Pentecost 02 B, 6-14-2009
Salem - Luther Memorial Parish, Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 4:26-34;
Let’s talk parables. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks in parables once again. He does that a lot. If you were in our recent Bible study on Opening the Book of Faith and you remember the four ways we read the Bible in the Lutheran Church then you might remember that we can use a literary reading of the Bible to help us understand it here.
Remember your old English Lit class? One would hope that among many other things they taught you about parables. Many times Jesus used this literary device called a parable to get his point across. In this reading from Mark’s gospel we hear that Jesus preached only in parables as the people “were able to hear.”
Parables are short stories that paint word pictures for us. They are not meant to be literally true, and they are not always strictly factual, nor are they meant to be that, either. Even so God has always delighted in talking to us with parables, and so we find them used throughout the Bible. Dr. Terrence Fretheim, professor of Old Testament at LSTC, who taught a couple of Bible studies and forums at the Synod Assembly last weekend touched on this during his presentations. I distinctly remember him pointing out that one Old Testament text says God is like a maggot. (I think that was Fred Beaver’s favorite comment during the whole assembly. Definitely one of mine: God is a maggot.) But is God a really maggot? No, but God could be pictured as having the qualities of a maggot, especially when one remembers that maggots were used in ancient medicine to clean infected wounds. God cleanses us completely of the wounds that scar our lives.
A parable with an unlikely image can communicate great truth. This is especially so in the New Testament where we find Jesus teaching with parables many times to communicate truth about the kingdom of God. Parables are a kind of extended metaphor, which is one way – and maybe the best way – of taking hold of what the Episcopal priest, the Rev. Dr. J. Barrington Bates, calls “the amazing wonder that is God” within the limits of our ability to communicate.
Today’s parable is just that: a metaphor, a word picture, not factual, not literally true, but still giving us the truth about the “amazing wonder that is God.” Jesus calls it the “kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is like someone who would scatter seed on the ground, and the seed grows, but he doesn‘t know how.
How is that like the kingdom of God?
Lamar Williamson, in his commentary on Mark writes that “the Kingdom of God grows in a hidden, mysterious way, independently of human effort.” He goes on to say that the kingdom of God develops in history independent of human efforts as a miraculous work of God. The harvest that comes of this is a gift from God. Williamson says that this is important whenever we take ourselves and our efforts too seriously, seeking by our plans to “bring in the kingdom of God.” That is human arrogance which runs up against God’s “hidden presence and power.” (pp. 97-98.)
I agree, and yet, so many would say that there are far too many people in churches who are content to be pew potatoes - the church equivalent of couch potatoes. It’s a universal problem in the church. Ask any pastor. Pr. Brian Stoffregen at Faith Lutheran in Marysville, California illustrates the problem with this story that he lifted from a church newsletter from St. Mark’s Lutheran church in Roswell, New Mexico:
A preacher in the midwest was called by a woman who wanted to speak to him about her dissatisfaction with the program of the Church. He invited her to come to his office and talk the problem over with him. She accepted the invitation and brought to his attention some of the things that were needed and could be done.
He gratefully acknowledged the wisdom of her ideas. He then said, "This is wonderful that you are so concerned and interested in this. You are the very person this Church needs to head up this program. Will you take the job?"
Her reply was just as immediate. "Oh, no, I don't want to get involved. With my clubwork and the hours that I put on some other things, I just don't have the time. But I will be glad to advise you any time."
The preacher's answer was classic and well put: "Good, gracious, lady, that's the problem now. I already have 400 advisers. I need someone who will work."
We are fortunate here in Parrottsville that we have workers in the kingdom. Consider the people who worked for Luther Memorial’s yard sale this weekend. They did a great job and they were so speedy and efficient at packing up on Saturday morning that I couldn’t catch up with them. They just left me in the dust. I tried to catch up with them but everywhere I went they had already been there and gone. It seems the kingdom was moving along without me quite well. I ended up in the Salem Cemetery keeping company with the guys who were fixing tombstones. And I got to do a little tombstone work myself.
Pr. Stoffregen points out that we all have our jobs to do: casting seed on the earth and being ready to participate in the harvest when the time is right while God's "job" is to create "natural" growth.
When I was in New York I took a couple of seminars on Natural Church Development. NCD is designed to evaluate any congregation in terms of the eight most important characteristics or qualities a congregation can have, identify the weakest area of a congregation‘s life, and then focus on strengthening that area so that all areas of congregational life will improve over time. I wanted to use NCD in Hudson and Churchtown but the Synod Staff kept telling me we didn‘t qualify and so we never were able to use it there. Too bad, because I think it could have helped, and it would have helped because NCD research shows us that as we go into the 21st century the key issue for us is not church growth but church health. (Christian A. Schwarz, Natural Church Development, p. 17.)
This is good news for our small churches in rural communities where growth is going to be hard to come by and we struggle with the idea of outreach amid our limitations.
If seeds grow "automatically," the concern for the farmer (or the pastor or the person in the pew) who has planted the seed of God's word, is not how to make it grow; but what might be hindering the growth that would come naturally. What hinders the growth that we trust God wants to give? It may be that what the Episcopal priest, the Rev. Dr. J. Barrington Bates has to say on this score is relevant to many churches:
“In the kingdom of God,” he says, “we would put aside our own egotistical need to have power over anyone else and instead cultivate compassion, understanding, and cooperation.”
Back to the parable. The sower does nothing after sowing the seeds. Doesn’t even understand how it all works. Real farmers spend a lot of time and money and effort working against all those things that would keep those seeds from sprouting. They know how it all works. And they tend to be successful. Yet, even with all that work, farmers still wait in faith and the growth happens while they sleep.
Me, I’m fighting a loosing battle against weeds in my garden. I go out an take the hoe and even use my bare hands and remove those weeds and they keep coming back. It reminds me that the kingdom of God is like a weed, a mustard plant, growing from a tiny seed, resilient, hardy, persistent. Maybe I try too hard sometimes. The kingdom of God seems to be able to move along just fine on its own. Maybe the thing to do is to not try so hard to make the kingdom work, but to do the work that the kingdom brings our way.
Peace be with you.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Sermon for Easter Sunday's main church service
4-12-2009, Easter Sunday
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 16:1-8
Being a fan of scary movies I often see movie promos employ the words every horror film fan lives to hear: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Ever since the days of Bella Lagosi and Boris Karlov Hollywood has tried to scare audiences solely for the sake of scaring people who love to be scared and constantly dare the industry to come up with a new plot line or new special effect to really keep them on the edge of their seats. And it has made a lasting impact on our culture. Who could forget Bella Lagosi as Dracula? Even if you see those old thirties movies for the first time today, you encounter a character you’d be hard pressed to forget and would not want to think too much about in the dead of night. “The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.”
Whenever we think of Frankenstein we will have Boris Karlov to thank for his classic role in the movies. Christopher Lee made a pretty good vampire in those old classic Hammer films. Everyone has their favorite character actors in these films. My favorite character actor, Max Von Sydow once played the part of Satan in “Needful Things,” the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Of course, to balance things out, Max Von Sydow also played the part of Jesus Christ in another movie, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the one where John Wayne, in a role completely out of character for him, played the role of a centurion at the foot of the cross. “Surely this man was the Son of God.” Who could forget that? Which leads us to our unforgettable Gospel reading today.
I’ve heard too many sermons in years past where the promo for today’s Gospel could echo Hollywood: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Personally, I don’t understand that. What’s there to be afraid of in the message from today’s Gospel? Is it not supposed to be the Good News? And as I read the Greek text for today’s Gospel I do not find a call to be afraid, be very afraid. Rather I find an initial fear, fear as in fright and terror, good old horror movie fear, replaced with something entirely different: amazement; amazement as in an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous: the tomb of Jesus is found to be empty. It may be that I have a personal axe to grind here, but as we will see, every sermon based on today’s Gospel that leaves us in the end with nothing but the initial terror of the women and suggests that we, too, should share that terror if we are good Christians contradicts both the man in the tomb and the amazement of the women.
As the Gospel reading opens the crucifixion has already happened. The centurion who stood at the foot of the cross, and no, he probably didn’t look or sound anything like John Wayne, has already given witness, though perhaps unintentionally, perhaps even as a final, cutting, cruel, sarcastic remark that this crucified Jesus truly is the Son of God. Remember that the same centurion also stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. So much for his reverence.
The Pharisee, Joseph of Arimathea, got permission from Pilate to take the body down from the cross and bury it in his family crypt, a tomb cut into a hillside near Jerusalem. In keeping with common burial practices a round stone was placed in a groove and rolled into place to seal the tomb even as the sun was setting on a Friday that would have rivaled any scary movie out of Hollywood.
And there Jesus was expected stay, “descended to the dead,” as they would have said back then.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours after the tomb was sealed the Gospel of Mark portrays three women setting out for the tomb. They are Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.
Why are they going to the tomb? It’s simple: they have a duty to perform. A responsibility to carry out. And they will faithfully carry out their duty even though Jesus has been laid to rest. How they will do this is a matter of concern for them. The stone that seals the tomb is not in place permanently. It wasn’t meant to be; Joseph of Arimathea intends to bury other members of his family there over time. But it is a heavy stone. Perhaps four feet across, the women are worried that it is too heavy for them to move. Heads down and talking among themselves they wonder who they will get to roll away the stone for them.
It’s at that point that they realize they have arrived at their destination and they look up to see that the stone has already been moved.
But this sight does not inspire hope. To the contrary. When they see the stone has already been moved without their knowledge they become “alarmed,” as the text says. They are afraid, they have fear as in fright, fear as in terror that something very, very wrong is happening here. Their first thought might well have been: The tomb has been desecrated!
Not knowing what to expect they entered the tomb, something that one could not do casually because of the very low entrance; they would have to bend over and creep through it. Now Mark’s Gospel becomes very surrealistic, despite its simplicity. Bible scholars tell us that this is where the Gospel story moves from a basic story telling mode into the mode of spiritual vision where absolute spiritual truth is made known. In the tomb they find a young man, dressed in white as if he were a priest from the Temple, of all places! He appears to be casually sitting there to the right of the entrance in a place of death, a place to be shunned and considered unclean by the Hebrew people, unclean to the point of being absolutely toxic. The women were alarmed. In the words of Hollywood, they were afraid. They were very afraid. Something terrible beyond words must have happened here!
But this young man in the white clothes must have seen their terror. Right away he spoke to them and he used the words that have always announced the Good News, “Do not be afraid.” Hollywood would never hire this guy to write promos for their movies. He would never attract audiences to the latest horror flick. “Do not be afraid.” He calmly stated the obvious: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” Why else would you be here? Then he continued with the most unexpected remarks in the most casual fashion: “He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him.” An empty stone shelf hewn out of the side of the crypt greeted their eyes. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
Mark keeps the story very simple. Nothing more is said about this odd young man in the tomb, why he is there, where he came from, what his name is, or what his purpose is in the tomb. It’s almost as if he’s a tour guide: “Look, this is where they put him…” So it is unusual, but that’s because of the way Mark portrays the scene.
Despite the casual behavior of the man in the tomb the women didn’t take all this so casually. Even though the man in the tomb told them not to be afraid they found they could not help but be afraid. Mark says they fled the scene, motivated by good old fashioned Hollywood style fear – it seized them! It you want to stay true to the Greek text then you might say it possessed them, or grabbed them like a wild animal and in a panic they ran away! But that uncontrollable terror began to give way to something else:
amazement, an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous. And that also seized them. They were amazed at what they had seen and heard: the tomb was empty, Jesus has been raised, he is not there.
No wonder they didn’t say anything to anyone at first. Would you? Caught between terror on the one hand and amazement on the other hand would you tell someone something that they wouldn’t believe, that you had found the tomb empty? That one who had been crucified was not in his tomb but on his way to Galilee? May as well tell people you’ve seen the Loch Ness monster cruising the Dead Sea. The fear that you won’t be believed would be strong.
But in time sheer amazement, wonder, and absolute joy overcame their fear and they could not help but tell the disciples and Peter. Mary Magdalene and the other women became the very first people to openly tell the Good News about Christ Jesus: that the tomb is empty, he has been raised, he is not there.
There is much to be amazed at.
What’s there to be afraid of? Thanks be to God.
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 16:1-8
Being a fan of scary movies I often see movie promos employ the words every horror film fan lives to hear: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Ever since the days of Bella Lagosi and Boris Karlov Hollywood has tried to scare audiences solely for the sake of scaring people who love to be scared and constantly dare the industry to come up with a new plot line or new special effect to really keep them on the edge of their seats. And it has made a lasting impact on our culture. Who could forget Bella Lagosi as Dracula? Even if you see those old thirties movies for the first time today, you encounter a character you’d be hard pressed to forget and would not want to think too much about in the dead of night. “The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.”
Whenever we think of Frankenstein we will have Boris Karlov to thank for his classic role in the movies. Christopher Lee made a pretty good vampire in those old classic Hammer films. Everyone has their favorite character actors in these films. My favorite character actor, Max Von Sydow once played the part of Satan in “Needful Things,” the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Of course, to balance things out, Max Von Sydow also played the part of Jesus Christ in another movie, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the one where John Wayne, in a role completely out of character for him, played the role of a centurion at the foot of the cross. “Surely this man was the Son of God.” Who could forget that? Which leads us to our unforgettable Gospel reading today.
I’ve heard too many sermons in years past where the promo for today’s Gospel could echo Hollywood: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Personally, I don’t understand that. What’s there to be afraid of in the message from today’s Gospel? Is it not supposed to be the Good News? And as I read the Greek text for today’s Gospel I do not find a call to be afraid, be very afraid. Rather I find an initial fear, fear as in fright and terror, good old horror movie fear, replaced with something entirely different: amazement; amazement as in an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous: the tomb of Jesus is found to be empty. It may be that I have a personal axe to grind here, but as we will see, every sermon based on today’s Gospel that leaves us in the end with nothing but the initial terror of the women and suggests that we, too, should share that terror if we are good Christians contradicts both the man in the tomb and the amazement of the women.
As the Gospel reading opens the crucifixion has already happened. The centurion who stood at the foot of the cross, and no, he probably didn’t look or sound anything like John Wayne, has already given witness, though perhaps unintentionally, perhaps even as a final, cutting, cruel, sarcastic remark that this crucified Jesus truly is the Son of God. Remember that the same centurion also stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. So much for his reverence.
The Pharisee, Joseph of Arimathea, got permission from Pilate to take the body down from the cross and bury it in his family crypt, a tomb cut into a hillside near Jerusalem. In keeping with common burial practices a round stone was placed in a groove and rolled into place to seal the tomb even as the sun was setting on a Friday that would have rivaled any scary movie out of Hollywood.
And there Jesus was expected stay, “descended to the dead,” as they would have said back then.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours after the tomb was sealed the Gospel of Mark portrays three women setting out for the tomb. They are Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.
Why are they going to the tomb? It’s simple: they have a duty to perform. A responsibility to carry out. And they will faithfully carry out their duty even though Jesus has been laid to rest. How they will do this is a matter of concern for them. The stone that seals the tomb is not in place permanently. It wasn’t meant to be; Joseph of Arimathea intends to bury other members of his family there over time. But it is a heavy stone. Perhaps four feet across, the women are worried that it is too heavy for them to move. Heads down and talking among themselves they wonder who they will get to roll away the stone for them.
It’s at that point that they realize they have arrived at their destination and they look up to see that the stone has already been moved.
But this sight does not inspire hope. To the contrary. When they see the stone has already been moved without their knowledge they become “alarmed,” as the text says. They are afraid, they have fear as in fright, fear as in terror that something very, very wrong is happening here. Their first thought might well have been: The tomb has been desecrated!
Not knowing what to expect they entered the tomb, something that one could not do casually because of the very low entrance; they would have to bend over and creep through it. Now Mark’s Gospel becomes very surrealistic, despite its simplicity. Bible scholars tell us that this is where the Gospel story moves from a basic story telling mode into the mode of spiritual vision where absolute spiritual truth is made known. In the tomb they find a young man, dressed in white as if he were a priest from the Temple, of all places! He appears to be casually sitting there to the right of the entrance in a place of death, a place to be shunned and considered unclean by the Hebrew people, unclean to the point of being absolutely toxic. The women were alarmed. In the words of Hollywood, they were afraid. They were very afraid. Something terrible beyond words must have happened here!
But this young man in the white clothes must have seen their terror. Right away he spoke to them and he used the words that have always announced the Good News, “Do not be afraid.” Hollywood would never hire this guy to write promos for their movies. He would never attract audiences to the latest horror flick. “Do not be afraid.” He calmly stated the obvious: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” Why else would you be here? Then he continued with the most unexpected remarks in the most casual fashion: “He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him.” An empty stone shelf hewn out of the side of the crypt greeted their eyes. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
Mark keeps the story very simple. Nothing more is said about this odd young man in the tomb, why he is there, where he came from, what his name is, or what his purpose is in the tomb. It’s almost as if he’s a tour guide: “Look, this is where they put him…” So it is unusual, but that’s because of the way Mark portrays the scene.
Despite the casual behavior of the man in the tomb the women didn’t take all this so casually. Even though the man in the tomb told them not to be afraid they found they could not help but be afraid. Mark says they fled the scene, motivated by good old fashioned Hollywood style fear – it seized them! It you want to stay true to the Greek text then you might say it possessed them, or grabbed them like a wild animal and in a panic they ran away! But that uncontrollable terror began to give way to something else:
amazement, an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous. And that also seized them. They were amazed at what they had seen and heard: the tomb was empty, Jesus has been raised, he is not there.
No wonder they didn’t say anything to anyone at first. Would you? Caught between terror on the one hand and amazement on the other hand would you tell someone something that they wouldn’t believe, that you had found the tomb empty? That one who had been crucified was not in his tomb but on his way to Galilee? May as well tell people you’ve seen the Loch Ness monster cruising the Dead Sea. The fear that you won’t be believed would be strong.
But in time sheer amazement, wonder, and absolute joy overcame their fear and they could not help but tell the disciples and Peter. Mary Magdalene and the other women became the very first people to openly tell the Good News about Christ Jesus: that the tomb is empty, he has been raised, he is not there.
There is much to be amazed at.
What’s there to be afraid of? Thanks be to God.
Sermon for the Ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service
Easter Sunrise Ecumenical, 4-12-2009
Harned’s Chapel UMC - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 20:1-18
“Christ is risen, and life reigns!”
First of all I bring you grace and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ, and greetings from the Lutheran Parish of Parrottsville, and also greetings from Bishop Julian Gordy and more than 54,000 Lutherans in the 170 congregations of the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in which we say we are a resurrection people who pray first, walk together, and change lives. And you never thought you were so important here in little old Parrottsville.
Today we rejoice that congregations in Parrottsville can come together on this Easter morning to proclaim with one voice the one word that ties all Christians together as one body of the Lord around the world and throughout time, and that is the proclamation: “Christ is risen.”
Later this year we will celebrate our oneness in Christ when we finalize an ecumenical agreement with our brothers and sisters in the United Methodist Church. Upon acceptance at our Church-wide Assembly in August the ELCA will enter into a new partnership with the United Methodist Church when our two faith communities enter into full communion. I don’t know about Pr. John Wilson, but I know that I have a Bishop and a Conference Dean and a whole lot of colleagues who would be tickled pink if we could celebrate that here in Parrottsville when the time comes. It will be a living sign of the resurrection in our lives today. It will be a living sign that Christ lives and that he lives in our lives. It will be a living sign that we are, together, a resurrection people who pray first, walk together, and change lives. It will be a living sign of the really terrific and cool changes that can happen when we let Christ be Christ and the Lord of our life, and it is something that could not possibly happen were it not for the death and resurrection of Christ the Lord.
The ELCA pastor Rolf Jacobson is the editor of a really neat book that came out last year called {Crazy Talk}; the subtitle is, “A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms.” My kind of book. In {Crazy Talk} Pr. Jacobson reminds us that resurrection is the “act of God by which new life is given to the dead,” and that:
"…every single day, we are being resurrected. … In a very real way, we die in our sins every single day. Our lives are dead and worthless through our constant sin and rebellion. However, in the act of continual forgiveness granted us through God’s grace, we are reborn new, forgiven, resurrected humans. This is an actual resurrection. Our sins kill us, but God’s forgiveness makes us alive again." (Jacobson, Rolf A., ed. {Crazy Talk}: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, Augsburg Books, 2008, pp. 143, 147.)
(excerpt from St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Homily.)
Christ is risen, and we are a resurrection people, praying, and walking together and changing lives as we live ever more into the reality of the Kingdom that Christ has prepared for us.
There is the Good News for us today, but there is a catch. It means that lives are changed. Are we not a resurrection people? Do we not pray first, walk together, and change lives?
If we are the people of Christ, if we are a resurrection people, then lives change. When we are truly a living sign that Christ lives and that he lives in our lives then it means our lives change. It means our families change. It means our churches change. And it means our world will change.
If we do not want to believe that, if we do not want that change to happen and fight against it, if we choose to believe that we are too good for it, if we want to turn our backs on the resurrection that is the ultimate change then we are not a resurrection people; we are dead; and we roll the stone back over the entrance to the empty tomb, and we tell Mary Magdalene and Peter and the disciples to go home and hang it up; its all over with, we’re just playing church this morning, we don’t really mean it.
The Good News is that change does not mean death! To the contrary! It is the lack of change that is death because:
Isn’t this what Mary had to say to the disciples in so many words?
And isn’t this not just the Easter proclamation of the Good News, but also the challenge of the Good News that is being presented to our very own parishes even as we speak?
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
To be bluntly honest about this: it means the time for individuals trying to control the destiny of their own lives, their friends, their neighbors, their families, their businesses, their schools, their congregations, and their world has come to an end. As Dr. Kildare used to say, “It’s out of our hands now.” Christ has suddenly and swiftly intervened and taken matters into his hands.
It’s in Christ’s hands now because he is risen.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands bore the nails of the cross for the world.
It’s in Christ’s hands because he alone is Lord of the Church and the Church is his alone, to do with as he will.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands alone direct the destiny of his Church.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands are the ones open and inviting each one of us to be the living Church in this community.
It’s in Christ’s hands because,
Trust Christ. It’s still not too late. There is still time to put agendas, and dreams of money, and desires for control, and fears of loosing control aside and to trust Christ enough that he alone will take center stage in life.
Trust Christ to take our life into his hands. His nail scarred hands remain open to receive one and all.
Trust Christ, who was crucified and rose for us all.
Trust him because he alone is our Lord and we are his Church, to do with as he will.
Trust Christ because he is risen, because he is Lord of your life, because he brings change to your heart, and because in Christ life reigns.
Thanks be to God.
Harned’s Chapel UMC - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 20:1-18
“Christ is risen, and life reigns!”
First of all I bring you grace and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ, and greetings from the Lutheran Parish of Parrottsville, and also greetings from Bishop Julian Gordy and more than 54,000 Lutherans in the 170 congregations of the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in which we say we are a resurrection people who pray first, walk together, and change lives. And you never thought you were so important here in little old Parrottsville.
Today we rejoice that congregations in Parrottsville can come together on this Easter morning to proclaim with one voice the one word that ties all Christians together as one body of the Lord around the world and throughout time, and that is the proclamation: “Christ is risen.”
Later this year we will celebrate our oneness in Christ when we finalize an ecumenical agreement with our brothers and sisters in the United Methodist Church. Upon acceptance at our Church-wide Assembly in August the ELCA will enter into a new partnership with the United Methodist Church when our two faith communities enter into full communion. I don’t know about Pr. John Wilson, but I know that I have a Bishop and a Conference Dean and a whole lot of colleagues who would be tickled pink if we could celebrate that here in Parrottsville when the time comes. It will be a living sign of the resurrection in our lives today. It will be a living sign that Christ lives and that he lives in our lives. It will be a living sign that we are, together, a resurrection people who pray first, walk together, and change lives. It will be a living sign of the really terrific and cool changes that can happen when we let Christ be Christ and the Lord of our life, and it is something that could not possibly happen were it not for the death and resurrection of Christ the Lord.
The ELCA pastor Rolf Jacobson is the editor of a really neat book that came out last year called {Crazy Talk}; the subtitle is, “A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms.” My kind of book. In {Crazy Talk} Pr. Jacobson reminds us that resurrection is the “act of God by which new life is given to the dead,” and that:
"…every single day, we are being resurrected. … In a very real way, we die in our sins every single day. Our lives are dead and worthless through our constant sin and rebellion. However, in the act of continual forgiveness granted us through God’s grace, we are reborn new, forgiven, resurrected humans. This is an actual resurrection. Our sins kill us, but God’s forgiveness makes us alive again." (Jacobson, Rolf A., ed. {Crazy Talk}: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, Augsburg Books, 2008, pp. 143, 147.)
God’s forgiveness is made real for us through the death and resurrection of Christ.
Christ’s death has set us free:
Christ’s death has set us free:
He that was held prisoner by death has annihilated it.
By descending into death, he made death captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of his flesh….
It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.
Now, Death, where is your sting? Where is your victory now?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Now, Death, where is your sting? Where is your victory now?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
(excerpt from St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Homily.)
Christ is risen, and we are a resurrection people, praying, and walking together and changing lives as we live ever more into the reality of the Kingdom that Christ has prepared for us.
There is the Good News for us today, but there is a catch. It means that lives are changed. Are we not a resurrection people? Do we not pray first, walk together, and change lives?
If we are the people of Christ, if we are a resurrection people, then lives change. When we are truly a living sign that Christ lives and that he lives in our lives then it means our lives change. It means our families change. It means our churches change. And it means our world will change.
If we do not want to believe that, if we do not want that change to happen and fight against it, if we choose to believe that we are too good for it, if we want to turn our backs on the resurrection that is the ultimate change then we are not a resurrection people; we are dead; and we roll the stone back over the entrance to the empty tomb, and we tell Mary Magdalene and Peter and the disciples to go home and hang it up; its all over with, we’re just playing church this morning, we don’t really mean it.
The Good News is that change does not mean death! To the contrary! It is the lack of change that is death because:
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
And isn’t this not just the Easter proclamation of the Good News, but also the challenge of the Good News that is being presented to our very own parishes even as we speak?
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
To be bluntly honest about this: it means the time for individuals trying to control the destiny of their own lives, their friends, their neighbors, their families, their businesses, their schools, their congregations, and their world has come to an end. As Dr. Kildare used to say, “It’s out of our hands now.” Christ has suddenly and swiftly intervened and taken matters into his hands.
It’s in Christ’s hands now because he is risen.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands bore the nails of the cross for the world.
It’s in Christ’s hands because he alone is Lord of the Church and the Church is his alone, to do with as he will.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands alone direct the destiny of his Church.
It’s in Christ’s hands because his hands are the ones open and inviting each one of us to be the living Church in this community.
It’s in Christ’s hands because,
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
(excerpt from St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Homily.)
Trust Christ. It’s still not too late. There is still time to put agendas, and dreams of money, and desires for control, and fears of loosing control aside and to trust Christ enough that he alone will take center stage in life.
Trust Christ to take our life into his hands. His nail scarred hands remain open to receive one and all.
Trust Christ, who was crucified and rose for us all.
Trust him because he alone is our Lord and we are his Church, to do with as he will.
Trust Christ because he is risen, because he is Lord of your life, because he brings change to your heart, and because in Christ life reigns.
Thanks be to God.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sermon for Passion Sunday Year B
Hi all,
This is my sermon for tomorrow.
Pr. J
4-5-2009, Palm/Passion Sunday
Salem - Luther Memorial Parish, Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 15:1-47
they said I had to carry this cross…
Once upon a time I had to carry a cross. It was on Good Friday. I was an intern at a big church in Chicago. They took worship and the liturgy very, very seriously in that church. I found out how seriously one day early in my internship when I made the honest simple mistake of walking across the chancel from one side to the other. Immediately the Assistant Pastor pointed out to me that I did a bad thing. I didn’t understand. What’s so bad about it? “You didn’t reverence the altar,” she said. “Was I supposed to?” I asked. “Are you Lutheran, or Baptist?” came the response. If you were ever to go to that church today and see how they do worship, then you might come away thinking, “Boy, those people must be more Catholic than Lutheran.” They, one the other hand, definitely would think that you are more Baptist than Lutheran.
In fact everything they did in that church concerning worship was well within the bounds of the Lutheran worship tradition. You just don’t see that kind of thing all the time in every Lutheran church because our local practices differ so much. Take, for example, Good Friday. The day I had to carry a cross. Holy Week had arrived. I had just finished running what seemed like a marathon Lenten season, with Evening Prayer conducted every week night, mid-week Lenten Compline every week, a few saints’ days celebrated during the week when we had mid-day worship Monday-Friday at noon, not to mention the never ending funerals, and the usual grind of three big services every Sunday morning, one of those in German. Then Holy Week hit. They told me that on Good Friday the intern always has a very important job. During the Good Friday liturgy the intern carries a cross during something called “the veneration of the cross.”
Right away I thought, “Wait a minute! Lutherans don’t venerate the cross! That’s Catholic!”
“But, oh contraire,” they told me. Veneration of the cross has always been a Lutheran practice, since the time of Martin Luther. The Lutheran theology of the cross practically begs for it, and veneration is not the same thing as worship in any case. Lutherans worship God as Father, Son – who died on a cross – and Holy Spirit, but they may venerate the cross, which I came to understand in my own unique way as a sort of show of respect for the cross, the best I could do having been once upon a time what Pr. Stacy McGill calls a “stinky Baptist” myself.
So, ok, … I have to carry a cross. What cross?
“Oh, the Assistant Pastor will show you,” said the senior pastor. And he snapped his fingers and the Assistant Pastor obediently took me back into the maze of passages behind the office to show me the cross I should carry. There it was, propped up in something like a big flower pot with flowers entangled around it. It was perhaps 4 feet tall, and looked heavier than it was.
“That’s the one the intern carried last year,” the Assistant Pastor said. She had me lift it to see if I could carry it. It turned out to be hollow and made of light weight plastic. No problem. I can carry this in one hand. That was Wednesday in Holy Week. Then Friday came.
There was a rehearsal on Friday afternoon. I came into the sanctuary, looked around for the cross I had to carry, and didn’t see it. “Where’s the cross?” I asked. The Assistant Pastor, who always did the senior pastor’s talking for him, said, “He has changed his mind. He wants you to carry that cross over there.”
I looked where she pointed, up over two sets of stone steps, way back in the shadowy recesses of the chancel, and there it was. Propped up against the big stone altar was the mother of all crucifixes: a very big cross with a large figure of Jesus nailed to it. With real nails. And it was as tall as I was. And it didn’t look user friendly. They had me pick it up, just to see if I could. Unlike the other cross, this one was solid wood. Oak. Heavy. I hefted it. I could pick it up. I was holding it where the crossbeam met the stock, about so high. Not good enough, they told me. You have to hold it with one hand underneath, and keep it steady with the other. So I tried that. It was barely manageable. But not high enough to please the senior pastor.
“Higher!” he demanded.
I began to have some really strange thoughts about the suitability of that crucifix as a hammer at that point; I could use it to flatten the senior pastor once and for all; many people would have applauded me if I had, but there would probably be negative consequences for me, so I never acted on that thought. I lifted the crucifix as high as he wanted it and was able to keep it there, barely. But then he wanted more.
“You have to walk down the aisle with it!”
“What?!”
“Walk down the aisle while the choir is singing!”
“You’re kidding!”
“No! You have to walk down the aisle all the way and then bring it back while the choir is singing!
Every intern does this! You have to do it!”
I could tell this was not going to be a Good Friday after all. It was going to be a Very Bad Friday for this intern.
So that night at the appointed time in the liturgy I managed to heave that holy blessed monster crucifix up in the air and began walking down the aisle with it while the choir sang away. And I barely made it. And I am amazed that I didn’t drop it. As it was I couldn’t balance the thing while walking, and it kept swaying from one side to the other because it was so top heavy, and as I went down the aisle people reached out to touch the thing and I gritted my teeth and kept saying to myself, “Don’t push it! Don’t push it! It’ll go over! It’ll flatten the person in the pew across the aisle!”
Somehow I managed to make it all the way down the length of that aisle and back, which I took to be proof that there really is a God, and much to the amazement of the senior pastor. Later I was told the senior pastor didn‘t believe I could do it, and he wanted to set me up for a fall, because that‘s just the way he is. But the joke was on him. Fortunately, I’ll never have to do that kind of thing again, nor would I wish it on anyone. You might say I was walking the “way of the cross,” and that is my story of carrying a cross. What’s your’s?
The Bible gives us Jesus’ story of carrying a cross.
Jesus had to carry a cross of his own when they sent him to Golgotha. What we know of the Roman practice of crucifixion tells us that Jesus would have had to carry just the cross beam, but that was bad enough. Much bigger and heavier than the crucifix I had to carry, they would have laid it across his already battered and bloody shoulders and forced him to carry it. He couldn’t get relief just by dropping it, because they would have tied his arms to it. If it went down he would have gone down with it, and he probably did. In the end they got him a little help, because he just couldn’t do it. Then they crucified him on a hill near the city of Jerusalem.
Remembering this is what Holy Week is about. It is a reminder that after Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, he walked the way of the cross on the road to Golgotha where he died on the cross for the sins of all people in order to win the victory of God over sin, death, and evil.
The road to Golgotha is lined by human tragedy, and our Passion Sunday service today is a way for us to open ourselves to this story in our lives.
Where is this story in your life? Where have you carried a cross? What do you know of betrayal and fear, of confusion, of your world turned upside down while no one seems to care? How do you think about and pray about the burdens you find yourself carrying?
However you answer the questions, know that Jesus has already been there ahead of you. He has already walked the path that you are walking, he has already carried that cross; know that he did this for you and for all humanity in all times and all places, did this because God is a God of compassion who gave the only Son, that the entire world might have life.
Let us therefore give thanks to God, let us be bold as disciples of Christ, let us take heart and have courage in our lives because of the saving sacrifice of Christ on the cross for us.
Thanks be to God
This is my sermon for tomorrow.
Pr. J
4-5-2009, Palm/Passion Sunday
Salem - Luther Memorial Parish, Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 15:1-47
they said I had to carry this cross…
Once upon a time I had to carry a cross. It was on Good Friday. I was an intern at a big church in Chicago. They took worship and the liturgy very, very seriously in that church. I found out how seriously one day early in my internship when I made the honest simple mistake of walking across the chancel from one side to the other. Immediately the Assistant Pastor pointed out to me that I did a bad thing. I didn’t understand. What’s so bad about it? “You didn’t reverence the altar,” she said. “Was I supposed to?” I asked. “Are you Lutheran, or Baptist?” came the response. If you were ever to go to that church today and see how they do worship, then you might come away thinking, “Boy, those people must be more Catholic than Lutheran.” They, one the other hand, definitely would think that you are more Baptist than Lutheran.
In fact everything they did in that church concerning worship was well within the bounds of the Lutheran worship tradition. You just don’t see that kind of thing all the time in every Lutheran church because our local practices differ so much. Take, for example, Good Friday. The day I had to carry a cross. Holy Week had arrived. I had just finished running what seemed like a marathon Lenten season, with Evening Prayer conducted every week night, mid-week Lenten Compline every week, a few saints’ days celebrated during the week when we had mid-day worship Monday-Friday at noon, not to mention the never ending funerals, and the usual grind of three big services every Sunday morning, one of those in German. Then Holy Week hit. They told me that on Good Friday the intern always has a very important job. During the Good Friday liturgy the intern carries a cross during something called “the veneration of the cross.”
Right away I thought, “Wait a minute! Lutherans don’t venerate the cross! That’s Catholic!”
“But, oh contraire,” they told me. Veneration of the cross has always been a Lutheran practice, since the time of Martin Luther. The Lutheran theology of the cross practically begs for it, and veneration is not the same thing as worship in any case. Lutherans worship God as Father, Son – who died on a cross – and Holy Spirit, but they may venerate the cross, which I came to understand in my own unique way as a sort of show of respect for the cross, the best I could do having been once upon a time what Pr. Stacy McGill calls a “stinky Baptist” myself.
So, ok, … I have to carry a cross. What cross?
“Oh, the Assistant Pastor will show you,” said the senior pastor. And he snapped his fingers and the Assistant Pastor obediently took me back into the maze of passages behind the office to show me the cross I should carry. There it was, propped up in something like a big flower pot with flowers entangled around it. It was perhaps 4 feet tall, and looked heavier than it was.
“That’s the one the intern carried last year,” the Assistant Pastor said. She had me lift it to see if I could carry it. It turned out to be hollow and made of light weight plastic. No problem. I can carry this in one hand. That was Wednesday in Holy Week. Then Friday came.
There was a rehearsal on Friday afternoon. I came into the sanctuary, looked around for the cross I had to carry, and didn’t see it. “Where’s the cross?” I asked. The Assistant Pastor, who always did the senior pastor’s talking for him, said, “He has changed his mind. He wants you to carry that cross over there.”
I looked where she pointed, up over two sets of stone steps, way back in the shadowy recesses of the chancel, and there it was. Propped up against the big stone altar was the mother of all crucifixes: a very big cross with a large figure of Jesus nailed to it. With real nails. And it was as tall as I was. And it didn’t look user friendly. They had me pick it up, just to see if I could. Unlike the other cross, this one was solid wood. Oak. Heavy. I hefted it. I could pick it up. I was holding it where the crossbeam met the stock, about so high. Not good enough, they told me. You have to hold it with one hand underneath, and keep it steady with the other. So I tried that. It was barely manageable. But not high enough to please the senior pastor.
“Higher!” he demanded.
I began to have some really strange thoughts about the suitability of that crucifix as a hammer at that point; I could use it to flatten the senior pastor once and for all; many people would have applauded me if I had, but there would probably be negative consequences for me, so I never acted on that thought. I lifted the crucifix as high as he wanted it and was able to keep it there, barely. But then he wanted more.
“You have to walk down the aisle with it!”
“What?!”
“Walk down the aisle while the choir is singing!”
“You’re kidding!”
“No! You have to walk down the aisle all the way and then bring it back while the choir is singing!
Every intern does this! You have to do it!”
I could tell this was not going to be a Good Friday after all. It was going to be a Very Bad Friday for this intern.
So that night at the appointed time in the liturgy I managed to heave that holy blessed monster crucifix up in the air and began walking down the aisle with it while the choir sang away. And I barely made it. And I am amazed that I didn’t drop it. As it was I couldn’t balance the thing while walking, and it kept swaying from one side to the other because it was so top heavy, and as I went down the aisle people reached out to touch the thing and I gritted my teeth and kept saying to myself, “Don’t push it! Don’t push it! It’ll go over! It’ll flatten the person in the pew across the aisle!”
Somehow I managed to make it all the way down the length of that aisle and back, which I took to be proof that there really is a God, and much to the amazement of the senior pastor. Later I was told the senior pastor didn‘t believe I could do it, and he wanted to set me up for a fall, because that‘s just the way he is. But the joke was on him. Fortunately, I’ll never have to do that kind of thing again, nor would I wish it on anyone. You might say I was walking the “way of the cross,” and that is my story of carrying a cross. What’s your’s?
The Bible gives us Jesus’ story of carrying a cross.
Jesus had to carry a cross of his own when they sent him to Golgotha. What we know of the Roman practice of crucifixion tells us that Jesus would have had to carry just the cross beam, but that was bad enough. Much bigger and heavier than the crucifix I had to carry, they would have laid it across his already battered and bloody shoulders and forced him to carry it. He couldn’t get relief just by dropping it, because they would have tied his arms to it. If it went down he would have gone down with it, and he probably did. In the end they got him a little help, because he just couldn’t do it. Then they crucified him on a hill near the city of Jerusalem.
Remembering this is what Holy Week is about. It is a reminder that after Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, he walked the way of the cross on the road to Golgotha where he died on the cross for the sins of all people in order to win the victory of God over sin, death, and evil.
The road to Golgotha is lined by human tragedy, and our Passion Sunday service today is a way for us to open ourselves to this story in our lives.
Where is this story in your life? Where have you carried a cross? What do you know of betrayal and fear, of confusion, of your world turned upside down while no one seems to care? How do you think about and pray about the burdens you find yourself carrying?
However you answer the questions, know that Jesus has already been there ahead of you. He has already walked the path that you are walking, he has already carried that cross; know that he did this for you and for all humanity in all times and all places, did this because God is a God of compassion who gave the only Son, that the entire world might have life.
Let us therefore give thanks to God, let us be bold as disciples of Christ, let us take heart and have courage in our lives because of the saving sacrifice of Christ on the cross for us.
Thanks be to God
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Mid-week Lenten reflection, 1 April 2009
Hi all,
Here is tonight's mid-week Lenten reflection. Peace to all,
Pr. J
First Reading: Deuteronomy 7:7-8
7Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: "Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. 8It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
Gospel: Luke 19:29-40
29When Jesus had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34They said, "The Lord needs it." 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38saying,
"Blessed is the kingwho comes in the name of the Lord!Peace in heaven,and glory in the highest heaven!"
39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
(New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)
Lent 5B, SLM – Parrottsville, 4-1-2009
One of the themes of the Lenten season is the theme of the journey, especially the wilderness journey. We see many images of the wilderness journey in the story of the Exodus and the wandering of the Israelites, the life of Moses, God’s promise of deliverance from bandage in Egypt, and God’s promise of deliverance to a “Promised Land.”
Now, as we come near to the end of our season of wilderness journeys, we heard a reading from Deuteronomy in which Moses tells Joshua,
"Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. 8It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
We take it for granted that the name Joshua means Joshua. We don’t stop to think that it’s a Hebrew name that means “Deliverance.” We don’t stop to think that the Aramaic form of the name was Yeshua, and that we know someone by that name from the Gospels: Jesus.
Here, where Moses speaks to Joshua, I am reminded of the story of the transfiguration, of how the disciples’ vision portrayed Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus, this new Joshua. That story never tells us what Moses and Elijah had to say to Jesus, but I wonder if perhaps the story was meant to remind us, and the original Gospel readers, of what Moses said in Deuteronomy:
"...you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them…."
The Exodus story of the Israelites’ wilderness journey really ends with Deuteronomy and Joshua, with the Israelites entering the land of Canaan - Palestine. Our wilderness journey during Lent ends with a reading from the Gospels on this coming Sunday - the Processional Gospel at the very beginning worship, as we recall the story of how Jesus entered Jerusalem with crowds of people cheering him on.
What’s happening in that story?
Jesus has come to the end of his own journey. He has come to Jerusalem for the last time where he will be crucified.
The disciples following him have come to the end of their journey, too, and it will change them They seem to think Jesus is going to be a somewhat different kind of Messiah than the one we know, one who enters the city in triumph to take over and lead the people to a new “promised land,” a new Jerusalem, where the Kingdom of God will be realized by a king on a throne in the Holy City.
But what really happens once Jesus enters Jerusalem?
Think of the events we remember at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Anything but entering into a “promised land.” After all the building of expectations and all the excitement, after really believing that this Jesus must be the new Joshua, that he will deliver his people from Romans and from corrupt priests and from self-serving Pharisees, Jesus is crucified and dies.
The disciples must have been devastated. And one gets that impression from reading the Gospels, and that was how the disciples saw the end of their wilderness journey.
But was it really the end of the journey?
What happens next in the story? After Maundy Thursday and Good Friday there is Easter. There is the mystery of the empty tomb and there is the proclamation: “He is not here! He is risen!”
And then the disciples, and us, realize that the journey to the “promised land” really has not ended after all. Instead it has really only begun as a new and unexpected journey into the real and eternal kingdom of God.
Thanks be to God!
Here is tonight's mid-week Lenten reflection. Peace to all,
Pr. J
First Reading: Deuteronomy 7:7-8
7Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: "Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. 8It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
Gospel: Luke 19:29-40
29When Jesus had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34They said, "The Lord needs it." 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38saying,
"Blessed is the kingwho comes in the name of the Lord!Peace in heaven,and glory in the highest heaven!"
39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
(New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)
Lent 5B, SLM – Parrottsville, 4-1-2009
One of the themes of the Lenten season is the theme of the journey, especially the wilderness journey. We see many images of the wilderness journey in the story of the Exodus and the wandering of the Israelites, the life of Moses, God’s promise of deliverance from bandage in Egypt, and God’s promise of deliverance to a “Promised Land.”
Now, as we come near to the end of our season of wilderness journeys, we heard a reading from Deuteronomy in which Moses tells Joshua,
"Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. 8It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
We take it for granted that the name Joshua means Joshua. We don’t stop to think that it’s a Hebrew name that means “Deliverance.” We don’t stop to think that the Aramaic form of the name was Yeshua, and that we know someone by that name from the Gospels: Jesus.
Here, where Moses speaks to Joshua, I am reminded of the story of the transfiguration, of how the disciples’ vision portrayed Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus, this new Joshua. That story never tells us what Moses and Elijah had to say to Jesus, but I wonder if perhaps the story was meant to remind us, and the original Gospel readers, of what Moses said in Deuteronomy:
"...you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their ancestors to give them…."
The Exodus story of the Israelites’ wilderness journey really ends with Deuteronomy and Joshua, with the Israelites entering the land of Canaan - Palestine. Our wilderness journey during Lent ends with a reading from the Gospels on this coming Sunday - the Processional Gospel at the very beginning worship, as we recall the story of how Jesus entered Jerusalem with crowds of people cheering him on.
What’s happening in that story?
Jesus has come to the end of his own journey. He has come to Jerusalem for the last time where he will be crucified.
The disciples following him have come to the end of their journey, too, and it will change them They seem to think Jesus is going to be a somewhat different kind of Messiah than the one we know, one who enters the city in triumph to take over and lead the people to a new “promised land,” a new Jerusalem, where the Kingdom of God will be realized by a king on a throne in the Holy City.
But what really happens once Jesus enters Jerusalem?
Think of the events we remember at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Anything but entering into a “promised land.” After all the building of expectations and all the excitement, after really believing that this Jesus must be the new Joshua, that he will deliver his people from Romans and from corrupt priests and from self-serving Pharisees, Jesus is crucified and dies.
The disciples must have been devastated. And one gets that impression from reading the Gospels, and that was how the disciples saw the end of their wilderness journey.
But was it really the end of the journey?
What happens next in the story? After Maundy Thursday and Good Friday there is Easter. There is the mystery of the empty tomb and there is the proclamation: “He is not here! He is risen!”
And then the disciples, and us, realize that the journey to the “promised land” really has not ended after all. Instead it has really only begun as a new and unexpected journey into the real and eternal kingdom of God.
Thanks be to God!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent
3-22-2009, Lent 4
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 3:14-21; Numbers 21:4-9
serpent on high
One reads from the Hebrew Bible: “From Mount Hor they journeyed by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people is short in the way.”
Sounds like trouble to me. The Hebrew text in its colorful way says the “soul of the people is short.” Right away we know their patience is short. Tempers are flaring. Voices are rising, arguments are happening, and people are becoming angry with God because God is leading Moses to lead them all around on this wild goose chase to the Promised Land, and they’re getting angry with Moses for listening to God in the first place.
And maybe you can understand why.
If you’ve been reading the Book of Numbers and the Exodus story up to this point you’d see that the Israelite people are being led by Moses who’s being led by God to wander around in this big barren place called Sinai and now they’re in the area near the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of Sinai - somewhere near Edom and Mt. Hor.
Have you ever seen pictures of those places? I tell you, this is no place for a vacation. One does not casually walk around in that territory. I know what that’s like. I’ve been hiking with the Boy Scouts in Arizona enough to know. I’ve seen places like Mt. Hor and Edom and Sinai in Arizona. I know you better be prepared if you want to go hiking in terrain like that. That was our motto: be prepared. We scouted out the terrain before hand, had contour maps courtesy of the United States Marines in Yuma, planned our hike in advance, knew where the local water was and what the temperature would be and where our rest stops would be and we had all the proper gear we needed and packed enough food and water and we were prepared to go hiking 5, 10, even 20 miles in the desert. The Israelites were not prepared.
They have spent their entire lives as slaves in Egypt. This means they did not have easy lives. They were not free. But it also means they were somewhat sheltered. They had no idea how to take care of themselves out in the big wide wild world, especially in the wilderness of Sinai. They didn’t have the faintest idea how to manage on their own. They couldn’t even watch where they put they own two clumsy feet when they walked, probably too busy complaining about God and Moses to look where they were going.
You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to know that when you’re walking in a rocky desert type area whether its in Arizona or the Sinai you better pay attention to where you put your feet, especially if you are foolish enough to venture out without proper foot gear, and I guarantee you the Israelites did not have proper foot gear 3200 years ago. At best they had sandals. Probably many of them were barefoot in country where no one should go barefoot.
That made it all the worse when they blindly stumbled through an area infested with venomous snakes. No wonder a number of them were bitten. Some died. Not a pleasant way to go. Being sheltered, having no experience, not knowing how to deal with snakes, all of them were scared. They believed it was a punishment sent by God for their complaining. At the end of the day, after they made camp, they approached Moses and begged for mercy, “We have sinned … pray to God to take away the snakes…”
I personally do not believe that God is vindictive and would intentionally send the Israelites into the viper’s den as punishment for petty complaining. No complaint is going to hurt God, and the God who did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but to save it would not stoop to lethal revenge in response for the pettiness and self-centeredness of the Israelites. The Israelites had nothing but their own blind fool carelessness to blame for their troubles that day. They should have looked where they were going. They should have scouted out the route. They should have been prepared. Another way of saying their own sin was to blame. But I do believe God knew the answer to their problem and inspired Moses to do something about it.
I remember a few years back I was busy banging out a sermon on the computer one day, and Ayla discovered what happens when you sit on your foot the wrong way for too long. Painful. So she started wailing and catastrophising: “Is it ever going to get better?” And Leslie told her to just sit still and wait and the pain would go away, but Ayla had no faith in Mommie’s wisdom, and kept wailing and insisted it wasn’t getting any better. Finally I had enough of this; I’m trying to write a sermon. I can‘t think with all this racket going on. So I told Ayla if nothing seems to be working then there’s only one thing left to do. That got her curiosity going and she seemed to forget the pain for a moment.
“What?” Ayla asked.
“BRING OUT THE PLACEBO!” I called out.
“What’s a placebo?” she demanded.
“There’s nothing left to do now but give her the Placebo! Leslie, where’s the Placebo?”
“Mommie, what’s a placebo?”
Leslie got the hint, and got the Ace Bandage out and wrapped Ayla’s ankle, and behold, we had a miracle. The pain went away instantly. The placebo worked.
God inspired Moses to make the image of a poisonous snake and raise it up where everyone could see it. God does not use magic, like the pagan gods of Egypt, and so the serpent’s image was not magical in any way. In and of itself it had no power, just looking at it meant nothing more than looking at a bronze image. But -
God knows all about faith and God knows that faith is a very powerful tool in healing. The people had faith; those who suffered snake bites had faith that God would heal them. They just needed a sign that God had not abandoned them, that God heard them, that God cared, that God was still there, that God would, in fact, heal them. So God gave them a symbol of God’s power to heal and a symbol that God can overcome even the poisonous snakes in the desert. The poison snake crisis was over.
Jesus is reported to have told Nicodemus that, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
The Son of Man raised high on a cross brings healing and new life to a world full
of suffering, dying, sinful people.
More than the simple image Moses made by hand from bronze found in the book of Numbers, more than just a simple placebo, Jesus himself is the cure, the remedy, the answer, the way.
We know God is rich in mercy, kindness, and compassion, even for, and especially for a fallen and sinful humanity. We know that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. If we need a sign that this is so, that God has not abandoned us, that God hears us, that God cares, that God is still there, that God will in fact, heal us and redeem us and bring us into the kingdom, then God gives us a sign. The only Son was raised high on a cross for the sake of all humanity, and history repeated itself, as the new serpent of Moses hung over Jerusalem long ago so that all may look up to the Son and know that they have new life.
Let the power of Christ raised over the world guide your life.
Let the compassion of Christ raised upon a cross forgive you and heal your life.
Let Christ hold you up in your pain, illness, distress and in your need for forgiveness and healing.
Let him give you strength and confidence and boldness to truly be his disciple, dedicated to his service, carrying his cross, working to forgive and heal others as he forgave and healed many, and bearing his Good News to the world.
Let him lead you in your own desert walk with God so that you may come out of your wilderness and into a new and promised life.
Peace be with you
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 3:14-21; Numbers 21:4-9
serpent on high
One reads from the Hebrew Bible: “From Mount Hor they journeyed by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people is short in the way.”
Sounds like trouble to me. The Hebrew text in its colorful way says the “soul of the people is short.” Right away we know their patience is short. Tempers are flaring. Voices are rising, arguments are happening, and people are becoming angry with God because God is leading Moses to lead them all around on this wild goose chase to the Promised Land, and they’re getting angry with Moses for listening to God in the first place.
And maybe you can understand why.
If you’ve been reading the Book of Numbers and the Exodus story up to this point you’d see that the Israelite people are being led by Moses who’s being led by God to wander around in this big barren place called Sinai and now they’re in the area near the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of Sinai - somewhere near Edom and Mt. Hor.
Have you ever seen pictures of those places? I tell you, this is no place for a vacation. One does not casually walk around in that territory. I know what that’s like. I’ve been hiking with the Boy Scouts in Arizona enough to know. I’ve seen places like Mt. Hor and Edom and Sinai in Arizona. I know you better be prepared if you want to go hiking in terrain like that. That was our motto: be prepared. We scouted out the terrain before hand, had contour maps courtesy of the United States Marines in Yuma, planned our hike in advance, knew where the local water was and what the temperature would be and where our rest stops would be and we had all the proper gear we needed and packed enough food and water and we were prepared to go hiking 5, 10, even 20 miles in the desert. The Israelites were not prepared.
They have spent their entire lives as slaves in Egypt. This means they did not have easy lives. They were not free. But it also means they were somewhat sheltered. They had no idea how to take care of themselves out in the big wide wild world, especially in the wilderness of Sinai. They didn’t have the faintest idea how to manage on their own. They couldn’t even watch where they put they own two clumsy feet when they walked, probably too busy complaining about God and Moses to look where they were going.
You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to know that when you’re walking in a rocky desert type area whether its in Arizona or the Sinai you better pay attention to where you put your feet, especially if you are foolish enough to venture out without proper foot gear, and I guarantee you the Israelites did not have proper foot gear 3200 years ago. At best they had sandals. Probably many of them were barefoot in country where no one should go barefoot.
That made it all the worse when they blindly stumbled through an area infested with venomous snakes. No wonder a number of them were bitten. Some died. Not a pleasant way to go. Being sheltered, having no experience, not knowing how to deal with snakes, all of them were scared. They believed it was a punishment sent by God for their complaining. At the end of the day, after they made camp, they approached Moses and begged for mercy, “We have sinned … pray to God to take away the snakes…”
I personally do not believe that God is vindictive and would intentionally send the Israelites into the viper’s den as punishment for petty complaining. No complaint is going to hurt God, and the God who did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but to save it would not stoop to lethal revenge in response for the pettiness and self-centeredness of the Israelites. The Israelites had nothing but their own blind fool carelessness to blame for their troubles that day. They should have looked where they were going. They should have scouted out the route. They should have been prepared. Another way of saying their own sin was to blame. But I do believe God knew the answer to their problem and inspired Moses to do something about it.
I remember a few years back I was busy banging out a sermon on the computer one day, and Ayla discovered what happens when you sit on your foot the wrong way for too long. Painful. So she started wailing and catastrophising: “Is it ever going to get better?” And Leslie told her to just sit still and wait and the pain would go away, but Ayla had no faith in Mommie’s wisdom, and kept wailing and insisted it wasn’t getting any better. Finally I had enough of this; I’m trying to write a sermon. I can‘t think with all this racket going on. So I told Ayla if nothing seems to be working then there’s only one thing left to do. That got her curiosity going and she seemed to forget the pain for a moment.
“What?” Ayla asked.
“BRING OUT THE PLACEBO!” I called out.
“What’s a placebo?” she demanded.
“There’s nothing left to do now but give her the Placebo! Leslie, where’s the Placebo?”
“Mommie, what’s a placebo?”
Leslie got the hint, and got the Ace Bandage out and wrapped Ayla’s ankle, and behold, we had a miracle. The pain went away instantly. The placebo worked.
God inspired Moses to make the image of a poisonous snake and raise it up where everyone could see it. God does not use magic, like the pagan gods of Egypt, and so the serpent’s image was not magical in any way. In and of itself it had no power, just looking at it meant nothing more than looking at a bronze image. But -
God knows all about faith and God knows that faith is a very powerful tool in healing. The people had faith; those who suffered snake bites had faith that God would heal them. They just needed a sign that God had not abandoned them, that God heard them, that God cared, that God was still there, that God would, in fact, heal them. So God gave them a symbol of God’s power to heal and a symbol that God can overcome even the poisonous snakes in the desert. The poison snake crisis was over.
Jesus is reported to have told Nicodemus that, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
The Son of Man raised high on a cross brings healing and new life to a world full
of suffering, dying, sinful people.
More than the simple image Moses made by hand from bronze found in the book of Numbers, more than just a simple placebo, Jesus himself is the cure, the remedy, the answer, the way.
We know God is rich in mercy, kindness, and compassion, even for, and especially for a fallen and sinful humanity. We know that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. If we need a sign that this is so, that God has not abandoned us, that God hears us, that God cares, that God is still there, that God will in fact, heal us and redeem us and bring us into the kingdom, then God gives us a sign. The only Son was raised high on a cross for the sake of all humanity, and history repeated itself, as the new serpent of Moses hung over Jerusalem long ago so that all may look up to the Son and know that they have new life.
Let the power of Christ raised over the world guide your life.
Let the compassion of Christ raised upon a cross forgive you and heal your life.
Let Christ hold you up in your pain, illness, distress and in your need for forgiveness and healing.
Let him give you strength and confidence and boldness to truly be his disciple, dedicated to his service, carrying his cross, working to forgive and heal others as he forgave and healed many, and bearing his Good News to the world.
Let him lead you in your own desert walk with God so that you may come out of your wilderness and into a new and promised life.
Peace be with you
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent Year B
Hi all,
Here is the sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, 3-15-09. This is the stampede sermon. I might post a few notes about this episode in the Gospels later this week if I get time. Meanwhile, peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-15-2009, Lent 3B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 2:13-22; Romans 4:13-25
Stampede!
It was the month of Nisan. Late March on our calendar. The flax harvest was about to begin. The late rains watered Judea and Galilee all month long with spring showers. Dirt roads turned to mud churned up by hoof and foot and cart wheel, but that did not stop the many thousands of pilgrims from making their journey from as far away as Gibraltar in the west and Jewish colonies in India to the east. Sometimes starting out months in advance and many times traveling on foot they flocked by the thousands and the tens of thousands to the Holy City, Jerusalem, the City of David where they converged on one of the wonders of the world, King Herod’s Temple.
The Passover was very close. On the 15th day of Nisan the Hebrew people across the Known World would celebrate and remember the one event that made the Hebrew people into a nation, their freedom from slavery in Egypt. For those who spent Passover in Jerusalem and had come to make their sacrifices in the Temple, it was as if they had come into the very presence of God, close enough to see and feel and even smell the presence of God in the constantly rising smoke of sacrifices, the electric atmosphere of the city, and the never ending all pervasive odors of burnt offerings and incense that drifted down from the Temple and blanketed the whole city. The spring rains would clear the air everyday, but the sacrifices would go on and on and on and in no time the smokey haze and smell of burning sacrifices would descend upon the crowded city once again. People were taught that the sacrifices were the only way they could approach God, the only way they could have forgiveness of sins, the only way they could have salvation, and the only way they could enter God‘s kingdom. Jesus came to change all that.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem during that time before Passover. We will come back to that part of the story when Jesus enters the city during our Passion Sunday readings. For today the Gospel of John is concerned what happens after Jesus led his disciples through the city gates. Like many thousands of other Hebrew people from near and far Jesus entered the Temple. His expectations were probably much like those of many other people. He expected to enter a place set aside as the House of God, a special, sacred, holy place where one might be able to experience the presence of God in some small way, through sacrifice, prayer, or listening to the teaching of the many rabbis and Pharisees who held their own private classes and forums in the wide-open courts and columned proches of the Temple. One does have certain expectations for a place like a temple, especially if it is The Temple in Jerusalem.
Fr. Bruce Chilton, who teaches at Bard College in Dutchess County, New York, made a compelling case in his Lenten lectures a few years back and in his book Rabbi Jesus that Jesus and his disciples came to make their own Passover sacrifice at the Temple. That would easily explain what happens next in the Gospel, but even if Jesus didn’t come like many others to make a sacrifice he would still have been very surprised at what he found. In the Court of the Gentiles and in the rooms formerly occupied by the schools of the Pharisees he found stables and pens and cages for animals and tables for money changers.
Ooops! Not what one expects to find in a temple of any religion.
Only a few years before, while Jesus was in Galilee, the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas finally had enough of the nit picky Pharisees. He was tired of the Pharisees constantly watching priests perform the rituals and the prayers and the sacrifices day in and day out. The Pharisees were the worst possible critics. They would find a fault with a prayer, a flaw in the liturgy, a miniscule mistake in a sacrifice, and they let the priests know it with a vengeance. Finally Caiaphas said enough is enough! All this petty complaining is interfering with the work of his priests! So he booted the Pharisees out of the Temple. He threw their offices and their schools out on their rump. He brought the Temple stockyards and animal handlers from the Mt. of Olives into the Temple, into the spaces formerly occupied by the Pharisees, and he told the Pharisees they could have the old Temple barns for their offices and schools - and good riddance!
And so when Jesus entered the Temple on this occasion he found not the clean and stately courts of a magnificent wonder of the world filled with devout worshippers of God but something more like the old Chicago stockyards filled with cattle, sheep, lambs, pigeons, birds of all kinds, and plenty of stinking manure to boot, not to mention scads of people tending the animals, shoveling manure, hauling feed, and a battalion of priests more than willing to take your good Roman or Greek coin and turn it into official Temple shekels, for a fee of course, so that you could then turn around and give those shekels to yet another priest so you could buy your sacrificial lamb in the very shadow of the altar. The priests had a real racket going.
Even Jesus can be surprised. And he was.
Many years ago when I was still very little, before I started school, I used to sit up late into the night with my mother’s step-father watching westerns on TV. He was addicted to westerns and he watched every single western there was to watch on TV back in 1959: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Bat Masterson, Wagon Train, Rawhide, and more. As a result I learned long before I started school about things like stampedes. But it took me many years to realize that the classic image of the stampede from Wagon Train and Rawhide can be applied to today’s reading from John.
The impression we get from the Gospel of John is that Jesus intentionally, deliberately, with some planning and preparation forcefully drove the sheep and cattle out of the Temple. That’s a stampede in any 1950’s western. There is no other way to look at it. There was no peaceful, magical leading of the animals out the gate of the Temple, through the city streets and into the countryside beyond. It was a dirty, messy, loud, business that probably involved the disciples and others helping Jesus against the priests who were trying to stop him. We are forced by the Gospel to imagine a great uproar in this great wonder of the world. There is a confrontation between Jesus and his disciples and the priests. There’s the scuffling and shouting of many, probably thousands of people. And although I do not believe that Jesus himself would have encourage the harm of other people - it absolutely goes against what he had been teaching and practicing up to this point - still, other people probably found here the occasion to do harm. This is probably where Barabbas found the opportunity to commit murder and the reason why he was arrested and sentenced to be crucified. And then there were the animals. Hundreds of them. A stampede of sheep and cattle surged out of the Court of the Gentiles, through the Eastern Gate of the Temple, and down into Kidron Valley, back toward the Mount of Olives where they came from.
“You have turned my Father’s house into a market place!” Jesus shouts as he chases the animal handlers and sellers out of their stalls, overturns the tables of the money changers and scatters their glittering coins across the stone pavement. Going back to the Greek text in the Gospel of Matthew one finds even more colorful wording used. Jesus shouts at these people that they have turned his Father’s house into a “cave of thieves.”
You know the priests would be none too happy about all this. The entire Temple has been disrupted at the worst possible time - Passover is nearly upon them! I think Caiaphas himself faced off with Jesus for the moment and demanded to know his reason for doing this. “What sign can you show us for doing this?” At least he gave Jesus benefit of a doubt.
Here the Gospel of John comes to the whole point of telling us this story: Jesus answered them: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
“It’s taken us 46 years to build this Temple and it’s not done yet!” came the angry, skeptical response. “Will you raise it up in three days?” Clearly the priests did not understand Jesus the way the Gospel of John understands him.
The Gospel goes on to tell us that later, after the empty tomb and the events of Easter, the disciples would understand Jesus' words in terms of the temple of his body, which would be crucified, buried, and then raised from the tomb, not the great stone wonder of the world where Jesus had just caused a major uproar.
The Apostle Paul tells us that we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, those who seek signs of power, and foolishness to Gentiles, those who seek wisdom; but to those who are called to follow Christ, both Jews and Gentiles, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God who cleanses us of our sin even as he once cleansed the Temple.
During Lent we are called, those of us who seek signs and those of us who seek wisdom, to follow the Lord who cleanses us and makes us acceptable before God. He was not daunted by what he found in a great stone wonder of the world. Neither is he daunted by what he finds in the human heart, and with the compassion of God he confronts the sins of the heart and sets them right. Let him into your hearts and minds and souls this Lent, that he may cleanse us of our sins this day and every day.
Peace be with you
Here is the sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, 3-15-09. This is the stampede sermon. I might post a few notes about this episode in the Gospels later this week if I get time. Meanwhile, peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-15-2009, Lent 3B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
John 2:13-22; Romans 4:13-25
Stampede!
It was the month of Nisan. Late March on our calendar. The flax harvest was about to begin. The late rains watered Judea and Galilee all month long with spring showers. Dirt roads turned to mud churned up by hoof and foot and cart wheel, but that did not stop the many thousands of pilgrims from making their journey from as far away as Gibraltar in the west and Jewish colonies in India to the east. Sometimes starting out months in advance and many times traveling on foot they flocked by the thousands and the tens of thousands to the Holy City, Jerusalem, the City of David where they converged on one of the wonders of the world, King Herod’s Temple.
The Passover was very close. On the 15th day of Nisan the Hebrew people across the Known World would celebrate and remember the one event that made the Hebrew people into a nation, their freedom from slavery in Egypt. For those who spent Passover in Jerusalem and had come to make their sacrifices in the Temple, it was as if they had come into the very presence of God, close enough to see and feel and even smell the presence of God in the constantly rising smoke of sacrifices, the electric atmosphere of the city, and the never ending all pervasive odors of burnt offerings and incense that drifted down from the Temple and blanketed the whole city. The spring rains would clear the air everyday, but the sacrifices would go on and on and on and in no time the smokey haze and smell of burning sacrifices would descend upon the crowded city once again. People were taught that the sacrifices were the only way they could approach God, the only way they could have forgiveness of sins, the only way they could have salvation, and the only way they could enter God‘s kingdom. Jesus came to change all that.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem during that time before Passover. We will come back to that part of the story when Jesus enters the city during our Passion Sunday readings. For today the Gospel of John is concerned what happens after Jesus led his disciples through the city gates. Like many thousands of other Hebrew people from near and far Jesus entered the Temple. His expectations were probably much like those of many other people. He expected to enter a place set aside as the House of God, a special, sacred, holy place where one might be able to experience the presence of God in some small way, through sacrifice, prayer, or listening to the teaching of the many rabbis and Pharisees who held their own private classes and forums in the wide-open courts and columned proches of the Temple. One does have certain expectations for a place like a temple, especially if it is The Temple in Jerusalem.
Fr. Bruce Chilton, who teaches at Bard College in Dutchess County, New York, made a compelling case in his Lenten lectures a few years back and in his book Rabbi Jesus that Jesus and his disciples came to make their own Passover sacrifice at the Temple. That would easily explain what happens next in the Gospel, but even if Jesus didn’t come like many others to make a sacrifice he would still have been very surprised at what he found. In the Court of the Gentiles and in the rooms formerly occupied by the schools of the Pharisees he found stables and pens and cages for animals and tables for money changers.
Ooops! Not what one expects to find in a temple of any religion.
Only a few years before, while Jesus was in Galilee, the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas finally had enough of the nit picky Pharisees. He was tired of the Pharisees constantly watching priests perform the rituals and the prayers and the sacrifices day in and day out. The Pharisees were the worst possible critics. They would find a fault with a prayer, a flaw in the liturgy, a miniscule mistake in a sacrifice, and they let the priests know it with a vengeance. Finally Caiaphas said enough is enough! All this petty complaining is interfering with the work of his priests! So he booted the Pharisees out of the Temple. He threw their offices and their schools out on their rump. He brought the Temple stockyards and animal handlers from the Mt. of Olives into the Temple, into the spaces formerly occupied by the Pharisees, and he told the Pharisees they could have the old Temple barns for their offices and schools - and good riddance!
And so when Jesus entered the Temple on this occasion he found not the clean and stately courts of a magnificent wonder of the world filled with devout worshippers of God but something more like the old Chicago stockyards filled with cattle, sheep, lambs, pigeons, birds of all kinds, and plenty of stinking manure to boot, not to mention scads of people tending the animals, shoveling manure, hauling feed, and a battalion of priests more than willing to take your good Roman or Greek coin and turn it into official Temple shekels, for a fee of course, so that you could then turn around and give those shekels to yet another priest so you could buy your sacrificial lamb in the very shadow of the altar. The priests had a real racket going.
Even Jesus can be surprised. And he was.
Many years ago when I was still very little, before I started school, I used to sit up late into the night with my mother’s step-father watching westerns on TV. He was addicted to westerns and he watched every single western there was to watch on TV back in 1959: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Bat Masterson, Wagon Train, Rawhide, and more. As a result I learned long before I started school about things like stampedes. But it took me many years to realize that the classic image of the stampede from Wagon Train and Rawhide can be applied to today’s reading from John.
The impression we get from the Gospel of John is that Jesus intentionally, deliberately, with some planning and preparation forcefully drove the sheep and cattle out of the Temple. That’s a stampede in any 1950’s western. There is no other way to look at it. There was no peaceful, magical leading of the animals out the gate of the Temple, through the city streets and into the countryside beyond. It was a dirty, messy, loud, business that probably involved the disciples and others helping Jesus against the priests who were trying to stop him. We are forced by the Gospel to imagine a great uproar in this great wonder of the world. There is a confrontation between Jesus and his disciples and the priests. There’s the scuffling and shouting of many, probably thousands of people. And although I do not believe that Jesus himself would have encourage the harm of other people - it absolutely goes against what he had been teaching and practicing up to this point - still, other people probably found here the occasion to do harm. This is probably where Barabbas found the opportunity to commit murder and the reason why he was arrested and sentenced to be crucified. And then there were the animals. Hundreds of them. A stampede of sheep and cattle surged out of the Court of the Gentiles, through the Eastern Gate of the Temple, and down into Kidron Valley, back toward the Mount of Olives where they came from.
“You have turned my Father’s house into a market place!” Jesus shouts as he chases the animal handlers and sellers out of their stalls, overturns the tables of the money changers and scatters their glittering coins across the stone pavement. Going back to the Greek text in the Gospel of Matthew one finds even more colorful wording used. Jesus shouts at these people that they have turned his Father’s house into a “cave of thieves.”
You know the priests would be none too happy about all this. The entire Temple has been disrupted at the worst possible time - Passover is nearly upon them! I think Caiaphas himself faced off with Jesus for the moment and demanded to know his reason for doing this. “What sign can you show us for doing this?” At least he gave Jesus benefit of a doubt.
Here the Gospel of John comes to the whole point of telling us this story: Jesus answered them: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
“It’s taken us 46 years to build this Temple and it’s not done yet!” came the angry, skeptical response. “Will you raise it up in three days?” Clearly the priests did not understand Jesus the way the Gospel of John understands him.
The Gospel goes on to tell us that later, after the empty tomb and the events of Easter, the disciples would understand Jesus' words in terms of the temple of his body, which would be crucified, buried, and then raised from the tomb, not the great stone wonder of the world where Jesus had just caused a major uproar.
The Apostle Paul tells us that we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, those who seek signs of power, and foolishness to Gentiles, those who seek wisdom; but to those who are called to follow Christ, both Jews and Gentiles, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God who cleanses us of our sin even as he once cleansed the Temple.
During Lent we are called, those of us who seek signs and those of us who seek wisdom, to follow the Lord who cleanses us and makes us acceptable before God. He was not daunted by what he found in a great stone wonder of the world. Neither is he daunted by what he finds in the human heart, and with the compassion of God he confronts the sins of the heart and sets them right. Let him into your hearts and minds and souls this Lent, that he may cleanse us of our sins this day and every day.
Peace be with you
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