Tag Archives: Christ

What is a Sacrament?

Posted on by
3

Over the next three days, I’ll briefly explore the nature of our sacraments. Starting with what we actually mean by the word.

According to the Book of Common Prayer (pp. 857-8):

The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.

Many of us can recite the first half of that definition: the part about their being an “outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace”. But when we call something a sacrament, what are we really saying? Primarily that this (to whatever we are referring) is the observable part of something bigger. Like the water in baptism or the thin wafer many of us use for Communion. That these are something physical and observable, that direct us to something more than that.

Perhaps more difficult is the second half: that these are “sure and certain means” of receiving grace. Most challenging, I think, based on the way we think and behave, is that we are able to receive grace through physical means or that our “sacramental” habits possess in them the very grace “given by Christ”. Like Calvin, we might see that thin wafer, as just a wafer. We also need not adopt an understanding that is hard for our post-Enlightenment brains to comprehend: namely that the thin wafer that tastes like Styrofoam is somehow magically turned into a person’s flesh who has been dead for 2000 years. But we are being invited into a mystery in which that wafer becomes more than a wafer.

We may have to get what is meant by grace:

Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.

For us, then, the sacrament is a hint at the world beyond this one and are something we do together. They also exist as a means by which we can know and sense that GOD-given grace. It is no wonder, then, that the sacraments involve a physical nature: water on the skin, food and drink in the mouth, oil on the forehead, hands on the head and shoulders. Sacraments are intended to be experienced in our bodies, not merely our minds.

This, then, is the story of sense and understanding, of feeling and thinking. The sacraments can’t be confined to one way of comprehension.

Tomorrow we’ll explore some of the messy history of sacraments.

In the meantime, what is your experience with the sacraments? How do they feel? What do you think? And how have they worked?

With Us

Posted on by
Reply

a Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter C
Text: Luke 24:1-12

Our Bible study group that started last fall has slowly been working its way through Genesis. For many of us, it has been a pretty eye-opening experience. We are currently wrestling with Jacob and his return home. I admitted to

the group that I personally have a hard time with Jacob because he isn’t all that good. (In a different setting, I might use a more colorful descriptor.) Jacob steals, cheats, and takes advantage of other people. He matures through the story arc, but some of these traits are still there.

And still, GOD is with him.

It is one of the most amazing things about these stories. What GOD is willing to do.

GOD created the world and everything in it and declared that it was good.

GOD promised death to the first humans and their son, but shows mercy, instead.

GOD finds a friend in Abram and promises him a son and a mighty nation. And delivers.

When that nation strays, GOD stays with them.

When they are imprisoned, GOD stays with them.

When it is time, GOD liberates them.

And even as they wander in Egypt, complaining that GOD has abandoned them, GOD is with them.

GOD keeps the promise to a man that long ago died.

Then GOD came to not only be with us, but to live and love and work and hurt and die as one of us. That GOD might know the feel, the fear, the anger, the sadness, the hope, the love of being human.

GOD in Jesus pushed us. Revealed Himself to us. Helped us to see what GOD most desired, what GOD dreamed for humanity. Taught us to share and to love one another. Opened our eyes to the mockery of creation we had made. Demanded we do something about it. Then gave us a tool to transform our lives and best embody that dream.

GOD gave us baptism. Even GOD in Jesus was baptized, by a human hand, in a river; water washing over his body, dripping from his skin, streaming back to the source as Jesus stood up from the river: a new creation.

In baptism we declare our old selves dead. We reject our past and turn ourselves to a new life. A better life. Eternal Life: that vibrant, abundant, truly alive life.

But to get there, we have to die.

GOD is still with us

In some ways, Christianity is a death cult. One of the reasons ancient Romans condemned the proto-Christians was because they thought they were cannibals. They ran around talking about eating flesh and drinking blood. How much Jesus tells us to die to ourselves, to give up this life for a better one, to face death in this life for a true one. It is what we are about. Accepting the need to die so that we might become something else, we are like human caterpillars weaving cocoons.

For the first few centuries, we made sense of this with conviction. We faced persecution. We were hunted and killed. Not because we believed we were one religion and the state sponsored another. But because our faith taught us to reject the dominant values of Roman culture. To be different. To live different. To love different. To kiss each other. To hold each other in suffering. But also to reject violence. To refuse to hurt another. To swear allegiance to Jesus and not Rome.

When our patron Paul wrote that we claim for ourselves that “Jesus is Lord,” he was doing so with political intention. For Rome demanded that the conquered people declare that “Caesar is Lord.” Paul took the phrase to poke Rome in the proverbial eye and say No, there is no earthly Lord. We pledge our allegiance only to Jesus.

And in Jesus, we face the very death of GOD.

That our great and powerful GOD was killed by humans. And we face the incredible humbling experience that we, as followers of Christ, are not conquerors and rulers and warriors, but are vulnerable, meek, and killable. That the way of the world is powerful and most likely will defeat us. But we are supposed to be different anyway.

We face that we have been the ones to oppress and hurt and despise.
That we have shamed and spat on and sent death daggers with our eyes and lips.
That we have cursed one another and condemned them with our words and gossip.
With our eyes and minds and hearts and fingers.

That we haven’t done enough, not nearly enough, to make GOD’s dream a reality. A dream of radical equality and peace. A dream that every child born into this world will die old and gray and happy. A dream in which our weapons would be destroyed and turned into tools. That we, even through our baptisms and confirmations and ordinations still are also sinners.

In spite of all of this, GOD is with us.

Even when we are like Peter, who doesn’t listen to Mary Magdelene and has to see for himself. When we ignore the women, the poor, the weak, the disabled, the different simply because they aren’t us; when we think we know better than the rest; when we have to experience Easter for ourselves and we place our heads in our hands and weep, GOD is with us.

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. GOD is with us.

In our love, our anxiety, and in our rebirths. GOD is with us.

GOD is always with us.

Rejecting the Cross that isn’t Christ’s

Posted on by
Reply

a Sermon for Good Friday C
Text: John 18:1-19:42

Good Friday Cross

[recording will be added later]

The Cross

Jesus was forced to carry it. He died on it. What more do we know about it?

Jesus was being led to the outskirts of the city, right outside the front gate. This is where traitors were hanged and let to rot in the sun. Visitors would know what Rome does to those who undermine Rome’s authority. They couldn’t miss it.

Rome crucified traitors, not petty criminals. It is not a universal punishment, but a specific one. It is reserved for those who defy Rome: revolutionaries, rebels. Not so much thieves, beggars, or even murderers.

The cross was tall, but not like in the movies. Just tall enough to get your feet off the ground by a couple of feet. Low enough that stray dogs would tear the flesh off the bodies of the crucified.

The cross is a torture device, causing extreme pain. It would normally take days to die, but death was certain. This is the shock of Jesus’s relatively quick death on the cross.

Like the lynching tree, the cross is an act of terrorism. It’s intention is to humiliate and frighten the locals, demonstrating what happens to those who rock the boat.

The cross is the work of Rome, not “The Jews”. The gospels portray Pilate as an unwilling judge, but the cross is a Roman weapon, not a Jewish one. Regardless of the church’s anti-Semitic past, it is undoubtedly Rome that kills Jesus.

The changing nature

The proto- and early Christians used a sign to identify themselves to one another: ichthysthe ichthys, or Jesus fish. This symbol matched their understanding of themselves as fishers of people. In spite of this, the cross became the symbol for Christ and Christianity. There’s only one explanation: it is a rejection of Rome. It is common in oppressed communities to adopt the symbol used to humiliate them.

So the cross you wear is supposed to be the cross you bear.

It is not your jersey, your advertizement, your billboard, your evangelism tool. It is a declaration that you reject Rome and its cult of subordination and violence and a sign of your allegiance to GOD’s kingdom.

And yet, when Constantine absorbed the early church into Rome, the cross, the symbol of Roman oppression was redefined a third time. It was wrestled back by its first users and stripped of its revolutionary power. Once again, Rome the mighty, enemy of the Kingdom of GOD, was using the cross as a symbol of its power, its domination, its adoration of violence and control.

In the nearly 17 centuries after Constantine’s death, the cross has more often been used as a sign of state power and oppression and hatred than the peace and love those first followers. Those people that adopted the cross as an orphan, saying This is your new family. We treat each other differently in this house.

Wearing the cross

When I wear my cross, I do so to reject Rome, to show my allegiance goes to no country but to one kingdom.

Most of the time, I don’t wear a cross. I have a few reasons. Take with you this one: for many, the cross is always a sign of oppression and cannot be redeemed. It is a sign of human greed and violence and arrogance. It reminds them of how full of sin the church continues to be. And it terrifies them that we are powerful and irrational. A terrible combination. Many cannot see Christ in the cross.

In spite of all that the cross has become and what it has yet to become, it is deeply symbolic of our struggles and of our ongoing learning. It is what we bear with Jesus today. Just as many of His first followers met that same fate, executed by Rome.

But we do so with a certain knowledge that Jesus came to us at a specific moment in our history and yet is always here; always with us. That the Christ, the Word, is here: in flesh and wine and water and wood. That Jesus died, yet never leaves us.

May we, Christ’s humble servants reject the cross of power and authority and certainty and murder and fear and greed and hate and sin and all things we know deep in our hearts to be wrong. May we instead take up that other cross of humility and sacrifice and faith and generosity and goodness and love. And may we know that in everything Jesus loves us and dreams for us and pushes us to make this place more fully GOD’s Kingdom.

cross - neck

For My Son: Changing the Lord’s Prayer

Posted on by
3

Photo 2013-03-27 08.58.39 PM

Right off the bat. I have to confess that I am predisposed to the modern Lord’s Prayer. Even better are some of the rewrites I’ve heard in the last year or so. Some really good praying is happening. Tonight, I’m now all in. Here’s why.

Praying with my son.

I used to argue that we can change anything else, just not the Lord’s Prayer. I was convinced, since its the only thing people know by heart, we couldn’t do it to them.

Until I discovered how many actually don’t know it.

And what keeping it is doing to others.

Then I tried it, and found that I preferred it. But the churches I’ve served don’t use it, so I don’t lead it.

How easily those words slip out of my mouth:

Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name they kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen.

Words, so foreign, so strange, so opaque. Yet familiar and comforting. Words of childhood. Old, distant words. Words that aren’t mine. It was the only prayer in the whole book my parents required me to memorize.

Something is different tonight. Something in the air. Something in my heart.

I have been praying the other version from the Book of Common Prayer with my kids for the last few weeks. And tonight, it really struck me. I had forgotten to slip it in between the two songs. I started slowly and deliberately.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your Kingdom come

your will be done

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread

and forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial

and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,

now and forever.

Amen.

It doesn’t rattle off the tongue, it sings off it. It pleads off it. It yearns off it. These are not the convictions of the powerful or the expectations of a people that enact blue laws. It isn’t a prayer for memorizing, but for living. These are the hopes and dreams of a people so beat up, so small. The prayer I want my son to know.

Not a prayer of yesterday, or a prayer that is one Jesus taught some people long dead. A prayer that speaks to GOD’s dream for all of humanity in every age and in every moment. And more to the point, a prayer that speaks to my son. A prayer that tells him that Christ is yearning for more than what we have in this world and compels him to see it, to strive for it, to make that dream a reality. A prayer that isn’t my prayer forced upon him, but a prayer known and accepted

because it is his.

Tonight, this prayer is ours.

What I Buy About the Cross

Posted on by
5

A few years ago, Rose and I were visiting some friends for dinner. After the plates had been cleared and we were finishing our dessert, my friend said “I’m starting to believe that I don’t need a Jesus to have existed to believe in a Christ.”

The look on his wife’s face shocked me much more than his statement. They had long ago moved away from their conservative, reformed childhood background. But for her, he had crossed a bridge too far.

I had given up on the primacy of historicity years before. Hearing him speculate, not on Jesus precisely, but on the matter of his faith in Jesus was like music to my ears. And being inclined toward radical theology, I am much more prone to be interested in the dance of experience and of actuality than I am of requiring my belief be predicated on certainty.

What I don’t buy

In the Jesus event, we deal with two sets of time: the historical time in which a human named Jesus walked the earth and the time before and since in which the Word of GOD was a present and active participant in the GOD event.

That’s why I don’t buy that GOD is a father that kills his son. Jesus isn’t a pawn. GOD isn’t an accountant with a checkbook that needs to be balanced. And I certainly don’t buy that GOD is all powerful enough to create such an intricate and delicate world, only to come up with the dumbest possible problem requiring an even dumber solution.

In fact, I don’t buy the atonement at all. Well, not the way we usually deal with it, anyway.

Cosmic Speculation

Ask the average person about the nature of GOD and you get a variety of personal responses.

Ask them about the power of GOD and you start to get different answers.

Those answers start to deal, not with people, or the relationship between GOD and the people, but with metaphysical moments described in Scripture.

Moments like Creation, the Deluge, and the Exodus.
Moments like miraculous births, the healings, and the exorcisms.

But when we start talking about Jesus, and specifically the purpose of the cross, we leave belief, reason, history, Scripture, and even metaphysics and enter into the realm of cosmic speculation. I love theology as much as the next guy. Actually probably way more. But there is a reason there has been so little consistency and uniformity of belief about this one theological concept. It is different. Much less certainty and much more speculation. Much less Scripture and much more theological writings. Much less Hebrew tradition and much more Greek philosophy.

And lastly, there is one Scriptural reason I don’t buy any of the visions of atonement: Abraham didn’t kill Isaac.

Jesus dying as revolutionary

In the historical Jesus, we have the pursuit of the most likely and accurate information about the actuality of Jesus as possible.

There is a certain fear, even among those that are into the historical Jesus that it will uncover something bad. Something scary. Perhaps that we’ll find Jesus’s bones, therefore disproving his bodily resurrection. Or perhaps we’ll discover that The DaVinci Code was true and that Jesus actually did have sex. (The horror!) More likely it is that when we parse Scripture, we find some of our favorite bits may not have happened. And we are left to deal with the idea that their power comes in the form of a story, rather than a history. Like confusing Lincoln for its source material.

There is another truth, however. That in reading Borg & Crossan’s The Last Week, we get an image of a revolutionary Jesus, executed by the state for insurrection. That Jesus was an historical man that was necessarily killed, not to fulfill a godly quota, or by a humanity corrupted by sin, but by a human empire that was bent on humiliating and decimating its enemies. Parading them nakedly against their religious laws like prisoners at Abu Ghraib. If you follow the historical Jesus movement to its logical conclusion, we can find that Jesus wasn’t killed for or by GOD or to do anything for our sins. He was killed because he preached good news about a GOD that wants us to love as GOD loves, rather than kill as empires do. Just looking at our last century, we have plenty of proof that today’s Romes kill today’s Jesuses.

But that doesn’t change a thing about what Jesus was doing or is doing.

cross bag

Incarnation

That is why the incarnation is so valuable. It isn’t some modernist proof so that enlightenment thinkers and the new atheists can suddenly go “Oh! I get it now!” but acts as a small leap. Not only for us, but for GOD. A leap from a history of a people that long ago tried to distance themselves from GOD. Yet GOD persisted, to the point of sharing in a human experience and was changed by it.

In this way, the cross, and the meaning of the crucifixion are the remnants of a human age in which we neither feared GOD, nor loved GOD, for we could not believe that GOD is with us.

We can leave the cross in the ground, for it is not the symbol of GOD’s way, but the rejection of the human way. It is not a divine symbol of retribution, or the symbol of GOD’s power, but the mocking of Empire’s power. The physicality of the symbol is clearly a totem. And yet we’ve allowed it to be twisted into a Roman desire for power, infusing this potent symbol of rejection with the very agency that produced the original torture device. Making the cross today the very symbol of Constantine’s empire.

And even in the midst of this confusion brought by the power of our Romes, the presence of the incarnate Word, in a one-time event and in the persistent event that spans two thousand years still breaks through. Jesus is here. Jesus is among us. In us. Incarnate. Still.

Man, Have You Got the Wrong Idea

Posted on by
Reply

a Sermon for Lent 3C
Text: Luke 13:1-9

hide
No link

Jesus raises a question about providence this morning. A question about GOD. About good and evil. About the way of the world. He tackles what is perhaps the most enduring question in human history: why do bad things happen?

And yet, before tackling the big question, He asks the gathered people a question:

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?”

He asks if they believe this thing: that all tragedy is a result of sin. That people get what they deserve.

No, he says, it doesn’t work that way.

But He knows they don’t believe Him. He knows they already have it wired up here:
There is good and there is bad. Good things, good people, bad things, and bad people. Then good results come from good actions and bad results from bad actions. So good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And we think GOD plays an active role in how this plays out.

Michael Danner, a Mennonite pastor, approaches this idea in his commentary for this morning.

People believe this in spite of the facts. No matter how many good people suffer, people still believe this. No matter how many bad people prosper, people still believe this. Why? Because people really, really, really want the world to work like that. In a world where that is true people have a say in the matter of suffering. In that world, if people are good, they can avoid suffering.

In other words, control. Now hear this again: “people really, really, really want the world to work like that.” We have imposed this order to the world. It isn’t scriptural. It’s more like Greek philosophy. It doesn’t speak to GOD’s sense of justice. It speaks to our devotion to balance and fairness. And it confines GOD, transforming that which cannot be understood into a dispenser of carrots and sticks.

Reject and replace

Jesus rejects this view of the world, and of GOD. But He doesn’t explain why. This should be a familiar characteristic of Jesus to us by now. Jesus isn’t a wisdom dispenser. He is a teacher, a rabbi, and his disciples, then and now, are to not just learn, but follow.

What Jesus does say, however, is that we will meet their fate unless we repent. This sounds bad, doesn’t it? But we must take these two things together.

First, Jesus rejects out of hand any perceived causal link between having bad things happen to somebody and the suggestion that they must be bad people. Doing bad things doesn’t mean you’ll eventually get your comeuppance. Lacking strong morals does not mean GOD will manipulate your environment so that you don’t get into the program you applied for or that an anvil will land on your Wile E. head. Jesus flat out rejects this. Do you believe this? He asks them, then before they can answer, He says “No, I tell you.”

Second, Jesus seams to suggest that all are fated to death, unless they repent. You remember that repentance involves three things:

  1. acknowledging one’s sin
  2. confessing it
  3. accepting a new way

So repentance involves rejecting one’s old life and embracing a new one: rejecting the way of our world and embracing the way of GOD’s Kingdom.

Jesus is inviting his disciples in every age to reject this human understanding of providence and embrace a way of becoming a different people. We are called to reject this specific construction, this way of understanding the order of things, this Platonic dualism of good and evil. That GOD doesn’t engage with us that way. GOD isn’t responsible for our labeling of good and evil. It isn’t how the world is ordered. We made it up!

And we are called to replace that, not with another construction for explaining away providence, but with a way of walking in this world. It is a way because it isn’t enough to believe certain ideas and it isn’t enough to do certain things and it isn’t enough to be a certain way. We are to become something new. Always becoming new.

Replace beliefs with a journey

The challenge for us, then is that Jesus is asking us to tear apart this frame of understanding the world that provides comfort to us and then doesn’t give us an identical replacement. I know that many of us have a hard time rejecting something without a replacement. Don’t throw it away without getting a new one! But Jesus is telling us to do just that. Our idea is wrong. GOD’s mercy and judgment doesn’t work that way.

So that’s pretty uncomfortable.

Jesus seems to be saying that, as usual, our attention is focused on the wrong things. Reject the empire’s ways—the ordering, the certainty, the purity, the authority—and embrace GOD’s way—the way of discipleship, of following, of becoming what GOD dreams for us. Don’t worry about the natural law—where is Jesus leading us? How might we best feed His sheep? These are our questions.

Like Abram, we are called to a life of exploration and fascination. A life that is not just a set of conditions or an orderly belief structure, but a Sabbath journey of hope and courage. It is a way of living in our world as an immigrant, a wanderer, a sojourner on a pilgrimage.

Like the Woman at the Well, we are called to a new life, a changed life, a life of rejecting the old and embracing the new. Of witnessing the power of Christ in our midst, proclaiming it to our family, friends, and neighbors. And to be transformed by the power of the Spirit.

For us, may this journey continue.

GOD is here

Posted on by
Reply

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 4:21-30

brick wallThe teacher is kicked out of school

Jesus approaches the front of the synagogue, is given one of the scrolls of Isaiah and Jesus reads out:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

He hands the scroll back to the attendant and sits down. Then he tells the people that

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

It appears that more is said. Jesus no doubt “opened the Scripture to them”. And their response to this is amazement. Clearly Jesus is charismatic. He is intelligent. He is thoughtful. He connects with them where they are at. They hear in Jesus the very voice of GOD.

What amazes them, however, is not GOD. It is that Jesus is a carpenter’s son. That Jesus used to run around here in diapers. Now look at him! That education really did him well. They tell him so. They tell him how amazing this is!

Jesus responds by telling them how the conversation is going to go: You are going to quote scripture at me that is supposed to make me feel a certain way and then ask me for the same blessings others have received. Well, you know how a prophet isn’t welcome in his hometown? You know how GOD ignored the Hebrews during Elijah’s time and Elisha’s? And the people drive Him out of town and try to kill Him, but Jesus walks away.

Walking out

Jesus walks out on them. He has infuriated them, caused so much rage to well up in them that they are looking to kill him. What makes them mad enough to actually try to kill him?

I have a few ideas. Notice, though, that nothing He says should cause their extreme reaction. Their response isn’t justified. Nor is it exclusive to Jesus’s hometown. I think there are two different reasons: Jesus has too accurately described them—showing how far from GOD they are and by highlighting that GOD will withhold grace from some. Therefore Jesus will withhold from them.

If this story doesn’t hit too close to home with us, then we aren’t actually listening. Jesus tells us that our merciful GOD withholds grace from people. That GOD did it with the Hebrews and Jesus does the same with his childhood neighbors and friends.

No doubt many of us know what it is like to live without feeling the nearness of Christ. Or that we have done something to reject GOD—to send GOD away from us. We have hurt our relationship with GOD and worry that GOD will write us off—that Jesus will just walk away.

For others, the suggestion that GOD doesn’t match the vision they have carried since childhood is cause for outrage, even violence. How dare we make these claims about an unchanging, distant GOD of the 1950s!

Fulfilled in hearing

Jesus says in response to the Scripture he read from Isaiah:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

He doesn’t say Today this scripture has been fulfilled in my birth or Today this scripture has been fulfilled in my magic powers. He says that it is fulfilled in your hearing.
What is lost in the confusion of this story is that Jesus is present with them. Jesus is there. His proclaiming the Good News “to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” and their presence with Him is the big deal. Their marveling about Jesus’s skill matches with their ignorance to Jesus’s presence. They worry that GOD is far from them or that GOD can ignore them, but GOD is right in front of them!

Jesus tells the parable later in Luke that we often call “The Prodigal Son” (or what I call “The Lost Sons”). In it we have a young man leaving his family behind and then coming back, destitute, to be reunited with his father. This is often told to highlight the great forgiving and merciful nature of GOD. The elder son, however, is just as lost. But he isn’t lost out there somewhere, he is lost right here, at home. He feels abandoned and far from his father; even going so far as to calling their relationship one of slavery. But the father was there the whole time. He was with him, working alongside him. The elder son didn’t understand the relationship. His distance from his father is self-induced.

The problem for these people in the story then, is not that Jesus walks away, it is that they walk out on Him.

The presence of GOD

Headlines were made more than a decade ago when Mother Teresa’s personal journals were published. Millions wanted a glimpse of the innermost thoughts of one so devoted, so publicly faithful, so representative a Christian life and service. The biggest story in them was the revelation that most of Teresa’s adult life was spent without the intimate presence of Christ she had earlier on. She even lamented the feeling of distance she felt from her Lord. And yet, this great epiphany was lost on the multitudes: that her service wasn’t based on constant presence or the reward of divine intimacy in exchange for good behavior, but that GOD was up to something good in her. Her belief in the Triune GOD supported her and drove her, not because of constant affirmation from the divine source, but in the trust that Jesus was right.

The struggle with faith in Jesus is that we have been promised His presence, and yet that promise goes first to the needy. Not when we feel needy or when we want the status quo to be maintained. His presence is most felt when we hear Him from a place of need. A need for repentance, a need to be drawn back to GOD, a need to be moved. To hear the call to transformation, not as an invitation, but salvation, rescue. When what we need is to be saved from our surroundings or from our current lives. To be changed from our earthly selves into people of a different way. Jesus doesn’t come to preserve the status quo, but rescue us from it!

Indeed GOD is here.

 

[see also my video response to the text]

The Incarnate Spirit

Posted on by
Reply

a Sermon for Christmas

Merry Christmas! We have joyously arrived at the eve of Christmas, that day in which we celebrate, not just the birthday of a special child, but the very incarnation of GOD: GOD’s incredible presence with us and in our world.

It is one of our favorite feasts and holidays. One that brings great joy and fellowship throughout our world. And hopefully most of us feel so joyous after a particularly rough season of Advent this year.

Tonight, we celebrate the kickoff to a great season characterized as much by our family experiences of divine fellowship as by A Charlie Brown Christmas. A time in which our experience of the power of GOD’s work in our lives is found where it always is, in the love and generosity of our friends, our neighbors, and even strangers.

The name we use for the holiday is Christmas, which is not a description of the holiday itself, but the traditional Latin celebration of the holiday in the Christ Mass: three masses at night, dawn, and day, to celebrate three aspects of the Incarnation. A more fitting name for the holiday may be the Feast of the Incarnation, the day in which we celebrate in worship the coming of GOD’s holy Word in human form, that Jesus would be born as a human, live as a human, and would die as a human.

We are also reminded in the Incarnation that Jesus didn’t come once, 2,000 years ago, only to stay away. That Jesus comes to us and will return to reconcile the world. This understanding of this feast day means that our focus isn’t only on that little baby, but on the promise of change and transformation that comes with him. The promise that we will be changed inside and out. As individuals and as a society. And that our work is found in bringing that change to the world and in Christ’s name.

And this is the rub; the part that continues to challenge us. The Incarnation, then, isn’t just about GOD coming among us and Jesus being born or even the promise of Jesus’s return. The Incarnation means that as Jesus came as the Word among us, we are to become incarnational. That we are part of GOD’s revolution. We are compelled by Paul to be the hands and feet of the Body of Christ, the living embodiment of GOD. We are compelled by Jesus not to act certain ways but to be certain people. We are to live intentional, Spirit-filled lives of devotion to GOD, the holy trinity.

Tonight, as we sing, eat, and drink, may we see Jesus in one another. That little bit of magic we foolishly call “the Chrismas spirit” is not really magic. It is not the result of a seasonal incantation. It is truly the Incarnate Spirit, the very work of GOD in us. Bringing GOD’s priorities of love and joy and service out of us.

May we share that spirit gracefully.

We Don’t Need a King

Posted on by
3

When the Hebrew people were captive in Egypt, GOD sent Moses to lead the people to liberation. When they had trouble listening to what GOD was telling them to do, the people were given laws on how to create a just society. When the people had trouble maintaining their society, GOD sent judges to lead them and keep the society just. Then the people demanded a king: the neighboring tribes had kings, so they wanted one too. So GOD called David to be their king.

The scope of our early history is a persistent problem with leadership. We had trouble living into the world GOD intended for us and so GOD kept trying to give us what we needed. The story after we get a king is more like a testament to “be careful what you ask for: you just might get it.” Our history was not served well be the kings. A lesson that was made worse by each succeeding generation.

There is an old tradition to seeing Jesus as descending from David; as being the true heir to divine kingship. But what are actually saying? When we call Jesus our king, I fear that we are expecting the wrong thing from Him. That, like Peter calling Jesus “Messiah” and expecting a military leader, do we call Jesus “King!” and see a patriarch? Is he ruler? Does He command us to jump and we say “how high?” Is his authority so dependent on intimidation and centralized economic power?

Or is Jesus a king in the same way He triumphantly entered Jerusalem on a colt? A ruler who doesn’t actually rule; a leader who follows.

This Sunday is called the Feast of Christ the King, a relatively new feast day in the church, dating to the early 20th Century. It is the day we acknowledge the supremacy of Christ as head of the Kingdom of GOD. I worry that we lose sight of what kind of king we are talking about. A king that serves, that sacrifices, and that loves radically. A king that looks the complete opposite of virtually any king any of us has ever read about. It is an image that is too hard for us to understand and far too easy to misuse.

That is why I say we don’t need a king today. We don’t need a leader or conqueror or a hero. We need Jesus. Just Jesus, Son of Humanity, whose example is humble, not glorified; generous, not treacherous; hospitable, not exclusionary.

The one who came to save us from ourselves. Like our Hebrew ancestors, we don’t need a king. We just need The Way.

Pussy Riot Reveals Russian Morality Police

Posted on by
Reply

Or I (heart) Pussy Riot

I’ve only just come across this story as I catch up on my podcasts and as Christian Piatt covered a few days ago. Christian covers the discomfort we have in the prophetic action and the challenge of protest in an admirably personal way. You should really check out his post. It can also give you a little background on the story.

The only piece that I want to add is what was brought up by a reporter in a conversation for On The Media, which is what this reveals about the Russian courts. The entire case against the group of young women was based on several people’s testimony, not that they did it, but that they were hurt by the performance. This is interesting in light of the many things I’ve written about the need for respect, including today’s other post. The law is about offense, the action took place in a church, and the protesters asked for forgiveness at the opening of the proceedings.

Those offended said no.

Christian Piatt rightly references the overturning tables idea of Christ-like prophecy. And it is the Christians testifying, and the Putin regime that stand convicted by this moment.

This is what separates the prophetic from blasphemy and the ethically courageous from the morally cowardly: how we treat one another. Our country was born from early settlers that, to avoid religious persecution, came to a new country, killed its inhabitants, and persecuted one another because of religion and in the name of morality. How this artist collective has been treated by the Russian authorities doesn’t compare with the Salem witch trials. None of them is going to be burned alive. But it is that same unethical persecution for morality at work.

My prayers go out to these women, to those effected by this farcical tragedy, and particularly to Putin. That they all may know what has truly transpired here.

Related articles