What can we say August 9? 11th after Pentecost

    I think I’ll preach the Old Testament! But read below for my flirtation with the Epistle and Gospel, which have their thoughtful moments.  Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 appeals to me, as the idea of preaching through the narrative of Joseph (Gen. 37-50) is something I want to do some day. The lectionary, though, skips immediately to chapter 45 next week and then plunges ahead into Exodus. Maybe a sermon can capture the flow of the larger story – without the sermon being a mere retelling of that story.

   And what a story! The drama, emotion, irony and vivid settings make this the Bible’s single greatest tale. The climax in chapter 45 (or is it in 50 after Jacob dies?) is stunning, undermining all our theological oversimplification. Joseph doesn’t let the brothers off, or give them another chance. He sees in how God, without causing evil, uses it for good – and the preacher dare not over-trivialize that thought either. Perilous but precious stuff.

   Just on chapter 37: Joseph, if we’re reading the Hebrew correctly, doesn’t get a “technicolor dreamcoat” (a la Andrew Lloyd Webber!) but rather a coat with long sleeves. Short sleeves were essential for day laborers in the fields, where it would be hot and brambles would get caught in longer sleeves. So Jacob is saying Joseph gets to live in the comfort and authority of the house, while the older brothers bear the sweat of hard work out of doors. As happens in the case of Cain and Abel, brother rages against brother, when brother’s real problem is with the Father (or God).

   Fascinating that, within a single family, we have class division. I wonder if, in my sermon, I might help people think about dashed dreams (especially during this coronavirus season?) - but not just for us but for the marginalized? I may have a soprano sing "I Dreamed a Dream" (from Les Miserables) - and try to ruminate on crushed dreams among us and others. I also noted, watching John Lewis's funeral, that James Lawson quoted Langston Hughes's great dream poem: "I dream a world where man / No other man will scorn, where love will bless the earth / and peace its paths adorn / I dream a world where all / will know sweet freedom's way, where greed no longer saps the soul / nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth / and every man is free, where wretchedness will hang its head / and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind / Of such I dream, my world!" It's not a stretch! Joseph's dream, at the end of the day, was about securing enough for everybody, food for the entire world.

   Jonathan Sacks notices how Reuben fairly quickly tries to intervene, but fails – calling him “the Hamlet of Genesis,” someone with good intentions he never completes, or they backfire; at the critical moment, he never comes through.

   We have little hints in this opening scene of the story of how God superintends things. God is, as Sacks puts it, “already monitoring the sequence of events, arranging the necessary strategic interventions to ensure that the outcome will be as planned.” All this is concealed, not obvious at all – and so I wonder how the preacher opens up to listeners the idea that we are sort of “co-authors of our lives,” free to act, yet with God’s involvement, a far cry from the silly “God is in control” mantra people love.

   I love it that the Bible seems utterly lacking in sweet, happy families. So much dysfunction – helpful to me, as a guy from an utterly dysfunctional family. Tolstoy’s opening to Anna Karenina is poignant: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s a bit tongue in check. Every family has its unhappiness. A pastoral challenge is to help people not to glibly say such saccharine things about family. During the Covid-19 crisis, how many people said “Oh, how cool to get more time with family!” – in earshot of the woman whose belittling husband now stays home instead of giving her the respite of leaving for work, or the divorcee who felt her loneliness more agonizingly. Don’t do this in preaching, ever! – and help people to learn how to talk with one another about family. Bible families oddly enough show us the way.

   How haunting was it for Jacob to be deceived, deceiver that he was, and to see the younger lording it over his outdoorsy older brothers, having done so himself - successfully but then at a steep cost to himself. Marilynne Robinson names the atmosphere movingly, suggesting that Jacob "would live out long years among sons who were burdened with secrecy and guilt, always suspecting them, his divinely promised descendants, of a crime he might detest them for..." Had Joseph's brothers done away with him? "A question too terrible to be asked, a confession too terrible to be made, and Jacob growing old in this silence."

   Romans 10:5-15. "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" My surgically repaired foot is ugly as sin. Of course, Paul is seeing the beauty in the proclaimer, who's been sent, actually going, walking, getting to the people to share.

   I love this: in Abraham Verghese's wonderful The Covenant of Water, Philipose tells Elsie, "I have a notebook on feet. Feet reveal character. You could be a king or bishop and adorn your hands with jewels. But feet are your unadorned self, regardless of who you proclaim yourself to be."

   Ugly feet have their beauty, if they’ve trudged courageously. In Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin tells of a wily World War I veteran who tries to share his wisdom with a young man who quickly grows weary as they walk along the road: “You may be tall, handsome, intelligent and gifted; but if you have feet of despair you might as well shine shoes on the Via del Corso; feet of despair are too tender, can’t fight back. Under prolonged assault they come apart and bleed to death; they become infected and swollen in half an hour. On the other hand are feet of invincibility. Feet of invincibility are ugly, but they last forever - building defenses where they are attacked, turning color, reproportioning and repositioning themselves until they look like bulldogs.”

   Michael Gorman calls the string of scriptural citations here “somewhat confusing.” Verse 9 gets isolated: “If you just confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” as if that’s a formula for a revival. Paul is leaning in to his Jewish relatives and friends who just don’t buy into Jesus. Complicates things – and then do we really want to name that anyone who utters “Jesus is Lord,” and intellectually accepts that Jesus was raised are saved? – and that’s it?

   What about the woman I counseled with who swore to me she’d never believe in Jesus because her daddy, who most certainly did as a Bible teacher and deacon in his church, sexually abused her through her teenage years? He’s saved and she isn’t? Or those who have only heard about Jesus from boring, vapid, judgmental people? They’re not saved but the dullards are? I don’t think it’s a problem to ask such questions in the pulpit. No need to answer them. Just let them linger.

   Matthew 14:22-33. A tough text unless you do the You have to get out of the boat to walk on water thing. My skeptical head just spins over such a story, that feels more parable than fact – although who knows? I prefer realities – like the sensational archaeological discovery of “the Jesus boat,” a real fishing boat dating to the time of Jesus, a boat he most assuredly saw and maybe stepped into, helps me feel my way into the reality of first century life on Galilee.

   Did this Jesus walk on water? And Peter too, acting very Bruce Almighty-like? – but only briefly. Peter, whose name means “rock,” sank like a stone. As we would expect. And Jesus fusses at him! Seems like he should give him credit for taking even a few steps – on water.

   There’s a Buddhist story of a disciple who walked on water, or sank depending on whether he focused on the Buddha. Easy story to spiritualize. We can even sing “Precious Lord, take my hand.” But I’m probably not the only guy in the room who will just shrug and say Gosh, not sure this really happened. The Gospel writers had to know skeptics as well. Maybe one or two were themselves skeptics. But they let the story stand – maybe to throw cold water on skeptics like me and invite me to suspend me for a few minutes and tread onto such a story that, if it happened or not, most clearly is about faith, and really about how utterly amazing and God-like Jesus really was and is.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 16? 12th after Pentecost

       I cannot imagine why a preacher would forego the Old Testament lection for this Sunday – ever, but especially now, given the severe splintering we’re experiencing in society, and in the church. Still, Jesus and the Canaanite woman is a rich text as well (see below).

    Genesis 45 is the theological high water mark of the Old Testament, and is a peer of even the best the New Testament has to offer.  Reconciliation should be the fixed point in all our thinking, imagination, labor, and prayers. 

   No biblical story narrates the grief, time, joy and miracle of reconciliation as powerfully as the drama of Joseph.  The emotional intensity of the climax in chapter 45 is intense, and you have to let it be intense, and feel it in your bones; let the story take your breath away or they won’t feel it either.  The Egyptians overheard Joseph’s sobbing in the next room; people in the pews had best hear it in the sanctuary.  The weeping and embracing are just astonishing, and so beautiful – and I can’t help at some point racing ahead to the riveting moment when Joseph is reunited with his father; “he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a long time” (Gen. 46:29).

     You can’t just plop down in chapter 45 either; the backstory matters.  Without over-explicating every detail, the preacher has to pick up where the story begins, in chapter 37, with a pathetically dysfunctional family, Joseph’s dream that was from God but felt like sham arrogance, the brothers’ cruel dispatching of him and then the wretched way they shattered their father’s heart, Joseph’s rise, and then fall, and then rise in Egypt.  Don’t assume people know the story, but then don’t expend twelve minutes retelling it either.  Urge your people to read it at home, promising it’s better than House of Cards or Game of Thrones.

       Here’s an interesting detail from the Hebrew: of all his sons, Jacob loved Joseph best – because his deepest affection was for his mother Rachel, not the other mothers of his other boys.  And so, Jacob dressed this son, not in an “amazing technicolor dreamcoat” (as in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - which is such silliness compared to his other work!), but (as the Hebrew puts it) in “long sleeves.” The other brothers wore short sleeves, meaning their labor was in the fields, in the heat, where briars would get tangled in long sleeves. Joseph was established in the house with those long sleeves, in a position of comfort and power over the brothers.  It was that long-sleeved garment of privilege denied them that they bloodied and handed to their father.

   Marilynne Robinson has reflected so profoundly on the backstory - those years between when they did what they did to Joseph and the rediscovery. How did Jacob live with those ten sons? He never asked if they had done away with Joseph – “a question too terrible to be asked, a confession too terrible to be made, and Jacob growing old in this silence.” And, with them, did Jacob shiver when he recalled being himself a horribly flawed sibling? “Since the presumed death of Joseph, Jacob would have noticed a grim bond among them that excluded him. And he would not have been able to put aside the bitter knowledge that sons can deceive their fathers. Alone as he had been with his guilt as he stood absurdly disguised, lying to blind old Isaac, he might find a semblance of it in the tense caution of their dealings with him.” And isn’t Robinson right about Jacob’s reunion with Joseph? “But the days of many years have been full of dread and loss and grief and suspicion, and no ending can be happy enough to change this.” Boom. Brilliant.

     To focus on chapter 45 I wouldn’t spend too much time on Joseph’s character – which isn’t really the point.  He has considerable brilliance, and a moral compass we do not see often in our days.  But that would be to moralize a theologically robust story.  The shock of God’s way comes when the famine compelled the brothers to go down to Egypt, the breadbasket of the world. In a stunning plot twist, it was Joseph from whom they had to ask for food. He would give them far, far more. Naturally they didn’t recognize him; but he recognized them. After dallying with them a bit, he dismissed his entourage from the room, let loose long pent-up emotions, gathered himself, dried his tears, and revealed his secret: “I am Joseph, your brother.”

     When I preach on this, I let the emotion drip, I leave time for it to flow around the room and into the souls of people.  His next words?  “Is my father alive?”  Again, in a pre-cell-phone era, he did not know, and hoped against hope; the brothers, who had despised father and brother, had to feel the gut-wrenchingness of his question.  Mind you, the Bible doesn’t tell us how they felt!  So we have space to find our own emotions from our own life stories in there somewhere – without reading in so much you don’t hear Joseph’s story any longer.  The brothers had to be stricken with shock, horror, guilt, trepidation, remorse.

     But how did Joseph deal with those who had treated him and his father so cruelly? His words must have taken light years to sink in: “Do not be distressed; don’t be angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me here to preserve life” (Gen 45:5). Even after the glorious reunion with his father, and then even after Jacob’s death, Joseph said the most remarkable thing: “Do not be afraid. You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, so that many people should be kept alive” (Gen 50:20). Joseph forgave; he cast their common, broken life into the hands of God’s larger intentions. Testimony to God’s miracle – in the big story, but then also in Joseph’s gentle disposition.  Who is capable of what he just said to them?

     Notice the brothers weren’t given a “second chance,” another crack at getting it right. They never got it right; they never made up for what they had done. God did not depend on any attitude change among the brothers. God quite simply used the evil they perpetrated and transformed it into good.

     Not that God caused them to do evil: God did not make them sell their brother or break their father’s heart. But God gathered up their misdeeds, the broken will of God, and pieced it all together for God’s good purpose. Joseph’s leadership was defined by seeing, understanding, and then articulating this. He brought healing to the fractured family, and food to a hungry world – or rather, his leading was God’s imperceivable, mysterious use of his life, and then his awed witness to it.  It’s so important to get this nuance: in my Will of God book, I carefully distinguish that God uses evil but doesn’t cause it; and we need to say God uses every evil for good.  Some evils are just evil, and it eviscerates and trivializes the suffering to try sunnily to claim God brings some good from it.

   Joseph's refusal to enact his power reveals indirectly the heart of God. Marilynne Robinson once more: PIf human beings are to be granted individuality, agency, freedom, meaningful existence as human beings, then God must practice almost limitless restraint,” and then that, “to refrain, to put side power, is godlike." Philippians 2 anyone? She continues: God “can change and not change,” and “immutability is not an inevitable consequence of His nature, as if options were denied Him by philosophical consistency.”

     Leadership expert Ron Heifetz speaks of the need for leaders who climb up into the “balcony” and see larger patterns in the workplace.  Joseph was caught up far higher than the balcony; he was granted a view from heaven itself.  Claus Westermann (in his Genesis 37-50 commentary) wisely noticed that God did not merely use the evil of the brothers; God could have done that without the brothers ever meeting up with Joseph. No, “God’s plan is to bring the evil devised by the brothers to good in such a way that there can be forgiveness.”

     So many threads to follow.  Reconciliation takes time, a long time.  Reconciliation isn’t forgive and forget; it’s genuine healing – for everybody involved.  Joseph needed the healing as much as the brothers and their father did.  The beneficiaries of this reconciliation?  Not just this family, but people who had never known them!

     If ever a text shouted to the preacher “Trust me!” it is this one.  You don’t need to make it relevant; it’s more relevant than anything you can devise.  You don’t have to make it interesting or funny; it’s the greatest story ever told.

     I might touch on “Joseph could control himself no longer.”  We are control freaks – but the healing comes when we yield control and let the emotions roll.  The emotion isn’t Oh, I feel God! but rather, Wow, God is releasing, and healing my emotions!  Think of the joy when the hobbits are reunited in Rivendell after the ring is destroyed at Mordor (The Return of the King); J.R.R. Tolkien told a friend that when he wrote this scene, his tears kept smearing the ink.  He never saw the video of course, but Peter Jackson handled this so well.

     Or the scene in Good Will Hunting where Sean embraces Will and keeps repeating, “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.”  Very Genesis 45ish.  Of course, the climactic scene of all climactic scenes is the cross (“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good”) – or is it the resurrection? Or that breakfast reunion by Galilee (John 21)?

   Matthew 15:21-28. The story of the Canaanite woman (Syro-Phoenician in Mark!) is a doozy - all the more reason to preach on it! Floyd Filson, in his 1960 commentary on Matthew, suggested that he winked at her when he spoke these words, implying insider status for this one. Or was it a clever ploy on Jesus’ part to evoke deeper faith in her, or those watching? I'm pretty sure I prefer the notion of Jesus growing into a fuller ministry, realizing through this woman's chutzpah that he has more boundaries to cross - than thinking Jesus is omniscient and a winker!

   Sarah Ruden’s new translation (The  Gospels) quite rightly renders kunarion as “little doggies,” instead of “dog.” Try it. Better. More pitiful, more dismissive. Dogs, we might recall, did not enjoy warm relationships with humans back in Bible times. 

   Morna Hooker, noting how Jesus confined his attention to the Jews, suggested that “the Gentile woman requests a cure outside the context of Jesus’ call to Israel; she seems to be asking for a cure which is detached from the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, merely taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the presence of a miracle worker. This is perhaps the reason for Jesus’ stern answer; his healings are part of something greater and cannot be torn out of that context.”

   Joel Marcus is mindful of the history of bad blood between Tyrians and Galileans – and how the farm produce of Galilee so often wound up in Tyre, while the peasants in Galilee went hungry. So Jesus’ words make a bit of compassionate sense. Or should we suggest, as many have, that Jesus had a growing moment, a learning experience, a maturation in himself? Mistakenly, he turned her away – and her persistence cracked open a bit of hardness in Jesus’ Jewishness to leave space for a desperate Gentile? Depending on the height of your view of Jesus’ humanity, this may or may not work.

   Martin Luther examined this text and thought of the ways Christians are to persist in trusting God, even when God seems to turn his back on them. They must learn to see the ‘yes’ hidden in his ‘no.’  Much wisdom here – although the preacher dare not resort to trifling ideas such as those articulated in Garth Brooks’s crooning “Unanswered Prayers.”

   The woman’s persistence has recently been likened to the persistence of women right insisting on their place in the church. “Nevertheless, She Persisted” became a popular slogan, t-shirt and hashtag this year. Persistence of all kinds is a biblical thing, falsifying the absurd notion of God’s will being associated with “the door was open.” Many open doors we most surely should not walk through. And many closed and bolted doors should be knocked down.

   I am fond of Sheila Nelson-McJilton’s probing sermon, “Crumbs” – cited in Leonora Tubbs Tisdale’s great book, Prophetic Preaching. “Crumbs. That’s all they are looking for. Crumbs. Not the whole life. Not even a slice. Just crumbs. You and I want the whole loaf…” – and then she speaks of our wealth, access, all the poor lack. But then she presses further: “Crumbs. They want more than crumbs because deep in their souls, they know they deserve more. And yet they often do not know who to ask or how to ask…”

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 23? 13th after Pentecost

    How to choose among these 3 stunning texts? I may touch on the Old Testament and Epistle, saving this chunk of the Gospel for next week, when Matthew 16 arrives at its real climax. Before exploring the so very preachable and vivid drama of Exodus, let’s set the context by rambling around our Epistle.

   Romans 12:1-8. Conformity? or Transformation? Michael Gorman deploys some thoughtful phrasings of what’s going on in this fabulous text. Given the Gospel laid out in Romans 1-11, Paul now explains the reflex in us of God’s mercy: it’s a “believing allegiance,” a “resurrectional cruciformity.” Cruciform, but joyful.

   Gorman suggests chapters 12 onward are “like a Christian Holiness Code,” the New Testament’s version of Leviticus 17-26. Indeed: sacrifices were commanded under the Old Covenant. Paul repurposes that image and language here, taking our bodies and minds as our sacrifices, a fulltime worship that “does not occur only in specific places or at specific times; it is, rather, the liturgy of life.”

   I think of the story of Clarence Jordan’s daughter Jan coming home from school in tears, explaining to her dad that a boy named Bob Speck was picking on her, pushing her and throwing her books on the floor – harassment due to Jordan’s radical Christian community, Koinonia. Jordan responded to her: “I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes and beat the hell out of Bob Speck.” Jan answered: “You can’t be excused for 15 minutes.”

   This text figured – sort of – in my college days. My roommate’s girlfriend cross-stitched J.B. Phillips’s rendering of this passage and hung it on our wall – perhaps fantasizing it would help us behave: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.” Or as we may know it, “Do not be conformed, but be transformed.”

   N.T. Wright (in his New Interpreter’s Bible commentary) says “The opening 2 verses of this section are as dense as any passage in Paul.”  Agreed.  Read slowly.  Preach a whole series on the thing.  I won’t attempt every detail, but here are a few that leave me thunderstruck and appear to be fertile preaching ground.

   The “Therefore” is huge!  Paul assumes you’ve just been listening to somebody read out loud chapters 1-11 – so remind yourself about grace, faith, the Spirit, baptism. Paul seems to be shifting from faith to action – an unfortunate “seems,” as Christians forever focus on belief and then forget to get to ethics, simultaneously forgetting they are one and the same. N.T. Wright again: “Belief and behavior are inextricably woven. They are the breath and blood of Christian living, the twin signs of life.” 

   Two things: even fine church people are great conformists – to the culture, to parental expectation, to the confines of political ideology; Christian parents hope their children will “fit in,” and fret when they don’t. Paul says “Don’t fit in!” Who said “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd”?

   Paul trashes conformity, replacing it with “Be transformed.” The grammar startles me: this metamorphousthe (like metamorphosis!) is a passive imperative. Imperatives usually say Go do this. But the passive imperative is Go have this done to yourself, just let this happen in you. Clearly a power outside ourselves – the Spirit! – does this work on and in us. And the verbs here are plural! Y’all be transformed. It’s not mere individuals but the community, together.

   I dig C.E.B. Cranfield’s remark (in his fabulous ITT commentary on Romans): “There is only one possibility open to us – to resist this process of being continually moulded and fashioned according to the pattern of this present age with its conventions and standards of values.  The good news is we are no longer helpless victims of tyrannizing forces, but we are able to resist this pressure which comes both from without and from within, because God’s merciful action in Christ has provided the basis of resistance.”

   Back to speaking of plurals: Paul declares we do all this “by the mercies of God.” Not mercy, but mercies – a plural captured in the hymn “Great is thy Faithfulness.” I need plenty myself.

   Notice also for your people that worship for Paul isn’t sitting in a pew singing hymns and reciting litanies. It’s something you do with your body. We all worship something, some things, with our bodies. How stunning is this? You can please God, or not, with your body. It’s the “temple of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Gorman calls it “death and difference.” It’s a new way of perceiving, a new way of doing everything in, with, and about our bodies. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited us to be “transformed nonconformists.”

   But then I wonder if conformity is itself transformative - if we are conforming to Christ, or to great saints in the life of the Church.

   Need an illustration of all this? Look no further than today’s lectionary…

   Exodus 1:8-2:10 dovetails three dramatic moments that are precisely what Paul was talking about: the vicious infliction of harsh servitude on Israel, the devious midwives countering, and then the birth and rescue of Moses, the rescuer.

   Tourists gawk at the pyramids as wonders of the world. Like most others, they came to be on the backs of slave labor, blood, sweat and tears. American culture is mired in debates now about monuments to the beneficiaries of slave labor. And Walter Brueggemann, in his lovely book Sabbath as Resistance, unearths how our culture clings to Egyptian ways: endless work, more and more production, money flowing upward toward the top. The coronavirus crisis underlines how we are lost without it. I love Brueggemann’s phrasing: “It is not accidental that the best graphic portrayal of this arrangement is a pyramid, the supreme construction of Pharaoh’s system.”

   And who’s the most anxious one in such a system? The guy at the top! “He dealt shrewdly with them,” a line to make you laugh out loud. Less straw, killing the male work force? Paranoia, self-destructive – but just as surely destructive of others. I think I will name, again, the way our idolatry of our day, political ideology, vaunts itself as the way, truth and life, but is finally only self-destructive. That's bipartisan...

   How deftly the narrator, like using a zoom lens, moves from the megapicture of Egypt, its vastness, and sprawling construction projects, to two small women, Shiphrah (meaning “beautiful”) and Puah (“fragrant flower”). Religious parents should name their daughters for them. They “fear God,” but they also have considerable spunk, sass, courage. History’s first civil disobedients! Thoreau reminded the world that “I was just obeying orders!” is no defense. Church people need to get over their blind attachments to what superficially seems to be patriotism or goodness. God’s great heroes through history have blatantly disobeyed the law, starting with Peter (“We must obey God rather than men,” Acts 5), continuing through history to the Civil Rights movement; the examples are endless, although the preacher never disses listeners. An art, not a science for sure.

   The Bible disses empire, but in clever, sneaky ways. Why didn’t Shiphrah and Puah kill the babies? “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are so strong they give birth before the midwives can get there.” True? A little fib? Doesn’t matter. They were heroic. Instead of blaming and feeling impotent in the face of massive powers, they did what they could.

   The heroic is always like that. Church doesn’t speak often enough of courage. Examples abound. John Irving, in Cider House Rules, uses Charles’ Dickens’s great line from David Copperfield to great effect: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Dr. Larch is reading on through the book to orphans from David Copperfield, inspiring them to be just this: heroes of their own lives.

   Or Aunt May’s wise counsel to Peter Parker/Spiderman: “Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them. Years later, they’ll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer. I believe there’s a hero in all of us…that keeps us honest…gives us strength…makes us noble…and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most – even our dreams.”

   Heroes? Small people changing the world? Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. Albert Schweitzer, giving up a lucrative career to plunge into Lamparene. Jochebed defied Pharaoh by hiding her son. Even Pharaoh’s daughter! Rameses II, greatest of the pharaohs (and it’s no accident that this was precisely when God showed who’s really God!) had 59 daughters! This one knowingly took a Hebrew boy who was to be killed into her home.

   There’s so much in Exodus 2! Moses is a “good” child; the Hebrew, tov, is the same as what God pronounced over each day of creation in Genesis 1. How on earth would one keep a child quiet for so long?  Right now, moms (parents generally) are weary and near despair, trying to work from home while also teaching - and then think of the marginalized families and their even greater despair! The preacher names these realities, even if there are no evident fixes. What is God asking of the Church in such a time?

   When Moses's mother can no longer manage, in a moment wrought with poignant sorrow and yet unquenchable hope, she places him in a basket and just sends him down the Nile. The word for basket, tevah, is used only one other time in Scripture: Noah’s ark! Like Noah’s ark, this tevah had no rudder or sail, floating randomly – and yet was God’s hand in it somehow? The preacher might wish to say Yes! But it’s better just to let the question linger – which is how our people experience there lives. Think Forrest Gump: “I don't know if Momma was right or if, if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happenin' at the same time.”

   And then the Pharaoh's daughter: how much courage did it take for her to welcome a slave child into the palace? Kelley Nikondeha, in her thoughtful book Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us About Freedom, sees her as a beneficiary of a closed system of complicity. When she bathed, she was "attempting to purge the filth of empire. Something in her broke under the water's surface." She leverages her privilege (this is God's call to us!) to save a child washed ashore. Nikondeha then ponders such moments in our day.

   My mind rushed to Pope Francis. For his first trip away from Rome after his consecration, he chose Lampedusa, and island in the Mediterranean where hundreds of immigrant bodies had washed ashore. He had an altar made from the wrecked boats of migrants, and spoke of the place as symbolic of "the locked door between the worlds of affluence and poverty." His sermon strove to "awaken the consciences of those who have forgotten how to weep over the plight of the poor."

   And then Matthew 16:13-20. In the plot of the Synoptics, the clear turning point in the saga is this very moment. Until then (as I learned from W.H. Vanstone’s old and profound book, The Stature of Waiting), Jesus is in control, a dynamic actor striding across the stage of history, working miracles, dazzling the crowds. Now he has ventured to the border, in the far north, to Caesarea Philippi, which in those days was a warren of pagan temples; check out the artist’s rendition of what it would have looked like, imperial altars all affixed to the ancient cave dedicated to the nature god, Pan. After this haunting conversation in such a place, Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem. No more miracles really. Increasingly he is passive; he is “handed over.” He is acted upon.

   Vanstone muses on what this alone might mean for us. as we think life’s plot should be toward increasing control, independence – and we loathe any turn toward dependence. I had a close friend with colon cancer.  A few years back, on the week I was preparing to preach on this text, he told me with immense sorrow, “Today they handed me over to hospice.” We shudder; we pity – but Jesus invites us to respect and relish this backwards plot to our lives, for it was the plot of his life.  Jesus was amazing in his first weeks of ministry. But the real glory came when he let himself be betrayed, beaten, tried unjustly, when he “never said a-mumblin’ word,” when he refused to come down from the cross or strike his enemies dead but instead forgave them. Even his resurrection was passive:  he didn’t bolt from the tomb and knock the guards aside; God raised him.

   Jesus’ identity is debated, among those who know him best. Who do people say Jesus is today? Political ideologue? White guy? Liberal prophet? My personal assistant? The answers are many, and downright embarrassing. Peter gets the right answer, but doesn’t grasp what that identity implies. I love the irony in Jesus’ rebuke: “Get behind me.” That’s precisely where disciples are supposed to be – for it is from behind that we follow! Jesus is heroic, but not a Spiderman kind of heroic. He'll show the heroic, if Peter will be stick around.

   Matthew alone then supplies the much-abused conversation about the keys, and Peter as the rock on which the church would be built. Without dissing Roman Catholicism, we can name the way the church perverted all of this into a power grab, and still does. To us are entrusted “keys,” but those keys are our gentle pastoral authority to listen, love, guide, demonstrate mercy and hope. Martin Luther spent a lot of time pondering these keys. We ordained peeps are responsible for order and discipline. Peter is entirely foolhardy, as are all of us who dare to wield the keys and be the church. We simply stick behind Jesus, a little bit embarrassed over how dumb we can be, and count on his mercy, his mercies plural, and journey with him to the holy city not to assume power but to lose everything.

   Of course, Stanley Hauerwas is right about Peter-as-Rock: “That so much has been written about this passage betrays the responsibility that Jesus has given Peter. Peter’s task if not to call attention to himself, but to witness to the Messiah.” And thinking Peter-as-rock: if you make it to Rome some day, don’t miss the Scavi – the excavations under the crypt of St. Peter’s, where they found a necropolis from the time of Jesus and Peter, and where they firmly and convincingly believe Peter was actually buried. A huge WOW in this place.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 30? 14th after Pentecost

 

   Exodus 3:1-15 – the subject of my first long paper in seminary. I joked that the takeaway from this text was If you see a bush on fire, take your shoes off. When Lisa and I found ourselves on vacation in New Jersey a couple of years ago, visiting (unexpectedly, a last minute rain day change in our itinerary) the Hindu temple, the fabulous and flat out amazing Shri Swaminarayan Mandir outside Robbinsville, New Jersey, once we entered we, without even asking if we had to, removed our shoes. Of course. Sacred space. Don’t track in the mud and dust.

   My book on preaching (not how to preach but more how to continue preaching, The Beauty of the Word: The Challenge and Wonder of Preaching), I reported how so many sermons I read and hear are about us, our faith, our struggles, our spirituality – when most Bible texts oddly are actually about God. Didn’t Karl Barth warn us that to speak about God is not to speak about us in a loud voice? I’d love to hear (and preach!) more sermons that are simply about God. This Sunday’s Old Testament and Gospel readings needn’t have little moralisms or take-aways. What would they be? If you see a bush on fire, take off your shoes? Go be crucified to save the world? I hope to focus on God, which inevitably will have implications for my call, the church, and how we live – but our fixed attention will be on God.

   Exodus 3 reveals to us a God who hears, who cares, who calls, who comes down to save – and not merely pie in the sky afterlife saving, but real, physical, socio-economic saving. And God calls Moses, who stammers with nothing but “Here I am,” which Isaiah would say later, and we sing now in Dan Schutte’s lovely hymn. Not Here are my credentials, or I hope to do things I’m good at for God. Just Here I am. I am not running. God seems to want availability more than ability. Gerhard von Rad pointed out that “Neither previous faith nor any other personal endowment had the slightest part to play in preparing a man who was called to stand before Yahweh for his vocation.”

   This text is about God, and God is what our lives are to be about. Here we see that God will save – for what purpose? “So that you will worship me on this mountain.” We exist to praise, notice, admire, be in awe of and simple be astounded by God. An expansive mind, blown wide open by such a God, isn’t baffled by questions like Moses’ – how a bush could burn but not really. 

   That this text is about God is reiterated when Moses asks, with naïve innocence I think, What is your name? God’s answer is – evasive? teasing Moses and us into a deep mystery? Or is the name and hence the divine nature just too overwhelming for a mere Hebrew word? Jews rightly omit the pronunciation of the name, which must be something like Yahweh (which seminarians utter with total abandon, gleeful in their thin knowledge of Hebrew, discounting the historic Jewish reverence for the name!). What can it mean, even if shrouded in mystery, this “he who must not be named” (and yes, as a Harry Potter fan I’ll probably play off Voldemort…)?  

   “Yahweh” looks like a verb. I like this a lot. God isn’t a static thing, but an action, a movement, a happening. The vowels intimate that this verbal form is causative: God is the one who causes things to happen. So God happens; and God makes things happen. Thirdly, this verb’s y prefix implies a future, an as-yet-incomplete action. God is the one who above all else will be. What was Jesus’ parting promise? “I will be with you always.” Whatever future we envision, God will be there; it will be about God, and for God. 2 Corinthians 5:7 says we “walk by faith, not by sight”; Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as “the conviction of things not seen.” What is unseen? Not invisible things, but future things.

   Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explores that Moses was afraid to look at God (v. 6). If he (or any one of us) got too close to God, and became like God, he could understand history from heaven’s perspective – and the price of that is too high. “He preferred to fight injustice as he saw it, than to accept it by seeing its role in the script of eternity.” Moses, we should recall, had been a fighter against in justice. When he saw a slave beaten, or two men fighting, or young women being treated roughly by shepherds, he intervened – which is why he was in Midian in the first place. Is God now asking him to keep fighting like this? or to lead in a way that opens the way for God’s redemption, which is large-scale and historic instead of just one at a time?

   Romans 12:9-21. Gorman here speaks of this text lifting up “a three-dimensional resurrectional cruciformity.” What a thought-provoking phrase! It’s Love, Faith/faithfulness, and hope… Of course.

   This text should be read slowly, maybe just one phrase a minute, or a week. You really could preach a year’s worth of sermons, lingering over each phrase. I wouldn’t over-explain in a sermon on this. Let Paul’s words just be, and do their own work. Or perhaps I’d take the pictorial dictionary approach. What face, saint, hero’s face comes to mind as you linger over “Be patient in tribulation”? or “ardent in prayer”? Or slowly notice unusual word connections. “Rejoice in hope.” Usually we think simply Have some hope. Or strain to hope. But hope itself brings joy, or you discover joy in the hoping. “Practice hospitality.” It does require practice.

   Matthew 16:21-28. Last week’s blog addressed the situation at Caesarea Philippi, and this remarkable turning point in the overall plot of Jesus’ life – from active to being acted upon, from impressing to embarrassing. Fascinating that Jesus tells him to get behind him – as that’s where followers are supposed to be anyhow! The “taking up your cross” might sound like bearing your burdens, but that’s not it at all. In the Roman world, if you picked up your cross, you were on death row, you were walking that green mile toward your execution.

   Joel Marcus, in his commentary on Mark, wisely refers us to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s thoughts on the Gulag: “From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself. ‘My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. . . I no longer have any property whatsoever. . . Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.’ Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.”

What can we say September 6? 15th after Pentecost

    Romans 13:8-14. Rarely is a single text so pivotal in the life of one of our greatest saints – and so to preach on it? This is the passage St. Augustine stumbled upon while struggling so mightily in the garden of his friend. I love Sarah Ruden’s new translation of this moment in the Confessions: “I was weeping with agonizing anguish in my heart; and then I heard a voice from next door, a little boy or girl, I don’t know which, incessantly and insistently chanting, ‘Pick it up! Read it! Pick it up! Read it!’” – and it fell open to Romans 13, in particular this: ‘Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy’ (I was doing okay for the first four… but then the last two?). ‘But put on the Lord Jesus’ (clothing again…), ‘and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.’ 

   We have made all sorts of provisions for the flesh to gratify its desires! We speak fondly of ‘comfort food,’ or for all sorts of occasions we say ‘I need a drink,’ or ‘You deserve that vacation at the beach.’

   If you're doing the Augustine angle, don't forget Mary Oliver's wonderful (short, entirely memorable) poem: "Things take the time they take. / Don't worry. / How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?" St. John Chrysostom commented on the almost inevitable connection between drunkenness and the others: “For nothing so kindles lust and sets wrath ablaze as drunkenness and tippling… Wherefore I exhort you, flee from fornication and the mother thereof, drunkenness.”

  Our text explicates what is “due,” what is “owed,” so not taxes or retirement plans, but “love” – agape. Michael Gorman is spot on: “This summary does not negate or replace the more specific commandments, but reveals what each is: a call to love.” Could the preacher reiterate this thought too often?

   Romans 13:8-14 is one of many texts that calls into question those who would drive a big wedge between Jesus and Paul. Here, just like Jesus, Paul alludes to the various commandments and then says they are summed up in the commandment to love. 

   Then he moves to the stirring “You know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep.” Lots of sleepwalking images are fitting - which we'll get to in a moment. People might lean forward though, hoping or fearing you'll talk about being WOKE - a way conservatives ridicule liberals. Being awake is good? But can be excessive? I hope to try to sort all this out - and suggest, perhaps, that the WOKEness God asks of us is to be awake and attentive to God, and awake, attentive, and deferential toward others. Dicey, I know.    Americans have Washington Irving’s old story of Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep in the Catskills as a faithful subject of King George, then woke up years later and was shocked to discover his beard was a foot long and America was a free democracy; he slept through the Revolution!

   But I think about the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,” the 7 young men who (according to legend) hid inside a cave in the third century to escape persecution against Christians, then woke up at the beginning of the fifth century to discover the empire had become Christian. The preacher could explore “sleeping through a revolution,” or it might be even more interesting to ponder what it would imply to wake up in a world where, if everything and everybody are Christian, then is anybody really Christian? 

   Americans also have “the Great Awakening,” a revival that was unanticipated and hard to understand today. Read Jonathan Edwards’s dense, theologically muscular and not very entertaining sermons – and it’s hard to conceive that the masses, especially young adults, were stirred to renewed and deepened commitments to Christ. Makes you wonder what might actually ‘work’ today. Lighter, more accessible fare? Or denser, harder stuff? The much noted Asbury revival earlier this year? Was it an emotional surge? Or something more substantive, behavioral, even cultural or justice-fixated?

   I think of Awakenings, the book by Oliver Sacks (and then the 1990 film) – the story of victims of an encephalitis epidemic who surprisingly began to do quite well after years of affliction. All are fitting images of the power the Gospel might have on a vapid, routine kind of life. 

   Paul deploys the image of clothing. Gorman again: “The ‘clothing’ required for ‘walking’ as a Christian is nothing other than Jesus.” A few years back, we encouraged our people to pray in their closets – which Jesus told us to do! – with the prayer tag saying “Jesus said, ‘Go into your closet and pray’ (Matthew 6:6); So pray Prepare for your day with God As you dress, remember Romans 14:8, ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.’”

    And I always recommend that preachers think, not only of what a text means for an individual person, but also for the church.  What would the awakening of the church, or of your church look like?  How would it actually happen?  Can the preacher paint the picture, which might draw the church toward the reality?

   Matthew 18:15-20. This important text, clarifying that there are real processes for the church to engage in to work toward reconciliation, needs some deconstructing. Its assumption that leaders have power over wayward members is an open door to terrible abuse. Examples of this are many, and horrific. And although the obvious abuses of power are agonizing, I worry also about subtler ways those in authority wound others. Even the preacher, trying to proclaim the Gospel. I tend to think we just have zero authority vs. clergy of yesteryear. But there still is some power residing in the one standing in the pulpit, to shame, to embarrass, to belittle, to quarantine people off from God even while thinking we’re telling some Bible truth.

   Notice this text does not lay out a strategy for division!! The premise is, since we are stuck with one another, how do we deal with our stuff? Huge.

   Three quirky thoughts. (1) The idea that we should treat the unrepentant one “as a Gentile or tax collector” falls strangely off Jesus’ lips. He was a great friend to tax collectors (for which the pious ridiculed him), and the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s historic pact with Israel is at the heart of everything Christian. Dare we imagine Jesus giving a little wink, saying what the pious would like to hear (“Treat them like tax collectors!”), but assuming we’d understand that it’s like Matthew or Zaccheus now.

   (2) The “binding.” We have the power to bind. I really want to do this with my sinful people. A member of my church recently confessed a long-running affair to me, and then added “I’m sure I won’t be welcome around here after this!” I want to bind him to us, to me, to our church. It’s the lovely ropes of love that I hope to braid around him and hold him and all who feel shunned or unwelcome or unworthy to us. Not what the original had in mind – I don’t think… then also:

   (3) The “loosing.” My mind drifts to John 11. Lazarus staggers out of the tomb and Jesus says “Unbind him, and let him go.” Yeah, get him out of the strips of cloth the make up that straitjacket of a burial shroud – but there’s also some symbolic unbinding, some liberating of the person for life. Can we exercise our power to loosen people, to empower and embolden and liberate them for a life of service and joy? Not a binding You’d better do these things, but Can you see what could be?

   And now, Exodus 12:1-14. Passover, pretty important to our understand of God, everything biblical, certainly Holy Week – and relationships with our friends today, the Jews. For background, see if you can get yourself invited to a Jewish family’s home for Passover. Maybe the local rabbi? You'll have the time of your life, and might wish to convert. An unforgettable night, and you’ll never be “supersessionist” any more about such things. You’ll be very careful never to attempt something like a “Christian seder,” which my rabbi friends assure me isn’t a thing, and is offensive to them.

   Yes, Jesus did Palm Sunday and got crucified around Passover. The scene is intriguing. A city with a population of 50,000 swelled with maybe 2 million pilgrims. Packed. Smelly. Chaos. No wonder Pilate marched his regiments into the city to keep peace, and no wonder Pilate got spooked and had this popular maybe-messianic one killed. Jesus loved Passover. But the preacher needs to let Passover be Passover without rushing to Christianize it. Holy Communion is not a baptized Passover.

   At Passover, real Jewish Passover, that is, the youngest son rises and asks, “Why is this night special (or different) from all other nights?” The fact that provision is made for children to learn about this is underscored by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who notes how odd it is that just as the Israelites are scrambling to get out of Pharaoh’s clutches, Moses is talking about children in generations to come. “About to gain their freedom, the Israelites were told that they had to become a nation of educators. Freedom is won, not on the battlefield, but in the human imagination and will. To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a free society you need schools.” Passover isn’t a neat experience. It’s an education in freedom.

   What is commemorated is the climax of the plagues in Egypt and Israel’s deliverance to freedom. The food is delicious but also richly symbolic. 

   Bitter herbs = the taste of Israel’s suffering

   Harosset = a mnemonic of the mortar with which slaves built

   Matzot = how they left in a hurry

   And of course a bit of lamb, remembering the blood and sacrifice.

Could our food remind us of moments in our own salvation history? The theme, redemption from slavery, might direct us to our own bondage to our culture (which American are loathe to recognize) – or perhaps to the reality of bondage in American history. We still reel from the lingering effects of racism and slavery’s impact on our society. God would have us ponder such things when we respond to Exodus 12.

   Scholars remind us that the feast of unleavened bread wasn’t just a hustling out of Egypt thing; it was an agricultural festival, perhaps prior to the Exodus itself. Passover similarly has connections to agrarian life, the offering up of a lamb as gratitude for the thriving of the whole flock. Linking annual, natural blessings to spectacular historical interventions is the stuff of theology, worship and discipline. As Roland de Vaux suggested about these nature-related Spring festivals: “One springtime there had been a startling intervention of God.” For years I have raged against vapid understandings of Easter that are about the blooming of flowers and the return of life to the outdoor world; but the resurrection of Jesus happened in just such a season – and our life with God is about something dramatic, once and for all, and also what is ongoing, annual, daily even. Everything, including farming and eating, changes in light of deliverance – the subject of my book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week.

   A solemn but joyful meal right before bolting for freedom. Don’t rush to Jesus yet! Linger with the Jews. See if a rabbi or Jewish teacher or friend might share sermon time with you. And don’t let your people stay confused about freedom. Americans blithely think freedom is I can do whatever the heck I want. Or they might piously add I can worship God the way I want. So egocentric, isn’t it? And so patently false. We are profoundly bound to the habits, mores and ideologies of our culture, bound to sin, self, anxiety, you name it. And note well that when the Israelites were set free, God let them directly to Mt. Sinai to download hundreds of laws to forge a covenant with them, to show them how to stay free, to introduce history’s curious idea that does reappear in Christianity: we are set free to be servants of another.