"With Flakes of Light" - Transfiguation A

Exodus 24:12-18
Saint Matthew 17:1-9

Zora Neale Hurston, wrote a book about the life of Moses beautifully weaving the biblical accounts with those of the rich storytelling tradition of her ancestors who were slaves.

Here is how she described Moses as he descended from the mountain after spending forty days communing with God.

Moses lifted the freshly chiseled tablets of stone in his hands and gazed down the mountain to where Israel waited in the valley.  He knew a great exaltation.  Now men could be free because they could govern themselves.  They had something of the essence of divinity expressed in order.  They have the chart and compass of behavior.  They need not stumble into blind ways and injure themselves.  This was bigger than Israel itself.  It comprehended the world.

With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned down the mountain with the tablets of testimony in his hands. 

“Joshua,” Moses said, “I have laws, Israel is going to know peace and justice.”1

I love that.  It is beautiful writing.  “With flakes of light still clinging to his face.”
 
That is a certain sign that someone has had something majestic happen to them.  You’ve seen it.  You’ve experienced it.  This isn’t just something that happens to characters in the bible because it has happened to all of us.  Not being as eloquent as Ms.  Hurston, we might have to settle on the words “She was beaming!” to describe what we meant. 
 
It is moments like this that sustain us.  It is those times when we have felt especially wonderful, fully alive, exceptionally happy, in the darker or even the more humdrum moments of life.
 
It is the reason we take pictures at momentous occasions.  We want to remember the joy, the excitement of those moments.

Think of what a big moment it must have been when Moses, his face flecked with  left over light from being in the presence of God descended down the mountain with the commandments. Unfortunately, Moses time to shine didn’t last very long because of what was going on back down in the valley with his people.

You remember the story.  

Moses had been gone so long that the people had given up on him and God and asked Aaron to cobble together another god for them to worship.  Either out of fear of the mob, lack of leadership skills, or an absence of faith, he fashioned a golden calf for them.
 Here is Zora Neale Hurston’s fictionalized account of what was going on with Moses and Joshua on the mountain while the people partied down below.

Moses looked down at the stones in his lap and passed his hand over the carved figures reverently and then looked back up the mountain as if he would retreat up there.  Then he brought his attention back to the tumult below.

“Does it sound like the voice of the people shouting for victory, Joshua? 

Well,’ he said haltingly, ‘does that sound to you like they are crying out for help?  What do you reckon could have happened to Israel, Joshua?

 “Oh, that’s singing and dancing that I hear.  Sounds like the dance songs to Apis, the Bull-god to me.  Listen to those drums!”
 
 Moses snatched his face away from Joshua and the last glimmer of light that had clung to his face from God, died to ashes.2

That has happened to us to when mountaintop moments of majesty are interrupted and tarnished by other events. 
 
That is why it makes so much sense for Peter to want to stay on top of the mountain with Jesus.  He and Jesus had just had a very nasty row.  Peter had confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.  And for a moment he was a hero, a theologian of the first order, until Jesus started to talk about the cross. 

When Jesus began to talk about a cross, Peter crumbled.  He had been trying to tell them what it would mean to be the Messiah.  But all Peter had wanted was for Jesus to stop talking.  He had felt as if the Jesus he had known and loved was slipping through his fingers.3

He also must have felt that a majestic moment might slip away if he didn’t do something.

Poor Peter has taken a lot of grief over the centuries for his response to the appearance of Moses and Elijah there with Jesus and most of it is unjustified.
 
This is a moment worth preserving.  This is a moment that is worth keeping for if not eternity at least as long as possible.  How often does one get to witness a meeting of the minds of three great religious leaders?   It is as if the four presidents on Mount Rushmore started to speak.  At the risk of dating myself that would be a Kodak moment!
 
Lutheran Pastor Brian Stoffregen has always wondered, how did they know it was Moses and Elijah? 

Did they have pictures of them hanging in their synagogues? Did they have their names over their pockets on their presumably white robes -- or perhaps their names were printed on the back, across their shoulders like football players? However they knew who they were, they represent the law and the prophets; and there were traditions about both that they had never died.4

 This is not only a moment worth preserving but it would serve another purpose: It would keep Jesus safe.  All of those predictions about his suffering, and dying could never take place if he was safely ensconced in a house on the mountain.  Nothing could ever happen to him in a mountaintop retreat.
 
'At this moment it is almost as if the LORD God had to blow a whistle, pull back on the reigns and say, “Whoa!  Whoa!  Whoa!” 

While [Peter] was still speaking, (Still babbling on) suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”5

At that the two disciples fell on their faces, frightened, terrified, scared to death.
 
It is at this point Jesus comes over and does something vastly different from everything else we have been talking about this morning.  “Jesus came over and touched them.  ‘Get up,’ he said, don’t be afraid.’”6
 
This may even be a more powerful, lasting image than all the fire and smoke of Moses’ mountaintop experience and even the bright light with the bright stars of Scripture with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

Transfiguration Sunday is such a weird and wonderful day to celebrate. In so many ways, nothing really happened. Nothing changed. The world wasn’t turned upside down. The disciples weren’t suddenly flooded with a new understanding of God or of Jesus.  

It doesn’t change Jesus’ fundamental ministry. It doesn’t even change the timeline or the outcome of Jesus’ challenging message. He continues to heal. He continues to teach. He continues to frustrate the religious folks. He continues to expect more from his disciples than they ever are able to follow through on. Ministry just continues, which makes this sacred moment on the top of a mountain all the more interesting.7 

Because in that moment we catch a glimpse of God’s grandeur and God’s love.
The grandeur is amazing but the love sustains.

So too, it is for us.  There will be mountaintop moments when we feel that God is in total and complete control and we feel God’s presence in all of its glory.

 There will also be moments when we fall on our faces in fear wondering if life can go on and if we ever be able to see our way though.  When the last glimmer of light in our life seems to die.

 It is at both of these times we can feel God’s tough in Jesus and, when we do, we will discover that the flakes of the light of God’s love are still clinging to our face.

 Thanks be to God who makes this so.  Amen

__________

1. Zora Neale Hurston, Moses: Man of the Mountain.  (New York: Harper, 2009.)

2. ibid.

3. Kristin Adkins-Whitesides, “Wrapped in a Cloud.” A Sermon for Every Sunday. Accessed February 22, 2020. https://mailchi.mp/asermonforeverysunday/this-weeks-sermon-1744129?e=b84b5994b2.

4. Stoffregen, Brian. “Matthew 17.1-9 Transfiguration of Our Lord Last Sunday after the Epiphany - Year A.” Exegetical Notes at CrossMarks. Crossmaks Christian Resources. Accessed February 22, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt17x1.htm.

5.  Saint Matthew 17:5.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6.  Saint Matthew 17:7.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]

7. Faulhaber, Patrick. “Life Goes On.” Modern Metanoia. Modern Metanoia.org, February 10, 2020. http://modernmetanoia.org/2020/02/10/last-sunday-after-epiphany-a-life-goes-on/.

"'Contempt' or Kindness" - Epiphany 6A

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Saint Matthew 5:21-37 

The speaker pointed out that he believed “the biggest crisis facing our nation  . . .  is the crisis of contempt — the polarization that is tearing our society apart.”  Then he continued by giving an example from another occasion when he was addressing a partisan audience of fellow conservatives.

“My friends, you’ve heard a lot today that you’ve agreed with — and well you should. You’ve also heard a lot about the other side — political liberals — and how they are wrong. But I want to ask you to remember something: Political liberals are not stupid, and they’re not evil. They are simply Americans who disagree with you about public policy. And if you want to persuade them — which should be your goal — remember that no one has ever been insulted into agreement. You can only persuade with love.”

 After he had finished a member of the audience angrily approached.  “You’re wrong. Liberals are stupid and evil.”
  

At that moment, my thoughts went to … Seattle. That’s my hometown. While my own politics are conservative, Seattle is arguably the most politically liberal place in the United States. My father was a college professor; my mother was an artist. Professors and artists in Seattle … what do you think their politics were?

That lady after my speech wasn’t trying to hurt me. But when she said that liberals are stupid and evil, she was talking about my parents. I may have disagreed with my parents politically, but I can tell you they were neither stupid nor evil. They were good, Christian people, who raised me to follow Jesus. They also taught me to think for myself — which I did, at great inconvenience to them.

 The speaker concluded his remarks by suggesting that every member of his audience: “Ask God to give you the strength to do this hard thing — to go against human nature, to follow Jesus’ teaching and love your enemies. Ask God to remove political contempt from your heart. In your weakest moments, maybe even ask Him to help you fake it!”1

 On paper it looked like a great address that might have spoken to many in the nation if we had heard it.  We didn’t unless it was our habit to watch the entire coverage of The National Prayer Breakfast on C-Span. 
 
Everywhere else — on both the liberal and conservative cable news networks — there was nary a word spoken about Dr. Arthur Brooks’ remarks.
 
I think they got left out because they didn’t fit with our current national narrative of contempt for those who hold different political views from ours.  Whether we like it or not this narrative is recited to us over and over again on a daily basis and what it leads to is  enmity and strife rather than life and peace.

It is the same choice that Moses offered the people in his farewell address.  It is “a simple message: choose life and not death, but its simplicity was born through the complexities and adversities of forty years in the wilderness.  Here, simple does not mean easy.”2
 

Nor is it a slogan for some movement to be chanted in the streets or printed on a T-shirt.  ‘Choosing life” is a way of living that works toward bridging divides rather than deepening them.

What we know for certain is that anger and fear always leads to a  kind of death.

Political ideology feeds rancor. Drivers rage. Spouses demean. Bosses boss people. The nations rage too. Politicians show their fists. Hoping for good, we go after  . . .  the other political party, or we blame whomever for whatever. But there is a kind of accepted, expected anger in the world, in society, in all of us, and it’s the high god who’s commanding loyalty and devouring us all.3

Moses tells us to choose life and Jesus tells us how.
 
“Jesus is getting at the heart of [the laws] purpose: calling followers to obey God not out of duty but from a desire that stems from the very core of their being, their love.”4  It is almost as if Moses and Jesus are telling us that life, love and contempt cannot occupy the same space.
 
It’s like the Pauli exclusion principle in physics which says that more than one solid object cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  We cannot hold love and contempt for another person in our hearts and expect all to be well.  One path leads to life and the other leads to death.
 
In a very clever way Jesus is showing us how this spiritual death can enter into our lives, very sneakily, very cleverly.  He takes us beyond the commandments to show us their consequences. 
 
We know the commandments Jesus is talking about.  If you grew up a Lutheran and attended Confirmation classes, you memorized the commandments along with their meaning from Luther’s Small Catechism.  You “feared and loved” God enough to not break any of them  because you knew “it was certainly so” that if you did your life would be in a shambles. 
 
Jesus is showing us that “when God gives us commandments, God is not imposing rules for the sake of rules.  If we pay attention to what God means, we will see that everything God asks of us is for our best, for the good of others, and leads all to freedom.”5
 
The children of Israel were about to experience freedom as they entered the promised land but while they might possess it they would never enjoy it unless they made good choices. 
 
Jesus wanted his followers to find the same kind of freedom, too.  But that kind of freedom will never come if we hold each other in what Arthur Brooks called contempt.
 
It is so easy to point a finger.
 
We can think about segregation in the south and in the north.  It kept God’s children separated as some held others in contempt because of the color of their skin.  Both groups lost as each one’s freedom was limited their having to hold on to at least some level of contempt for the other.
 
Think of the term “bad hombres” and then think of all the “fine amigos” that you know.  Think of how your life would be limited if you held others in contempt because of their country of origin.
 
You can probably think of more of these comparisons than I can but my language is encumbered by my presence in the pulpit. 
 
Just think about all those times when a friend, or you heard yourself say something about another person or group that held them in contempt.  I can think back in moments in my life when I have done it and I cringe! 

This kind of behaviors, that kind of talk, not only tears us apart but rends the bonds of a civil society asunder.

Last week the amazingly bright and talented woman whom I am proud to call my pastor encouraged her congregation to do what I hope to encourage us to do today.  She said:

[I]t is time to be loudly kind, to be obnoxiously compassionate, to be irritatingly loving.  To say no to the corrosive power of contempt and to answer hatred with the strength of love. To stand up for each other. To refuse to return evil for evil and to say why that is. To have good courage and to proclaim that [courage] often  . . .  not only on Sundays when we are all together, but even more importantly in all of those other quiet, normal times and places in our lives during the week. So let us live fully and loudly and publicly as who we are, for God will use our witness. And our world will change. We will be changed.6

 Things can change if keep reminding ourselves and everybody we meet of the life and death choices that lie before us in our words and actions every day.  And, if we live out our lives in Christ’s love, we will be reminding ourselves and others that, instead of choosing contempt,  we have chosen life.
 
Thanks be to God who has given us the opportunity to make this so.  Amen.
 
__________

1. Arthur Brooks, “America’s Crisis of Contempt.” The Washington Post, February 7, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/arthur-brooks-national-prayer-breakfast-speech/?arc404=true.

2. Ken Evers-Hood, “Deuteronomy 30:15-20. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 244–46.

3. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say February 16. Epiphany 6th.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 1970. http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

4. Maldonado. Perez Zaida “‘Connecting the Reading with the World.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 255–57.

5. Michael Renninger, “Mawage.” Sermon.  A Sermon for Every Sunday.  www.sermonforeverysunday.com.  February 11, 2020. 

6. Shannon J.  Kerschner, “Adding and Shining.” Sermon.  Sunday Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.  February 9, 2020.

"Blinded by the Light" - Eipiphany 5A

Isaiah 58:1-5, 9b-12
Saint Matthew 5:13-20 

One of my favorite preachers is Dr.  James Howell, who holds forth from the pulpit of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I listen to their worship as I am either driving back and forth to work or out-and-about on errands. 
 

Last week he began his sermon by telling his congregation that he was going to start by going down to the piano and playing “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”  He decided not to do so because he was sure that, if he did, the only reaction his people would have when they walked out of church would be, “He plays the piano?”  He went on to say, “I don’t want you to leave church saying, ‘He plays the piano?’ I want you to go out of church saying, ‘Jesus is amazing.’”1
 

I know that Dr.  Howell is right from an experience I had with a wonderful New Testament professor named Dr.  David Rhodes.  Dr.  Rhodes was also an actor who committed the entire Gospel of Mark to memory.  He performed the piece, in costume, at churches around Chicago.  It was wonderful.  People loved it.
 

Like any convert Dr.  Rhodes believed that if he could do it everybody could or should.
 

When I took his class he had all of us memorize and present some portion Mark’s gospel so that when we got back to the parish we could recite the gospel for the day from memory instead of reading it from a book.  The curmudgeon that I am I didn’t think that would be such a good idea.  I was right.
 

The proof came when I was on vacation and attended Bethany Lutheran in Englewood, Colorado and their pastor, Wayne Weissenbuhler, recited the gospel from memory and preached an excellent sermon.  When I asked the people I was with what the sermon was about all they said was, “He memorized the gospel.”  I knew that but I pressed on asking again if they could tell me what his very fine sermon was about.  They replied, “Did you see that!  He had the gospel memorized.”
 

His sermon got overshadowed by his skills at memorization.
 

In today’s gospel Jesus calls his followers to be “the light of the world” but their light is to celebrate not  their abilities but how amazing Jesus is.
 

That is what went wrong with the worship of the children of Israel.  Their faith life pointed to themselves and not how amazing God was.

The community Isaiah addresses seem to be hoping that worship might be a sufficient condition for God’s blessing rather than being  . . .  a necessary or desired practice.  Instead, the prophet sears those with ears to listen, reminding us that God is interested in religious formalities only after demands for social justice are met.2

Here is what was happening.  While the people enjoyed worshiping God, they also were trying to leverage their worship into earning God’s favor.
 

They had a very functional idea about how worship worked.  We came, we offered sacrifices, and God was supposed to bless us.  This is a very utilitarian  notion of worship.  Saint Augustine put it this way: I worship something  not in itself but because I can use it for something I really want. 
 

This is also the message of the prosperity gospel preachers.  Want a blessing from God, go to church.  Want more money in the bank, tithe or at least send an offering to their ministry.
 

There is another kind of worship that, says Saint Augustine, is built on love. I love something  whether I get something else out of it or not.  Anybody we know wants to be loved like that and so does God – but sometimes we approach God in a very matter-of-fact manner. 
 

The focus of this kind of worship is on us.  It is what we are giving God just by our being here. 
 

The people fasted, they used up gallons upon gallons of expensive oil, they sacrificed stockyards full of animals but still the LORD was not moved one bit. 
 

As one scholar put it, they wondered: 

"Is there anything we can do to appease you, or will you always be holding that exodus thing over our heads?  Sacrifices?  Multiple sacrifices?  Ultimate sacrifices?  Because if your going to play the guilt card, nothing can suffice."3

The prophet declares that nothing would suffice because they were using their worship as an excuse not to take care of each other and especially the poor, the down trodden and the helpless in their midst.

 Here, in the wonderful paraphrase by Dr.  Eugene Peterson, is how the LORD responds:

"This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts.  What I’m interested in seeing you do is:  sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.  Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once.”4

Once they took the focus off of themselves and turned their light toward others, the LORD said, things will begin to turn around.

Think of what that would mean for society if we stopped asking, “What can I get?” and started asking, “What can I do?” 
 

Think of what that would mean if we stopped wondering “Whose going to help me?” and started wondering “Who can I help?”
 

Think of what that would mean for our nation if we had leaders who stopped telling themselves that what they were doing was politically expedient by “standing with the team” and instead took seriously their responsibilities to themselves and to the republic and, in the words of the junior senator from Utah, kept their “promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and political biases aside.”5
 

Maybe the light wouldn’t just be shining on them but shining as a testimony of their faith for others.
 

Maybe then we could start working together again.
 

Jesus called us to be “lights for the world” and “salt of the earth.”

Each time [Jesus] uses the word “you” in this passage, he is actually using the plural form of that word, which we don’t have in English…unless, of course, you live in the South. He is saying, “Y’all are the salt of the earth. Y’all are the light of the world. Let y’all’s light so shine before others.”  In other words, it is not each person’s ability to shine that Jesus is focusing on, but their power as a collective.  

By the power of the Holy Spirit the disciples of Christ learned to work together to display the love of Christ, to share their bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into their houses, to cover the naked, to offer their lives for the sake of others…and when they did so their light broke forth like the dawn.

In these tense times when it seems there is so much that wants to pull people apart, when there are clear, competing visions and desires for what our human communities and even our country wants to be, the light of Christ evident through the church is especially important.6

Every time we get blinded by our own light and swept up, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, in “some brimstone baritone . . . rolling stone, preacher from the east” others won’t be able to see Jesus.
 

But if we shine our lights on him and let him shine his light on us we remind ourselves that we aren’t just a bunch of ‘you’s,’ but one great big ‘y’all’ Christ’s light can begin to shine on us but in us and through us.
 

If what we do in this place causes us to stop shining our light on ourselves and allow Christ’s light to draw others in our light is shining!  If what we do helps them see in our witness something that can say that we exist as a community in the world to remind the world that God loves it, cares for it, has died for it so that all may truly live our light is shining! 
 

If we remind ourselves that we are not to blind others with our light but help them experience  Christ’s light people who still live in darkness may come to say, “Jesus is amazing.”
 

If all this happens then our worship will be worth it.  Don’t you think?
_______
 

1. James C.  Howell, Sermon,  Sunday Morning Worship.  Myers Park United Methodist Church. February 2, 2020.

2. Ken Evers-Hood, “Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading With the Word.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship.  Vol.  1; year A. (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press,2019): 228–29.

3.  Patricia K. Tull,“Micah 6:1-8. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship.  Vol. 1; Year A.   (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2019): 209–12.

4.  Isaiah 58:6-9.  (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

5.  “Full Transcript: Mitt Romney’s Speech Announcing Vote to Convict Trump.” The New York Times, February 5, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/us/politics/mitt-romney-impeachment-speech-transcript.html.

"Blessed Are the Upside-down" - Epiphany 4A

Micah 6:6-8
Saint Matthew 5:1-12

If you work in a community where the civic mantra is: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” and you are the quarterback of the hometown team that lost their last game by 17 points you might want to lay low for a while.   That is what I would advise Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers if he had asked me.
 

He did not.
 

Instead he went on his girlfriend’s podcast and took a private family squabble public.  Apparently, the rift was over (You guessed it!)  religion.  If you guessed correctly don’t let it go to your head.  There were really only two choices for a famous family squabble that boils over into the press – religion or politics – so you had a 50/50 chance of being right.
 

Here is what Rodgers said in rejecting the faith of his family.
 

“”Religion can be a crutch," Rodgers said. "It can be something that people have to have to make themselves feel better because it’s set up binary.  I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell,” Rodgers went on. “What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?”"1

I was a little puzzled reading that.    Who is he what he talking about?  What made him believe that the life of faith only offered the choice between black and white, right on wrong, and that there were no grey areas?  Where did he learn that faith was like football where there had to be a winning team and a losing team?  What caused him to think that God only liked winners and rejected losers? 

Why would he think less of God than he does Packers fans who no matter what the score of the NFC Championship game will still be there next year not only cheering them on but, if it snows, shoveling out the stadium for $12 an hour.
 

Rodgers may have things backwards for what he is articulating is not the way of God but the common wisdom of this age.

“Blessed are those who have lots of money in the bank, for they will be free from worry.”  “Blessed are those who keep looking over their shoulder watching their rear, for nobody will ever get the jump on them.” These are little everyday statements about the way things work in the real world.2

Those are the mantras of those who don’t need to use religion as a crutch because they are winners!  Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking to them.  He is talking to the rest of us who know in one way or another that we need something more in our lives and desire, deep down in our hearts, to be blessed.
 

Don’t think just about those disciples on the mountaintop or the crowds that gathered to hear these words for the first time think about how we are hearing them just now.

Then and now, those who stand out as heros of their own destiny take the bull by the horns and let nothing or no one stand in their way.  Who you are as a person really does not matter as long as you get the job done –   unless you are one of Jesus’ disciples. The "nature and character of true discipleship [is] radical and thoroughly contrary to the values that seem to galvanize our imaginations and, often, our lives.”3
 

Every sermon and commentary I have read this week has mentioned how the word “Blessed” can be translated.  The Greek word makarioi can mean blessed, peaceful, happy,  but it really means something much more deep than those emotions.  “Rather than happiness in a mundane sense it refers to the deep inner joy who have long awaited the salvation promised by God.”4

 Have you seen much of that around lately? 
 

One of the things I’ve noticed this past week is what a joyless town our nation’s capital is.  This joylessness is a bipartisan thing.  The face on the screen is always angry and the faces that surround them are usually scowling.  Somebody is always enraged about something. 
 

Gone are the days of the energy of Theodore Roosevelt or the optimism expressed in darker times than these of his cousin, Franklin.  The “happy warrior” attitude of Vice-President Hubert Humphrey is gone as is the idealism of President Reagan.  Joy can be a bipartisan thing too. 
 

When we allow our divisions to get in the way all sense of inner peace is gone.  That is what is happening to the Rodger’s family, our nation, and even Saint Paul’s church in Corinth.
 

First Church Corinth was a troubled place.  These folks could fight over everything! They fought over big stuff and little stuff.  They had big community dinners before the Eucharist where some ate so much there wasn’t anything left over for others and some even got tipsy.  They bragged about who baptized them.  Was it Pastor Cephas?  Or Pastor Paul?  They even fought over whether women’s head should or should not be covered in church!
 

It clearly wasn’t a positive place and my guess is that when they talked about their fellowship the conversation was not uplifting.  I’m sure very few people went away thinking to themselves, “I really want to get involved there.”  More likely they backed off wondering, “Why would anybody want to be a part of that?
 

Before I settled down here I did pulpit supply which is how our relationship got started.  It was great fun and very revelatory because there was always one person in the congregation who couldn’t think of one kind thing to say about the place.
 

I enjoyed preaching at one church which was near my house.  The pastor was doing a great job, the music was excellent,  and the people were really cool, except for one woman.
 

She waylaid me the minute I got in the building as was greeting people with my usual: “Hi!  I’m Dave!  I’ll be your pastor du jour today!”
 

She couldn’t wait to tell me that the best days of that church were far behind them.  Most of all, the woman didn’t like what “she” (meaning the pastor) had done to their chapel.
   

(By the way, clergy can always tell when they are dealing with an unhappy member of the laity because they forget our names and only refer to us in the third person.)
 

Then she added: “This church will never be like on the day when the King of Sweden visited.  The church was packed!  The streets were crowded!  There were lines around the block!”
 

While I was over this conversation that had turned into a diatribe I went away wondering when the King of Sweden made his grand appearance.  As with everything else I “Googled” it and it turns out that His Majesty Carl Gustaf XVI was in Chicago in1967 to celebrate the opening of the Swedish American Museum on Clark Street in the Andersonville neighborhood.  “1967!” I yelped, “That was over a half-a-century ago!”
 

The last good thing this woman could say about her church happened four-score-and-ten years ago!
 

This lead me to wonder how I tell stories about the church.  When I talk about the church do I only talk about the things that have gone wrong? 
 

When I am sharing memories with others — especially with others who are unchurched – do I speak about the good things we are doing or is the only story that they hear is the one of the time somebody said something to someone and they walked out never to return again? 
 

Are my words about the tough times or the good times? 
 

Do my words hurt the body of Christ or do they heal it? 
 

And, what is most important, Saint Paul would remind us as individuals do my words help or hurt the team.
 

This is something that Aaron Rodgers can relate too.  It is certainly something that every sports fan can relate to especially on Super Bowl Sunday.  To give Saint Paul’s metaphor a modern spin.  No quarterback would say to an offensive lineman, “I have no need of you.” He would be pulverized on the next down!
  

No member of the defense would say we have no need of a good offence.  It’s hard to win a football game when you have scored nothing!
 

No member of the offence would belittle the efforts of a defense.  And, as every Bears fan knows, no team should try to do without a good field goal specialist.
 

No, every good team like every church, has to realize that we need each other.  We are all a part of this body of believers that the Spirit of God has called together in this place.   We are all a part of that group of people who knows our weakness and come here out of a hunger and thirst for God’s presence.

We are like those people who first heard these words come from Jesus’ lips.  We all long to be blessed with the sense of deep joy, satisfaction, shalom that God can give.
 

It comes when we realized that as a church, as a nation, as families we need to stick together.  Enough tough times will come our way without our creating more.
  

We all have troubles and troubles to spare without exploiting the shortcomings of one another.  There have been dark moments in all of our lives but if we keep returning to them, rehearsing and rehashing them, then the darkness just might close in all around us.
 

Even so, even with all of poor choices we are known to make, Jesus calls to live as one of the blessed.  And a good way to start would be to see each other as part of God’s team whose motto is as old as the words of the profit.
 

For us, winning is not the only thing!  The only thing that matters is that we “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.”
__________
  

1. Kelsey Driscoll, “Aaron Rodgers's Comments on Religion 'Hurtful' to Estranged Family: 'Basically a Slap in the Face'.” AOL.com. AOL, January 23, 2020. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/23/aaron-rodgerss-comments-on-religion-hurtful-to-estranged-family-basically-a-slap-in-the-face/23907363/.

2. William Willimon, “On the Way to a New World.” Pulpit Resource 30, no. 1 (January, February, March 2002): 21–24.

3.  Christopher Holmes T., “St. Matthew 5:1-12. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” In Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, 1:223–24. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2019.

4.  Donald A. Hagner, Matthew (2-volume Set---33a and 33b). Vol. 33a. (Grand Rapids, , Mi: Zondervan, 2017.) p. 95.

"Who Do You Trust?" - Epiphany 3A

Saint Matthew 4:12-22

A strange confluence of events occurred as I sat in my television room last Monday night watching the Minnesota Wild/Florida Panthers game on my NHL Center Ice satellite package the cost of which I can now take off on my taxes because I mentioned it in a sermon.

Over the weekend I had begun reading Theodore Rex the massive biography of President Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.
 

Earlier in the evening I had watched a television special on the life of Dr.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  on the day the nation set aside to honor the enormous contribution he made to our national life and when it was over I turned on the hockey game.
 

The game was good but the commercials were interesting.  Almost everyone was for a candidate running for president.  All of them making a pitch to hockey fans in front of the March 3rd primary vote in Minnesota.   I watched with interest at first but by the third period I was almost longing for obnoxious and ubiquitous Xfininity commercials with the  detestable character who supposedly was the personification of inefficient AT&T internet service.
 

All of the candidate’s commercials messages could be summed up in two words: trust me.  Trust me.  I’ve built a business.  Trust me.  I’ve been in the senate forever.  Trust me.  I can write all the wrongs of capitalism.  Trust me.  Trust me.  Trust me.
 

I hope you hear any claim by any candidate imploring you to trust him or her with  a one word question front and center in your head: “Why?” 
 

It’s a good question because in the beginning of his life not everybody trusted Dr.  King. 
 

In 1963 six leaders of  liberal churches in Birmingham and one rabbi wrote him a letter called “An Appeal to Law and Order and Common Sense” in which they acknowledged  the existence of “various problems that cause racial friction and unrest.” But they objected staunchly to the way in which Dr. King and the civil-rights movement had confronted Jim Crow laws, demanding change through nonviolent direct action. Such demands, these religious leaders insist, should be “pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets.”1

I was only ten but I would guess that most of my neighbors and even the liberals in my family agreed with them because crowds, even well-intentioned crowds, could turn violent too quickly.
 

But none of us here, I hope, would now maintain that the laws Dr.  King and the marches were protesting against - Jim Crow laws that mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks - were morally acceptable.
 

The change is proof that for many Dr.  King was right: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” We honor him now but many wondered about him then.
 

So too they wondered about Theodore Roosevelt when he ascended to the presidency at 43 upon the assassination of President William McKinley.  Even though he was a voracious reader and Harvard graduate Washington insiders called him brash, bombastic, “the cowboy president.”  His opposition to discrimination was so great he invited Booker T. Washington to a White House state dinner.  He was the first African American ever to be extended such an invitation prompting and an outcry from newspapers north and south and death threats against Roosevelt's life. 2
 

Like Dr.  King, President Roosevelt was not trusted in the beginning but now his face stares out from Mount Rushmore with three other heroic presidents.  A place where every presidential candidate dreams of having their likeness enshrined if we would but “trust them.”
 

Most leaders who claim they are trustworthy by making promises at the beginning tend to be disappointments.  Few presidents upon leaving office are as popular as they were at the beginning of their term because eventually many of their campaign promises have to be broken.
 

That is what is so ingenious about Jesus’ call to the first disciples.  He didn’t promise them anything all he asked them to do was follow him.

One of the things that fascinates me about Saint Matthew’s account  . . .  is that there is no hint of any prior encounters, with Jesus.   He hasn’t been doing any advertizing.  He hasn’t been making any promises.  He hasn’t had any rallies in which he pandered to people’s lesser or better angels.
 

Neither were the disciples “searching for something.”  They were not on some sort of journey of self-discovery.  They weren’t traipsing across mountains and valleys in some far off land looking for a spiritual guru.  They were simply at work, as fisherman, doing what they had always done.

It was hard work but also a very good way to make a living.  This was a family business that allowed them to feed themselves and their clans but make a good profit as well.  We would have called them “middle-class” with houses and families making enough money to not thrive but more than survive. 
 
They also had job security.  As long as their health and strength held out living in the cosmopolitan area that they did with soldiers, pilgrims, and all kinds of people coming and going there would always be a market for what they were selling.  So great was their job security that there was little doubt that when the time came for him to hang up his nets their father Zebedee would pass the business along to them.
 
Then Jesus shows up and he calls them.  “Hey!  You!  You!  You!  Follow me and I will make you fishers of men and women.”  Sometimes in popular American Christianity we get this wrong.  We say, “Since I took Jesus into my heart . . . ”  or “Since I gave my life to Jesus . . . ” or “Since I decided to follow Christ . . . ”

That’s not the story.  The story is that you don’t take Jesus anywhere.  He’s the one who takes you and then takes you places.  You can’t “give your life to Christ.”  He takes it.

Everyone is here because you got put here.  For some of you, it was a life-changing, for others it was a lifetime of leading and coaxing.  For every one of you, God reached in, grabbed you. 3

 And so we are here, called by Jesus, the same way those boys in the boat were. 

 And for most of us we didn’t know how it happened.  Maybe our parents or a neighbor invited us or dragged us and then something hooked us.  

 For me it wasn’t the scripture lessons in Sunday School and certainly not the sermons in church that got me, (They were often 30 minutes long!  Count yourselves lucky!) it was the booming sound of our the new pipe organ.  

 I’d come into church, look at the bulletin, look up the hymns and say to myself, “Great tunes today!” And then I would sit back and twiddle my thumbs and think about a million other things until we got to sing them.

 For all you know I may still be doing that! I may be doing it right now.  I may be the one who is waiting for me to “bring it home” and finish up so that we can get onto something important like singing the sermon hymn.

(That is also, by-the-way, why we almost always sing all the verses.  It’s one of the few personal prerogatives pastors have.  We usually get to pick the hymns and if I’m picking them we’re singing them all the way through from the first note of the first verse to the last note of the fifth!

 In our time together I’ve heard your stories.  

 Those who starting coming to this church when it was meeting down the street in the funeral parlor.  

 Those of you whose journey includes worship experiences that included tents, fire and brimstone preaching, and people “walking the sawdust trail” during an altar call.

 Those who somehow got exposed to “smooth jazz,” WLIT 95.5 kind of worship with projection screens and worship leaders singing the same words over and over again in close, perfect harmony, while the congregation stood and swayed gently or just sat in their seats and smiled.

 Don’t knock any of those, men and women, for those are the places were Jesus found you and grabbed you.  This place, those places are where Jesus called you, summoned you and asked you to follow.

 And over time you discovered you could trust him.  

 He didn’t try to convince you to trust him through a thirty-second commercial that interrupted your hockey game.  He didn’t try to promise you things that you knew he could never produce.  He didn’t even act like a candidate and promise that if you trusted him he would fight for you to have more money, pay fewer taxes, and have a more peaceful life.

 Jesus reached in and took you and me on an adventure.  

We make a mistake to make this into some sort of mystery. Jesus did not demand that we swallow a dozen philosophical absurdities in order to be with him. He asked us to follow him. Faith in Jesus is not first of all a matter of having felt something, or having had an experience; it is a simple willingness to stumble along behind Jesus, a willingness to be behind him. The faith is in the following

 We are to follow, to do what he did, to live in the world as he lived. It is more important to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, even than to be a Christian. Christianity is not a set of beliefs, first principles, propositions. It is a matter of discipleship, following. Faith in Jesus is not belief about Jesus. It's a willingness to follow Jesus. The faith is in the following.

 We follow him because he is a faithful leader.

In our age to have a faithful leader is really something to proclaim.  

 We who have had potential leaders promise so much to us in order to gain our support only to drop us as soon as our ballots were dropped into the bottom of the ballot box.  

 We who have been promised so much, used, even lied to.  To proclaim that we have a leader who is faithful is really something to say.

 That is what we have and that is what the world needs.  

 We have a leader who cared enough to give his life for us.

 Now think about that: How many leaders do you know who would do that for you? No guilt here, just a thought, a question.  How many of those people on the campaign trail, begging to be your leaders, would give their life for you?

 Probably you can’t think of one.  Nothing.  Nadda.  No one. 

 We have one who did and that makes him a leader who is well worth following.  Don’t you think?

__________

1.  William J. Barber, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. “MLK Warned Us of the Well-Intentioned Liberal.” The Nation, January 18, 2019. https://www.thenation.com/article/martin-luther-king-trump-wall-jim-crow/.

2.  Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex.  (New York: Random House, 2010.)

3.  William, Willimon. “Guess Where You're Going.” Pulpit Resource 36, no. 1.  January, February, March, 2008.

 u.3

"Come and See" - Epiphany 2A

Saint John 1:29-42

For $44.95 you can purchase a toaster on Amazon that brands the face of Jesus on every piece of bread you toast.  It is humorously and heretically called  “The Grilled Cheesus Sandwich Press.” 

What your bread will look like when it emerges from this is pictured above and if you are having a hard time making the figure of Jesus out in that image you are not alone. 

I have never done well with these theological or historical Rorschach tests.  I can honestly say that I have never seen an image of anybody on anything, eatable or noneatable.  But others have!
  

The Guardian amassed a list.  People have reported seeing the image of Jesus: in a frying pan, on a tortilla, on a potato chip, on sidewalks, and even on a receipt from Wal-Mart.
 

One Irishman, John Keohane, claims to have seen an image appearing on the chipped facade of his pub in 2010.  Considering that Mr.  Keohane is pictured next to the image holding a Guinness in his hand and wearing a wry smile on his face leads me an entirely  different conclusion as to the reason he might be seeing things.1
 

These events are called “apparitions” which in a general sense is defined as the “appearance of anything remarkable or unexpected.”
 

The closest I ever came was when (and I am not making any of this up!)  an image of the Blessed Mother Mary appeared in a large yellow, blue and white stain on the wall of the Fullerton Avenue underpass of the Kennedy expressway. 
 

The thousands of people it attracted along with countless news trucks cause a massive traffic jam which I was stuck in every morning on my way to the health club.
 

Even though I was only moving at two miles-an-hour tops I never really got a good look so I conned my friend Scott into going with me to make a closer inspection with the promise I would buy him lunch afterward.  He agreed because to him, the sight of me picking up a check would be far more miraculous that anything he saw on an underpass wall.
 

We pressed our way through the crowds.  A Lutheran Pastor and a Medical Doctor who describes himself as a “low voltage Presbyterian.”  We looked and while we were impressed with the devotion exhibited by the faithful who gathered we had a hard time discerning in the figure any likeness to anything, let alone the Blessed Mother.
 

What was seen was clearly in the eyes of the seer.
 

One of my favorite preachers, Dr.  James C.  Howells, says this about this scene in today’s gospel: “I love it that Jesus, who really is ‘The One,’ isn’t a royal, mighty stud strutting about.”2  Yet people saw something in him

At this point, the very beginning of his ministry, the average person might not have been able to pick him out in a crowd but John the Baptist and his doing so produced some results more amazing than any apparition could.

John points to Jesus and says: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”3
 

We know what this means but I wonder if it meant anything to John’s original listeners. 
 

The problem, says Dr.  William H.  Willimon, is that “Jesus is notoriously difficult to see.  Not because he is like the busy executive who does not have time for us but because we are hindered in our vision.  We look for him in our own presumptions that blind us.”4
 

John the Baptist introduces Jesus as “a lamb: humble, not fearful, ready to be shorn and slaughtered. God’s way is confronting the battalions of Caesar with a  . . .  lamb.”5
 

Now here is something you might have missed.
 

Those who heard John’s proclamation about Jesus were originally John’s disciples.  Andrew, Simon Peter, the two the turned and followed Jesus, were originally followers of John the Baptist.

Jesus first words to them, indeed his first words in St.  John’s Gospel are: “What are you looking for?”6
 

And there, says Dr.  James Sommerville, is the problem.

Most of us don't even know.  We know we’re looking for something.  We're fairly sure we haven't found it yet. These disciples say, “Rabbi, where are you [staying?]”  And that’s a clue, isn’t it?  I think these two have found what they are looking for, and they don’t want to lose it.  “Where can we find you next time we come looking for you?”  And Jesus said, “Come and see.”  And they did.7

Most people come to a service of Christian Worship not to count the snowflakes, or to hear a book review of the hottest title on the New York Times list, or even for meditation and self-reflection, but for an encounter.  To encounter the living God.8

 That is the only thing the church offers people that they can’t get elsewhere. 
 
If you want entertainment, go to a movie or to the Paramount Theater, you can’t get much better than that.
 
We try for good music, the choir, Andy and Eunice, work very hard on this but really we can’t compete with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
 
What you get here that you can’t get anywhere else is an encounter with “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
If there is anything that toast, and potato chips, and tacos can tell us is that people are still looking for Jesus.   Sometimes we get all tongue-tied about why we get up on Sunday morning and come to places like this.  If today’s gospel tells us anything it tells us that we don’t have to be. 
 
Inviting people to “come and see” Jesus is as simple as telling them about a great movie, a great restaurant, a great play. 
 
We have no control whether they’ll like the place. We have no control over whether they’ll ever go back.  We don’t even have any control over whether they’ll ever listen to another word we say ever again.  But that doesn’t stop us!  We still tell people about things that we’re excited about.
 
John the Baptist was excited that he found Jesus so he told his disciples.  Andrew finds his brother and tells him.  And so it goes, through the ages until it came to us.
 
Someone told us, someone invited us, someone welcomed us to place called church and here we are with our lives all intertwined with Jesus, the Messiah, the Lamb of God.
 
A friend of mine was “At some church event, [and he]  picked up a refrigerator magnet with two pictures on it -- actually it's the same drawing of two people, but presented twice. The first picture is called "Reality Evangelism Part 1". One person says to the other, "Yeah, I go to church." Reality Evangelism Part 2 shows the same person saying, "Wanna come?" 8
 
What could be more simple than that?
 
Invite people to “come and see” maybe they’ll find what they are looking for and “they’ll come and stay.”
 
Will it work?  Who knows?  But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?

___________

1.   “Jesus Sightings in Food (and Walls) - in Pictures.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, July 21, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2011/jul/21/jesus-food-sightings.

2.   James C. Howell, “Weekly Preaching: January 19, 2020.” Ministry Matters: Preaching. Ministry Matters™ | Christian Resources for Church Leaders, January 13, 2020. https://www.ministrymatters.com/preach/entry/10050/weekly-preaching-january-19-2020.

3.  St.  John 1:29.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
 
4. Willam H. Willimon,“The Real Jesus We Really Don't Know.” Pulpit Resource, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 13–16.

5.  Howells, loc.cit.

6.  St.  John 1:38.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

7. James Somerville, “Have You Found It?” A Sermon for Every Sunday.  Www.sermonforeverySunday.com. https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Jim-Somerville-The-Lamb-of-God.pdf

8.  Willimon, loc.cit.

8.Brian Stoffregen,  “John 1.29-42 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany - Year A.” Crossmarks. Accessed January 17, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john1x29.htm.
 


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