s challenge was to adjust to God’s word
Receive it, believe it, and trust what he heard:
That God had now chosen with his people to dwell
Not as law, nor as temple, but as Emmanuel.
And by that we mean human—not a statue of stone—
But flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.
As true God and true man Christ invades this dark sphere
And announces God’s kingdom to folks far and near.
In Jesus God ventures forth into dangerous new lands:
To risk to being born and putting his life in our hands.
With a true Son on earth, God meets us face to face:
A divine participation with the whole human race.
God is with us, not remote or removed,
But in life and in death, as the cross has now proved.
God is with us. From this the believer derives
That in Jesus Christ God takes up space in our lives.
You see, Joseph was not making room for a concept,
For a doctrine about God, or some religious precept.
Joseph’s life was rearranged on account of a person,
And no amount of reasoning or wishing or cursin’
Could alter the fact that God’s grace would come down
And grow up and live as a man in his town.

That, my dear friends, is the real Christmas scandal,
On which, try as we may, we never get a handle.
For the thrust of so many of our holiday preparations
Is just about conjuring vague contemplations
Of beauty and love and the virtues of giving
Or the charity of others that make life worth living,
When really, like Joseph, we should concentrate on receiving
And guarding the Savior of Mary’s conceiving.
And instead of making sure everything is just-so,
We should hasten to his table, his mercy to know.
God’s presence among us is not some ethereal notion,
Or well-intended habits of religious devotion,
But in a particular person in a particular place
With particular parents and a particular face.

So both inside by the hearth or out where others can see it,
And if Tacky Light displays are your thing, then so be it…
Guard your traditions and customs, and the holiday things that you do
But most of all, guard this babe and see what he grows up to do.
And when Christmas often seems like a foregone conclusion
The news “God is with us” becomes a welcome intrusion.
When, what in our wandering lives should appear,
But a God who in mercy and compassion draws near!
His name is Lord Jesus, as Joseph was told,
And in his living and dying God’s love we behold.
Where two or three are gathered, we are promised he’s there.
And we’re equipped as his Body his message to share.
We live peace on earth, show good will to all men.
Thanks be to God! Merry Christmas! Amen!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Thanksgiving Day - November 25, 2010 (Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and John 6:25-35)

2010-11-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, self-described agnostic and humorist A.J. Jacobs spent a year trying to take the Bible literally and then wrote a book about it. Jacobs, the editor-at-large for Esquire magazine and author of three New York Times bestsellers, grew up in a Jewish household that was only nominally religious. He claims that he had always been drawn to his culture’s Holy Scriptures, and wondered if taking it word-for-word could help him reach some of his own conclusions about religion and maybe even his own faith. The following is a portion from his entry on Day 84, where Jacobs explains his attempts to keep Deuteronomy 8:10, an injunction in the Hebrew Bible to give thanks.

Jacobs writes:

“In Deuteronomy, the Bible says that we should thank the Lord when we’ve eaten our fill—grace after meals, it’s called. Christians moved the grace to the beginning of the meal, pre-appetizer.

To be safe, I’m praying both before and after.

Today, before taking my lunch of hummus and pita bread, I stand up from my seat at the kitchen table, close my eyes, and say in a hushed tone: ‘I’d like to thank God for the land he provided so that this food might be grown.’

Technically, that’s enough. That fulfills the Bible’s commandment. But while in thanksgiving mode, I decide to spread the gratitude around: ‘I’d like to thank the famer who grew the chick-peas for this hummus. And the workers who picked the chick-peas. And the truckers who drove them to the store. And the old Italian lady who sold the hummus to me at Zingone’s deli and told me ‘Lots of love.’ Thank you.’

Now that I type it, it sounds like an overly earnest Oscar speech for best supporting Middle Eastern spread. But saying it feels good. Here’s the thing: I’m still having trouble conceptualizing an infinite being, so I’m working on the questionable theory that a large quantity is at least closer to infinity. Hence the overabundance of ‘thank yous.’ Sometimes I get on a roll, thanking people for a couple of minutes straight—the people who designed the packaging and the guys who loaded the cartons onto the conveyor belt. My wife, Julie, has usually started in on her food by this point.

The prayers are helpful. They remind me that the food didn’t spontaneously generate in my fridge. They make me feel more connected, more grateful, more grounded, more aware of my place in this complicated hummus cycle. They remind me to taste the hummus instead of shoveling into my maw like it’s a nutrition pill. And they remind me that I’m lucky to have food at all. Basically, they help me get outside of my self-obsessed cranium” ( Jacobs, A.J., “By the Book: An Experiment in Biblical Living” in The Christian Century. Vol 124, no. 21, October 16, 2007 pp26).

Getting us out of our self-obsessed cranium: words of thanksgiving wisdom from a person who isn’t even convinced there is a God. It is a simple concept, really—opening ourselves up to “spread the gratitude around”—but one that is somehow difficult to remember and do. Perhaps that’s one reason why God essentially commanded his people Israel to perform acts of thanksgiving: so they would be reminded that they didn’t just spontaneously generate in the Sinai desert. In fact, they were once slaves whom God delivered to a life of freedom. In fact, they were once slaves who longed for a taste of plenty.

Our Old Testament reading for this national day of Thanksgiving is from that same book of Deuteronomy. We hear how God directs his people upon their arrival in that land of freedom and plenty to take some of the first fruits of the harvest from that land and put it in baskets and offer it to the priests for a group celebration. That is, before they partake of any of their hard-earned harvests themselves, and before they store up for any lean years that may lie in the future, the Israelites are told to set aside those precious first fruits—those cucumbers and those melons and those sheaves of wheat that have sounded so delicious after 40 years of manna—not for individual consumption, but as an offering to the Lord and to each other, together with the foreigners in their midst. What they are to say to the priests who receive their offering of first-fruits is key to this whole ritual of thanksgiving. God gives them the words; they don’t even have to worry about making up their prayers pre-appetizer.

And what exactly do they say at this annual Feast of Weeks, as it came to be called? Put simply, they recite their story. They say—and I paraphrase—‘God, we finally made it to this great place, here to the freedom and the plenty. We did not get here on our own strength. You brought us out of Egypt with your own deeds of power. And you have been the guide of this great journey and the giver of this great land. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ One may think that a pre-scripted “thank you” is not genuine, but as Jacobs and the Israelites were sure to learn, a “thank-you,” no matter how it comes, intends to get us out of our own self-obsessed craniums and connect us, not simply to the world around us, but to the One who surrounds us with plenty.

It is a fitting model for us on a national day of thanksgiving. A disproportionate share of the world’s resources pour into the United States each year. And our country continues to receive and resettle a large portion of the world’s refugees and immigrants.

America is not the Land of Canaan, and our system of government does not rely on divine mandates, but as people of faith within this country, we can frame our thanksgivings in the pattern of those forefathers and foremothers in faith. We can remember that our God is a God of abundance, who connects us through his providence in ways that we don’t often recognize when we’re just shoving this plenty into our maws.

Furthermore, we have received our blessings not merely because of our ingenuity and resourcefulness, but on account of the blessings God has given to the entire world to share and steward. As people who learn to spread the gratitude around, we can be challenged to give to God our first fruits of time, talent, and treasure, knowing that God has provided for us this far and certainly intends to take care of us hereafter. We are people who open up our mouths to give thanks and our hands to give back and share so that the world may know that gifts of God are not scarce.

That is what is so revolutionary about this command from Deuteronomy: that is, the giving of first fruits, not what is leftover in the granary and orchard floor. Together with the re-telling of their story, this ritual was not just a thanksgiving for the past, but also a pledge to look into the future and see it as hopeful, continually blessed. The act of taking that first batch of crops which finally came up from the soil, after long weeks of planting and farming, and dedicating it to God for the good of the community suggested a confidence that God would surely provide additional batches which could be enjoyed and consumed and saved. By remembering and thanking in this manner, we, as members of the overall most affluent country, can help transform the world to think this way. With even the foreigners and strangers in our midst, as well as the families whose ancestors may date back to the Pilgrims, we give thanks to a Creator who does want us not only to be able to acknowledge our inherent connectedness, but also to know his guidance of us through the years.

But lest we forget that there really is enough to around, and lest we forget that all land is really intended for the good of everyone…

And lest we forget that God looks upon us as redeemed people of one skin and blood…

And lest our fighting and our quarrelling and our hoarding consume us and drown out the voices of praise and thanksgiving...

Then may God then remind us again that He has gone one step even farther than we’d imagine and given humankind the greatest gift yet—the life of his own Son. God has not left himself out of this cycle of giving and receiving nor withheld himself from the grinding dead-end of hoarding and wasting. On the cross, God has lived our forgetfulness, himself, and in Jesus Christ suffers the full portion of our greed and selfishness, and yet still provides us with forgiveness and love.

Before the priests, the ancient Israelites offered their first fruits of grain and grape in the hope that God’s future they would never go hungry. At our table of sacrifice, we receive the bread of life and cup of salvation, with the promise that we will never go hungry and never thirst for that which we truly need. He has been our help in ages past and will our hope for years to come.

We receive this life from our great Giver—the first fruits of the resurrection—and we remember our story, which leads from our sin…to the table…to the cross…to eternal life. We remember our story as beloved children of the Most High—“it is he who has made us, and we are his” (Psalm 100:3) —and let loose with our overabundance of “thank you’s!”

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 28C] - November 14, 2010 (Luke 21:5-19)

2010-11-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

I confess I still have not changed the digital clock in my car to Eastern Standard Time. Each time I get in and glance at the dashboard I do a little double-take, but I’m usually too much in a hurry to root through my glove compartment, find the owner’s manual, and figure out the correct instructions for pressing the specific radio buttons that will move the time forwards or backwards. I suppose I’ve become somewhat spoiled in this twice-yearly time-toggle because almost all my other timepieces update themselves. The clock on my computer, for example, and the clock on my cell phone—the two places I check the time most regularly—are synched to some satellite up in the heavens that sends a signal without my knowing. The one beside my bed is easy to change—and I must change it—for it contains my alarm, but the car clock is stuck in Eastern Daylight for no other reasons than laziness and forgetfulness.

However, I have noticed this week that looking at those misleading dashboard digits makes me pay a little more attention to time and to its passage—even if it is for just a few seconds—before my mind wanders elsewhere. I am a little perplexed, for example, that we are still calling this “Standard” time, even though it is accounts for less than five months of the year. I wonder if I’m actually getting done in each day now that the extra hour of sunlight has shifted to the morning, or has my productivity changed at all? While I clearly don’t need the car clock to give me the correct time, I admit that I don’t exactly ignore what it tells me, either.

Time and its passage are no doubt on the minds of Jesus and his disciples, too, as they wander through the crowds on the streets of Jerusalem—crowds that are a little larger than usual due to the upcoming Passover festival. Things, in fact, are getting tense, down to the wire. Groups like the Sadducees, the elders, and the chief priests, who all vie for control within the Jewish religious establishment, have been stepping up their challenges to Jesus and his disciples. The Roman army’s presence is felt more keenly here in the capital city, and the ritual surrounding the temple has become corrupt. In Jerusalem, home of the mighty temple, the disciples encounter a confusing compilation of politics and religion and power and money that no doubt lead them to question the times. Jesus has just been hailed as the new king. What is about to happen? For what has Jesus led us here? When exactly will God bring his kingdom to fulfillment?

Their questions in this morning’s gospel passage come as a result of Jesus’ comments about the temple. He claims it will be thrown down: "Not a stone will be left upon another.” Such a thought would have been difficult to fathom, I’m sure. The temple that Herod the Great had constructed and renovated was enormous and fantastically ornate. Wealthy people and nobles had decorated and furnished it with all types of liturgical trappings dedicated to the glory of God…new hymnal dedications, altar supplies, Christmas poinsettias…it was magnificent. The temple embodied, in the mindset of many, the epitome of God’s splendor, as well as humankind’s dedication to that splendor. It was constructed to look permanent and to be permanent, just as God’s presence and power was permanent.

And so, for Jesus to assert that it would fall and soon be indistinguishable from a pile of rubble was quite a statement. It suggested that God had other plans far beyond this building of stone, that God had designs elsewhere…but where? Such an assertion also meant that the world as the disciples knew it then, in all of its complexity and certainty, was not to remain. Somehow this temple was not going to represent God’s finest hour, or even the finest hour of God’s people. And so, then, the natural worries about when it all will happen: “How do we switch our clocks, Lord Jesus, to this new Standard Time?”

If only the answer to such a question were located in our glove compartment, buried, as it were, in the pages of the owner’s manual! For centuries Jesus’ words about the next epoch in God’s reign have confounded the faithful. Certain Christian groups have for years studied on these chapters and others like them in order to divine the end of the world and when it will occur. They’ve even instigated certain world events (the Crusades come to mind) in an attempt to tip God’s hand.

Yet, as Jesus reminds his disciples—as Jesus reminds his disciples twenty-one centuries later—God’s time, kairos, does not work like that. God’s time is not like chronos, the type measured minute-by-minute, chronologically, by some satellite in the heavens or the watch on your wrist. Kairos is altogether different and is more like the kind of time that guides two people who are falling in love to know the right moment at which to say“I love you” for the first time. You cannot and should not try to predict God’s kairos, God’s perfect timing. You cannot and should not pin it down, measure it, or pour it into an hourglass. God’s time is not like clock time, and although in the coming days many will try to convince us, Jesus says, with fancy calculations that they have figured out the precise hour when God will bring all things to their conclusion, those people will be wrong. The flow of time and the consummation of history are ultimately in God’s hands, never ours.

Even if this fact doesn’t require us to change our clocks, so to speak, it does call for a certain change in mindset. For one, we are not to have fear. Nations will rise against nation, and there will be volcano eruptions during the president’s visit to Indonesia, and there will be earthquakes in Haiti followed by plagues of cholera, and it will seem at times like the earth is shaking on its very foundations, but don’t be led into terror, Jesus says.

But even more fearsome than cataclysmic world events will be the suffering that lies ahead for Jesus’ followers. As people of faith attempt to live out his words in a world that is hurting, misunderstanding and persecution will ensue. Some folks may even be hauled in front of tribunals and courts and thrown in prison. Some will be rejected by family members, but none of this, Jesus implores, should be a cause for anxiety. Rather, it is a cause for giving testimony. Such events will give the faithful a chance to point to God as the real source of security. Times of suffering and persecution provide the opportunity to become not a wall of resistance or a door to be locked but a window to God’s grace.

That is the change in mindset: that when the world starts to hate, the Christian sees the chance to speak love. When the world frets and threatens, the follower of Jesus practices courage and compassion. In moments of anguish and conflict, Jesus will provide you with what you’ll need to say, if anything at all. “Not a hair on your head will perish,” he says (a comment which carries more meaning for some people than others!) “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” That is, we will learn that the life lived in Christ is the life that cannot ever be taken away.

Some of these apocalyptic words of Jesus may strike us as too foreign, too “chicken little.” I suspect many modern minds don’t really know what to make of them. Yet, at the same time, I think we all can recognize the conflict or tension at the heart of the Christian faith to which they allude; that is, followers of Christ learn to be and interact with one another in a way somehow different from the rest of the world. We have been claimed by grace and we live by the Holy Spirit. We know by faith that God’s new beginning began at the cross of Jesus and that our lives point to a time beyond us…that kairos time beyond the destruction not just of the temple, but of all vain things human construct.

Followers of Jesus know that they living within this tension where we know God is victorious, and we know death has been conquered, and we know that loves wins in the end, but that it is not always evident by what we see and what we experience. There will always be, therefore, a temptation to withdraw from the world, or to predict the day all the evil will burn, or to threaten with violent words and actions those who don’t seem to be on our side. However, the mindset we are to take within this tension will take its lead from Jesus who did not withdraw from others, but who engaged the world in love. It will be an opportunity to testify, to be a part of the wondrous effort that changes the world to live on God’s good time.

That kind of stuff is so easy for a pastor to say, though. Obscenely easy. It’s comfortable and cozy here from up in this pulpit as I coach you to be calm in the face of trial and loving in the threat of danger, to view your persecutions out there your workplaces, in your schools, in our mission field, as an opportunity to testify. The students who attended Middle School Bible study this week reminded me of that. Our topic was cheating in class. We got into a pretty lively discussion about it, and I dare say that I would never want to face one of them in a debate tournament! They’re extremely bright and quick on their feet.

After a while, however, the discussion took a very serious turn when we began to talk about what it would take to change the culture of cheating that they confront in school today. The students in the Bible study informed us in no uncertain terms that in taking a stand for personal integrity, for example, they’d be up against the whole social scene at school, a scene that favors certain in-groups with power and status. I heard their fear of being hauled before a tribunal of their peers, laughed at, mocked, shunned for following rules. And yet, I know that they can handle it. I know that they already take on injustice and dishonesty—I know that they have learned the language to name them and confront them—I know that they are honing those responses of love and faith in the midst of suffering because I see glimpses of it in our life together here.

I find comfort in thinking that’s how Jesus speaks to us in this passage. He speaks to us, you see, from far beyond the trials of youth and adolescence, far beyond the trials of betrayal and denial by friends. He speaks to us from beyond the hospital bed, beyond the tears of sorrow and grief. Jesus speaks to us from beyond the cross. He speaks to us from the promise of an empty grave, that time when, once and for all, the whole of creation will be synched up to God’s great timing in the heavens—great glory, hallelujah!—and for that we wait and we testify in hope.

The incorrect time on my car clock is slowly getting annoying, but I must say it has at least one helpful effect. Even if only for a second or two, it makes me think that it’s later than it really is. As a result, I press on to my destination even quicker. There is a slight spring in my step, an urgency to my mission. I press on, a bit more firmly, my eye set on a time in the future.

That’s good practice, I suppose for these last days, when it is probably later than we realize. We keep pressing on. We keep on keeping on. And by our endurance we will gain our souls.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Reformation Day - October 31, 2010 [Romans 3:19-28]

2010-10-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

Apparently the thing to do nowadays is to hold a rally. Specifically, if you want to whip up enthusiasm for your cause and restore something to the center of the political or social landscape, just reserve some large public space and rally people. Yesterday, for example, in our nation’s capital, comedians John Stewart and Stephen Colbert held their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or March to Keep Fear Alive. Authorities will likely dispute the number of people who showed up to take part in an event that was both silly mockery of current political discourse as well as serious statement on certain political positions, but suffice it to say the National Mall was crawling with people who were there to rally. Stewart’s and Colbert’s rally was, of course, a response to the Tea Party’s Rally to Restore Honor—held in late August—which likewise attracted untold thousands to Washington, D.C.

So, if rallies are the thing to have, today, Lutherans the world over—more than 70 million of us!—will hold their Rally to Restore their Lutheran Identity. In Wittenberg, Germany, where the Protestant Reformation unwittingly got kicked-off 493 years ago to this day, townspeople will dress up like Martin Luther and his wife, Katie, and hand out shrink-wrapped copies of his Small Catechism on every street corner. You’d better believe that in Lutheran congregations across the globe, the rousing strains of “A Mighty Fortress is our God” will be belted out, just as you can believe that worshipers will mutter under their breath about how they liked the version in the old red hymnal better.

photo by Meredith Sizemore
(www.wix.com/MSizemore/Meredith-Sizemore-Photography/)

And at our congregation’s outpost here in the middle of Baptist country, you—yes, you!—can rally at our very own Reformation Fest after the service. Enjoy German food and root beer (since we can’t serve the real stuff), and try your hand at the “95 Theses Relay,” where competitors will race against each other in an attempt to nail copies of that epoch-turning document to a door that the property team has set up in the yard. Here we stand: it’s a real rally, folks—an annual event in the midst of a world that seems to know less and less what “Lutheran” is about. It’s all an effort to Restore our Lutheran Identity…a statement to ourselves, if no one else (sigh), that lutefisk-eaters and potluck dinner providers are alive and kicking in the 21st century.

However, when the last chords of the pipe organ fade away today, and the Lutheran-red blouses and vests are hung back in the closet to be worn another time, maybe Pentecost, we still might have failed to grasp the true meaning of this day and the movement of which it reminds us. For this is most certainly true: any celebration of the Reformation or commemoration of Martin Luther’s criticisms of the Roman church in the early 1500’s is really a rally to restore the church. The Protestant Reformation did not occur to establish a particular group’s identity, or to declare theological supremacy, or even to found a denomination named “Lutheran” or “Reformed.” The Reformation happened as a result of an attempt by several church men and women to reiterate a message of God’s grace. They preached it from church pulpits, they discussed it over their family meal tables with their children, they stood in front of fearsome Councils and Diets to defend it, and yes, they even nailed it to church doors, as was common practice in those days for starting a university debate or posting a public notice.

The point of the Reformation was not so much about human identity as it was about the very nature of God and the crux of the news about his Son. As the apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the church in Rome, written roughly fifteen centuries earlier: “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” That was it, in a teeny-tiny nutshell. Essentially it is very church-y, theo-speak that means this: no more working or buying or reasoning or even praying your way to God’s good favor. God gives it to us on his own accord. In fact, God heaps it upon us, undeserved, like a helping of German potato salad. In the loving arms of Jesus Christ, God accepts us freely and transforms us graciously to be his people and nothing this world can throw at us can ever change that. “For there is no distinction,” the apostle also says, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they [who have sinned] are now justified by his grace”—that is, made right, set free from sin, forgiven—“as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” A reiteration of grace.

These words of Paul can send chills of gratitude and wonder down our spines, but for Martin Luther, they struck across the page and straight into his soul like the bolt of real lightning that had initially sent him from law school to the monastery. Besieged for his whole life by the idea that he would never be able to satisfy a righteous God, and influenced by a religious system that had obscured the message of grace with all kinds of pietistic hoop-jumping and money-making evangelism strategies, Luther had convinced himself that God would never think he was good enough. Yet Luther realized after reading and re-reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, a central message that appeared again and again throughout Scripture: that through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, God had indeed found Luther and declared him good. Christ’s faithfulness to the covenant, even to the point of death, had secured for all people the mercy of God.

Hugo Vogel, 19th c.

Although not at all a new concept, it was revolutionary. You could say it rallied the church, especially when the Pope’s representatives showed up in the towns of northern Germany in the early 1500’s selling indulgences to raise funds for a new cathedral in Rome. Luther and his colleagues didn’t have to work too hard to rally a reform of some of the church’s practices. And just as the Lutheran reformers’ efforts sought to restore God’s grace in Jesus to the center of the church’s life and message, the Reformation also underscored the importance of God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures, for faith. As the sole means by which people could come to meet and understand this Christ who died for all, the Bible served as the foundation for church reform. It became a Constitution, of sorts, for those who wanted to judge church doctrine and practice.

Much has been written about the socio-economic and geopolitical forces that enabled Luther’s reforms to go viral and, in the process, transform the western world, but we cannot forget that one of the main reasons that the message of the reformers spread so well and so fast was because one of the dominant questions people more or less seemed to be asking was “How do I find a gracious God?” It was certainly the main question on Luther’s mind, the monkey on his back, so to speak, that led him to those passages of grace: “How do I find a gracious God?” The answer came back, and resounds to us even now—in the Word; in the water of baptism; in the bread and the wine; and in what Luther called the “mutual conversation and consolation among the brethren and sistren”: in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

I’m not so sure that is the dominant question that people, even fairly religious ones, ask these days. In a culture where more and more people describe themselves as un-churched or even agnostic, where denominational identity even among believers is on its last legs, and, most of all, where rugged individualism rules the day, I’m not so sure that many people ask “How do I find a gracious God?” I hesitate to speak for an entire cultural ethos (especially when I don’t dare speak for my family without first consulting with my wife), but I would venture to say that the dominant question people are asking today concerning faith is, “How is this relevant?” “How does this apply to me and what I’m experiencing?”

As I listen to the voices of both criticism and praise in faith and culture, and as I peruse Bible study curriculum for youth and young adults, that question appears to be the one that is forefront in people’s minds—articulated or not. I would venture to say that most people can find a gracious God, and maybe even recognize there is one to be met in Jesus Christ. But the prevailing sentiment is, “So what?” Like Sally, who upbraids Linus for enticing her out into the pumpkin patch to await the Great Pumpkin, folks these days are wondering “what’s the point?” I know that I, myself, am often bound to pose the same questions and wonder if it’s really worth missing the Hallowe’en party at Violet’s house to be drawn into the life of faith.

To make it worse, basic foundations to Christian faith can often come across like antiquated, superstitious, empty tradition. Bedrocks like the holy sacraments, regular Sunday worship and even the Holy Scriptures become more and more distant to a culture that upgrades and uploads to a faster, flashier, mode of communication every three months. It is so easy, in such a technology-saturated culture, to fall into thinking that the present is superior to everything that came before us, just as we expect, in so many ways, that the next-version-of-whatever will be more advanced than what came out last week. In many ways, it becomes difficult to adhere to the authority of ancient Scripture, despite the fact that it is a living Word.

That, I would suggest, is where our rallying comes in. As those who know they have been claimed by a gracious God, we rally to spread the news that the life of faith is really what keeps us alive. We rally to restore the church—not so much as placing it at the center of world influence but holding it accountable to the gospel. Yearly, weekly, and minute-by-minute this rally will continue as we reach into God’s Word and gather as his people for worship. Will Willimon, former dean of the chapel at Duke Divinity School says that the church “is never-ending training in learning to trust the Bible, learning to take ourselves a little less seriously and the Bible a little more so.” (William H. Willimon, Pastor: the Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry. Abingdon Press, 2002. pg 125)

As we do that, as we strengthen our trust in the Bible, the body of Christ will need you to reach into your own story to find those theses—those points of meaning where grace has slapped you upside the head—and nail them to the front door of your life, for all to see.

And you will be relevant, if relevance is what the world wants so badly. Rest assured that we will be relevant because we will be introducing them to Jesus. We won’t be introducing them to a program, or an ideology, or even a wonderful congregation. We will be introducing them to Jesus, who is relevant—who dies to be relevant—and always will be in ways in which our sinfulness will often blind us.
“God’s Word forever shall abide, no thanks to foes, who fear it.

For God himself fights by our side, with weapons of the Spirit.”

Sounds like a rally cry, doesn’t it?
“Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse…

Though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day.

The kingdom’s ours. For…ev…ER.”

OMG! Forever.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 23C] - October 10, 2010 (Luke 17:11-19)

2010-10-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

You see, they were accustomed to shouting out. Declared by ritual Jewish law to be unclean, lepers—and all those stricken with any incurable skin disease—were not only to live alone and outside the city walls away from people, they were also to walk around shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” at the top of their lungs wherever they went to warn people of their presence. It was a humiliating chore, to say the least. As if it weren’t bad enough to be burdened with such a debilitating, disfiguring condition, a leper also had to bear the responsibility of reminding others how contagious they could be, what an outcast they were. When all they probably wanted was to fit in, to be one of the crowd, to be, at the very least, ignored and passed by—the leper was charged with constantly calling attention to his or her status as an ugly outsider. “Unclean! I’m a mess! I’m a reject!” they would essentially walk around saying. As much as anyone could get accustomed to such a thing, lepers were accustomed to shouting out.

So it would not have been that strange to be walking along the road in first-century Israel and happen upon lepers who were shouting at people. However, on this occasion, as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, the lepers do not cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” Ten of them, in fact, clumping together at a distance like a pack of mangy, stray dogs in a borderland village between Samaria and Galilee, glimpse Jesus and his disciples and cry out for mercy. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Recognizing Jesus for who he is (the only non-disciples to ascribe this name to Jesus), these ten lepers heave their desire for mercy upon him. It is not clear from the passage whether their expectation was that they would be healed, or if they simply saw him as a source of alms. Nevertheless, Jesus tells them to go present themselves to the priests.
The priests in those days were like the gatekeepers of the community. According to Jewish code, priests could declare people clean and restore them to dignity and to human community. Still stricken with leprosy—and probably still shouting out to people on their path—the ten turn to go check in with the priests and on their way, mysteriously, they are cleansed, much like Naaman the Syrian who had dipped seven times in the River Jordan to cure him of his leprosy. Both Naaman and the ten lepers were asked to do something that didn’t quite seem effective in order to realize their healing. Go to the priests. “OK,” they shrug. On their way, they are healed.

And then they fall silent…finally! No longer infectious, no longer contagious, they have no need to shout out anymore. No need to cry out on the road, no need to remind everyone of their condition. No more shouting…except for one…one leper who returns, still shouting, still crying out, still yelling at the time of his lungs—yet this time contagious with praise and thanksgiving.

Each week either Chris or I stand in front of you as we prepare the table for Holy Communion and we have a little dialogue. “The Lord be with you,” we say. And you respond, “And also with you,” as if there is something about Jesus that is catching, something that can be shared. Perhaps we should shout it?

Then we continue: “Lift up your hearts,” to which you reply, “We lift them to the Lord.”

Then we suggest, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” and you oblige: “It is right to give our thanks and praise.”

At that point either Chris or I, directing our attention to the one who has called us here, to the one who has given us new life, to the one who has healed us of sin time and time again, says, “It is indeed right, our duty and our joy, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ.” The green hymnal used the word “salutary” at this point, which I thought was helpful. “Salutary,” a seldom-used word these days, means, well, “helpful.” Beneficial. Good for us.

Well, whether or not we say “salutary” every Sunday in our worship we still participate in the very actions that single Samaritan leper demonstrated on that road to Jerusalem. Getting ready to share the bread of life and the cup of salvation, you and I have, in some sense, heard his shouting and contracted his infectious joy and thanksgiving. Down through the ages it has been passed along, from one cleansed sinner to another. He has declared us clean in the waters of baptism and set us free. We find ourselves responding to Jesus’ great mercy for us by shouting praise and giving our thanks. In fact, the words in Greek for this leper’s actions are doxazon and eucharistein, two words which may sound foreign to our ears, until when we think of the words doxology and Eucharist. Enthralled by Jesus’ mercy and thrilled to be healed, the leper forgets the priests and instead runs back to the feet of the one who healed him, shouting doxology and making eucharist as he goes. Praise and thanksgiving: yes, these things are right, they are a joy…and they are good for us.

One of our professors at seminary had a practice of carrying his hymnal with him as he left his pew to get in line to receive Holy Communion. Whereas most people, when it came time to stand up and follow the usher’s lead, stop singing the communion hymns, and lay their hymnal down to assume a more quiet stance in line, this professor would keep on singing, stopping only for the few seconds it took him to hold out his hand and take the bread. I liked the image: so filled with joy and thankfulness on the way to receive and give thanks to Jesus that his words of praise cannot be silenced. I have noticed, with happiness, that several of you sing at the communion rail as you kneel. It is an infectious action. That one professor, with such a simple gesture, spurred several other worshippers to think again about their attitude toward Jesus’ merciful presence.

Indeed, the experience of the one leper reminds us that not only is praise and thanksgiving really the first and best response to our Lord’s grace, but that before we can be sent out into the world with the news about Jesus, we must return to him in worship. Jesus’ shock at the ingratitude of the other nine does not mean their healing is revoked. After all, they did exactly what he commanded. But the one leper reveals the truest life of the sinner who has been redeemed: through this return in praise and thanksgiving we realize in our heart of hearts that, in the end, the only place we really can go to encounter God’s mercy is in the person of Jesus Christ, the one who hangs on the cross.

Christian writer Don Miller writes in his best-selling book, Blue Like Jazz, that “the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus.” He goes on to say, “I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life along, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me,” Miller continues, “and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.” (Thomas Nelson, 2003. p 237). Salutary.

And that all makes sense to me—the need to fall down and worship something bigger and more awe-inspiring than myself, the carrying my hymnal to Communion so I can sing my praise, the salutary effect this all has on my soul, but often it’s still as if only about a tenth of me, if that, actually succeeds in responding. I estimate that only about a tenth of my heart, my mind, my soul—a tenth, at the most—that sings with joy and praise when I know I can run to him on the road. For all the times I’ve been drawn into the wonder of praise and thanksgiving at the foot of Jesus, there are nine more parts of me that go elsewhere. There are nine more parts of me that fall in love with something other than Jesus. But thanks to the actions of this one leper, I’d like to think Jesus is pleased with that one faithful part.

Earlier this summer a stray cat started hanging out on our porch. We thought he was a little sketchy both in appearance and behavior, so we kept clear of him. We made sure our daughters knew he was an unclean cat. But eventually he wore us down, and we finally fed him one morning. One bowl. That was all. He disappeared later that day and night, but the next morning, about the same time, that cat came back. And, of course, we did it again. We gave him more food. And again. And now every morning. Our girls, ages two and three, get so excited each morning when they discover he’s returned.
It never gets old for them, even here on day forty-three. It’s like they can’t believe it. You should see their faces. They are so happy that he has come back for more, as if he’s expressing his thanks.

I’d like to think that’s something like the look on Jesus’ face each times he sees us rounding the bend, bowled over as we are by his mercy, the hymnals of our hearts open wide, growing more and more accustomed to shouting out our cries for mercy or our songs of thanksgiving.

The Lord be with you!!!

And also with you.

Got it! Thanks. And thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.