The preacher can portray the dual identity
of this Ethiopian. There is something exotic about him and his native land,
home of the Queen of Sheba, the mysterious source of the Nile, perhaps the
place where the ark of the covenant has rested all these centuries… But then
he’s black, he’s African, and he has an alternative sexual identity.
He’s been to Jerusalem – and we know that
because of his identity, he wasn’t admitted.
Stunning: he still went, still was obsessed with the Scriptures even
though he was excluded! I’ve noted this
in United Methodism: people we exclude, whom we don’t “condone,” who can’t
receive the church’s blessings, keep showing up, keep coming back, keep seeking
to be a part of the community that ostracizes them. Some miracle in that… reminding me that this text appeared in the
lectionary the Sunday after our 2012 General Conference, and I could not help
but comment on the parallels (video here).
The text’s question, Do you understand? intrigues – as this Suffering servant text (Isa
52-53) still is a puzzle. But for all of
Scripture, we need guidance – we the clergy, and we the people to whom clergy
preach. There is a study/intellectual
level at which we need guidance; but more importantly, we need real life
practical guidance. St. Francis was the
master interpreter of Scripture – not because of any clever insights he had,
but because he read the Bible, and it became his to-do list for the day.
The text’s next question, Does he speak of himself, or another? is
still batted around. The answer, certainly, is Yes. The prophet has been afflicted in his ministry
to the exiles; yet his servant role is theirs, unfulfilled, or perhaps one they
are being summoned to fulfill. We can
read Jesus in, as Phillip and the Ethiopian did – but the original text stands
well enough on its own; I’d commend John Goldingay’s lovely exposition (in The Theology of the Book of Isaiah) of how a
prophet suffered for his message, and that suffering came to be understood as
redemptive – and this does give us some clues about how God chooses to be God,
and hence what God was doing in Jesus.
And the text’s third question, What is to prevent me being baptized?
quite tragically gets answered. There’s a class, you have to be a member, you
have to believe and repent, you can’t be this identity unless you repent, you
have to be touched by a duly ordained person, etc. What a rich text, teeming with homiletical
possibility.
Psalm 22:25-31 is certainly fascinating –
if we reckon with the notion that Jesus, in utter agony on the cross, called to
mind a Psalm he had learned as a boy from his mother, beginning “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” Did he,
as many did, hold in mind not just that phrase, but the entire Psalm – which as
we see here winds up with dramatic words of steadfast hope in the face of
severe adversity?
1 John 4:7-21 goes on a bit of a ramble –
but his points are well-taken and entirely preachable. I shiver a little when people say something
like God’s love is the love people share – but 1 John surely underlines that
when we love, we do partake of God’s love.
But for him it’s not only that God’s love = human love – which is a
dicey proposition. It all begins,
continues and ends in God’s love for us – and not a mood in the heart of God,
but a specific, concrete action in the crucifixion of Jesus.
“Perfect love casts out fear” is the text’s
best line – although discerning what “perfect” love is can be elusive. I admire Scott Bader-Saye’s great book, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. His wise reflections on good and necessary fear versus irrational,
overstated fear – and then how the desire for security, especially in our
post-9/11 world, crowds out faith, courage, boldness, discipleship. “We fear
excessively when we allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the
good. When we fear excessively we live in a mode of reacting to and plotting
against evil rather than actively seeking and doing what is good. Fear causes
our vision to narrow, when what is needed is for it to be enlarged… Our
overwhelming fears need to be overwhelmed by bigger and better things, by a
sense of adventure and fullness of life.”
Or we may well say, by the love of God in Christ Jesus.
John 15:1-8 exhibits yet one more of
Jesus’ riveting “I am” statements. His
identity, and thus the revealed identity of the very God Moses inquired into,
is declared – but in images, like living water, the good shepherd, and here, a
vine. If you can, interview somebody who
knows about growing things, how vines work or don’t, how they bear fruit or
don’t.
Gisela Kreglinger has written a
fascinating book called The
Spirituality of Wine.
She grew up in a wine-producing family, and teaches us much about how alienated
urban people are from the land and what unfolds there. As archaeologists have found thousands of
winepresses all over Israel of Jesus’ day, we realize he spoke to people who
knew vines, vineyards, winepresses, and so his very vivid image of life with
him would have been utterly memorable – and as listeners found themselves back
at work, pruning, pressing, keeping the bugs away and such, would have seen,
felt, and smelled quite tangible images of their relationship to Jesus.
And then
there’s this: “Left to themselves, vines grow like weeds… Part of cultivating
the vines is to prune their branches and tie them onto wires….” Pruning has its
homiletical possibilities – and Kreglinger suggests that the wires onto which
vines are tied “are like the structures and rules in a religious community; we
need them… they give us support and stability.”
I find all this to be wonderfully suggestive, and may well preach a
sermon in which I reflect in a leisurely way over vines, roots, being stressed,
pruning, trellising (especially if I can track down a vineyard worker for an interview!). After all, monks
back in the Middle Ages became the great wine producers, and tended their vines
as a spiritual practice accompanied by prayer. Even we grape-juice Methodists,
with our peculiar and unhappy relationship with fermented grape juice, can ponder
with profit the image of Jesus as the vine.
This business of fruitfulness is always ripe
for preaching. (Pun intended). Bearing fruit, from the vine’s perspective,
is different from the way we think about being good. Ripening fruit doesn’t grit its teeth and
strive really hard to get bigger and change color. It’s a passive thing, nutrients being pumped
into the fruit, entirely dependent on uncontrollable rainfall and sunshine, and
processes that are hidden underground where no one can see. Holiness is like this; do you remember how
the doctrine of Sanctification actually works?
And then I recall when I was in the thick
of writing on The
Will of God. I asked a bunch of
theologians about the subject – and one replied quite simply by saying “If you
want to do God’s will, start with the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. That can keep you plenty busy for the rest of
your life.”
Prepositions matter in theology. A lovely
hymn prays, “Abide with me.” But Jesus doesn’t speak of being beside us, but
actually in us, and we in him. Mind you, Jesus isn’t going for any bland “I
feel God in me” or “God is in each one of us.”
It’s way more serious, and downright fleshy than all that. Jean Vanier rephrased it, “To abide in Jesus
is to make our home in him and to let Jesus make his home in us.”
Raymond Brown rightly says this vine
language has “eucharistic overtones.” To
think of the Lord’s Supper – in my book, Worshipful, I quoted Austin Farrer and then explored
this thought and its inversion: “Jesus
gave his body and blood to his disciples in bread and wine. Amazed at such a
token, and little understanding what they did, Peter, John and the rest reached
out their hands and took their master and their God. Whatever else they knew or
did not know, they knew they were committed to him… and that they, somehow,
should live it out.” When a disciple is filled with Jesus, he remembers what his
physical body is to be: a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)… As N.T.
Wright rightly suggested, when we eat and drink at the Lord’s table, “we become
walking shrines, living temples in whom the living triune God truly dwells.”…To
ingest Jesus is intriguing: we take Christ into ourselves, and he is then
within us. This goes beyond even the closest human relationship, even sexual
intimacy. If Jesus is in us, there is zero distance between us. Over time,
creative theologians would reverse the image: we are consumed by Jesus. We
enter into his body; we get inside Jesus himself. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke
imaginatively about this: “My penitence, my salvation, are His food. I myself
am His food. I am chewed as I am reproved by Him; I am swallowed as I am
taught; I am digested as I am changed; I am assimilated as I am transformed; I
am made one as I am conformed.”
He lives in us, and acts through us – and so
as not to thwart this, we need to be cleansed or pruned. Jean Vanier speaks of
asking to be pruned of our fear, compulsions, our frenetic pace in life, sense
of failure, spending ourselves on success and power. “Choice implies loss Fidelity in love can
cost a lot. To grow in love we have to pass through pain and anguish. It is the
same in our relationship with God. In order to be more present to God, we have
to be less present to other things.
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My book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, now has a study guide with videos, making it more useful for small groups!
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