What can we say January 11? The Baptism of the Lord

    We could preach from Isaiah 42:1-9, and I’d have fun exploring the angle of asking: Did John, or Jesus, or onlookers ruminate on this text in their minds? “Here is my servant, my chosen in whom my soul delights? I have put my spirit upon him”? Is this at last the “new thing” God pledged to be about? A “bruised reed”? Were some protruding out of the water in the shallow Jordan?

    Of course, Matthew 3:13-17 gets rightful pride of place this day. I love (understatement) our annual renewal of Baptism on this Sunday. Standing by the font, watching people come, joyfully, sadly, hopefully, broken, eager, every mood conceivable. I always re-read what Martin Sheen, the great actor and devout Catholic, told Krista Tippett (in his fabulous interview with her on On Being) about standing in line in worship: “How can we understand these great mysteries of the church? I don’t have a clue. I just stand in line and say Here I am, I’m with them, the community of faith. This explains the mystery, all the love. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed, just watching people in line. It’s the most profound thing. You just surrender yourself to it.” 

    Or as Dom Jeremy Driscoll put it, “Monks are always processing. When we go from one place to another, we don’t just do it helter-skelter. I am reminded again and again that I am not just vaguely moving through life. I am inserted into the definitive procession of Christ. I am part of a huge movement, a definitive exodus. I am going somewhere.” I love that. Wonder if my choir will sing “Down in the River to Pray” from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

   Matthew 3:13-17, so simple, so provocative, needing so little (if any!) explanation. I wonder if in my sermon I can somehow usher people into the scene by the river, and then get out of the way? I’m impressed by what Karl Barth (in the skinny volume of Church Dogmatics, IV.4, published not long before he died) shrewdly suggested: “Jesus was not being theatrical. When Jesus was baptized, he needed to be washed of sin -- not his sin, but our sin. When faced by the sins of all others, he did not let these sins be theirs, but as the Son of His Father, ordained form all eternity to be the Brother of these fatal brethren, caused them to be His own sins. No one who came to the Jordan was as laden and afflicted as He.”

   If you have a good Baptism story, now’s the time. I once baptized a 45 year old man dying of pancreatic cancer. As I splashed water onto his forehead, he began to shake, then to cry – and then as he became supremely calm and at peace he said to me, “I feel younger. I feel lighter.” I’ve renewed Baptism in the muddy creek called the Jordan – and describing what it looks like invites people into the moment.

    Have you ever read Flannery O’Connor’s story “The River”? A young boy, Harry, hears a preacher, named Bevel, who’s baptizing people in a stream, say “Leave your pain in the river.” The boy has much pain indeed, and the story ends tragically. Well worth the preacher’s time to ponder – even if it’s not used in the sermon! We need to experience, know and feel more than we tell.

   The moment is more ominous than we realize. Jesus’ next challenge is in the wilderness, engaging in mortal combat against the devil. Justin Martyr wrote that just as Jesus was baptized, a miraculous fire was ignited right in the middle of the river! Davies & Allison say this: “Jesus interpreted his prospective dark fate in eschatological terms… so, Jesus could have gone to the Baptist not in order to obtain forgiveness but rather to receive a pledge of ultimate deliverance, a seal of divine protection.”

   Can I imagine and help our people imagine Jesus, dripping wet, climbing the bank, an echo of creation as emerging from the watery chaos, or the people coming up out of the muddy Red Sea – or even an infant plopping out all wet from the mother’s womb. And the dove, maybe a descendant of the one Noah sent out from the ark? The text is about Jesus, not us – so while resisting this perennial temptation to think the text is about me (reminding us of Barth who reminds us that to speak of God is not to speak about us in a loud voice!), we might touch on the way Jesus becomes one with us, and so when he is declared “Beloved,” we are as well. Never forget that your people just don’t feel all that beloved. They are Americans, earning their way, feeling entitled, or lonely or just plain hardened to life. Judging others as a reflex of their own insecurity. Clergy, maybe you included, are a bit numb and weary, not sensing your belovedness. With Jesus, you are beloved. Like a newborn infant.

   Do you know Fr. Greg Boyle's new book, The Whole Language? His interactions with former gang members, homies, is riveting, and healing. They feel like krap, including when they hear clergy speak of the burden of sin. He always responds, "God sees son, not sin," or "You are beautiful, you are good, you are wonderful." What does God say to Jesus wading in the Jordan? Not Well-lived! or Well-repented, but Beloved. Dare we suggest God sees Son, not Sin in us? 

   The dove draws our minds back to Noah’s ark, the bird of redemption as the perilous floodwaters subsided, an airborne sign of God’s presence, and assurance. Notice this is the first, and maybe the clearest, mention or explication of the Trinity in Scripture. No wonder we use the Trinitarian formula in Baptism! No theological postulates or explanations about this Threeness in God. It’s a story, it’s all relationship, everybody else gets drawn in.

   Theologians have fretted over why Jesus was baptized, being sinless. I’d fret more over the idea here that the heavens were visibly opened. Everybody got a glimpse into whatever’s up there. Streets of gold, pearly gates, angelic choirs with harps? I can’t preach on the heavens being ripped open without recalling Martin Luther King’s last sermon in Memphis: “It’s alright to talk about ‘long white robes over yonder,’ in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here.”

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  Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World - one I've been wanting to write for decades now! Abingdon provides a study guide and video series with it. Enjoy - for you, for others and for groups too.

What can we say January 18? 2nd after Epiphany

    Isaiah 49:1-7. “Before you were born I called you.” How about you, preacher? How do we invite our people to realize such a thing? The suggestion is that your call isn’t something you figure out, or choose, but it’s just there, larger than your entire existence, enveloping you always.

   “You made my mouth a sharp sword.” I was chatting the other day with a clergy friend about another clergy friend who, we agreed, craves and creates controversy and trouble. Is his mouth a sharp sword? Or it what John Lewis called “good trouble” or really just “dumb trouble”? How do we discern the difference? Just because my people are annoyed doesn’t mean I’m speaking truth. St. Ephrem: “Truth and love are wings. Without both, you tumble.” Can a “sharp sword” fulfill love? Is it like a scalpel, the surgeon’s painful but merciful excision of something lethal? Is it like a sharpening blade, creating friction that leads not to harsh sparks but to a beautiful finish, like a mirror?

   “You are my servant, in whom I will be glorified.” God, that is, not you the servant! Not too many clergy are all that tempted to vainglory. More likely it’s what 2^nd Isaiah confesses next: “I have labored in vain, and spent my strength for nothing.” Burnout. Exasperation. The perils of ministry. Notice this burned out one’s words made it into Scripture… So there is some hope – perhaps best conveyed in the question of verse 6: “Is it too light a thing that you should be my servant?” This may mean many things – but for me, today, I hope it can mean that I am okay with simply being God’s servant, whether what I do works, or satisfies me or anybody else, or even if I am worn flat out.

   1 Corinthians 1:1-9. Lucky Sosthenes! Sticking close to Paul, he is remembered forever. This letter is, interestingly “to the sanctified.” Really? Not yet? In anticipation? “Saints”? It’s aspirational, more for Paul than for the Corinthians themselves! By naming them as such, he raises the expectation, dreams the dream.

   Paul opens with what we might call flattery. In the balance of the letter, we find Paul fuming that they aren’t actually living up to the flattering intro. Again, aspirational? Maybe we spoke nobly and optimistically to our people when we preach – dreaming they might actually rise up to our vision, God’s vision. Jewel’s great song echoes the idea: “Maybe if we are surrounded in beauty, one day we will become what we see.”

   John 1:29-42. Fairly standard Johannine verbiage until verse 35 (and I don’t mean that dismissively!). It’s a scene the preacher can depict so people can picture it: over there, guys under a tree in the shade, and it’s 4pm, so it’s getting late, weariness may be setting in.

   John says “Behold” him. I’d want to ponder that “Behold.” It’s more than just looking. At Christmas we sang “Come and behold him.” There’s a taking him in, a reflective meditation on him, a gazing, an amazed gawking, an embrace of the eyes and the soul. 

   John says “I did not know him,” but they were kin! Maybe they didn’t see each other much – or maybe he’s saying I knew him but I didn’t really behold or recognize him until the revealing of the Spirit… Now I see him, know him, understand him, behold him for who he really is. And then you have to love the pace, and spatial imagery of John.  Two guys hear, traipse off after him, he spots them behind him – and he doesn’t tell them to be good or do good, but simply “Stay with me.” And they stayed. That’s enough of a sermon, right? Jesus says Be near me. And it is our life just to be near him.

   He “takes away the sin of the world,” not of each individual but the whole fallen world? He takes it away: I can envision hauling garbage away! So it’s not just, okay, this sin of yours and of the world – and you’re still holding the trash or it’s all lying around. Can we hope for such from Jesus?

   John “saw the Spirit come down.” Was it a dove again? What would it look like today if the Spirit came down? Concoct a vision, and share!

   I might fiddle around with “the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother.” So it’s sort of Go, find others, and tell – but there’s also a little nuance of Because Jesus found you, you find yourself with a new family. He found a brother.

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  Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World - one I've been wanting to write for decades now! Abingdon provides a study guide and video series with it. Enjoy - for you, for others and for groups too.

What can we say January 25? 3rd after Epiphany

    Isaiah 9:1-4 pulls my heart back toward Advent. Walking in darkness, seeing a great light: we ponder the magi, Jesus’ birth, the Gospel of John’s vivid imagery of light shining in the darkness. Isaiah, back in the 8th century, was not foretelling the future. But how intriguing is it that he names the historic degradation of Zebulun and Naphtali – the very tribal areas where Jesus grew up and ministered as an adult! The “way of the sea,” the Via Maris, was the great road connecting Egypt to Mesopotamia – running right past Galilee and the epicenter of his ministry. I’m not sure the heavy trade that made it a profitable route was what Isaiah had in mind; but Jesus did take up residence along this road, where moneymakers and tax collectors stayed busy.

   Notice in your heart and maybe in the sermon the poetic couplings in this text, as if to reiterate, to remind, to drive home the hope! “There shall be no gloom” surely implies there is gloom now, and I fixate on the great poem from Fra Giovanni: “The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see – and to see, we have only to look.” Hope maybe isn’t so much about better, changed circumstances, but learning to see – in the dark.

   Before touching on our Epistle, let’s linger over the Psalter and Gospel for a few moments.

   Psalm 27 is one of my great loves, which I spend a whole chapter on in my new book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World. Hard not to preach on it when the chance comes. The lectionary picks out verses 1, and 4-9 – all lovely, but so is the entire Psalm which, like Isaiah, fixates on the light. Because “the Lord is my light and my salvation,” then “I will not fear” – an echo of Psalm 23. You can almost picture someone with good cause to fear repeating to himself, “I will not fear, I will not fear.” Don’t the words, when coupled to trust in the Lord as light and salvation, actually scuttle some of the fear?

   Mark Smith, in his lovely book Psalms: The Divine Journey, demonstrates that this Psalm emerged from the Israelites’ experience of worship in the temple. It was oriented toward the east; so as the sun rose over the Mt. of Olives, the blazing light would strike the eastern wall of the temple, creating a brilliant glow on the outside. But the inside: high windows were designed to let that rising light in (after a night of watching and praying), and the bright light would then glisten off the golden interior creating a nearly blinding display of radiance. Other nations worshipped sun gods. In Israel, the sun was a vivid illustration of God’s bedazzling nature – and they knew as well as we that the sun is God’s instrument of life, light and warmth. This light symbolized God’s immanence and God’s transcendence all at once! As Smith puts it, “In the temple experience, internal and external perceptions merged, and thus there was experienced the God of superhuman size and brilliant light giving joy and perhaps even healing to those who trust in his name.”

   Ellen Charry (in her Brazos commentary), as always, has rich insights. She notices that Psalm 25 pleads for forgiveness; Psalm 26 proclaims that the speaker has relocated himself to a cleaner place; then Psalm 27 "takes the protagonist's reconstruction of his life a step further. These 3 Psalms provide snapshots of progress in the spiritual renewal of life." Wow. Then this: if you're attentive to Psalm 27 you'll notice "the speaker moves rapidly back and forth between his local hearers" (fellow worshippers) "and God.. One can almost see his human audience watching expectantly as he turns his body now toward them, now away from them, toward God, and back to them again." Prayer, witness, community. Just lovely.

   “One thing have I asked of the Lord.” Me? I’ve asked for dozens of things! When Jesus visited Mary and Martha, just across the valley from the temple, Jesus dissed Martha a little for being obsessed and “distracted” by “many things.” “One thing is needful” (Luke 10:38-42). That one thing was sitting at Jesus’ feet. In Psalm 27, it is simply being present in the house of God. We can resonate to the Psalmist and reflect on the privilege and joy it is today to be in a sanctuary. It is the house of God, God our salvation is there.

   The Psalmist asks “to behold the beauty of the Lord.” Dostoevsky said “The world will be saved by beauty.” We do not think of beauty nearly enough, and simply to ponder the beauty of Jesus, the beauty of the story, the beauty of the Church, the beauty of holy lives: isn’t this the antidote to fear?

   I spoke at a Pentecostal conference years ago. During the opening song (which took at least 20 minutes!), the guy next to me stopped singing the song, raised his hands toward the ceiling (or toward heaven?) and muttered, over and over and over, “Oh Jesus, you are so beautiful.” I want to grow up to be like him. We sing “Fairest Lord Jesus… Beautiful Savior.” Didn’t Jesus say his body was the real temple? The ultimate dwelling of God on earth? Didn’t Jesus have to be beautiful, or maybe magnetic or charismatic or beguiling, as total strangers dropped everything to traipse off after him, with no idea where they were heading?

   If we think expansively, we behold the beauty of the Lord all day long, every day – any time we are awake and looking around… and since Lent is coming: Lauren Winner once offered the shrewd suggestion to give up anxiety for Lent. Of course, worries flutter into the soul… so when they do, you recite a verse, from memory, from a card you carry around, whatever: “Set me on a rock that is higher than I” (Psalm 27:5). Isaiah’s geographical notices, and the Psalm’s seeking of the Lord’s face lead wonderfully into our Gospel reading:

   Matthew 4:12-23. Jesus, walking out of those Isaianic places, Zebulun and Naphtali, on the Via Maris (did he look around and think, Wow, Isaiah is resonating in my soul right now?). He saw fishermen. Not Andy and Opie fishing as a hobby, but a business (was it called Zebedee and Sons?). Little details have figurative import here. Jesus did not wait in the synagogue for them to come. He went to them, to their place of business (a very John Wesley-ish thing to do). They did not interview several rabbis and choose their favorite; he chose them. Jesus didn’t have a nice visit, and say “See you when I’m back” as he waved goodbye. They had to leave plenty behind to follow: business, family, home. We sometimes diss the disciples for their slowness – but geez, they left everything.

   Hard for me to ponder this text without thinking of the “Jesus boat” archaeologists found – dating to the time of Jesus! I wish it said “S.S. Simon Peter” on the prow! But this is a boat Jesus surely saw, maybe stepped into or floated in. We forget the realities of Bible stories – so this salient reminder of the tangibility of the life of fishermen is astounding. I wonder if, just maybe, when they saw the face of Jesus, they ventured in their minds to the 27th Psalm and this seeking the light, the face of God.

   1 Corinthians 1:10-18. When Jesus started calling fishermen, could he even (with his fantastic imagination and brilliant understanding) have fathomed how his followers would quickly divide themselves into warring factions? Yet another “unintended consequence of the resurrection,” the mess our churches have always been in. 

   “Be in agreement,” and we agree that those other guys should agree with us. “Be in unity,” which we all favor – as long as it’s my unity. You have to love Paul’s daring: it’s not just those who say they belong to Paul or Apollos or Cephas – but even those who declare “I belong to Christ.” Aren’t there always those who trump in, cockily vaunting themselves as the one true Bible party?

   They suffer from “rivalries.” The Greek is eris: Paul and his Greek readers would have known the mythological tale of Eris, goddess of strife, causing the Trojan War by dropping a golden ball into a party, and stirring up debate over who was the fairest. The carnage was legendary.

   We cannot know, but I wonder if in this context when Paul refers to the foolishness of the Gospel, he’s exposing the high self-regarding Corinthians for their masked foolishness – and, that if the Gospel itself is foolishness, then we should be well-prepared to bear some foolishness from others in his church?

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  A couple of years ago, I published a new Lenten study, Unrevealed Until Its Season - which proved to be pretty popular for laity (and many clergy I know!). Give it a look!

What can we say February 1? 4th after Epiphany

   Not one, not two but three texts this week that might land in anybody’s top ten of preachable, powerful texts! Sometimes I think toward a sermon by hearing music kin to the text – so I’ll start with “Blest Are They,” the great David Haas (despite his foibles??) hymn and chorus. I also like to ponder art – so spending time just gazing at the folly of a crucified God will bring healing to my soul, and hopefully to my sermon, even if I don’t speak on the epistle! Speaking of which, I explicated 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 in my March 4, 2018 blog post, weighing the absurdity of the cross, various portrayals of the crucifixon, St. Francis’s prayer (the real one, not the popular one), and a great reflection from Michael Knowles on the folly of preaching that may be the greatest single word of encouragement written for preachers I have ever read.

   Familiar texts are surprisingly hard to preach on though – because they are so… familiar. It’s tough to capture the shock and awe that Micah’s first hearers, or Paul’s first readers, or those gathered on a Galilean hillside must have experienced. Maybe naming the surprise that was theirs might help pew-sitters this Sunday.

   Quite oddly for me, I have written a book on both texts.  Doesn't guarantee a good sermon though, does it?  Micah 6:1-8 turned out to be more intriguing than I’d imagined. Micah (meaning “Who is like the Lord?”) was from rural Moresheth-Gath – and in those tumultuous 8^th century days, the rural towns bore the brunt of foolish policy-making in the big city of Jerusalem. Would a rural church pastor dare join in with Micah complaining about policy in urban places?

   The question, “What does the Lord require?” needs parsing. The verb, require, is a translation of darash, which is not like a teacher requiring homework or a judge requiring punishment. Darash is the way a child requires its mother’s love, a flower requires sunshine, a lover requires the beloved’s presence. And God darashes 3 things, which may really be 1 thing viewed from 3 perspectives.

   1. Do justice, not think about justice or believe in justice or hope for justice. DO justice. And “justice” is our rendering of mishpat, which isn’t fairness or getting what is deserved. Justice, mishpat, is when the poorest are cared for.  There’s that statue of justice outside the Supreme Court – showing that “justice is blind.” God’s justice isn’t blind at all. God sees, God cares. God isn’t unbiased. God is immensely biased, toward us, hoping for the best conceivable outcome for our lives.

   2. Love kindness. Kindness seems vapid, although we should be kind, especially in such an unkind era.  The Hebrew is hesed, steadfast love, covenant loyalty.  Really it’s about mercy. Pope Francis proclaimed 2016 as “The Year of Mercy” (and he showed mercy to any and everybody) – but God knows we still need it a decade later in 2026. God is all mercy. We are called to be merciful (as the Beatitudes will show!).

   3. Walk humbly. In a cocky world, we are asked to be humble – not humiliated, but humble, which really is nothing other than the truth about ourselves. We are weak, vulnerable, in need, dependent upon God, not all that brilliant or strong after all. And we walk, not standing still. You go – for God.

   Matthew 5:1-12. Jesus, as full of desire for the wholeness and love of people as God speaking through Micah, began his sermon to a bunch of nobodies by blessing them. The Beatitudes aren’t commandments: go be these ways! What we see is that God blesses what the world despises. Matthew has “poor in spirit,” but Luke 6’s version has just plain “poor.” Most Americans will want to keep “in spirit,” but it’s both, always. Jesus blessed those who “mourn.” We pity them – but in God’s heart they are blessed. Jesus admires the “meek.” Put that on your resume and see how swiftly you lose an interview! But with Jesus, meekness is holy. Help your people feel the shockingly counter-cultural feel of all this! No conventional wisdom or trite soundbytes here.

   Jesus blessed those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Not those who ARE righteous, just those seeking it, craving it, grabbing what they can and discover then they really want more. Then we see his blessing of the “merciful” – and it’s reflexive: they receive mercy. We could spend our lives well just striving for mercy; we’re all desperate for it already. Jesus knows – and simultaneously blesses the peacemakers, and those who suffer for righteousness...  So much in this rich text.

   What fascinates me is thinking of people whose photo you might attach to each Beatitude. St. Francis? Dorothy Day? Your grandmother? I suspect though Jesus didn’t think of these as eight distinct things. They are, again, really one. The meek can be merciful; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness make peace. And so forth. Stories of holy, courageous, blessed lives always work well in preaching!

   The real picture to attach to these Beatitudes is Jesus himself. It’s virtually autobiographical. Jesus was all these things. He’s showing us what it’s like to be close to his heart.

   So to preach these texts:  I think I'll begin by inviting people to imagine what God is like - and some mix of that darash-kind -of-God, and Jesus looking with deep care and compassion at people on a hillside above Galilee. That's the kind of God we're talking about. He dreams holy dreams for us. He longs for the happiest, most joyful life for us. He's not a commander so much as he's a yearner, and is willing to show the way by being our best selves so we could see and believe. I might rifle through each thing (do justice, hunger for righteousness, etc.) or pick a couple. Maybe meekness, which is so out of style (and fits walking humbly): where have I seen this around our church or in the world? And the merciful, or peacemakers: where are these guys needed in a clashing society? Can I find a story where mercy was enacted, and the world changed?

   What about the church?  Is the church poor, meek (yes?? - in this declining culture), merciful and a doer of justice (not so often)? When has the church looked like Micah 6 or Matthew 5? Can we dream of such a church? This is a church that does justice because it has received mercy, that loves hesed because this is what we hunger and thirst for, and walks humbly because we acknowledge joyfully our meekness.

   So it's not Go thou and do likewise! but painting a beautiful image of what holy living looks like, so we'll be attracted, so we'll discover we already have more meekness and mourning than we let on in public... How good of Jesus to bless them and us with such a humble, holy, soaring vision of life with him!

What can we say February 8? 5th after Epiphany

    Isaiah 58:1-12. The preacher’s role is well-portrayed by the prophet: I am a “watchman.” Ron Heifetz and other business gurus speak of wise leaders as taking the view from the balcony, above the fray, seeing the big picture. Can I persuade my choir to sing the Bob Dylan / Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower”?

   “The Fast I Choose” would make an intriguing, and maybe haunting sermon title. Odd to us: the Israelites are fasting! – an alien practice for us modern consumerist Christians. We would assume if we fasted (and really fasted, not just doing with donuts for a day), we’d join the ranks of the super-spiritual. To regular fasters, God says I want something else – or really, something in addition to fasting, or really the ultimate purpose of fasting. God wants justice, shalom for everybody.

   Walter Brueggemann’s sarcasm makes me chuckle: “The Israelites enjoy worship” – something my people crave! But it’s nothing (for them and for us) but self-indulgence; they see the Lord as potentially useful… It’s not just our foolish thinking we might use God as a tool for what we want; it’s also our failure to get in sync with God’s vision for social justice. Brueggemann nails the issue: “Worship not congruent with humane economic practice is bad worship.” Worship isn’t a time to garner God’s help. It’s worship, sheer adoration of God – and then getting on board with God’s projects, not ours.

   On the idea that worship is not instrumental, as if for some other benefit, but is all about God: Thomas Aquinas was on his deathbed. Those around him heard a voice from above: “Thomas, you have spoken well of me. What reward would you ask for yourself?” Aquinas replied, “Nothing but Yourself, O Lord.”

   To fast, to think and act differently with respect to economics, requires a self-imposed (or God-imposed) weakness. Hence, our Epistle:

   1 Corinthians 2:1-16. What was Paul’s weakness? Ben Witherington: “For whatever reasons, whether physical appearance, a weak voice, lack of training in declamation, or inadequate rhetorical delivery, Paul in his oral performance did not come across as rhetorically adept… God chose a weak agent to proclaim the message of God’s weakness on the cross.”

   Notice the oxymoron tucked into the phrase, “They crucified the Lord of glory.” It’s a “mystery,” not solved or solvable, but entered into, lived for, in awe of. Understanding this may be “maturity” in this life of faith. The mature are those who know they are weak.

   Church and clergy just don’t get weakness, yet it’s at the heart of who Jesus was/is, and at the core of Paul’s ministry. We trust in strength-finders, or even spiritual gifts (religious strength-finders, right?). We want skills, resumes, productivity. But Paul comes in weakness, and brags about it. Wasn’t his real weakness simply being human? Aren’t even the good-looking, agile and eloquent weak? In 2 Corinthians 12 we see the bookending of today’s text: “My power is made perfect in weakness.”

   Brené Brown has drawn a massive following with this theme. Why does it seem unusual to church people? It’s in vulnerability, in our weakness, that love, good, hope, relationship, and actually everything good happens. Weakness isn’t something to be overcome. It simply is. My leadership book is appropriately titled Weak Enough to Lead. Are you?

   In this blog, I try to direct you to texts and comments that aren’t mere fodder for sermons, but actually nourishment for the preacher’s spirit. I adore this word of encouragement from Michael Knowles, commenting on just this text: “The vast majority of preachers throughout the entire history of the Christian church have conducted their ministries in either relative or absolute obscurity.  And they, by virtue of such obscurity, best exemplify cruciform preaching as Paul intends it.  Wherever preachers stand before their congregations conscious of the folly of the Christian message, the weakness of their efforts, and the apparent impossibility of the entire exercise… there, Paul’s homiletic of cross and resurrection is at work.  The one resource that genuinely faithful preachers of the gospel have in abundance is a parade of daily reminders as to their own inadequacy, unworthiness and – dare we admit it? – lack of faithfulness.  Yet these are the preconditions for grace, the foundations for preaching that relies on God ‘who raises the dead.’”

   The preacher might want to clarify that when Paul says “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus,” he is light years from the way preachers or believers today might say “Just give me Jesus.” Which Jesus? We remake him in our own image so swiftly and unwittingly. Paul adds “and him crucified,” which helps. Paul doesn’t exactly keep Jesus simple. Isn’t the plea to keep theology simple really an evasion of the complex claim of the Gospel on all of life?

    Matthew 5:13-20. Jesus’ wonder-sermon on the mount continues. The scene in the Monty Python film The Life of Brian hilariously pictures people trying to hear Jesus, and mistaking what he was saying (Blessed are the cheesemakers!). The preacher might try to set the scene – the lovely Galilean hillside, not much changed today from 2000 years ago! And also the shock, the mental revolution Jesus was hoisting on his listeners.

   And then how personal all this is! The Greek “you” (humeis) is emphatic, like “You yourselves” or “You – yes you!” Jesus speaks of salt without explaining the connotation. Salt preserves, seasons, purifies, fertilizes; it’s a metaphor for wisdom, and was used in sacrifices at the temple. Jesus again left it open-ended for them and us to poke around, find peculiar meaning just now for me and others. 

   Regarding salt: I plan to reflect on Mahatma Gandhi’s 240 mile march to the coast of India protesting the British tax on salt. Hundreds of thousands trailed behind him; 60,000 were arrested. When Gandhi got to the shore, he made a little salt – his point being it occurs quite naturally in God’s good world, is so essential to life, and thus should not be a high control government monopoly. Sounds like grace, or compassion, or even justice.

   The lamp would have been utterly familiar, the small terra cotta kind that didn’t cast a lot of light, but cast what light there was. Laughably, Jesus says you wouldn’t put it under a bushel!  The “city set on a hill”: Jesus may have pointed north above the Galilee to the town perched up there: 

  Safed, elevation 3,000 feet above sea level, the highest city in all of Israel, and to this day a fabled center for Jewish learning and mysticism. The image of “the city set on a hill” fed the dreams (and fantasies) of America as God’s chosen people (so the Puritans, and on into modern political Evangelicalism). These visions haven’t been wicked, and there is a holy dream at the core of it; and yet the perils, the implicit arrogance, pose problems. Jesus is inviting his people, the nobodies, to be the bright hope of the world.

   We who dig notions of being saved by grace not works, and we whose religious life is really I do what I want, I ask God to help with what I want or when I’m in trouble, then I go to heaven one day, should shudder at the clarity and height of Jesus’ soaring demand (or isn’t invitation the better word?). Our righteousness is far beyond even the Torah. Jesus doesn’t want mere adherence to rules – although rules mattered to him, he wasn’t a lax, do whatever you feel like kind of guy. The commandments must be exceeded in the heart of God’s holy people – as he explains in subsequent verses (next week's text!) in this same amazing sermon. Don’t murder? If you’ve harbored anger… Don’t commit adultery? If you’ve harbored lust in your heart… It’s a profound inner and outer holiness Jesus is after. And it’s not a straitjacket. It’s the way of freedom. So important for preachers: to underline how God’s commands aren’t commands so much as compelling invitations, open paths to live freely and joyfully. Can the preacher devise a few thoughtful examples of how this unfolds? A story from your life or someone you love and admire?

What can we say Feb. 15? Transfiguration Sunday

 As we head into Lent, I thought I'd commend to you a fabulous book of Lenten sermons (beginning with Transfiguration Sunday!), Being Transfigured, by Chris E.W. Green, a sparkling theologian I admire immensely. 

    Exodus 24:12-18. Why does my mind drift to the Busch beer ad from the 80’s, revived for the 2022 Super Bowl: “Head for the mountains.” God invites Moses to come up “on” the mountain; but then Exodus 24 says they went up “into” the mountain. The Hebrew isn’t all that significant. But I wonder. We think of going “on” a mountain. But this mountain? It’s a deeper experience. You go “into” the mountain.

   Such mountainous heights remind me of something I wrote in my book on hymns (Unrevealed Until Its Season). “Roger Scruton, philosopher of beauty, contrasts the serene beauty of a green meadow with a ‘wind-blown mountain crag… We experience the vastness, the power, the threatening majesty of the natural world, and feel our own littleness in the face of it.’ This we call ‘sublime,’ which isn’t super-beautiful, but a beauty that humbles, even frightens you a little. It’s thrilling and inspiring, but it underlines your finitude, your frailty.”

   Isn’t God like such a sublime mountain crag? We are in awe. We tremble a little, and wonder if it’s safe. You can’t just jog to the top. You feel small, and yet drawn into the wonder. How perfect that so many mountain scenes figure prominently in God’s revealing God’s mind and grandeur to us.

   Notice there are 6 days of waiting in a cloud before the Lord spoke! Time. Sabbath timing. Such is Moses’ experience – and his on behalf of all Israel, and of us all.

   2 Peter 1:16-21. The apology here, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths” – which is what the Transfiguration sounds like! The claim from whoever wrote this epistle, not sounding late so much as the word of one of Jesus’ real disciples: “We had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Richard Bauckham’s extensive study of the Gospels indicates we have good cause to think of them as based on actual eyewitness accounts – which is a big deal, echoed in today’s text!

   Jesus, in this eyewitness account, “was honored by God the Father” with the voice from heaven: “This is my Son, my Beloved,” a declamation God offered not once but twice: at the Baptism of our Lord, and at his Transfiguration. We are told, at such magical, pivotal, transformative moments, not merely to admire Jesus, but to “listen to him,” to be attentive to him as to a lamp shining in a dark place (Psalm 119:105).

   Matthew 17:1-9 is an endlessly great and generative text for preachers – but not if we have some moral take-away or point. In The Beauty of the Word, I suggest that preaching shouldn’t be so much about us, our faith, our life as disciples, but about God. The Transfiguration is the parade text: the Bible, and thus sermons, should be first of all about God, not us! The takeaway? This threesome are so overwhelmed by God’s unmitigated presence that their respond is simply “They fell to the ground in awe.” Period. I want to preach the sermon that causes my people to be in awe of God. Period.

  So speaking of awe: I just finished Dacher Keltner's remarkable Awe! This deep dive into what Awe is – via storytelling and science - is fabulous. “Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand.” “Awe reveals that our current knowledge is not up to the task of making sense of what we have encountered.” Lucky us, because “we can find awe anywhere.” This “need for awe is wired into our brains and bodies, and finding awe is easy if we just wonder.” 

   He distinguishes “eight wonders of life.” Before romping through all 8, I wondered which Jesus' transfiguration fit. I suspect it's all 8! Best, maybe, is “other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming obstacles” – or “moral beauty." Examples abound, from escaping Auschwitz to firemen on 9/11 to Desmond Tutu; think Fr. Greg Boyle or Special Olympics. Then there is “collective effervescence,” like weddings, sports celebrations, reunions, joining in a “wave” – all involving other people. Of course, there is “nature,” from cataclysmic events like a thunderstorm or a tsunami, or the ocean or mushrooms in a forest, or a double rainbow. Then music – which taps something subterranean and inexplicable. Visual design is another wonder: buildings, a Mayan pyramid, a dam, a carved angel, the crafted, crafting and crafter all amazing. Spiritual awe happens, a moving service or an encounter with the numinous. Life and death: so birth, and being at the bedside when your mother dies. And finally epiphanies, sudden moments when we understand essential truths about life. 

   Sometimes it’s a realization, like the moment that dawned on Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that “Oh my god, this president is going to be impeached.” Or the moment when someone's true self emerges in a crisis or grief. I love it in John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany when Owen responds to key moments with THE SHIVERS. Awe gives you goosebumps, chills, or you shudder; it takes your breath away, and you can’t summon the words to tell about it will, although you wish you did. Maybe you emit a “Whoa” or “Oh my.”

   Keltner points out that in gathering stories of awe from people of 26 cultures around the world, not one mentioned money, Facebook, a smartphone or consumer purchases. Studies show people with less wealth feel awe more frequently. Also, medically, awe evokes humility and joy – but also “regions of the brain that are associated with excesses of the ego, self-criticism, anxiety and depression, quiet down” when we experience awe. As we cultivate and find awe, we become more open to new ideas, more curious, and attentive to the strengths of other people. 

   In preaching, I wonder about the suggestion that any time anybody feels awe, they get a glimpse of what the disciples saw in the Transfiguration. It's a reach - but using the text to cultivate the habit of looking for everyday awe? Okay, enough Keltner for now!

   Some other items worth pondering in our text for today: it was “6 days later,” just as our Old Testament text, Exodus 24, did not jumpstart until six days, waiting for the Sabbath, had passed. The 6 days here are also after the Caesarea Philippi conversation on Who Jesus is, and why he matters, all that gloomy talk about Jesus suffering, taking up your cross, and more.

   At such a pregnant moment, Jesus was “transfigured.” The Greek is more interesting: metamorphothe – and yes, if you don’t know Greek, it looks and sounds like “metamorphosis,” a crusty thing opening into a beautiful butterfly. Amazing. Miraculous. Jesus happening.

   His clothes dazzled, but so did his face, shining so brightly, enacting that classic benediction from Numbers 6: “May the Lord make his face to shine upon you.” It happened to these disciples, and perhaps happens to those who are attentive, attuned to Jesus and his appearing.

    “Suddenly” (!) Moses and Elijah appeared. Centuries old dudes! They may symbolize Law and Prophets. Or they are the two guys in the Old Testament who didn’t obviously die and get buried. They were the mountain men, like Christ, familiar with such mystical moments on this high place. They’d been on that mountain, they know its perils, the trembling before the mystery, surviving the annihilating presence.

    They were “talking with one another.” About… what…? We wish we knew! And we wish we could eavesdrop on that conversation! Fair for the preacher to ask – and without attempting an answer. In preaching we simply can reiterate Peter’s ridiculously wild understatement: “It is good that we are here.”

What can we say on Ash Wednesday?

  Ash Wednesday. I always tell myself and fellow clergy that they don’t come for the homily. They come for the ashes. I still love the great reflection Martin Sheen offered when interviewed by Krista Tippett: “How can we understand these great mysteries of the church? I don’t have a clue. I just stand in line and say Here I am, I’m with them, the community of faith. This explains the mystery, all the love. Sometimes I’m just overwhelmed, just watching people in line. It’s the most profound thing. You just surrender yourself to it.”

   I continue to commend some sort of Lenten fast, although it gets watered down into dieting or substituting beer for wine or whatever you gave up. Jesus fasted for his 40 days, and the saints we adore did the same. The location of his fasting: simply harrowing. Lisa and I visited the St. George's monastery that hangs perilously from a cliff overlooking the Wadi Qelt. It's hot, it's steep, and even today they warn you of brigands and carnivorous creatures in the area. 2 hours almost wore us out. Jesus did 2 hours 12 times daily for 40 days.

   I am enjoying and admiring Chris Green's new Being Transfigured. He confesses, as we all can, that "my sense of sin is warped / There is nothing more sinful than what we’ve said about sin, and what we’ve done in the name of our hatred of sin." How very "Self-absorbed – and self-negating" our sense of sin can be. "We’re nice but not kind, indulgent not compassionate, permissive not forgiving." Our need isn't to try harder, but a miracle; we need to be released by a divine intervention. 

   I think of my first adult life dog, Abigail, who loved to run in the woods of my rural parish. After she didn't come home one day, I finally found her - enmeshed in some old barbed wire somebody had used as a fence back in the day. The harder she struggled to get out, the more the barbs gashed her skin. I had to urge her to be very, very still, to trust me, so I could extricate her  - and then her wounds required some healing. That's what Lent, and the whole Christian life is like.

  William Placher's terrific Mark commentary cites Alexander Schmemann ("Fasting makes us light, concentrated, sober, joyful, pure"), Macrina Wiederkehr ("Fasting is cleansing. It lays bare our souls. In the Divine Arms we become less demanding and more like the One who holds us. We hunger and thirst for justice, and holiness. We hunger for what is right. What hunger to be saints"), and St. Basil ("Fasting is to refrain from vice"). I'll ponder those for me, whether they worm their way into a sermon or not.

   Our Psalm, the 51st, one of the church's historic "penitential Psalms," bears the weight of this day and season - although we might quibble with the unforeseen implication that David, having seized Bathsheba (the patron saint of #MeToo?), simply repents and expects cleansing - and we conclude all is well. What's the lesson in the ripple effects and lingering impact of our sin - even forgiven (by God) sin?

   Matthew 6 is perfect yet terribly odd for Ash Wednesday. Jesus tells us not to practice our piety visibly (v. 1), and not to disfigure our faces but to wash them (v. 16) – on the very day we disfigure our faces publicly. Nobody at my place though is showing off, sporting ashes for the rest of the day. If anything, they’ll get some strange stares at the store on the way home.

  When I get home, I try to take some time to linger before a mirror – to ponder that I have just been marked with the horror and hope of Jesus’ cross. No hymn captures so thrillingly the paradox of this horror and hope as Isaac Watts’s “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” We “survey” the cross. We don’t just glance at it. The soldiers didn’t survey this one. They’d seen plenty of crosses, and had no reason to think this was God. All they saw was a dying, despised person – which was precisely what God was hoping to achieve. More lines in that hymn bear reflection: “Sorrow and love flow mingled down.” Onlookers saw tragedy, maybe justice mingled.

   “Did e’er… thorns compose so rich a crown?” At Elizabeth II’s coronation so long ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury placed St. Edward’s Crown on her head. It was heavy, forged of 22 karat gold, with 444 precious stones, aquamarines, topazes, rubies, amethysts, sapphires. She then knelt to receive the body and blood of our Lord. Did she ponder Jesus’ very different crown, its only ornaments those harsh thorns gashing his forehead, scalp and temples?

   “My richest gain I count but loss.” Lent is the season to reassess what has value, what doesn’t, how much we offer up to God. Do we urge our people to embark on a fast? It’s not dieting. It’s not being glum and feeling sorry for ourselves. It’s solidarity with those who aren’t choosing to fast. It’s weaning ourselves from dependencies on things. It’s an awakening to where our treasure is.

   Where are the “Take the Bible literally!” people when it comes to “Do not lay up treasure on earth”? We prudently save, we check our retirement portfolios, we pay off the house. No use castigating the people, or ourselves. It’s a mark of our brokenness, our desperate need for the true God. The ashes are lie that mark on Cain’s forehead. It’s guilt, and grace.

  And so we invite people into (hopefully) a growing devotion, a loosening of our grip on our treasures, an expansion of God and grace into daily life. Here’s something we did a few years back. At the Baptism of the Lord, we handed out shower tags (we got the idea, and even purchased the tags from Adam Hamilton!), which you hang in the bath: “Lord, as I enter the water to bathe, I remember my Baptism. Wash me by your grace, fill me with your Spirit, renew my soul. I pray that I might live as your child today, and honor you in all that I do.”

   On Ash Wednesday, we picked up on Matthew 6 and handed out closet tags. Jesus said “Go into your closet to pray.” The Greek tameion is an inner room of the house, a storeroom, small, private – reminding us of the need for a dedicated holy space at home. I love this – that if you go into your closet and pray, you are doing God’s will! Picking up on other clothing images in Scripture, here’s how that tag reads: “Jesus said, ‘Go into your closet and pray in secret; and your Father will reward you.’ So pray. Prepare for your day with God. As you dress, remember Romans 14:8, ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,’ and Colossians 3:12, ‘Put on compassion, patience, forgiveness, love – and be thankful. Whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.’”

   Two more items while we’re on Matthew 6. Jesus says “When you pray,” not “If you pray” – and he was assuming 3 set times of prayer as was common Jewish practice then and now. When Will Willimon was Dean of Duke Chapel, he told about a Muslim student who asked him, “Why don’t the Christian students ever pray?” He obviously observed the 5 set daily times for prayer in Islam, and was puzzled that he never ever saw Christians stopping to pray. It’s a judgment call whether you can mention this to your people. I think it’s compelling, and inviting – but some folks have such potent, irrational anti-Muslim feelings that they’ll shut down on you.

   And then Jesus talks about “reward,” shunning earthly reward, but implying quite clearly there are rewards, ultimate rewards to the life of faith. I for one downplay this, remembering a very smart college student who asked me if he could become a Christian if he didn’t believe in eternal life. His angle was he wanted to follow Jesus just because it was good, right, noble and true, not to secure any prize for himself. I admire that – but quite clearly the Gospels and Epistles lay out for us fabulous, unspeakably fantastic rewards, or ultimate realities, for those who believe.

 ** Check out my new podcast, Maybe I'm Amazed - amazing conversations with amazing people who've done amazing things! Recent guests: Kate Bowler, David Wilkinson, Lillian Daniel, Chris Green - and earlier in the series, Civil Rights hero Dorothy Counts Scoggins, UNC basketball coach Roy Williams, 7 time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, Walter Brueggemann, Amy-Jill Levine, and more!