What can we say December 4? Advent 2

   Beyond this week's texts, check out my "God Became Small: Preaching Advent" blog with thoughts on how to preach this peculiar season, with loads of illustrative material.

   Both our Old Testament and Gospel texts play on images of shoots and branches, the defiant growth that emerges even out of a seemingly dead stump. John’s vision is more violent, an ax whacking away at what only seems to be sturdy and living.

   Isaiah 11:1-10 interests me with its obsession with virtue – something we aren’t obsessed with at all, even in church life. I constantly return to one of the incandescent moments in Mark Helprin’s marvelous Winter’s Tale: in this thoughtful ramble on wealth, fame and possessions, Hardesty’s father says “Little men spend their day sin pursuit of such things. I know from experience that at the moment of their deaths they see their lives shattered before them like glass. Not so, the man who knows the virtues and lives by them. The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn’t matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we can stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God.”

    Maya Angelou suggested that “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” Notice the word “practice.” Courage, honesty, integrity, wisdom, character: these virtues are to be practiced, like skills. And I’m unsure about his, but Pádraig Ó Tuama reports that in American Sign Language, “the sign for courage implies strength that comes from the body, with both finger-spread hands beginning at the chest and moving out to form the letter ‘s’ for strength.” What is interesting is that the sign for ‘fear’ in British Sign Language uses the same finger-spread hand and touches the chest. It occurs to me that courage comes from the same place as fear, and where there is fear, there is the possibility of courage.”

    Fear and courage. That’s Advent.

    I’ve written before on Matthew 3:1-12 and will reiterate a few thoughts now. Years ago, I heard a great sermon suggesting you never see John the Baptist on any Christmas cards – and yet he’s the pivotal way in to all the Bible’s Christmas stories! A Church member heard me say this and devised for me history’s first (only?) John the Baptist Christmas Card!  It really is a season of “confessing sins” (a superlatively Advent-ish thing to do). Maybe we’d prefer not to be dubbed “You brood of vipers!” – but is this the case? “Bear fruits worthy of repentance” – and “Do not presume…” How much presumption is there in the Christian religion – and especially at Christmas!

   I always wonder if Shel Silverstein’s children’s book might, oddly, help us think about the ax being at the root of the tree. Do you know The Giving Tree (which works well at Christmas with a cut tree in your house, right?)? The tree provides shade and apples to a young boy, until he grows up and drifts away – only to return in need of wood for a house, then wood for a boat to go far away, and then for simply a stump on which to sit: a hard journey indeed – for the boy and for the tree!

   Trees amaze. Richard Powers's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Overstory, is about nine quirky misfits who eventually unite to protect trees - which are enormously important in the environment and the economy! 

    J.R.R. Tolkien loved trees as a child, and as he wrote The Lord of the Rings, especially with his Ents who spoke slowly "because anything worth saying was worth saying slowly, and anything worth hearing was worth hearing slowly." His grief was heightened by the ravaging of forests for the big ironworks and war munition manufacturing in Birmingham - mirrored in Isengard, Saruman's domain and factory of evil.

    Trees matter in Scripture - in today's readings, in Psalm 1 ("like a tree planted by the water"), in Jesus' apprenticeship with is dad as a woodworker, and even in the cross itself (Nikos Kazantzakis, in The Last Temptation of Christ, envisioned Jesus being forced to craft crosses for the Romans!).

   After John’s fuming is done, Luke reports that “with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” We sure believe in preaching as Good News – but clearly, for John the Baptist and Luke, the “good news” isn’t something sunny, positive, cheerful, or happy. It’s about vipers and axes, giving away one coat if you have two (so isn’t a closet purge in order?). 

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   Check out my book, valuable for preachers and laity during Advent, Why This Jubilee? - reflections on carols, sacred and secular.

Young Karl Barth Preaching, Offending, and Reassessing

    I laughed out loud a few times while reading Christiane Tietz’s wonderful new biography of Karl Barth. Once was during her recounting of his first pastorate in Safenwil. Full of Gospel zeal, he encountered (for the first time in his life) real people with profound social and economic troubles. His sermons began to veer toward what some regarded as “political,” and he was deemed by quite a few to be “socialist.” The common folk cheered all he had to say.

   But not Walter Hüssy, the grown son of the local factory owners who had financially paid for the bulk of the church building’s construction a few years earlier. He penned an open letter to Barth, published in the town newspaper: “Barth’s agitating speech was an attempt to sow discord between employers and employees. The owners after all are those who pull the cart, and need some elbow room.”

   Barth replied, in the same newspaper: “My honored sir, may I loan or give you a few good books where you can teach yourself some things? You address me in my role as pastor, that I should have a mediating effect. That would suit you! With your permission however, as pastor I set myself a different program, over which I owe no accounting to you. You may be older than I, but nonetheless you are still young enough to develop better insights. I sincerely wish you that.”

   The following Sunday, the church was packed beyond capacity! The slugfest was all the talk of Safenwil. The paper published an anonymous column entitled “The Red Danger in Safenwil,” noting Barth’s subversive agitation, and stating uncertainty whether he was really a good Christian or not. The Hüssys promptly departed the church – with their large donations.

   His professor of theology in Basel, Paul Wernle, corresponded with him, leading him to rethink not the content but the tone of his remarks. Wernle suggested he’d answered “crudeness with crudeness and rudeness with rudeness.” Pondering this, Barth admitted “When I read Hüssy’s attack, I didn’t feel any personal offense, but a desire to fight: take up the sword of the Lord and Gideon! I didn’t intend anything but to run down an enemy of a good cause. But now, fourteen days later, as the smoke has cleared, I must acknowledge that I behaved in an Old Testament-like fashion. My gesture appears less heroic now, and I can sense all the egocentric aspects that contributed to it.”

   He resolved to do better next time. On this, he never made significant progress. Preaching five years later, he asked out loud if Safenwil didn’t need a different pastor, “a pastor from whose sermons the love of God emanates with such power that you have to feel it, that you are moved. I apparently am not able to speak to you in such a way, because apparently in myself there is something very deeply not in order with God.”

   I am moved by these words, and hope they were genuine. Barth, I believe, trusted so firmly in the power of the Word to effect change that, when he observed a listlessness, a lack of response in his people and the town, he looked within seeking an explanation.

   Soon thereafter, he grew more acerbic: “You wish for me to be a false prophet, the pastor who pleases the people. To have a pastor in this village means to have eternal unrest in the village, a person who in the most uncomfortable way will continually question everything and give unexpected replies to all questions.”

   And so, bugged by all of this, but also mortified by theologians who could curtsy to the German war efforts, he wrote his Epistle to the Romans, called by theologian Karl Adam “a bomb on the playground of the theologians.” A new congregation gathered around him: countless young theologians and pastors around the world breathing in his fresh new life. And his days of pastoring in a small village were over. Should we say … thankfully?

   For all of us screwing up the courage to say what we need to say, and searching for the right tone, in some little church somewhere, we want what is within us to be "in right order," and we want to speak truly - even if they do not ask or pay us to stir up eternal unrest. For me, noticing a titan like Karl Barth walked this same difficult road, is encouraging. 

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  Check out Will Wold's "Preacher Lab" podcast, on which I was his guess in his latest episode - talking about the preaching life, of course.

What can we say Nov. 2, All Saints / 22nd after Pentecost

   We will observe All Saints’ Day on November 2. If you are, let me refer you to my blog from the last time regarding All Saints – with lots of reflections, illustrations and suggestions. The 2025 All Saints lections we’ll get to below. Right now, I want to touch on the Nov. 2, not-specifically-for-All-Saints texts.

    Haggai 1:15-29 would have been terrific for Reformation Sunday. The prophet tries to jostle the people out of their sleepy-headedness, out of their weary discouragement, and to rebuild the temple. The date he spoke? October 17, 520. I love the scholarly precision we find in the commentaries! Most standing there could not recall the former temple and its splendor. Could Haggai? Joshua and Zerubbabel (a name that is just so fun to say out loud!) could not as they’d been born in exile. Silver and gold will be required; the Lord claims it’s all his anyhow.

     The image we carry is that the temple they did build in response was modest, even shabby. But it can’t have been too shabby. It appears to have been a smidgeon larger than Solomon’s, and it stood for exactly 500 years until Herod took it down to replace it.

   2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 12-17 would be tough to preach, with the ominous Godless One stalking the people. Mind you, the notion of such a godless one being puffed up above all other objects of worship might give us the shivers, given all going on in our culture and wider world today. Luke 20:27-28 is (for me) another hard text to warm up to. Another good reason to stick with the All Saints’ lections!

   Ephesians 1:11-23 is one of those lovely texts that don’t require much explaining; it’s more eloquent just to linger over them. I certainly wouldn’t try to make such powerful words “relevant” or any such nonsense. They speak beautifully for themselves. I hope my people will notice I cherish these words, that I am personally awed by them. I hope to sound like a docent in a museum, pointing with gawking delight. Maybe my people will get caught up in the mood! The luxurious, lavish verbiage had to be mind-boggling to the early Christians, meager as their resources and prospects were. Frank Thielman is right: “Words that emphasize God’s meticulous planning pile up one upon another – purpose, work, counsel, will – how privileged are we!” Heirs, inheritances, riches, glory, destiny... 

   That last word, “destiny,” begs for a parenthesis. The old “God is in control” notion is ridiculous, of course. I love how Markus Barth (Karl’s son!) clarifies how personal this destining is: “It pertains exclusively to the relationship of the Father to his children. If no wise human father would treat his children according to a schedule fixed before their birth, how much less would the Father who is blessed in Ephesians 1:3-14!”

   The responsibilities of even the most fabulous heirs were driven home to me at the World Methodist Council in 1986 when Donald English reported on attending the wedding of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew – and how the couple, immensely wealthy, able to do whatever they might wish, had bowed and pledged fealty to the crown, to the “rights and responsibilities” that went with being a royal couple.

    I love Paul’s “prayer report” here. It’s not so much that What we asked God for was ‘answered.’ What intrigues is the content of his prayer – that the recipients, the objects of his praying, might have a “spirit of wisdom and revelation,” that their “eyes of their hearts might be enlightened” (reminding me of St. Francis’s constant prayer during his season of conversion, “Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart, and give me, Lord, correct faith, firm hope, perfect charity, wisdom and perception, that I may do what is truly your most holy will.”

   Paul also prays for 3 things (Do you wish people prayed this for you? for one another?): (1) the hope to which he has called you, (2) the God’s glorious inheritance, and (3) the magnitude of God! Do we get such prayer requests? What if we did? The hope business: Emily Dickinson suggested that “Hope is the thing in the soul with feathers…” – but is it in the soul? Or is it more about God? Markus Barth, again: “The emphasis lies not so much on the mood of the person hoping as on the substance or subject matter of expectation.” It’s the thing hoped for. Christopher Lasch (in his marvelous The True and Only Heaven) clarified that optimism is the fantasy that all will be better tomorrow, and it depends on us; but hope is the ability to deal with tomorrow if things aren’t better – and it depends not on us but on God.

   Luke 6:20-31. Unsure nowadays whether to sing David Haas’s wonderful “Blest Are They,” after the trouble he got into. His text is also the far more beloved Matthean slant on the Beatitudes. Luke’s is tougher, adding the “Woe” moments absent in Matthew. We’d probably prefer Jesus bless the “poor in spirit” instead of more simply Luke’s “poor.”

   Clarence Jordan shrewdly pointed out that the poor prefer Luke, while the rest of us delight in Matthew! Jesus spoke to the poor, the nobodies – and blessed them. They were accustomed to being cursed, ignored or blamed – as we see in our world today. How amazing was Jesus? For All Saints’ Day, it’s hard not to hear the line “Blessed are those who mourn.” We come mourning, indeed – but we grieve as those who have hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Again, I trust the reading of the names in God’s holy place more than I trust my frail words to express the hope of the Gospel!

   Robert Schuller tried to modernize the text with the rubric “The Be-Happy Attitudes.” But Jesus isn’t issuing commandments, much less doling out advice for a chipper life. He blesses, he embraces, loves, knows, recognizes, and gives hope to the hopeless, to the people nobody else wants – and then he brings down a Woe! on the big dogs, those who think they’re somebody, and especially the self-righteous. Jesus’ words are light years from the conventional wisdom of our day. He doesn’t say Blessed are the good-looking, the successful, the well-connected, the white Americans, and he doesn’t say Woe to the immigrant, the unemployed, the lonely or the homeless. The preacher has one more chance just now to chip away at the façade of thin, culturally-mashed-down thinking, and open the window into Jesus’ revolutionary worldview.

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  Check out my new book on the Psalms, The Heart of the Psalms - with study guide for your lay people, and good preaching stuff!!

What can we say October 30? Reformation Sunday?

   If we observe Reformation Sunday, it's wise not to get nostalgic about Luther, who after all was creating the biggest division in church history! It's the way he and all reformers know how to look forward, as on a watchtower, for the new thing God is about to do, which is in continuity with the old thing, as old as Habakkuk and from creation's first sunrise, God has been doing. We have a weight upon us. And in the texts to come, it's about being / becoming "worthy" of the call - which will never happen if we don't grasp, as Zaccheus did, that there are economic and lifestyle implications to welcoming this Lord into our homes.

   When I arrived as pastor at my 2nd church, they had organized small groups all over the parish for me to go and listen to them share "What's wrong with the church?" Such a bad idea. Yet there's so much wrong with the church, always. And ironically, some of what people find to be wrong with the church is precisely where our strength lies. Examples abound. I'm reminded of T.S. Eliot's words: "Why should men love the church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of life and death, and of all that they would forget. She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft. She tells them of evil and sin, and other unpleasant facts."

   And for denominations that divide into traditional vs. progressive? Thomas Merton's wisdom is spot on: "The biggest paradox about the church is that she is at the same time essentially traditional and essentially revolutionary. But that is not as much of a paradox as it seems, because Christian tradition, unlike all others, is a living and perpetual revolution."

   Near the end of Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson’s best (maybe? my opinion?) novel, we find this reflection on memory and death: “But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting so long.” On God we wait, using the time to learn, be exposed, grow, change our minds.

    Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4. Habakkuk is just fun to say out loud. When the apostle Paul, and then the Talmud replied to the question posed to Jesus, “What’s the great verse in the Bible?” both zoomed to Habakkuk 2:4. The image and setting are compelling in every age. The decline of one empire, Assyria, only yields another brutal, oppressive power, Babylon, signaled by the battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE. Nothing new under the sun – and yet heightened anxiety and terror.

   God calls Habakkuk and lays on him a massa, translated innocuously as “oracle,” when it literally means “burden, weight.” God’s message is heavy, something to be pondered (pondus is something heavy you carry). He’s not in a comfortable chair bearing this burden, but on a watchtower, like a sentinel, scanning the horizon for – more disaster? Or the coming of the Lord? I think of “On the Watchtower,” maybe preferring Jimi Hendrix to Bob Dylan.

   Habakkuk names the distortion of “justice,” mishpat, that marvelous Hebrew word that doesn’t mean fairness but rather a justice where the marginalized, those left out are included and cared for: this is the just society and people! That much-quoted verse, 2:4 (the primary text for Romans, cited in 1:17, then also showing up in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38) fascinates: “The righteous shall live by faith.” Habakkuk and the Israelites heard “the righteous” as those who doggedly adhere to God’s Torah. They “live,” that is, carrying on day by day. Their “faith” is their faithfulness to community and Torah-living.

   Paul morphs all of this in an eschatological and salvific direction. The “righteous” are those right-wised, put into a right relationship with and by God. They live – now, but will live eternally. Their faith is the gift of belief, trust – and Karl Barth is wise to remind us that it is Christ’s faith, his faithfulness that saves, not our faith or faithfulness.

   Indeed, in commenting on Paul’s reference to Habakkuk in The Epistle to the Romans, Barth’s words catch fire as we read them a century later: “The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question-mark against all truths.” The Church’s activity “is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself. The people of Christ know that no sacred word or work exists in its own right: they know only those words and works and things which by their negation are sign-posts to the Holy One.”

   Habakkuk would shout down an Amen from his watchtower. Our Habakkuk text is deeply suggestive of what the righteous person is not: he is not puffed up, she does not rely on herself. Habakkuk can help us not mis-read Paul. Faith for him clearly is not a one-time decision, but a constant walking, renewal regularly, a lifestyle, an attitude, practical.

   2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, 11-12. Not sure I’ll preach on this among the lections – but so intriguing to notice how, as is often the case, Paul’s prayers aren’t for some ailment, or for his friends to get a better job or find a spouse. No, he prays “that our God may make you worthy of his call, and may fulfill every resolve to do good and work of faith in power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.”

   Luke 19:1-10. “A wee little man was he.” The song tempts us to trivialize this remarkable encounter Jesus has with a rich tax collector in Jericho. The ruins of Herodian Jericho are eloquent if tragic witnesses to the grandeur that once was that city. Zaccheus, the small one, illustrating how Jesus welcomes the little ones, how “They are weak, but he is strong,” even the marvelous hobbits Tolkien created from the shire as the hope and future of Middle Earth.

   This man’s name: Zaccheus. The Hebrew, zakkai, “the righteous one,” suggests his parents had this dream of goodness for him. If he wound up (as Christian tradition suggested) as the first bishop of Caesarea, he did prove to be that zakkai. Did his parents live long enough to know? Was his life as a rapacious tax collector a lunge toward compensation for his being short? “Little ones to him belong.”

   Zaccheus’s climb up that tree: he was, we can be sure, a climber. I think of Danny DeVito when casting calls are made for him! As a climber, was he in the tree merely so he could see? So he could be seen? Was he late to the party? Short people could see if they arrived early enough to be in the front. After his transformative meal with Jesus, did he then follow up the steep highway to Jerusalem with the throng to join in Palm Sunday? Was he one in that crowd? I love sermons, and try to preach them, that simply dangle such possibilities.

   Luke’s punch line zooms in on what matters: “The Son of man came to seek and save the lost,” not the clever or well-placed or even the church members, Bible readers and believers. Jesus and Zaccheus broke bread together, in the home of what to Jesus was a stranger – and nothing was ever the same. There most clearly are economic implications to meeting up with this Jesus! Did Jesus order him to make outlandish reparations? Had Zaccheus, on meeting Jesus, hung his eyes in shame? Or was he motivated by the giddy joy of connecting with this Lord who was eager to “eat with tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 15:1)?

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  In my book on saints and heroes of the church (Servants, Misfits & Martyrs: Saints and their Stories), I have a good bit on Martin Luther and other reformers. My gratitude soared when my church history professor, David Steinmetz, told me he gave this book to his mother so she'd understand what he'd spent his life doing. Lots and lots of illustrative stuff in here for preachers, I am sure.

Guest preaching - in Poland

 I had the rare and delightful privilege of preaching in Krakow on Sunday. Check out video and text. It was short - but with the translator it took twice as long!!

Two New Books Helping Me Rethink How I Preach

   Two very different books I’ve read lately have struck me as potentially helpful to me and maybe to you in the vocation of preaching. One is a semi-fictional narrative of a few months in Johann Sebastian Bach’s life, the other by a political speechwriter on great speeches that were, as the title suggests, Undelivered.

   First, on what didn’t get delivered: Jeff Nussbaum has written speeches for dozens of leading politicians in pivotal situations. Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would have Rewritten History takes us on a tour of huge speeches that, for various reasons, didn’t get delivered. Eisenhower, if D-Day had failed. JFK, if they had bombed Cuba instead of blockading at sea. Helen Keller’s stinging diatribe on women’s rights. Nixon refusing to resign. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 victory speech. King Edward’s refusal to abdicate the throne. John Lewis’s pre-edited speech from the march on Washington in 1963.

   There is enough illustrative material here to keep a preacher busy for many weeks. But more importantly, Nussbaum explains how speeches are put together, why they work (or don’t) – and thoughtful inquiry into who’s listening, what time it is, when boldness or restraint are called for. How things are structured: his sequence of Attention, Need, Satisfaction, Visualization, Action is more helpful than any I've ever read in preaching manuals. He has an insightful discussion of whether and when we use We or I or You. And attention to little prepositions matters: would John Lewis speak of a march in America, or on America? I kept taking notes to help me rethink how I preach. I wished Nussbaum had taught preaching when I was in school – or today.

    I started with the audiobook, and wished I had the hard copy. But then the audio has real audio of Winston Churchill, John Kennedy, the fiery Emma Goldman. I now own both, and am glad.

   And then a very different read: James Runcie’s fascinating The Great Passion. It’s a novel, but tracking closely with reality. The story of a 13 year old, grieved over his mother’s death, not really wanted by his father, coming to Leipzig to study music. The school’s cantor, J.S. Bach, notices his voice, and takes him in not only as a student but into the Bach family home. It’s sort of a look at how the St. Matthew Passion came together from composition to performance from the perspective of inside the household and among singers and players. That’s how and where preaching comes to be: from somebody who lives in a home with people and situations and weariness and issues.

    A few passages struck me as revelatory for us: “Every time I walked through the streets of the town, I found it strange to contemplate the lives of others going about their daily business, with food to buy, medicines to fetch, debts to collect, money to earn. They were quite unaware of the time, anxiety and dedication we gave to the Passion, or how important we all thought it was.” You’re wrestling a Word from the Lord to the ground as you drive or walk, and no one has a clue. Reminded me a little of Tuesdays with Morrie: on learning of his mortal cancer diagnosis, he looks out the doctor’s window. “Outside, the sun was shining and people were going about their business. A woman ran to put money in the parking meter. Another carried groceries. Morrie was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. ‘Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me?’”

    The narrative of the Passion’s debut performance feels like my goal in preaching: “The story was the one we all knew. But what the Passion did was to make us feel that it belonged to all of us, here in Leipzig, for the first time. It was not a theological lecture, or a piece of rhetoric, or even an account of an event in the history of Palestine. It had become our story. It was happening now, during this performance, in the present tense, and I could see, on the faces of the congregation below, that they recognized they could do nothing more important than listen because they had become part of it all.” Can my sermon make them feel this story belongs to us, here, now?

    And then, although many citizens weren’t there, “It felt as if all Leipzig was in attendance: saints and sinners, old and young, contents and malcontents, the newly in love and the recently rejected; the disappointed, the forlorn and the forgiving: all God’s creatures, alone and together, hoping that, by listening to this music and being present at this service, they would allay the fear of death and be forgiven their sins and failings.”

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   Check out my book on preaching - not how to preach, but how to continue preaching: The Beauty of the Word: the Challenge and Wonder of Preaching. 

What can we say August 28? 12th after Pentecost

   Summer's over. Back to school - or whatever the transitions may be for our people. How to tap that mood? Jeremiah offers plaintive warnings about losing your way. Hebrews gives us good cause not to be afraid - and Luke ponders with whom we hang out. All key in peculiar ways.

    Jeremiah 2:4-13. God sounds like a wounded lover or heartbroken parent here: “What wrong did they find in me?” Do we do this – finding fault with God? Or is it exasperation that the God of Scripture isn’t quite the God we’re looking for, or that God is inadequate somehow to what we'd assign to God?

   From God’s perspective, they “went after worthless things, and thus became worthless.” The Hebrew is hebel, featured so provocatively in Ecclesiastes (“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”): hebel is a wisp, a breeze, nothing really, just dust settling. Can I show hebel somehow in my sermon? Dropping a little shred of paper or some dried up leaves?

   “You take on the character of the god you follow” (Walter Brueggemann). We become what our pursuits are, what we pay attention to. If we pursue God and substantive holiness, we become just that. Fascinating: our searching, our quest defines who we become! The preacher is wise to ask, Who are the vain recipients of our devotion? – and it’s such a long list. Political ideology, for sure. Things. Others. Self. Institutions – which Brueggemann hears as collapsing in this text. The church itself can be a vain recipient of devotion.

   On idolatry, and gods who are nothing reducing you to nothing, Thomas Merton, writing in 1965 but fitting today: "The great sin is idolatry. It is almost completely unrecognied precisely because it is so overwhelming, total. It takes in everything. Festishism of power, machines, possessions, sports, clothes, all kept going by greed for money and power. The Bomb is only 1 accidental aspect of the cult. We should be thankful for it as a sign, a revelation of what the rest of our civilization points to: the self-immolation of man to his own greed, and his own despair. Unless man turns from his idols to God, he will destroy himself, or rather his idolatry will prove itself to be his destruction."

   It’s about asking the right questions, and digging past the obvious. “Where is the Lord?” (a good question) needs modifying, since it’s not just any Lord, but “the one who brought us up out of Egypt.” The Lord isn’t a genie in a bottle or a personal assistant or an energy drink.

   Verse 8 should haunt all clergy: “The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who handle the law did not know me.” Can we answer well Jeremiah’s question “Do people change their gods?” Well of course they do, we do, we have, and will! “Can a nation change its god?” Nation can become the god, or it’s idolatry when we think we can compel the nation to follow a god of our own imagining. A sermon could explore the bogus gods we fixate on, and dream upon. We’re in a double fix: not only has God been forsaken, but the new fake deities gut us. Is Jeremiah pointed to a “cracked cistern holding no water”? We think our religiosity or busy-ness will hold water. What are the modern parallels for such cisterns?

   Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 is rich with homiletical potential! “Let mutual love (philadelphia!) continue” – but should we instead say “Let mutual love begin”? This Greek, philadelphia, reminds me of the Tom Hanks film by that name – about a man suffering from HIV and AIDS, simply asking, in those early days, for fairness, acceptance, justice and love. The goal of philadelphia isn’t merely enjoying people like us, but philoxenia, love for strangers.

   Why love them? We strangers have been loved. And, Hebrews, like Genesis 18 (Abraham and Sarah welcoming the strangers by the Oaks of Mamre), reveals that God has this quirky way of using the stranger to test us, to let God’s self be made known to us, for new life to come through them, the them who should be we/us. Tricky thing is, even if you think the stranger might be that angel, a divine visitor, you more likely think, Ehhh, probably not. Maybe to grow toward this philoxenia, the stranger we may need to learn to welcome is that stranger within, the me that is restless, feeling inadequate, exhausted, dislocated.

   “Be content”? The sermon must expose Madison Avenue and all advertising for what it is – a constant clamor of Do not be content! You need more, newer, different gadgets, stuff, clothes, experiences. Contentment isn’t even Okay, now I possess enough of those things. The Greek arkoumenoi means enough, sufficient – and then clarifies resides in God’s promise never to forsake us. Flannery O’Connor once spoke of the Eucharist, noting how it’s not much yet it’s more than enough: “It is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” 

   Kate Bowler’s terrific No Cure for Being Human, and then her devotional Good Enough probe this spiritual challenge and invitation with humor and wisdom.

   “Remember those in prison – as if you were in there with them.” Part 2 of that is bold. Not Pity them, or Pray for them. Envision yourself as in prison – in an act of solidarity, and the realization that we are all in bondage!

   What is an “undefiled marriage bed”? Two lie down: is the defilement lust (even then)? Dominance? Judgment? Iciness? Welcoming a stranger in this place is defilement! Listeners will suspect homosexuality might be in play here – and it must be the case that even those who totally embrace same gender relationships and marriage have to recognize that those beds too can be defiled in the same way straight beds are. “Let marriage be held in honor by all”? Thankfully it doesn’t say “traditional marriage”!

   Notice the proximity of hospitality to strangers and marriage. Isn’t Hebrews inviting couples to have missional marriages? Not asking God to make us happy or keep the peace, but What is God calling us, as a couple, to be and do? Is philoxenia our relationship’s mission statement? How to begin such a quest? Our Gospel lesson keeps it simple – but it’s oh so counter-cultural.

   Luke 14:1, 7-14 is my favorite text that stands so well on its own I’m tempted merely to read it, let folks ponder it in silence, then read it again and sit down: “When you host a dinner, do not invite those who can invite you in return, but invite the poor, maimed, lame, blind” requires zero finesse.

   Spiritual people love that old Moravian blessing, “Come, Lord, Jesus, our Guest to be. And bless these gifts bestowed by Thee.” But if Jesus pulls up to your table, he asks who’s there, who isn’t there, and why.

   Our beloved The Bible is clear! Or We stand with Scripture! people avert their gazes, or scramble to rationalize. Notice Jesus doesn’t say Don’t only invite those who can invite you in return – but flat out, Don’t invite them! Sheesh. Jesus isn’t devising a program to feed the hungry – although he urges us to be sure they are fed. He’s on a mission to save our souls. I often say If you only hang around with people like you, you become arrogant and ignorant.

   I also love to tell this: I think of people who have with some grandiosity walked into my office with a ham, or a food gift card, asking me to get it to some poor person. On bad days I’d say Thanks! On better days I’d say Find someone and deliver it to them yourself. On my best days I’d say Take it home, and invite the people you have in mind into your home and share it with them. That’s a Jesus-y meal, right? Can you tell a story, even from your own having dinners, that might paint the picture?

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  Check out my book, not on how to preach, but how to continue preaching: The Beauty of the Word: The Challenge and Wonder of Preaching.

No Explanations in the Church!

    I was lucky enough recently to enter the Church of All Nations by the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. I noticed the sign by the door, sternly warning “Please, No Explanations inside the Church” – and snapped a photo. A while back I had read something Ellen Davis wrote (in her marvelous Preaching the Luminous Word) about this sign:

   “We in the church have been baptized into the mystery of Christ; and so long as we attend to God, with every heartbeat we are drawn more deeply into a mystery that infinitely exceeds our understanding and power of expression, a mystery of mercy that goes beyond even our wildest hopes and imaginings. So no explanations in the church; rather, let us speak softly and with wonder, as befits a holy place.”

    Our people are – what to call them? – flatlanders, prosaic, mushed down people who only know cause and effect, political ideologies, loudness, clutter, busy-ness, and all the while our faith happens and is about something quiet, expansive, beyond imagining, something grasped only in the silence, in the dark, a little baffled. To walk people into mystery, the preacher must ink this in at the top of every sermon.

    How to preach the mystery that our Gospel is? Mystery doesn’t mean it’s incomprehensible, or not rooted in fact. It’s higher, deeper, more enveloping than the very real facts we know, with what’s comprehensible as the launching point.

    I think people need to see in the preacher a sense of awe in the face of mystery. So too much explaining, too much rational argument, too many earthy illustrations can ruin the mystery. When I was in Div School, we had a talent show every year – with a segment where students would walk on stage and imitate a professor, and the crowd would guess who it was. My friend Pat walked out, starting talking rationally about the Trinity, then removed his glasses, began to stammer, then put his hand over his eyes as if exasperated, searching for elusive words. It was Tom Langford, who taught theology this way – pitch perfect.

   I long to see more stammering, more scrunched up facesand reaching for impossible words in sermon delivery. When I teach preaching, I invite students to read Michael Erard’s wonderful Um: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What they Mean. He explores how, indeed, some talkers fumble around unintentionally and say Uh or Um too much. But an Um, with a pause, has fabulous functions. It implies humility: you don’t have this thing all figured out. It gives the listener space to fill in what you’re stumbling to say – so they are involved. “The scariest thing about dying is… Um…” and a listener pokes his or her fear into your talk, now fully engaged. Winston Churchill prepared his speeches with marginal notes of when to pause, when to fumble for a word, when to scrunch up his face and say Um.

   Just being quiet, not talking so fast. The Holy Spirit can fill the pregnant pauses. Or asking questions: every sermon should have questions that are left unanswered. Let it linger. Why was Elijah burnt out on Mt. Horeb? How did Mary feel when she heard Jesus’ first cry? What made Judas betray? Just leave it out there. What will heaven be like? Mystery.

   And finally, be careful to distinguish what’s proper to a classroom and what’s fitting in a sermon. An explication of the Trinity, or a meander through the origins of apocalyptic language, or the course of Jeremiah’s career. Offer a class! And in the sermon, supply a few hints you know such things and could lead such a class; you’ve read, reflected, and know – but for now we’re embracing and even falling into mystery. No explanations in the church!

What can we say May 1? Easter 3

    Acts 9:1-20. We don’t always think of Paul’s conversion story as a resurrection appearance – but he sure did: check out the creedal 1 Corinthians 15! Our Old Testament reading, which laughably (to me) is Acts 9, reveals something of the nature of the risen Christ. Not just a dead guy resuscitated, but a spiritual body, a body, recognizable, able to be seen and heard, yet utterly transformed, transfigured. Well after he’s ascended into heaven, the risen Jesus is still on the loose, changing everything. Appearing to Saul. Fulfilling Martin Luther King's admonition that "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." A blinding vision from heaven works pretty well too.

   I’m struck enthusiastically by Willie Jennings’s brilliant new commentary on Acts, here pondering how the Spirit has this habit of interrupting lives. Recalling that Saul is a killer: “He killed in the name of righteousness. No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life… Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their logic. Their authority confirms their argument.” Implications abound.

   But, Saul does not yet know that “the road to Damascus has changed. It is space now inhabited by the wayfaring Spirit of the Lord. Saul pursues, but he is being pursued.” Jesus asks Saul/Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?” or “Why are you harming me?” “In our world, this question flows most often out of the mouths of the poor, women and children.” Indeed, “the only good answer is to stop.” Saul/Paul’s “Who are you?” question mirrors Moses’s, and the answer, “I am Jesus” echoes Exodus 3 as well. Indeed, the particularity of Jesus: Saul/Paul “turns from the abstract Lord to the concrete Jesus” (Jennings, still).

   “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” – namely, in the bodies of Jesus’ followers. Jennings again on verses 10ff: these visions “seem to be auditory, visual and cinematic.” “The visions are less about what we can capture in sight and sound and more about being captured.”

   Here’s Willie’s best stuff: Ananias says “I have heard about this man.” “Saul is a killer of disciples. Do I act on a truth about someone, a truth that may put me in danger, or do I follow the word of the Lord and touch this dangerous person?” Ananias is so very honest – always the starting point of spiritual progress. Jennings again: “Ananias goes to Saul armed with Saul’s future and not his own.”

   “The truth we know of a person or people must move to the background, and what we know of God’s desire for them must move to the foreground.” Indeed, scales fall from Saul/Paul’s eyes – but doesn’t Ananias also enjoy some new vision of reality?

   F.F. Bruce points to Sundar Singh’s conversion. After years of hostility to the Gospel, he saw a great light one night (in 1904): “I saw the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, an appearance of glory and love. If it had been a Hindu incarnation, I would have prostrated myself. But it was the Lord Jesus Christ I’d been insulting the day before. A voice asked, ‘How long will you persecute me? I have come to save you.’ I realized Jesus is not dead but living. So I fell at his feet and received this wonderful peace, and the joy I was wishing for.”

   I love the suggestion, “Go into the city, and you will be told what to do,” which makes me wonder if that’s the word to us, that we discern our calling, the point of being a Christian, when we go into the city, and listen to the challenges and sorrows, the injustices and agonies of where real, and usually unchurched people live, work and play. You won’t take Jesus into the city. He’s already there.

  Ananias intrigues. The greatest of Christians are debtors to someone who ushered them into the Body. Naming yours, or others will make great illustrations. He said “Here I am” – and so perhaps models the readiness for Paul, and for us. We’ll sing #593 from the Methodist hymnal…

   Notice Church isn’t an institution just yet. It’s still called “the way” – and it might be a way, a path, a journey even for us as we reimagine things. Quirky thought: is there any irony that he is at the “house of Judas”? A common name, yes – but foes of Jesus aren’t tossed aside but redeemed in this story. Unlikely instruments everywhere.

   The scales falling from his eyes – symbolic of the spiritually blind now seeing, such a key miracle in Jesus’ ministry – reminds me of Puff the Magic Dragon: “His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain.” Childhood lost – so what did Paul lose when he saw the light? Plenty – and we hear the pain of his loss repeatedly in his letters: family, reputation, the security of the Law, much more.

   John 21:1-19. John 21 wasn’t long after Easter; Acts 9 many months later. Both are startling and transformative; conversion in both entails commissioning. I love the statue by the Sea of Galilee at The Primacy of Peter, a church built over a flat stone, allegedly the table where Jesus served breakfast to his disciples. This story has so many riveting details. Jesus cooking breakfast? Eating fish together? The fishing: notice in the Gospels the disciples never catch any fish without Jesus’ help!

   The haunting conversation between Peter and Jesus is memorable, and cuts to the heart of what adherence to the risen Christ is all about. Jesus doesn’t ask him Are you doing what I told you to do? or Have you been good? Jesus wants to know from him and from us, Do you love me? Way too much gets made about the variation in the Greek between agapé and philo – as if Jesus yearns for agapé but Peter can only muster philo? These two terms are pretty much interchangeable in John’s lexicon – and Jesus and Peter would have been chatting in Aramaic anyhow.

   Mary Magdalene’s plaintive puzzlement in Jesus Christ Superstar, “I don’t know how to love him,” is a fair starting point. What does this peculiar love feel like? Or look like? By the time Jesus parts from Peter, he has told him and us how. But the question itself: I love the moment in Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye surprises his wife Golde by asking “Do you love me?” Her reply? “Do I what? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town, you’re upset, you’re worn out, maybe it’s indigestion. Do I love you? For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow – After 25 years, why talk about love now?”

   Without oversimplifying, church folks (and clergy) might hear themselves responding to Jesus’ query by saying For years I’ve read your book, sat in your pew, given money, tried to be nice, volunteered at the shelter, gone to seminary…  But do you love me? I wonder about preaching a sermon that might list 3 or 4 simple, doable ways to love Jesus. 

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   Check out my book on, not how to preach, but how to continue preaching, The Beauty of the Word: The Challenge and Wonder of Preaching.