What can we say October 1? World Communion / 18th after Pentecost

    I love World Communion Sunday, although really every Sunday is just that, as is every Eucharist. I alternate between focusing on the unity of the church across the globe (which is to speak aspirationally and theologically more than realistically!), and fixing on the world itself and our mission to that world.

   Exodus 17:1-7. Christians, forever confused about grace, sense that grace is some valuable favor God offers – if we accept it, ask for it, believe in it. These Israelites only ask greedily, then grumble, foolishly ready to abandon freedom to return to the fleshpots of Egypt. God responds with… shocker! – grace, mercy, water in the wilderness. God’s like that.

   The Jewish festival of Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths, commemorating the wilderness wanderings, is happening now. Jewish families create little shelter-like structures in their homes. Fascinating. Talk to a rabbi. See if you can get invited over for a glass of wine. In your sermon, tell your people what you’re doing. They’ll be jealous.

   Israel’s demand for proof will seem familiar to us modern self-appointed arbiters of truth! Think about it: Anselm, Aquinas and a host of brilliant people have devised proofs for God’s existence; and a now larger number of wickedly smart people have debunked God’s existence. Logic can’t bend the will, or the heart though. As we’ll see in Philippians 2, Jesus ‘proved’ God by utterly ungodlike actions: humbling, debased, being abused and killed. There. That’s the only proof you get. 

   You could devise a whole sermon around the question of all questions there in verse 7: “Is the Lord among us or not?” How would we discern a Yes? Can we allow the space for those who’d say No, or I wish, or Used to be, or Maybe?

   Philippians 2:1-13 is one of the high water marks in all of Scripture, almost a creed-like distillation of the entire story of redemption. Scholars think it was an early Christian hymn. The joke’s on Leigh Teabing and The DaVinci Code, claiming Constantine made up the divinity of Jesus stuff in the 4th century. Here’s a song from 2 decades after Jesus, extolling him as God come down. Karl Barth: “A text like this can hardly be approached with sufficient care and concentration, for it offers so much is so few verses – a little compendium of Pauline testimony.”

   Little things charm me here (and so does the big thing…).  “If there is any encouragement…” A big if indeed! Nobody gets too much. Christians encourage. Do it. Invite others. It opens up the possibility of “being of one mind,” so elusive for us, even in church life. The culture never tells you to “Regard others as better than yourselves” – which is curious, since we seem quite naturally to do two weird things constantly: we harbor dark feelings of insecurity, suspecting others have it better, scanning Facebook with envy, etc.; but then we pass snarky judgment on others as if we’re superior – no more than a kneejerk reaction to our sense of inferiority. Paul wants neither, but the clarity that is humility. Humility is simple honesty.

   “Look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” No politician since John F. Kennedy (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”) has ever uttered such words, and neither have advertisers. 

   And then the last 2 verses!  Can you hear the paradox: “Work out your salvation, knowing God is at work in you.” Do I work? Does God work? Do I work and then realize God’s the one doing it? Yes.

   The hymn proper begins in v. 5. Translators differ on how to render the very beginning. Should it be the familiar “Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”? or the equally valid “Because he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”? God didn’t temporarily suspend being God, masquerading as empty, humble, obedient and slave-like for a season. God, in Christ, showed us God’s heart, what it always has been and will be like. His wasn’t to grasp (can we picture Adam and Eve grabbing that fruit? or Prometheus seizing the fire of the divinities?), or to consume, but to be emptied, poured out, “born.” God thought I want them to know and love me – so I’ll do this: I’ll become an infant, totally vulnerable, dependent, the antithesis of power. Maybe then they will be tender toward me and each other.

   As Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote, “In the Incarnation, the triune God has not simply helped the world, but has disclosed himself in what is most deeply his own.”  Infancy, and crucifixion:  this is God.  Paul moves into glorification – but as Barth reminds us, when the crucified one is glorified, “the abasement is not washed out or cancelled – it is he [the crucified one] who is exalted; it is to him the great name is given; it is of him who abased himself that all that follows is said.”

   This downward mobility, this life as emptying, will be ours the closer we are to Jesus. Think the whole life of St. Francis. My book, Weak Enough to Lead, got its title from Hudson Taylor, a pioneer English missionary to China: “God chose me because I was weak enough. God does not do his great works by large committees. He trains somebody to be quiet enough, and little enough, and then he uses him.”

   My preaching on this text focuses not on us or a Christlike demeanor or behavior, but on Christ. Stephen Fowl: “The best way to think of Christ’s manifestation of the glory of God is in terms of Christ’s beautiful body, a beauty that is not diminished but enhanced by taking the ‘form’ of a slave.” 

   George Hunsinger, in his brand new Brazos commentary, is especially wise on this. “Christ Jesus does not consider his glorious mode of existence as something that cannot be relinquished. He can relinquish it without ceasing to be who he is. Indeed he is never more fully who he is than in the act of relinquishing it. He relinquishes his glorious mode of existence without ceasing to be God. He does not refuse to act selflessly, at cost to himself, for the good of others.” Jesus’ “emptying” (kenosis) isn’t a subtraction, but addition (in keeping with the view of Athanasius, Aquinas and Barth!).

   Let’s ponder relinquishment. My book, Birth: the Mystery of Being Born, has a chapter on Adoption – and I am awed by Kelly Nikondeha’s wisdom (in her lovely book, Adopted: The Sacrament of Belonging in a Fractured World), pondering her own adoption as a baby: “A woman scooped me out of the white-wicker bassinet in the viewing room of the adoption agency and claimed me as her own. Her physical emptiness prepared the way for my fullness.” Then, pondering the woman who bore her, she tries to fathom if her giving her child up was a rejection? or rather a relinquishment? The woman who did not have to carry the child for so long actually did, at considerable physical cost. What if surrendering your child at birth is a loving relinquishment, not rejection, a humble acquiescence in the face of crushing circumstance? Is there a surprising kinship between a birth mother relinquishing her child for another so both can have fullness of life, and Jesus laboring for us in life and in death so we might have life?

   Notice I’m shrinking from offering illustrative material here. There’s really nothing like what Jesus did. Can the preacher trust the Jesus story, or the image of the crucified One, without dressing it up or lunging to “make it relevant?” Ours is to retell the story, and to be in awe and wonder. The preacher leads the way for the people. The preacher exhibits her own awe, his own wonder, inviting the people to join us in singing our own hymn about the glory of the humble Christ.

   Matthew 21:23-32. Very much like Socrates before him, Jesus answered questions with questions. I love the way this text delves into the privacy of their minds, struggling how to reply to the one they thought would struggle. Fearful, they try “We do not know.” Then, with considerable cheek, Jesus injects, “Then neither will I tell you.” Davies and Allison read this as indirect confirmation of Jesus’ authority: “He need not submit to question. His refusal is in fact veiled affirmation.”

    We’re fonder of Jesus’ other “A man had 2 sons” story. This one is edgy. He lobs an easy question at his critics. They tumble right into his trap. The point here isn’t that actions are more important than words; we’ve all seen that made up quote from St. Francis, “Preach always, use words only when necessary.” Jesus is interested in who actually shows up, who actually follow him instead of hiding out in pillared religious zones.

   Plenty of stories present themselves. Tony Campolo tells his funny, moving story about Agnes’s birthday in Hawaii. Greg Boyle tells about Mario, the tattooed ex-gang member. In Northern Lights: Resurrecting Church in the North of England, Jason Byassee tells a great story of a church of ex-cons, homeless and drug users being birthed in a barbershop. Better if you have one of your own, of course.

What can we say September 24? 17th after Pentecost

    I’ve never quite marshalled whatever it takes to pull off preaching from 2 texts in a single sermon. I might allude to one, but a dual focus tends to scatter my attention – and it’s worse for the poor souls listening! But it’s tempting here, as Exodus 16:2-15 and Matthew 20:1-16 illuminate one another in thoughtful ways. And the average churchgoer is familiar enough with both so you don’t have to start from scratch. Both are about food production, one miraculous, the other by labor – but with some miraculous economics.

   Both are, at the end of the day, about what it means to have “enough.” We did a series called Enough right before the pandemic. How much is enough? Am I enough? When do we say ‘Enough!’? I’m straying in my mind to Flannery O’Connor. Once, after blurting out to a friend, who spoke warmly of communion as symbolic, Flannery said “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it” – but then added more graciously and theologically, “It is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” That is, the Eucharist is enough.

    Exodus 16:2-15. “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” (Psalm 78:19). Or is the harder question, “Can this freed people stay free?” Check out photos of the Sinai. Paint the picture for your people. Not making a beeline for the Promised Land, but detouring far to the south through daunting terrain, the people had to wonder “Are we being led? Or are we merely wandering?” If they sang “I am bound for the promised land,” it wouldn’t have been bouncy and enthusiastic the way we sing it, but more of a dirge.

   With what will become monotonous whining, the people murmured – and God answered their murmuring, not with a curse or thunderclaps from heaven, but with bread. This is sheer, unadulterated grace: God replies with mercy, not to prayerful repentance, but to doubt-riddled whining. God gave them Manna – a wonderful word whose Semitic origin means “What is it?” Well, if heaven isn’t really up, this bread that came down – what was it? 

   In Bible times, Josephus the historian described the Sinai’s honey like deposits of the tamarisk (packaged and sold as souvenirs today!); insects suck off shrub’s sap and deposit the surplus on the branches; the residue crystallizes and falls to the ground; but this manna, not very tasty but rich in carbohydrates and sugars, succumbs to ants not long into the heat of the day. 

   Questions abound: it’s not a miracle? Or it’s the miracle of the tamarisk and insects? They saw this provision as a divine gift. And clearly the story begs us not to get derailed with the murmuring of historical questions. Flannery O’Connor resisted the idea of Eucharist-as-symbol, but there is much symbolic in this story. The double portion on Friday to cover the Sabbath… although the Sabbath commandment hasn’t been given just yet! No wonder devotional guides play on this ‘daily bread’ image; did Jesus have the manna in mind? You have to look out for it every morning; you can’t save up for a few days… etc. You have to love the way God not only responds to the murmuring with mercy; then when God gives them the bread, there are conditions. I admire B. Davie Napier’s phrasing (in Come Sweet Death, pondering the tree in Genesis 3, but it fits the manna as well): 

 Behold, God’s wondrous gift is given

   – with strings.

   All glory be to thee, uncertain giver,

   Who wants to have his gift

   and give it too.

   There are plenty of theological ruminations to be made on this scene. Brevard Childs (in his commentary which is unfailingly brilliant) points out that Exodus 16 does precede Exodus 20: “The sign of divine grace preceded the giving of the law of Sinai.” And then the riveting, profound scene narrated in John 6, when Jesus not only feeds thousands but explains his mission. It’s not about bread; the point of the bread is learning about every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Then Jesus raised it all to fever pitch: “The bread I give for the life of the world is my body.” He’d gone from feeding them, to pushing them toward Scripture, and now he’s dreaming of crucifixion. 

   Jesus gave them enough – not just enough bread, or just enough Scripture, but his own crucified body, which really is enough, just as the manna and the commandments to come, and the promise really were enough. Which lead us to…

   Matthew 20:1-16. This text about laborers in a vineyard is a splendid example of Jesus’ teaching, which is the antithesis of conventional wisdom, the kind of thing Clarence Jordan called a Trojan Horse: you let it in and Bam! Preachers typically preach to people who’d say I’m a 12 hour or a 9 hour kind of guy… but maybe they really are just one hour people, or maybe they aren’t in the field at all. It’s about the miracle of grace – and not last minute conversions. Grace is for everybody, and it’s enough for everybody. And there might even be a bigger surprise in the story – as I discovered when researching my book, Weak Enough to Lead. I’ll share this excerpt, which passes along a framework for how to read Matthew 20 that I find to be entirely persuasive, and alluring. Here goes:

   Jesus made up a shocking story about a vineyard owner who hired laborers in the morning, then some more later in the day, still more in the afternoon, and finally a few with only an hour left. When they lined up for their pay, he gave every last one of them a denarius. Quite fair – for a full day’s work. Not surprisingly, the guys who put in more time were furious. We are tempted to put some clever spin on the story, as if it is about late in life conversion, or even the magnificent bounty of God’s saving grace.

   But Amy-Jill Levine, rightly pointing out that “Jesus was more interested in how we love our neighbor than how we get into heaven,” asks an intriguing question: “Might we rather see the parable as about real workers in a real marketplace and real landowners who hire those workers?” Our gut reaction is No way! But wasn’t Jesus the kind of guy who wanted everyone to have enough? If the guys who were hired late, through no fault of their own, only got one-twelfth of a day’s wage, their family would starve. This is the same Jesus who told a rich man to sell everything, who directed party hosts to invite those who couldn’t invite them in return, who spoke of lenders forgiving massive financial debts, who included despised and untouchable people in his close circle, who visited Zaccheus and left him so staggered he gave his hard-earned money back with interest to those he’d earned it from.

   Shares of stock in a company run by Jesus would plummet in value. But he is our leader, the childlike one who never tired of asking hard questions. Could we his followers lead in very different ways, in weaker ways? Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms and creator of the Cotton Patch Version of the Bible, was a bold, no-holds-barred Christian, one of those once in a generation believers radical enough to dare to do what’s in the Bible. One Sunday he preached at a gilded, high steeple church in Atlanta. After the service, the pastor asked him for some advice. The church custodian had eight children, and earned a mere $80 per week. The concerned minister claimed he tried to get the man a raise, but with no success. Jordan considered this for a minute, and then said, “Why don’t you just swap salaries with the janitor? That wouldn’t require any extra money in the budget.”

   Jesus was like the child who can’t stop asking questions, like the child who sees a homeless person by the road and asks Mommy, can’t he live at our house? Maybe a leader can’t pull off the vineyard wage maneuver, or even the salary swap. But is there a way to lean in that direction, to engage in something dramatic to veer a bit more toward Jesus than business as usual? Jesus asks leaders, not merely to obey the law or even to be kind, but to be different.

   End of excerpt. When is, and how much is… enough? Douglas Meeks (in God the Economist) was right when he described our culture’s sense of scarcity: no matter how much you have, there is this lingering fear it might not be enough. Enough for what? Fill in the blank… And then you complicate the question by asking how much is enough for the other guy, or the stranger. 

   Sometimes “enough” is simple contentment – a holy, divinely-purposed goal: it is enough. Gratitude is believing It is enough instead of It’s not enough. Grace, being God’s child, living as one in God’s image, etc., is enough. Enough describes divine intent regarding resources: God wants everyone to have enough. There’s the old Haitian proverb: “God gives, but God doesn’t share.” The idea is that God has given us enough – enough food, enough water, enough of all the basics of life. It’s up to us to share, instead of hoarding or blocking the sharing.

   Oh, and Philippians 1:21-30 isn’t a bad text at all! If we back up and include verse 20, we understand Paul’s obsession here. Paul does not mind if he is disgraced, as long as Christ is honored – or “magnified” (which is the meaning of the Greek verb megaluno in verse 20). When Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she visited Elizabeth, and sang an eloquent song: “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46). Do I magnify the Lord? If a magnifying glass were held up to my life, would God’s reputation be enlarged in viewer’s eyes? Or shrunk down or hidden? Would I be ashamed?

   Paul’s prayer is that the Lord be magnified in his body. Too often we think of our faith as something spiritual, invisible, an emotion, an event in the soul. But the body is what matters: what do I do with my body? What do I put into it? Where does it go? Do I use my hands, my face, my back, my legs, to magnify the Lord? Your body is “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

   “If we are called to magnify Christ in our bodies, in the face of all the forces seeking to exert control over us, then we must be as intentional about all aspects of our life as Paul was. The desires we manifest, our patterns of consumption, the ways we get, hold and distribute wealth, can all be occasions where either we are disgraced, or Christ is magnified” (Stephen Fowl).

      At his age, and in the prison cell of Rome, Paul knew he was perilously close to death. But he wanted to die a good death that would somehow be a credit to God. In our society, death is such a terror, something we just don’t talk about – and so we deny our mortality, and lose all chance of dying well. We go to extreme measures to prolong life – understandably! But then the dying never get to say goodbye, to bless family left behind, to glorify God.

   St. Thérèse of Lisieux lived just 23 years. Frail in health, her keen awareness of the fragility of life wrought in her a remarkable intimacy with God. She grew eager to die, praying that God might take her without delay into his eternal embrace so that “I may be able to tell you of my love eternally face to face.”

To die of love is what I hope for,
on fire with his love I want to be,
to see him, be one with him forever,
that is my heaven – that’s my destiny.

This readiness, even eagerness to die changes how we look at life now. I am less likely to be greedy, or cautious. I am generous, I love freely. I live for others, not for myself. Paul did not say “to remain in the flesh is good for me,” but “for me to remain is helpful for you.” To live for others, and so for God, is joy.

   One and only one thing matters: “Let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel.” How infrequently do we think about this! We measure our worth by our property value, size of our portfolio, corporate position, pace of fun and consumption… Is my life “worthy” of what Christ has done for us?

   Part of the worthy life is being of “one mind striving side by side for the faith of the Gospel.” Although I might prefer it, Christ does not permit me to go off and be pious by myself, to insulate myself in some solo spirituality. I must connect with others. Christ died and saved me to be a part of his Body, the Church. Are you striving with others for the faith of the Gospel? Or are you just too busy? too caught up in your own agenda?

   To strive for the faith will feel like conflict with the world. We are citizens of a counter-culture – but do we act as if we are? How many Christians, and churches, lead innocuous lives, blending seamlessly into the landscape? Could it be that, until we follow Jesus closely enough to provoke hostility, we will never know courage, hope and joy?

What can we say September 17? 16th after Pentecost

    Before focusing on the Old Testament, let me touch on Romans 14:1-12. I admire Michael Gorman’s fresh take: “Rather than being anticlimactic, this section of Romans” (chapters 14-15) “is the climax of the letter.” Paul is a practical theologian, and all the profound theology is squandered if we cannot manage his primal themes here: welcome, and refraining from judgment. Gorman: “Segregation was not, and is not, a Christian option… A community torn by intercultural strife subverts the gospel.”

   Gorman clarifies that Paul is light years from an “anything goes” guy. It’s about distinguish was is essential and what is adiaphora, “nonessential.” The old saying tagged often to John Wesley, “unity in essentials… love in nonessentials” isn’t always a peacemaker, for we cannot concur on what’s essential and what isn’t. My simple differentiation is that the essentials are about God; the non-essentials are about our response to God. So Trinity, cross and salvation, grace, Christ as incarnate God, etc., absolute essentials. What to eat or drink, can you dance, and I’d include whom you love, aren’t essentials of the faith – although judgment on those who differ is clearly outlawed by our text!

   Gorman continues to be right about Paul here: it’s about respect for cultural differences in the community, not individual rights… and our accountability before Christ will be about whether what we did was geared toward glorifying Christ. If I differ from you on some behavior, and it’s because I want to do it, or it’s fun, or it’s my political ideology, then I will be judged by Christ for this.

   And then the Gospel is Matthew 18:21-35, the threatening tirade on forgiveness that makes forgiveness feel more like a duty under which you might chafe than a liberation from the afflictions of brokenness.  

   So: Exodus 14:19-31. On the morning I began pondering this blog post, the coffee mug I retrieved from the cabinet was a humorous one my kids had given me many years ago. Moses stands by the sea – but when you pour in the hot coffee, the waters part, and the people are heading to freedom. Then, minutes later, my morning Psalm was the 74^th. After lamenting dire national and personal circumstances, the Psalm cries out, “We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left, none of us knows how long this will be. Why do you hold back your hand? It was you who split open the sea.”

   The Israelites experienced far more than we ever will that having had a miraculous experience once upon a time, long ago, only exacerbates the lack of decisive divine aid today, or recently – or soon. My wisest self might say It is enough, or This is God’s way, or even to keep the image, the memory before us, and to pray Psalms with Israelites and Christians through the centuries is itself a parting of the seas. Maybe I’ll preach something like this – and prepare for the puzzled looks.

   Last time we got to this key text, the movie Dunkirk was out: the good guys, pursued by the Nazis, hemmed in on the beach. A miracle required? Is it a miracle when lots of little boat-owners courageously come after you?  

   In Exodus, a deluge is God's judgment on Egypt. We know how to pray for safety and recovery for those impacted by too much water. I recall when Katrina struck New Orleans, quite a few fool preachers claimed it was God's judgment on a decadent place. What is the relationship between God and masses of destructive water? Aren't we finally humbled and mystified? Things happen. People are hurt. Some get off free. Is Exodus a miracle (we're inclined toward Yes...) but a rescue in South Florida just courage and good luck? One is the creation of a nation, the other the saving of an individual - is that the distinction? Regardless, we should discourage folks from saying God saved me/my house, while somebody else got wiped out....

   We need to remind ourselves of a huge qualifier: this is a Jewish story, really the Jewish story, their epic of salvation, not ours; we piggyback on their story, we borrow it humbly to make sense of God and our world. Benjamin Franklin argued that the Seal of the US should depict Moses, rod uplifted, parting the waters. And Taylor Branch’s fabulous story of the Civil Rights movement was wisely titled Parting the Waters, so pivotal was this theme in the attempted saving of America and Americans.

   The biblical story, by chapter 14 in Exodus, has come full circle: Joseph being sold, his rise, fall and rise in Egypt, the tear-jerking reconciliation with his brothers, Joseph jumping from his chariot to weep on Jacob’s shoulders, then the passing of time and dreadful descent into slavery. Clearly Jacob’s family, which might have numbered 70 or so, has obeyed the injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.” Shiphrah and Puah must have had many helpers in delivering so many children over the decades. 

   The numbers are a problem. 600,000 or so men? Add women and children and you’re up to 2 million people – which Egypt couldn’t sustain, and which most assuredly would have been noted in Egyptian annals (as the entire population of Egypt then might have been 5 million…). Experts in queueing theory have done the math – and marching 2 million people out of anywhere would have required days, not minutes or hours, and with thousands abreast… Hebrew helps us here. The word translated “thousand,” elef, originally indicated an extended family unit of 9 to 14, then later a military contingent of roughly the same size.  So were there 2 million? Or something closer to 600 elefs, 6 to 8 thousand – which is still a lot?

   The crowd might be smaller than we’d thought, and the bigger historical question revolves around through which body of water they escaped. We may be attached in our imaginations to the Cecil B. DeMille “Ten Commandments” scene, where a huge body of water is split, with 25 foot banks of water forming a canyon through which the 2 million walked. 

   But the Hebrew doesn’t say it was the Red Sea, but the yam suf, the “sea of reeds.” How the Vulgate weirdly rendered yam suf as mare rubrum is a puzzle (as is why the Red Sea is called red, which it isn’t). This sea of reeds sounds like much of Egypt’s border… so the deliverance was through a more shallow body of water, more of a marsh.

   I knew fundamentalist friends in college who were mortified by this possibility, chalking it up to the heresy of historical-critical scholarship. But the Hebrew text is what it is; literalists aren’t literalists if they insist on Red Sea and Cecil B. DeMille. I remember one rejoinder to this from a fundamentalist friend: “How amazing then was it that God drowned the entire Egyptian army in such shallow water!” 

   The point of our story seems to be that they took off through a marshy sea of reeds, thought to be impassible by the Egyptians, who left it undefended… and some kind of miracle, maybe an unusually strong wind, pressed the water back just enough that they were able to elude the Egyptian pursuit. Do our miracles have to match bad translations or movies made in the 1950’s to qualify? The preacher can’t mock or ridicule though; we guide our people gently, always – and perhaps leave the Bible study issues for a classroom setting. 

   We also need to help people sort through what is a miracle and what is natural – and maybe then how the natural is similarly miraculous. You could try the old joke about the guy who said God would save him during a torrential downpour. The water rose, someone came by in a canoe but he declined to get in; a motorboat came by when the water was up to the windows but he trusted God instead; finally he climbed on the roof but refused the helicopter as well – and you know the punchline after he drowned: having asked God Why didn’t you save me? God said I sent you a canoe, motorboat and a helicopter… Bahahaha.

   I just don’t do this in preaching – or if you try it, you have to go somewhere realistic and meaningful, like how doctors cure you, and that’s maybe God too (since people don’t refuse helicopters from their roofs). Preaching on Exodus 14 can’t wrestle at too much length on miracles or the lack thereof; the sermon is for the theology of deliverance here – and I want to touch on a couple of important points after this excerpt from my book, Weak Enough to Lead – in which I speak of Moses’s frustration in guiding Israel, and this particular moment:

   Not surprisingly then, Moses’ attempts to lead failed repeatedly. In his first appearance in Pharaoh’s court he was humiliated. The plagues he unleashed only drew the ire of his own people, as their lot only worsened. Once Moses finally got them to the sea’s edge, when they heard the rumbling of Pharaoh’s chariots in pursuit, the people wailed in horror, pleading with him to take them back. His response was not to turn and fight, or to flee in a zigzag escape route. Instead, with Pharaoh’s juggernaut bearing down on them, he said to the people, “Stand still and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today” (Ex 14:13). Do… nothing at all.

   Perhaps Jehoshaphat thought of this moment centuries later when he said “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you” (2 Chr 20:12). Perhaps the Psalmist had been so spiritually intoxicated by this moment that he quite effortlessly wrote on God’s behalf, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:8). Or did Isaiah 36 have this moment in mind when the Assyrian Rabshakeh mocked Hezekiah and the Judeans in their besieged Jerusalem, ‘Do you think that mere words are strategy for war?’ (Isa. 36:5).  No secular leadership manual will ever counsel doing nothing, or simply looking to God for a miracle. But the theologically attuned leader will come upon quite a few brick walls where a calm, holy, do-nothing approach will be the only thing to do – and the best thing to do.

   Who was the first to step into the water? According to the rabbis it was Nahshon son of Aminadav. Only after Nahshon actually waded into the water did the sea part so everyone else could cross over. That first person to step forward is always the key. I admire Elie Wiesel’s retelling of this story: ‘One could see people running, running breathlessly, without a glance backward; they were running toward the sea.  And there they came to an abrupt halt: this was the end; death was there, waiting.  The leaders of the group, urged on by Moses, pushed forward: Don’t be afraid, go, into the water, into the water!  Yet, according to one commentator, Moses suddenly ordered everyone to a halt: Wait a moment.  Think, take a moment to reassess what it is you are doing.  Enter the sea not as frightened fugitives but as free men!’

   To witness a walk to freedom is liberating. Nelson Mandela walked out of a prison in South Africa into the history books. John Lewis, who became a congressman from Georgia, pointed to a photograph of himself as a young seminarian being released from prison in Nashville. His face glowed with a dignity, a confidence: “I had never had that much dignity before. It was exhilarating – it was something I had earned, the sense of the independence that comes to a free person.”

   Wiesel is right: this story is about human dignity. The Pharaoh repeatedly shows that he, at the apex of the pyramid, with all the world has at this fingertips, is the one who has no dignity. God sees the plight of the abused, the forgotten, those who only matter as units of production. They are precious to God – and God wills freedom for them, something so many regimes have gotten wrong, suggesting that slaves or the poor should accept their lot and hope for heaven one day. 

    I love the scene in Birth of a Nation when Nat Turner announces “I’ve read the whole Bible now.” He had been forced to preach to his fellow slaves from that handful of texts that speak of submission to authority; but then he broke free, preached the full Bible, and a revolution was sparked. A breathtaking display in the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington is Turner's Bible.

   The rabbis taught that the angels did not celebrate when the Egyptian army was lost – and we should be careful to avoid triumphalist readings of this and similar texts, and also moments in our lives.  God’s will isn’t a win for the good guys while the bad guys get crushed.  God’s will isn’t for me to get the job and somebody else goes without.  God’s will is always larger than our imaginings, or our vain narrowness.  God never rejoices in the fall or defeat or suffering of any of God’s creatures – a point worth touching on in our violent, good guys vs. bad guys culture.

   And finally: once freed, the people discovered God wasn’t leading them in a beeline to the Promised Land. Partly they were avoiding Egyptians fortifications. But also God saved them for a purpose which will only be clarified in the middle of their long detour to the south, at Mt. Sinai. Freedom is to know and fulfill God’s law. It isn’t that we are free to do as we wish, even free to choose for or against God. We are in bondage to self and sin; God sets us free – not to do as we wish, or even to do what we think we want to do for God, but to do what God wants. In our liturgy we say “Free us for joyful obedience.” And this liberation is a joyful one, after all. Right after Exodus 14 we get the raucous song of praise, with dancing and timbrels, in Exodus 15. What other reply to redemption could there be?

What can we say September 10? 15th after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Bitter herbs = the taste of Israel’s suffering

   Harosset = a mnemonic of the mortar with which slaves built

   Matzot = how they left in a hurry

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

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

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

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

What can we say September 3? 14th after Pentecost

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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