What can we say November 5? All Saints Day

    I will sometimes in this blog refer you to the previous time in the lectionary cycle the texts for the day / season came around (click here!), as I’ve not accrued much more wisdom! I'll assure you there is much good stuff there! – although I will add a bit that will be more timely (I hope). Peace and courage to you as you preach All Saints (I assume that’s your choice) on November 5.

   I have, while working on a new book (tentatively titled Everywhere is Jerusalem), been pondering places that hallow death – but not in a heroic sense. The American cemetery at Normandy has plenty of grief, but suggests heroic sacrifice. So what places simply speak into tragic death with no implied heroism? The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia. All have a sacred quality – the word “sacred” being key, not implying suffering’s over and all is well, which is what Christians do way too quickly with death, All Saints, and Good Friday. God hallows death. Jesus makes such places and moments sacred, not by the glory that’s around the corner, but by simply being in it with us, by living and dying into the horrific, evil, unjust suffering. Yes, we have hope – but we dare not trivialize death, loss, the consequent loneliness and pain. Especially on All Saints, which can rush a bit, can’t it? Not to depress, but to embrace, and to be honest in the face of all that crushes the human spirit in death. It's only when we've done so that we can speak of the hope. I think...

   So the hope is still there. Let me refer you to my Festival of Homiletics lecture, "Hope as Arsenic," on when we offer to much, or not enough, or the wrong kind of hope. Very important for us who preach!!

What can we say December 3? Advent 1

    Advent comes around every time this year! I keep reposting my fairly widely read and hopefully helpful post, God Became Small: Preaching Advent – with loads of illustrations, and reflections on how preaching is peculiar during this season.

   I have frequently groused about the Advent lections themselves, as if some theologically prissiness has overwhelmed wise choices? Determined not to be Christmasy – which is fine – we extend the apocalyptic, and give John the Baptist a wide swath, even as our people are longing for Mary, Joseph, the pregnancy, the longing… which I get, and which matter to me spiritually.

   So prior blogs on my grumblings over Advent 1, and my ruminations on the texts for this year’s Advent 1.

   I am thinking to go off lectionary and do a mini-series (just 4 weeks…) on the Isaiah 9 bit (put to marvelous music) of the messianic titles: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” People hum this text in their heads - from Handel's Messiah! I love the ramp up to these words, especially "and his name shall be CALL--ED" - as if making "called" into 2 syllables reminds us something big, unusual, hifalutin is coming!

   Endless questions intrigue me. What is his counsel exactly? Is God’s “mighty-ness” what we in our world think of as might? The titles seem to be applied to Christ – but it’s “everlasting Father,” not Son. What do you do with that? And it’s the “prince,” not the “king” of peace. Why? All these, in my view, get subsumed under Isaiah’s ultimate kid name, which gets applied to Jesus in Matthew – that fabulous, theologically hopeful nickname Emmanuel.

   More later…

What can we say November 26? Christ the King

    On these marvelous texts, I’d push you toward not one but two prior blogs on them, as they differ in interesting ways (as I look back on them now!). Here’s one, here’s the other. Lots of interesting stuff. I am moved, today, but Ezekiel 34:16: “I will feed them with justice.” Wow. What an image. Feeding – not with bread, or cool foodie items, but justice, which might be what we really are hungry for? And then in Ephesians 1: Hope is something you’re called to, not something you just have. I’ll ponder that, and preach about it somehow this Sunday!

   I do blush when I think of the sermons I've heard suggesting how Christ reigns powerfully over history, the nations, etc. Christ's reign is only powerful by its lack of power, its gentle compassion, its subversive humility. His palace is a lowly manger, his crowd one of thorns, his retinue a bunch of clueless dudes fleeing for the exits, his armies the poor and pitiful of the world. As Marilynne Robinson puts it in her soon-to-come reading of Genesis, if human beings “are to be granted individuality, agency, freedom, meaningful existence as human beings, then God must practice almost limitless restraint. To refrain, to put side power, is godlike.”

   I also suspect it's a false lead to ask Are we saved by grace? or by works? If you stick very close to Jesus, you will find yourself near those he cared about - and you can't help caring about them as well. We may well say that Jesus comes to each of us as the one who is "hungry, imprisoned, thirsty..." - and it is to! When we recognize his immense grace in this, we can't help but stick very close to him, and so involved in his care for those the world despises or would simply neglect, faulting or pitying them.

What can we say November 19? 25th after Pentecost

   The question about “talents,” the thief in the night, and the spectacular site of Hazor, visitable, so moving in the north of Israel! I am struck, on that text, once more, about the technological advance coming out of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age: not mere time markers, but wartime complications. You have your bronze shields and weapons – but then come the Philistines, who swing their big swords, not of bronze but of iron – and your shield splinters into silly pieces. No wonder the Philistines were so dreaded. And we might ask what technological innovations imperil the people of God today (a wide swath of answers suggest themselves!!).

   Sometimes, for fun, I’ll do a little quick romp through the lectionary texts, teasing folks with “I thought on Monday I’d talk with you about text #1… but by Tuesday I was pondering text #2…” (with little hints, a few details from each one as I go), “but then I settled on text #3.” This week is perfect for this – and the very method draws people’s attention to the variety and wonder of Scripture, and that Christians do what you’re doing in front of them, pondering, digging around for something.

   Judges 4:1-7 is the kind of text that could well induce people to read more Bible – although how would you squeeze a sermon out of it. Jabin rules in Hazor (which is a fabulous archaeological site!), illustrating that Israel clearly had not conquered all of the land. Back in the Bronze Age, Palestine was segmented, not a nation at all, with tribal chieftains defending and occasionally expanding their turf.

   The mighty Deborah – how we wish we knew more about her! Antiquity features the occasional woman of valor and fame – although each is the exception that proves the rule we still live with in much of the world. What a lovely detail: “She used to sit under ‘the palm of Deborah’ to judge.” This must have been a memorable visitable tree long after Deborah was no more.

   Here’s the vivid, movie-worthy moment: in v. 7 she says “I will draw out Sisera and give him into your hand.” In short order, he was not only drawn out, but wound up with a tent peg hammered into the temple of his head – only slightly less graphic than in the previous chapter when Ehud, pretending to bear a secret message, plunges a sword into the obese King Eglon’s belly – and the sword disappeared into the folds of flesh.

   Such stories might help people understand how the Bible isn’t a collection of sweet spiritual platitudes, but exposes real life at its most grim – and that somehow God is there too.

   1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 is similarly titillating, so I’ll touch quickly on the bizarre simile that the Lord will come “like a thief.” But not only are you not ready (unless you have some guns? - who would dare to preach "If you're armed to protect your home, you might kill Jesus coming to visit"?), but the thief comes to rip you off. “Keep awake, don’t get drowsy” is fair counsel to your people while you’re preaching (I love the old joke about the preacher who dreamed he was preaching, and when he woke up, he was). Paul speaks of a couple of armor items here, clearly not as fully developed as Ephesians 6. “Encourage one another” truly could stand as a 3 word sermon. I’ll tease them and say “I thought I’d preach this 3 word sermon and just sit down, for this could keep y’all busy all this week and the rest of your life.”

   Matthew 25:14-30. However, we will delve a bit more fully into the Gospel reading, so vapidly treated in so many sermons. I’m groaning or snoring already, hearing the grinning preacher ask “What talents has God given you? Use them for the Lord, don’t hide ‘this little light of mine’ but ‘let it shine.’” Gerhard Lohfink quite rightly points out that shortly after these words, they arrested Jesus and crucified him: “Nobody is executed for teaching nothing more than bourgeois morality.” I’d add that, while we think the kingdom will dawn if we get out people to fill out spiritual gifts inventories, those religious strengths-finders, the larger truth is that in Scripture God doesn’t seem to use people’s abilities so much as their frailties, their brokenness, their avail-ability. Moses can’t speak, Jeremiah is too young, Isaiah isn’t holy, Jonah bolts in the opposite direction, Gideon has too many soldiers. What are your weaknesses? Where are you broken? That’s where the Spirit will use you.

   Lohfink notices something I’d not noticed: the businessman is not just wealthy, but a “boaster.” To him, these huge sums are “a few things, or “a little.” His business practices are exploitative: “I reap where I did not sow.” Slaves 1 and 2 are worthy of him, matching his finagling, lightning-fast action, risk taking strategies. Lohfink muses: “What a bold move, to make a statement about the reign of God in terms of immoral material.”

   Here’s the other thing about these “talents.” The Greek talanta isn’t an ability. We should translate talanta as “a huge bucket full of solid gold” or “a bank CEO megabonus” or “winning the Ohio lottery.” Only the muscular could even pick up a talanton, as one might weigh fifty or seventy five pounds. Each would be worth around 6,000 denarii, which today (by some scholars’ reckoning) would be much more than I have earned in my twenty five years in the ministry, or twenty of those flasks of pure nard Mary wasted on the feet of Jesus that so mortified the disciples. Jesus’ stories always do this: outlandish hyperbole, mind-boggling, absurd in scope, to make his point about the unfathomable marvel of the kingdom. The kingdom is that valuable.

   Imagine the listeners, poor laborers: no one listening would have the slightest clue about how to invest a single talanton, much less 5, any more than you or I would know what to do with $74 million. You just let your jaw drop, lost in wonder, love and praise. What a far cry from the little The Kingdom Assignment book churches were snapping up a few years back. Pastor Denny Bellesi doled out $10,000 in $100 increments to church members, declaring that 1. The $100 belongs to God, 2. You must invest it in God’s work, and 3. Report your results in 90 days. Those reports were startling: people made money hand over fist to contribute to the Church, creative ministries were hatched, lives were transformed, people wept for joy – all covered by NBC’s Dateline.  So American. Why on earth would I give somebody $100 and say “This belongs to God,” implying that the other half million in his investment portfolio is his? Or to suggest God is the best “deal” ever?

   What about the dumb, wicked servant? In Jesus’ day, burying money was regarded as prudent, and he no doubt expects to be commended. But he gets a verbal thrashing from the master. If this parable is Jesus’ intimation that an astonishingly ravishing gift has been unloaded upon an unsuspecting Church that has not the faintest notion how to handle, then might it be that the parable solicits from us not the offering up of our individual abilities, but rather the frank, embarrassing admission of our corporate inability? We populate Church committees with the best people for the task at hand, and in meetings they confidently offer insights from their education and professional experience.

   But maybe what God needs is people who will huddle up, shake their heads and confess, “We just have no idea; the Treasure is too big, too heavy.” Maybe then, and only then, we can dare something for God. God gives the Gospel not to me so my ability can be put to good use, but to us so our inability might be exposed, and God thereby glorified.

   If it’s stewardship season, you have to ask if this thinking would ruin or prosper your campaign. But is your current campaign approach fruitful, or just numbingly dull and ineffective. I wheedle and cajole, we print and mail catchy material, I plead from the pulpit. How pathetic. Isn’t that the equivalent of the burial of the one talanton, and isn’t it the harbinger of the burial of the Church? The Gospel isn’t being unleashed if some percentage of Church members start to think of an extra $100 or so as belonging to God, or even if the most clever stewardship campaign in history magically seduced a majority of mainline Protestants into actually tithing. The Gospel is too big for such trifles. Surely it is only to the dumbfounded, to the clueless, to the overwhelmed, to those who are under no illusion they have ever known quite what to do because of Jesus and don’t pretend it could ever be otherwise – to those alone this crafter of Trojan horses says “Well-done, good and faithful servant.”  

What can we say November 12? 24th after Pentecost

   On these 3 texts, I’ve commented in the past as wisely as I know how – except that now I would add these thoughts on Joshua and Thessalonians:

   Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25. I found myself commenting on this moment in not one but two places in my new book coming out next year, Everywhere is Jerusalem.

Here’s excerpt #1.

   Near Jacob’s well, where Jesus stood with the Samaritan woman (John 4) is the small village known in Bible times as Shechem. Roughly twelve hundred years before Jesus befriended that Samaritan woman there, Joshua (Moses’ successor) gathered all the tribes of Israel, forty years removed from Egyptian slavery, and made one of the Bible’s great speeches. A challenge. An invitation – to them, and to us.

   As a kid, I was given the impression that the Israelites rolled into the Promised Land and, like a German Blitzkrieg, conquered the whole region. We didn’t need fancy scholarship to show us otherwise. Mark the conquered places on a map. They didn’t win much ground at all, and what territory they captured was not the most fertile. There were Canaanites all over the place, wealthier, with more power – and a religion that lured Israelites repeatedly into idolatry.

   Knowing the challenges to come, Joshua (in the book named for him, in chapter 24) rattles off a profound history lesson of how they got there, going back to Abraham, into days of cruel slavery in Egypt, through decades of wilderness wanderings, God sticking with them despite their foolishness. Noting a veritable mall of other gods that would be peddled on them, he urges them, “Fear the Lord. Serve him faithfully. Put away the other gods. Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

   I’ve stood in that field where he uttered such words. Wherever you stand or sit, right now, you have to make a decision, and a hard, serious one. It’s not some vague spirituality or sliding into a pew now and then. Choose your God or your gods! Take a stand; make this journey – and live it, with courage, grit, patience, maybe making that definitive decision again. And again.

   And here’s excerpt #2:

   How often does the Bible itself urge keeping some distance from our beloved ancestors and their cherished but flawed beliefs? Joshua, thirty seconds before his glorious declaration that “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15) invites the Israelites to “put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river” (Joshua 24:14). Could it be our journey involves finding a new space, different from, and closer to the truth than the spirituality of our parents, even the most beloved? They may have instilled in us the very faith we have to ask such a question! Or perhaps, as Jonathan Sacks suggested (in his last book, Studies in Spirituality), our parents may have been on their own journey to a new space that was truer than that of their parents. God called Abraham away from the idols of Ur; but his father Terah went with him, at least halfway to Haran (Gen. 11:31).

   1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Paul speaks eloquently here of “hope” – a topic over which I have obsessed. What is it – really? Do we give people enough? Too much? Let me commend to you my lecture on this from this year’s Festival of Homiletics, which (after Kate Bowler!) I entitled “Hope as Arsenic.”

 

What can we say October 29? 22nd after Pentecost

 If you’re attending to Reformation Sunday, we have great texts!

   Deuteronomy 34:1-12. I preached on this last go round… One of many texts that reveals how Scripture isn’t some fabricated account to persuade the unconverted. Moses, the hero, God’s chosen one above all others, dies literally on the brink of achieving his life’s dream. After 80 years together, Moses and God have something of a private moment.

   A breathtaking panorama (on a clear day, that is; I’ve taken tour groups to Mt. Nebo only to be met with thick clouds!): like a surveyor sizing it all up. Moses’ eyes zigzag south to north (Gilead to Dan), zigging back down Jordan valley, zagging west, back through the southern Negeb up to Jericho, crazily zagging back south to Zoar. His heart must have soared; surely he gasped at this wide-lens view of his life’s purpose.

   But then, the gut punch: Moses’ time is up. Did he have to die for the sins of people (Deut 1:37, 4:21)? For striking the rock (Num 20:12)? Wouldn’t God, the one who answered murmuring with manna, have turned suddenly petty? How are we privy to this private moment anyhow? Franz Kafka, of all people, may have been right: “Moses fails to enter Canaan, not because his life is too short, but because it is a human life.” 

   This dying without enjoying the fruit of a life’s work: isn’t it often or even always this way? We’re part of something bigger than ourselves – or at least we hope we are. Reformation won’t happen this weekend. Reinhold Niebuhr’s pithy wisdom comes to mind: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.”

   Who can picture Moses’ final day without recalling Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final hours? In Memphis, campaigning on behalf of garbage workers, he spoke eerily of his possible impending death (and it's well worth watching/listening to again and again): “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop… And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight… Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” 

   Worth pondering also is that the Torah, the primal Scripture in Judaism, ends now, here, just short of the climax! Is the point that each generation has the same choice – to live into the promises, the land? Is this a Reformation theme? The church that feels it has arrived in Canaan is the corrupted church; the one outside looking in, pledging fresh commitment and passion, is the living church.

   We have the mummies of Pharaoh’s, and Aaron’s tomb is visitable. So what’s this tease with Moses? Rabbis taught he didn’t die but was translated right up into heaven. He does materialize at the Transfiguration. Hebrew is fun here: the NRSV translates “He was buried” – but by whom? The Hebrew quite straightforwardly says “He buried him.” He who? The Lord? The Pseudepigrapha includes the Testament of Moses in which Joshua, bidding Moses farewell, declares “All the world is your sepulcher.”

   1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 is promising. I did a little preaching commentary on this for Christian Century a few years back (entitling it “Childish Behavior,” based on a quirky Greek translation!) – if you’re interested.

    Matthew 22:34-40. What would the Reformation of the Church imply if not the recovery of love for God and neighbor? Love loses its mind and needs reforming too. Is God like Tevye (in Fiddler on the Roof) asking Golda, “Do you love me?” She explains all her labors over 25 years, but he still wants to know. Or is God like Bonnie Raitt crooning “I can’t make you love me”? God wants our love – but not society’s mushed down, trivialized, moody, sentimental thing that is kin to but far from the love Jesus spoke of, embodied, and died in consummation of. Jesus’ zeroing in on 2 Old Testament verses (well-chosen!) only makes sense in the light of creation, the Fall, Abraham’s call, the deliverance from Egypt, Mt. Sinai, the prophets, Jesus’ incarnation, his teaching and healing, and then his crucifixion. All of that is what love is. We absorb this as best we’re able, and then try to love God and neighbor. 

   How wise of Jesus to give his dual reply. Know how pivotal Deuteronomy 6 is in Judaism! Call a rabbi friend – or make one by asking about this text. When Jesus said the main thing is to love God with heart, soul, and strength, he wasn’t making it up out of thin air. He was a Jew, raised by Jewish parents, the descendant of generations of Jews, all of whom began and ended every day with those very words: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

   The “Shema” of course begins with “Hear!” Listen!  The beginning of love is always listening, something uncommon these days. I love the line in Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water where a wise man is described at having 2 ears and 1 mouth, and he used them in precisely that proportion.

   For our very occasional Christians, who read a quickie devotional most but not all days, we may dwell on “Talk of these words when you sit in your house, when you’re walking around, when you lie down and when you wake up. Bind them on your hand, and as frontlets between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house.” On the door jamb of Jewish homes you’ll find a mezuzah, a little container with a tiny scroll of Scripture, looking something like a doorbell. (Christians too, can have them! I have one at home, and one on my office door, just one more little reminder...).

   You may have seen pious Jews with a little black box on the forehead, or straps on the wrists. They are taking literally what Moses intended – and what I find I need to stand any chance of being godly. I stick little cards and hang tags all over my world, in the shower, in my desk drawer, on the dashboard, to remind me to love and think about and ponder God throughout my day. My book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, is an attempt to help us Christians think about how to think about our love for the Lord all the time. A challenge for me: I should attach something to my head, I think. If I hear myself thinking You shall love the Lord over and over, I actually shall love the Lord.

   Our church did an entire series called “You Shall Love.” A sermon series, and email series, and little cards we printed up for people to carry in their pockets and stick in their desk drawers and by the bedside. I even shot a video of me trying to explore how everything we do in church life – and that’s not just worship but also a finance meeting, what trustees do, personnel decision, etc., must revolve around Jesus’ dual directive that we love God and neighbor. I’d commend it to you – but more importantly, I would commend you having this conversation with your church leaders.  Can we make our budgeting, mowing the lawn, how we think about policies, all intimately linked to this touchstone of love?

   Thomas Merton, always helpful, prayed, “Let this be my consolation, that wherever I am, you are loved.” And speaking of prayer – which is love! – Madeleine L’Engle, over a long weekend waiting on biopsy results for her husband, kept praying “Don’t let it be cancer.” Some friend told her, “You can’t pray that, it already is or isn’t cancer.” Her thoughts on this? “I can’t live with that. I think the heart overrides the intellect and insists on praying. If we don’t pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. And so I pray as my heart needs to pray.” Later, after the cancer was pronounced terminal, she wondered if her prayers had been wasted. But she concluded, rightly: “Prayer is love, and love is never wasted. Surely the prayers have sustained me, are sustaining me. Perhaps there will be unexpected answers to these prayers, answers I may not even be aware of for years. But they are not wasted. They are not lost. I do not know where they have gone, but I believe that God holds them, hands outstretched to receive them, like precious pearls.”

What can we say October 22? 21st after Pentecost

    Hard to select among such texts. 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 has the intriguing offer for readers to look into “what kind of people we are,” and to take Paul and company as “examples to be followed.” Daring, I think. Do I see myself as an example to my people? I should, certainly more than I do! – and do I reply to their need for me to frame being a “kind of person” with “Hey, I’m just a guy”? If the Gospel is real, to me as a guy, don’t I dare to expect myself to be a guy who is somehow exemplary, or at least someone in whom God’s Spirit is actually effecting something cool?

   “Our message came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” Easy to mutter some pietistic platitude about this. But the best we can do is talk as well and faithfully as possible. If hearts are changed, if the world tilts on its axis, it’s God’s work, not ours. Luther famously said it was God who reformed the church while he (Luther) was in the pub with his pal Philip drinking Wittenberg beer.

   Matthew 22:15-22 is a hugely important text. Terribly misinterpreted – as if Jesus were outlining the separation of church and state for modern people who would find such an arrangement to be very convenient for themselves and their political ideologies. They come to “entrap” him. Jesus’ strong suit was discerning hidden motives – and knowing theirs, and his downright Lincoln-esque ability to reply to tough questions with something clever to stump the questioners, they had no chance.

   They open with flattery. Aristotle pointed out that the opposite of a friend is a flatterer. They indeed are what Jesus calls them: hypocrites, the Greek meaning play actors. They think they have the perfect question, unanswerable. If he says Yes, he appears sympathetic to the hated tax collectors, thus alienating all nationalists. If he says No, he’s risking a charge of sedition. Not surprisingly, Jesus serves up neither. 

   Let’s check out one of these coins, he says. Surveying it, he asks an easy question: who is this guy? Caesar. Archaeologists have found these coins, with an image of Caesar, and the inscription including the blasphemous (to Jews) word DIVI: he’s divine. On the flip side, the coin dubbed Caesar as PONTIF MAXIM, the “high priest.” Here is God’s divine son, our great high priest, studying this very coin.

   Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. The Greek apodote means “give back,” as in return it to him. Must be his. Let him have it. Then the clincher line: and Render, “give back” to God what is God’s. And that would be… well, everything. Your life, these boats, the water, the fish, maybe even the minted coin with the blasphemous image. Heck, the emperor himself.

   Jesus’ wisdom was met with stunned silence; I wish my sermons were met with the same! There’s the sermon, with a clear imperative, an all-encompassing takeaway: Render unto God what is God’s, who is God’s. You can spend the rest of the day and your life working on that one. Grab a few examples here and there. Your lunch break at work. Your shopping this afternoon. Your conversation with a neighbor. The stuff in your closet. Your anxieties in the night. Your portfolio, or your debt, or your fantasies. Your time, your energy, your brokenness. It’s all God’s. Render it to God.

   So, my choice for Sunday: Exodus 33:12-23. Talk about a “thin place,” or a “liminal space.” Moses, on the (not a, but the) mountain with God. Wryly he chides God for telling him they’re going but hasn’t revealed whom the guide will be. The Lord says I’ll go. Then, with considerable cheek, or derring-do, taking his life in his hands, he asks to see God’s “glory.” The Lord responds to this bold ask by sneakily substituting “goodness” for “glory.” Want to see my glory? Here is some of my goodness. Maybe that’s how we see God’s glory, not head-on, which would overwhelm us, sort of like trying to look at the sun from 25 feet away. God’s goodness is a manifestation, an accurate shadow of God’s glory, an accommodated glimpse.

   The meaning of the name Yahweh is perhaps best explained in v. 19: “I shall be gracious to whom I shall be gracious, I shall have compassion on whom I shall have compassion.” No predestination here. Rather, it is in God’s nature to be gracious and compassionate. It’s God’s choice, not our earning, not our goodness.

   Tenderly, God offers a viewing spot for Moses: in the cleft of the rock. “Rock of Ages, cleft for Moses.” How good of God to provide, in the tectonic shifts and geological upheavals that made mountains, to provide little caves and crevices for creatures to hide and rest. St. Francis of Assisi believed, as did many medieval people, that clefts and crevices in rocks, all the way in Italy, were created at that moment on Good Friday when, just as Jesus died, earthquakes rocked the land. Medieval theologians and artists also saw Jesus’ wounds as clefts in the rock in which we hide ourselves. So lovely.

   I’m reminded of St. Francis, who went day after day into a cave to pray. When he came out each day, Brother Leo would ask him, Did God say anything? Francis said No. Day by day he poured out his soul, and day by day he always answered No. Finally, one day Leo asked, and Francis surprised him:  Yes, God did say one word to me. Leo: What was it? Francis: More. I love that. God wanted more - of St. Francis.

   God shows Moses God’s “backside.” Fascinating to play around with, isn’t it. You see the backside as it moves. God isn’t a still life, but one who moves. Yahweh clearly is a verbal form, an action verb in Hebrew. And where are you if you see the backside? You’re behind. Jesus said “Follow me.” That is, keep behind me, watch my backside closely.

   Moses’ request to see God’s glory might remind us of John 14 where Philip asks Jesus, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”   Jesus then did show all of them God’s glory – by being crucified. Martin Luther (worth dragging in, as the 500th anniversary of the Wittenberg door is looming!) suggested that in the cross, God showed us all the glory of God we could bear – calling it “God’s hidden backside.”  

   With all this Moses/mountain stuff, I plan to use the great benediction of the late archbishop Oscar Romero: “When we leave Mass, we ought to go out the way Moses descended Mt. Sinai: with his face shining, with his heart brave and strong to face the world’s difficulties.”

***

   Rendering unto God is worship, which is both liturgy and life. Check out my book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, on the real life continuations of what we do in worship. A resource for clergy and a good group study for laity!

What can we say October 15? 20th after Pentecost

    I cannot decide whether to preach on the Epistle, which is so dense, in the rich sort of way, or the longer, revealing narrative of our Old Testament lection. I just can’t dig into Matthew 22:1-14. I could deconstruct the thing and engage in some expositional gyrations – but time would be up, and what would really be gained? Perhaps you have some wisdom to shoot back my way on how to engage this straight up and make a holy, hopeful sermon out of it; I’d love to hear from you!

   So: Philippians 4:1-9, which Karl Barth called “one of the liveliest and most allusive in Paul, or anywhere at all in the New Testament.” And it’s so personal. Paul calls out two people by name! This has been a go-to text for me for so many funerals – although it’s fixated on life, and an abundant one in the thick of loss and suffering. I picture Paul pacing his semi-imprisoned space, dictating – and the amanuensis must have dropped his quill pen a few times, staggered and in awe by what we can only call “inspired.”

   To start on the backside, in verse 8: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” With so much negativity and rancor, and even in the religious world where so much chatter is sin and forgiveness, what excellent counsel! It’s not – be careful on this! – positive thinking. It’s finding, and attending to the beautiful. Jewel’s best lyric goes like this: “It doesn’t take talent to be mean / Please be careful with me / I’m sensitive, and I’d like to stay that way. / I have this theory that if we’re told we’re bad / Then that’s the only idea we’ll ever have / But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty / Some day we will become what we see.”

   We are, of course, if we but notice – and then dare to realize how all the beauty all over the place is crystallized and definitively embodied in Jesus, who is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise. St. Augustine’s adulation is memorable: “He is beautiful as God, beautiful in heaven, beautiful in his mother’s womb, beautiful in his parents’ arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful under the scourge, beautiful in laying down his life, beautiful in taking it up again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the sepulcher, beautiful in heaven.” Ponder him, his beauty, his excellence, his grace. Anxiety will slide down a little. Be grateful. Know some joy.

   So Paul conceives of all this as a reflex to his thoughts on “Rejoice always” and “Do not be anxious,” which must have been temptations for Paul, and which feel like endlessly elusive ideals for me. I mean, I’m already anxious, and veer toward melancholy – and here’s Paul (or is it God?) ordering me to feel differently. Like, it was bad enough already…

   George Hunsinger, in his fairly recent Brazos commentary, is wise on this: “It is not a matter of elation but of resilience. Nor is it basically introspective but Christocentric.” He quotes Martin Luther King: “Abnormal fears and phobias expressed in neurotic anxiety may be cured by psychiatry; but the fear of death, nonbeing, and nothingness, expressed in existential anxiety, maybe cured only by a positive religious faith.” I think I’d lean way more sympathetically toward mercy on the anxious and fearful, who aren’t so easily fixed. But the notation of “existential anxiety”: that’s huge. It’s what we can genuinely and faithfully address in the church.

   Regular anxiety might be something we can help with too. Read the text slowly. “Have no anxiety… but with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Paul must be mixed up: it’s supposed to be we file our requests, and if God complies, then we give thanks – right? No, “with thanksgiving let your requests be made known.” We begin with gratitude. Jesus invited the crowd to be rid of anxiety by pointing to the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field: they are arrayed in beauty, God provides for them (read Matthew 6:25-34!). Notice what God has done, feel the blessings you neglected to pay attention to (which is probably why you got into the anxious mess you’re in…). Could it be that gratitude is the antidote to anxiety?

   The psychiatrist Martin Seligman has written (in his great book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being) about anxiety – and shares that studies show how gratitude alleviates anxiety and depression (not entirely, but by a significant, measurable percentage).  My personal observation is that it is impossible to be anxious and grateful at the same time.  Something about gratitude – and not merely feeling thankful but actually expressing it in a note, a phone call, whatever – calms and even reverses anxiety, at least in the moment.

   That’s when the joy comes in: “Rejoice always.” How? By not being anxious. How? By sharing your requests with God – with thanksgiving. And then, when this becomes habitual, and natural, we get to the goal of the thing: Peace. “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (v. 7). And then that excellence stuff too.

   How intriguing that Paul dictates out loud, with the emperor’s Praetorian guard listening through the bars, that God’s peace will “keep” your hearts: the Greek word means to “guard.” Paul is in prison, guarded by men with weapons – which is how Caesar guaranteed his much bragged upon pax romana. But who’s really free, and who isn’t? In God’s hidden script, it’s the armed soldiers, and the emperor himself, who are not free but are in chains, while Paul is free as a bird, protected from them by the peace of God.

   Exodus 32:1-14 (but really, you must continue past v. 14 to the end of the story to make any sense of this!) always makes me laugh out loud, or shudder. The sheer psychological genius of the narrator invites us into a theological intimacy that is stunning. The people, their souls still stuck back in Egypt, grow impatient at the foot of Mt. Sinai. They deduce that Moses is “delaying.” Why would he delay? Isn’t it just their rush to move on, or to shrink back? They refer to him as “this man Moses,” not “our beloved Moses.” Martin Buber was right: “Whenever he comes to deal with this people, he is defeated by them.”

   They fashion an idol, a golden bull, the kind they’d seen back in Egypt, connoting strength, potency, virility. Hard not to take a hard look at the golden bull on Wall Street in New York! Up on the mountain, God was even then telling Moses what their gold was supposed to be used for: to adorn the tabernacle. Hard also not to grin over the adjacent statue, the "Fearless Girl." Is that the Church, not cowed by the bull and all its cultural trappings?

   The Lord saw their lunacy first and told Moses, speaking of them not as “my people” but “your people” whom “you” (Moses, not I, the Lord!) brought out of Egypt. Moses turned the tables just as swiftly, referring to them not as “my people” but as “your people whom you” (the Lord!) brought out of Egypt. Down in the valley, Aaron his brother had proven to be an effective but wrongly directed leader. Once the calf was finished, they threw a big party.

   When Moses happened upon the scene, Aaron violated Jim Collins’s rule for Level 5 leaders (leaders attribute success to others and apportion blame to themselves) and explained how “they” were set on evil. He bore no responsibility. Hilariously he recalled what transpired: “I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off!’ So they gave it to me, I threw it into the fire, and out came this bull calf!” (v. 24). Out came. I’m not big on a sermon retelling a story in great detail. But this one is just so delicious, so revealing of human nature at its most religious and most flawed.

   What Moses accomplished next astonishes. Moses talks God out of raining wrath down upon the people. “The Lord changed his mind” (v. 14). Philosophically, this is absurd. But the Bible’s God is in this with us, with give and take, suspense, jockeying back and forth – which is what love does. Failing in leading the people, Moses leads God – as Michael Walzer observes, Moses was “rather more successful with God than with the people.” Does this text tell me something about how to lead my people? – maybe by leading God? or advocating for them with God instead of venting my frustration with them?

   The preacher need not provide moralistic take-aways, although they are the low-hanging fruit. Let the story stand. Let people see themselves and others in it. Let them most important get a glimpse of the severe holiness of God struggling with the tender mercy of God.

   The violence at the end leaves me numb. I recall what I learned from Jonathan Sacks on a similar passage: 1 Kings 18. Elijah slaughters the Canaanite priests – but Sacks points out that the rabbis were appalled, noting that God never told him to kill them. I think it’s healthy and hopeful for clergy to wonder out loud if Moses, or the writer of Exodus mis-heard God – just as we all do. Scripture is still very much inspired – precisely in sharing moments when people act in ways contrary to the larger heart of God known throughout Scripture.

What can we say October 8? 19th after Pentecost

    Matthew 21:33-46. The best moment in this unimaginative text (I mean, Jesus must have had his in-your-face, simplistic preaching moments, like you and I do) is in verse 45: “The chief priests and Pharisees realized that he was speaking about them.” How could it take any time at all with this thinly-veiled allegory? Maybe that’s how the smug righteous continue to be smug and righteous, by cultivating the dimmest conceivable awareness of their own flaws, how no one in their right mind could question them.

   Exodus 20:1-20 is where my preaching focus will be. I preached on this last time around; you can watch it here. What more contested, politicized, misunderstood and trivialized text could there be? Do we harbor a mis-spun view of Paul and regard the law as a fossil to be discarded? Do we lean into the commandments? But those who do typically treat them as stones to hurl at those they would judge, rarely in critical self-reflection.

   Psalm 19 shows us the way to envision the commandments, not chafing under the law, but in a multisensory way relishing and delighting in the law. Sweeter than honey! Reviving the soul, rejoicing the heart, more desirable than gold. I love how Zora Neale Hurston (in Moses: Man of the Mountain) imagines that Sinai moment:

   “Moses lifted the freshly chiseled tablets of stone in his hands and gazed down the mountain to where Israel waited. He knew a great exultation. Now men could be free. They had something of the essence of divinity expressed. They had the chart and compass of behavior. They need not stumble into blind ways and injure themselves. This was bigger than Israel. It comprehended the world. Israel could be a heaven for all men forever, by these sacred stones. With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned to where Joshua waited for him. ‘Joshua, I have laws. Israel is going to know peace and justice.’”

   Martin Luther grasped the Gospel shape of this freedom, noticing how immense grace is tucked inside each commandment. What better sermon could you preach that to narrate the way God in mercy relieves us of our burdens by declaring “You don’t have to have other gods, you can rest, you don’t have to covet.” 

   Context matters here (and everywhere. These commandments didn’t float down chiseled in stone into courthouses or houses, universally applicable laws God has decreed absolutely. The commandments are the first of hundreds – and all of them are part of a longer story of people crying out under oppression, God hearing (and caring!), sending Moses, the miracles/signs (a la Jesus in John’s Gospel), the deliverance at the sea, and even the extraordinary patience of God in the wilderness, showering the people with manna when they deserved lightning bolts. God’s commands come after, in the thick of, and as a prelude to the merciful gift of salvation; obedience to the commandments isn’t a credential to qualify as a good person, or a way to curry God’s favor, but the reflexive, grateful life in startled reply to God’s abundant gift of love.

   The Gospel isn’t the end of the law (as in, it’s over and irrelevant) – or we might finesse the word and say the Gospel actually is the end (as in the goal/purpose) of the law (Romans 10:4’s tantalizing ambiguity!). God did tender these laws with a fair expectation we could follow them or at least get in the ballpark. There is such a thing as holiness, as a deep desire to fulfill God’s will. Brevard Childs: “The intent of the commandments is to engender love of God and love of neighbor.”

   The preacher could pick one command and zero in – or you could do what I plan to do, just a quick, breezy touching on each one with an explanatory note or two. No other gods? Luther clarified that our god is whatever motivates us, changes your mood, embodies the good life… so who is your God? No images of God? We are made in God’s image, and Jesus is the flawless image of God – so other creature-like images (the Egyptian or the Wall Street golden bull, you name it…) mislead. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain?  The worst offenders are our politicians who paste God’s name on much that is not of God, all posturing; and we church folk do the same, attaching God to much that is grievously not of God. 

   Remember the Sabbath?  Can we switch off our gadgets and actually rest? And did you notice the lectionary lops off the longer explanation of the Sabbath? There must be good reason it gets “more air time than any others” (Brueggemann) – as if we’d miss the comprehensive nature of it or wriggle our way out. Don’t kill? Jesus went deep, explaining that anger is an interior kind of murder (and in our rancorous culture, where anger management is a big thing, aren’t we rabid killers?). 

   No adultery (in a culture where sex as impulse, pleasure and self-fulfillment is all over the media)? Jesus said if you harbor lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. No condemnation there; just as in that moment in John’s Gospel, Jesus encounters an adulterer in order to set her free. No stealing? What did John Wesley say about a lack of overabundant charity to the poor – that it’s theft? No coveting? Coveting is the engine of capitalism! But God would liberate us from the stranglehold of always wanting more – or really, wanting what is new and different. I don’t want more iPhones. I want the latest iPhone – largely because I saw one in my neighbor’s hand.

   The purpose of the commandments is stated right there in Exodus 20 – “to prove you.” We avert our gaze from the fact that the Bible repeatedly suggests we are being tested, we are being proven; the so-called “temptation narrative” (Matthew 4) really is a testing, just as Abraham was tested/proven (Genesis 22). Beyond the proving, the simple dream of the commandments is “that you may not sin.” Not “to uphold civil society in America.” God sincerely wants to help us not to sin – and Exodus surely believes this is a real possibility.

   Philippians 3:4b-14 is a terrific text. Paul does his boasting thing – while clarifying he’s not boasting! – but with the clincher: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss.” We sing “My richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.” We sing this hymn – but do we get the depth of the sentiment expressed? What are my people thinking (if anything) when singing such words?

   Paul’s counsel is Lose anything, everything, for “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” We Americans think we can have our cake and eat it too; we can keep all our stuff and also know Jesus. But there is inevitably a sacrifice, a loss, an emptying before Jesus can be known – and once he’s known, there is an emptying. And why? In the prior chapter, Paul spoke of having Christ’s mind – which was one of kenotic self-emptying (although as we commented on Philippians 2, we should think not “although he was in the form of God he became a servant,” but “because he was in the form of God…”).

   Paul’s abiding goal is “to be found in him.” Paul was found by Jesus – interrupted on the road to Damascus. The notion isn’t We are seekers, but rather We are lost, we are wanderers, we are on the run – like Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”: “I fled him, down the nights and down the days; I fled him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, and in the mist of tears I hid from him……”  I love Stephen Fowl’s phrasing: “Christ is no longer a commodity to be gained but a place, a home where the lost Paul is found.”

   We like “know him and the power of his resurrection” – but then Paul adds “and may share in his sufferings.” To desire Christ’s sufferings? We hope his suffering will shield us from suffering. 

  But ponder St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer before the crucifix: “My Lord Jesus Christ, two graces I ask of you before I die: one is that I might feel in my body, as far as possible, the pain you underwent in your hour of passion; and the second is that I might feel, as far as possible, the love with which you were inflamed so as to undergo such a passion for us sinners.” Mind you, Francis’s prayer resulted in the stigmata, in constantly bleeding wounds in his hands, feet and side. Do we fear Jesus might actually join with us in his sufferings?

   Karl Barth (along with others) is vigilant to be sure we don’t make faith into a work: “Paul has no intention of supplanting the Pharisaism of works by the far worse Pharisaism of the heart… There is no bridge from here to there, but solely the way from there to here – the way that from beginning to end and all along is God’s way.” 

   Paul in a picturesque ways conceives of this union with Jesus as a runner pressing hard toward the prize. Fowl’s rendering is helpful: “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.” Let the preacher take his or her own risk at athletic metaphors. I heard a preacher once tell about running in the state finals of the 100 yard dash, starting poorly, but rallying and winning. I wasn’t inspired…