“Everything Everywhere All at Once” - Lent 4A

 

Saint John 9:1–41

Disclaimer

When the reading of the Gospel has to begin with a disclaimer you know you are in for a wild ride. 

Those of you who are here in person might as well sit down and strap in. Those watching at home might want to sit down too or, at least, scout out a safe place to fall down because you are not going to get this anywhere else on your television or computer screens this morning.

Last Saturday morning I was driving down Touhy Avenue in Rogers Park and as I was passing the synagogue of the Congregation Adas Yeshurun I noticed that they had guards – burly guys in heavy vests with security clearly marked on them – in their parking lot and on the street in front of their building.  They were checking cars and people driving and walking in.  I was saddened because these measures were obviously a reaction to the rise in anti-Semitic violence and when “a small antisemitic group based in eastern Iowa designated Feb. 25 as a ‘day of hate.’”1

Unfortunately, this hate has not been limited to one day or a single weekend but has been going on for centuries and has led to some of history's biggest horrors.  So, when we read a Gospel like today’s we must always do so keeping in mind the words of Dr. Michael Lindvall. 

First, all the characters in the story are Jews.  Jesus was a Jew; Jesus followers were Jews; and John himself was most surely a Jew. Secondly, John used the term as a signal word to identify Jesus' opponents in a historical context that did not yet know what would later become anti-Semitism.2

But we do, which is why I am going to suggest something to you.  As we go through the reading, and you hear the word Pharisee heed the suggestion of another biblical scholar and think of the words: “the learned ones.”3 This might help us to remember that this reading is not so much about them as it is about us.

The Sermon

The big winner at last Sunday’s Academy Awards was a crazy film called “Everything Everywhere All At Once” that won not only the Oscar for Best Picture but also “film editing, best actress and best supporting actor and actress.”4

I have not seen it but friends who did didn’t understand it.  One walked out mid-way while another said he “stuck with it to the end” which is not particularly high praise.

Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune said it has “become more divisive than the political divide in this country, even.” And described it as being “about a Chinese American family living above their laundromat, confronting debt, internal fractures and alternate universes ruled by an everything bagel.”5 Meaning a bagel with everything on it. 

I’m not sure that I’m going to have to see the movie after reading today’s gospel which is essentially about a man for whom everything, everywhere, seems to happen, all at once.I

It all begins innocently enough with a man blind from birth. He is minding his own business, not bothering anybody, when all of a sudden the disciples notice him and make him into an object of speculation.  As Dr. James D. Howell observed. “Jesus’ answer to the question about sin exhibits his heart more than anything he ever said: ‘Who sinned, this guy or his parents?’ Right answer: Neither. Boom, blame game squashed.”6

Then, as if to prove that this man is not outside of God’s power and love, Jesus is willing to get his hands dirty with spit and mud and orders the man to go and wash.

When he does, wonder of wonders, he can see again.  He can see his town, his house, his family – mom and dad, aunts and uncles, relatives and friends.  He can see flowers and colours, horses and camels, dogs and cats.  He can see!

What should have been a cause for community celebration with everybody going wild in jubilation instead turns into a call for speculation.  

There should have been a corned-beef-and-cabbage dinner.  There should have been green beer and a wild party that would have put any St. Patrick’s Day shindig to shame.  But, instead of great times everything, everywhere, seems to happen to this man all at once. 

In John's Gospel the story of his cure takes exactly two verses; the controversy surrounding the cure, takes 39 verses. 

All the man’s neighbours and friends knew is that before whatever happened, happened they could count on the same unnamed guy, being in the same spot, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, sitting on his mat and asking for alms.  He was a living landmark.  When they gave directions, they could tell visitors: “You walk down this street until you get to the blind guy. Turn left and what you are looking for will be right there.  You absolutely can’t miss it.”

Now he is up and he’s the one acting like a tourist himself seeing sights he only heard of but has never seen before. Something has happened that cannot be explained but that doesn’t stop the learned ones from trying to explain it or perhaps explain it away.

As one of the characters in the great book, The Lincoln Highway, observed:  “Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.”7

The rest of the story is made up of whether this man deserved, or didn’t deserve, what he received.

There are questions and none of the questions are kind.  Instead of asking him what its like to see again or whether the light hurt his eyes they speculate as to what happened. Noone asked the man what he was feeling or what he would do now. 

Instead, they begin by asking the most puzzling question of all: “Who are you?” and to each other “Who is this guy?”  Maybe it’s not the same man, they theorize.  Looks like him but maybe its not. Foolishly the man pipes us and says, ““I’m the man all right!”8 

In light of everything that happens to him, all at once, I’ll bet if he had it to do all over again, he would have kept his mouth shut. 

Who did this?  they want to know, and the man replied “a man whose name, I was told, was Jesus.  But, I didn’t actually see him because, I was blind!  Remember?”

When they ask him the “how” question, he tells the same story over and over again. “‘He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see.’”9

Then they ask him the most dangerous question of all: the “when” question.  Almost as an aside we are told that this miracle occurred on the Sabbath. Now everything has gotten worse. 

To the learned ones it appears that this miracle “has come on the wrong day, to an unworthy recipient, from a maverick agent who the Pharisees can’t see for dust.”10

If anybody can start doing anything they want whenever they want all at the same time.  Everything is going to fall apart.  Everywhere there will be lawlessness.  

Even the newly sighted man’s parents put distance between themselves and him.  Outside of Jesus and the man whose world is now in a royal upheaval they are my favourites in the story.  

When they are asked, they are smart enough to stay out of the fray. ““We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he came to see—haven’t a clue about who opened his eyes. Why don’t you ask him? He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.”11

They didn’t exactly throw their son under the bus but they sure wanted to make certain that they stayed out of oncoming traffic. 

It was well that they did because what happens next turns everything, all at once into a disaster.

They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind—and told him, “Give credit to od. We know this man is an impostor.”

He replied, “I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see.”  They said, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” “I’ve told you over and over and you haven’t listened. Why do you want to hear it again? Are you so eager to become his disciples?”

With that they jumped all over him. “You might be a disciple of that man, but we’re disciples of Moses. We know for sure that God spoke to Moses, but we have no idea where this man even comes from.”

The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

They said, “You’re nothing but dirt! How dare you take that tone with us!” Then they threw him out in the street.12

 So, there you have it.  On a day where everything, everywhere, seemed to happen to the man all at once he is right back where he started – on the street.

At this point Jesus, who has be absent from most of this story, reappears.  

In a perfectly lovely scene Jesus goes looking for the man.  

I can see the two of them sitting outside on the curb together with the man wondering what just happened to him and also wondering if his day, if not he whole life, would have been much better if Jesus had just left him alone.  

At least back there, in the good old days, which were no more than twelve hours but seemed like an eternity ago, he knew what to expect.  He had his spot on the street, his mat, his cup, and made enough to get by.  It wasn’t much but, at least, it was stable.

Now everything, everywhere, seems to have fallen apart all at once.  It was like he had been in a very confusing movie.  

It is then that Jesus comes and helps this man to see everything clearly not just on a physical level, but in every way.

What Jesus says to the man, in essence is this:

Remember all those people who doubted you, and defamed you, and made fun of you, all day long?

Remember all those people who thought that they and they alone had a handle on the truth?

Remember all those learned ones who thought they were so smart?

Well, all those people were blind as bats to what was and what was not the power of God working in their midst.  They wouldn’t be able to see it if it came up hit them right in the eye.

But you know.  You’ve experienced it and now you know that no darkness, not even ”the darkness of confusion or anger… NO DARKNESS is stronger than Jesus’ light. 

And Jesus helps him to see – that even when everyone else is casting him aside and telling him that he is not worthy or welcome, God’s response is staring him in the face: “you are deeply loved, and you are child of God, created in God’s image.”13

This – and so much more - is what Jesus helps this man to see. 

Jesus helps us to see it too.  Maybe not in everything, everywhere, all at once but at least in him, the one who made miracles from spit and mud. 

________________

1. Kade Heather, “Police Urge Jewish, Other Religious Communities to Be Vigilant This Weekend as Neo-Nazi Group Declares 'Day of Hate',” Chicago Sun-Times, February 23, 2023), https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/2/22/23611081/chicago-police-jewish-communities-vigilant-when-neo-nazi-group-has-declared-national-day-of-hate.

2. Michael J. Lindvall, “St. John 9:1-41. Connecting the Reading with the World,” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, ed. Thomas G. Long, et. al, vol. 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 1999), pp. 90-92.

3. Andrew Nagy Benson, “St. John 9:1-41. Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, ed. Thomas G. Long, vol. 2 (Nashville, TN: Westmonister/John Knox Press, 1999), p. 90.

4. Brooks Barnes, “'Eerything Everywhere All at Once' Is Big Winner at the Oscars,” The New York Times (The New York Times, March 13, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/movies/oscars-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html.

5. Michael Phillips, “Column: For Oscars 2023, 'Everything Everywhere' Wins, and a Great Divider Goes All the Way,” Chicago Tribune, March 13, 2023, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-ent-oscars-2023-reaction-everything-everywhere-20230313-7epeslcvt5eolbsnzigdqs4xe4-story.html.

6. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say?  March 19,” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (Myers Park United Methodist Church, January 1, 2023), https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/. 

7. Amor Towles, in Lincoln Highway (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2023).

8. St John 9:9. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips,  in The New Testament in Modern English (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

9. St. John 9:15. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

10. Richard Lischer, “March 22, 2020: Fourth Sunday in Lent,” The Christian Century, March 3, 1999, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-01/acknowledgment?code=0YirY63ycMCxxNyCOmEt&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=179489864c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2023-03-13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b00cd618da-179489864c-86361464.

11. St. John 9:20-23.  (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]

12. St. John 9:24-34. (MESSAGE)

13. Michael Remmenger, “I'm So Pretty,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverysunday.com, March 13, 2023), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Michael-Renninger-Man-Born-Blind-1.pdf.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d0FFTTuJ2g

"Resumes and Eulogies" - Lent 3A

 Saint John 4:5–42

In his very fine book, The Road to Character, New York Times columnist and PBS “NewsHour” contributor, David L. Brooks invites us to think deeply “about the difference between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.”  Quite simply:

The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success.  The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being – whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.

Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the resume virtues but ... most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.1

Besides, resumes can be misleading. 

While some of us attended schools where ginning up our resumes could get our sorry carcases kicked to the curb for other supposedly noble institutions it seems, that truthfulness doesn’t matter.  

We can think of a sitting member of congress whose resume could have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction but who, so far has only been told publically by one elder statesmen senator from his own party, “You don’t belong here.”2

This church, perhaps like few others in Christendom, can speak from painful experience of how the candidate presented on the printed page turns out to be something less than what was advertized.  One, two, three bad experiences can lead one to conclude that resumes are not all that reliable.

You can’t tell much from a resume which may be why Jesus never payed any attention to them.  

He called fishermen and made them evangelists.  He ate with sinners and tax collectors.  If you were overly impressed with your resume, he would give you the business big time but if your resume was a little more than shady, he’d strike up a conversation with you in a very public place in broad daylight. As was the case today as we eavesdrop on the two strangers talking at a well in mid-day.

If Jesus was into reading resumes, he would have immediately noticed that the first line – the space for her name – was blank.  It saddens me deeply that, in this month we have set aside to honour women’s history, so many of the names of women in both the old and new testaments are noticeably absent.  

So, the first line of this woman’s resume was blank but that didn’t seem to bother Jesus and neither did the line that required the name of her country of origin.  He was in Samaria and so, not unexpectedly, she was a Samaritan.  Didn’t seem to bother Jesus. 

And neither did the box that she would have had to check regarding male or female.  Again, the check mark is in the wrong box.  Female meant she was someone who was not to be spoken to by a male in public and especially a Samaritan woman and a Jewish male.

But Jesus had this strange habit of “befriending the people nobody else would befriend; befriending the people that other’s despised; befriending the people who everybody else thinks are what’s wrong with the world.”3

Dr. Scott Black Johnson thinks that Jesus begins the conversation sounding a great deal like “a customer at a 7-Eleven who has forgot his manners.”4 

“Give me a drink.”5 he says.  And she replies like one of the overnight shift workers at The Weiner’s Circle.  “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”6

This conversation is not off to a great start.  Ethnic, sexual, theological, sociological differences are being laid bare right there in the midday sun.

Still the conversation continues because Jesus looks beyond her resume.  

As David L. Brooks said in his column last Tuesday.  “You give me somebody who disagrees with me on every issue, but who has a good heart — who has the ability to sympathize with others, participate in their woes, longings and dreams — well, I want to stay with that person all day.”7

And it looks like these two just might be there all day until Jesus comes up with a real conversation stopper.  “Go, call your husband, and come back.”8 he says in a mike drop moment. 

It gets even worse when the woman has to admit that, at the moment, she doesn’t have a husband.  I can’t imagine the tone remained friendly.  Jesus had touched a sore spot.

“All too true!” Jesus said. “For you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now.”9

It is almost as if, at this point, readers, listeners, and scholars have given themselves permission to run wild with the woman’s resume.

Ah, now we know the reason she was drawing water at noon.

Even the wonderful and usually insightful, Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor, puts a negative spin on this poor woman’s resume, writing of her in a Christian Century article.

She was ... a ... fallen woman. Respectable women made their trips to the well in the morning, when they could greet one another and talk about the news. But this woman was one of the people they talked about, and the fact that she showed up at noon was a sure sign that she was not welcome at their morning social hour.10

Let this “good old boy” take an eraser to the suppositions about this poor woman’s resume.  

How about death?  It doesn’t take much to imagine that the pain of her over outliving one or two husbands might have been enough to for her to pull the covers over her head and leave them there until the sun was high in the sky.  Anybody who has experienced one death has discovered that afterwards you just don’t feel like wading out into large crowds no matter if your water supply was running low.

What if she managed to marry five losers in a row?  Boxes of rocks, empty.  Or, what if the men were bounders, cads?  Even if all the women were completely on her side and thought all of the guys she had been with were jerks who would want to talk about what dopes they were day after day?

Any of these reasons are far more probable and much more kind than pinning a label on her, calling into question her morals, and, worse yet, having it stick through the centuries.

I think it was Jesus’ willingness to look beyond her resume that brought about her realization that he was something special.  He saw her for who she really was, another child of God, and it touched her deeply.   

It had to have been a beautiful moment when she discovered, as it is for all of us when we discover, that we are more than what other’s are saying about us or we are saying about ourselves.  It comes when we discover that we are loved by God.

I think that is what caused the woman to drop her water bucket, leave Jesus standing by himself at the well with an empty cup still in hand and run into town with her proclamation that was really a question.

“In her, ‘He’s not the Messiah – is he?’ I hear a playful openness, a wonderful willingness to consider that God was larger than her preconceptions. [It is a] first step, a courageous willingness to be shocked, surprised, intruded upon”11 and included.

That’s why she went back to town!  She wanted to include others in this love she had found.  And look at what happened.  

On the strength of her word the people decide to include others too.  The people of her village don’t throw Jesus and his equally Jewish followers out of town but rather they ask them to hang around for a couple of days. 

This would have been unheard of!  It would be like the Democrats and Republicans not only having their conventions at the same time, in the same city, but in the same building.  It would be like FOX News and MSNBC sharing the same headquarters.  It would be like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia having dinner together, and going to the opera together, and going on vacation together. Oh, wait! That really did happen!  And so did this!  

A Samaritan town welcomed Jewish guests all on the strength of one woman’s witness.  

Dr. John Buchanan of Fourth Church let his imagination run wild in a sermon describing what this might have been like.

The Samaritans invite the Jews to stay with them for a while and, remarkably, they do, for two days. What a picture—Jews and Samaritans, men and women, walking back to town together, eating together for two days, sleeping under the same roofs together.12

People who had believed each other to be so socially

and theologically different that they would even use the same set of dinnerware were now having a party.

Nothing like that had ever happened before. Ancient enemies, people who believed in the very depths of their hearts that the others were so wrong, so outside orthodox definitions of morality, that contact with them was repugnant, unthinkable—those people spent two days together. They must have eaten together. They must have shared dishes and utensils and cups even. They had never done anything like that in their lives. They must have slept under the same roofs. I’ll bet they had a party. I’ll bet they had a banquet and drank a little wine—men and women, Jews and Samaritans. And I’ll bet before Jesus and his friends left to resume their journey to Galilee, they embraced.13

And when it came time for the eulogy at her memorial service I bet not a single word from her resume was mentioned.  

Who cared that she slept in and didn’t make it to the well until midday?  Who cared that she was a Samaritan who befriended a Jewish rabbi and his band of merry men and women?  Who cared about how many husbands she had?  Who cared about any of that?

I bet, in the eulogy they talked about her virtues and how she brought their town together.  I bet they talked about how she taught them the wonder of reaching out to others rather than living in the profound loneliness of their self-imposed isolation.  I bet they talked about what a character she was.

But most of all – best of all – I hope they said she helped them meet Jesus, hear him, get to know him, believe in him, and let their lives be changed by him.

I hope they said that she showed them Jesus and they fell in love with him.  

I can only hope something like that is said over me in the eulogy at my memorial service. 

How about you?

________________

1. David Brooks, The Road to Character (Penguin Books, 2016), xi.

2. Lisa  Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick, “'You Don't Belong Here': Romney Rebukes George Santos at State of the Union,” Time (Time, February 8, 2023), https://time.com/6253829/mitt-romney-george-santos-state-of-the-union/.

3. James D. Howell, John 4:5-42.  Sermon preached at the Myers Park United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina. February 23, 2023.

4. Scott Black Johnson, “Truth.”  Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. March 5, 2023.

5. St. John 4:7b. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6. St. John 4:9. (NRSV)

7. David L. Brooks, “The Power of Art in a Political, Technological Age,” The Aurora Beacon News (The New York Times, March 6, 2023), https://digitaledition.aurorabeaconnews.chicagotribune.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=6daa52d3-71ba-4876-bd3c-bde1e1282c62.

8. St. John 4:16. (NRSV)

9. St. John 4:18. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]

10. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Identity Confirmation: John 4:5-42. The Christian Century. February 12, 2008.

11. William H. Willimon, “Ordinary Revelation.” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 1 (2005): 37–40.

12. John M. Buchanan, “Astonished.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 27, 2005.

13. John M. Buchanan, “Included.” Sermon preached at  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. March 3, 2002. 

Sermon preached at Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rldCPR5X_GM

"What Do You Want?" - Lent 1C

Genesis 2:15--17 & 3:1–7

Saint Matthew 4:1–11

It is good on this first Sunday in Lent to begin the season by thinking of our sinful pleasures. 

One of mine, embarrassingly enough, was the television program Lucifer.  It is seen now only in reruns and that may be a good thing because, in addition to be highly entertaining, each episode also contained one gigantic blasphemy after another.  Some were so bad that even if I was watching alone I found myself looking around to make absolutely sure noone else was there before I buried my head in my hands.

Lucifer was based on a DC graphic novel {read: comic strip} in which the devil, Lucifer Morningstar, abandons his rule in Hades, and moves to Los Angeles and opens a nightclub.  Somehow, he gets involved in helping the LAPD solve a murder and likes the job so much he wheedles his way into becoming a consultant to the department. {I told you this was a sinful pleasure!}

What intrigued me about the series was the way Lucifer was portrayed.  

He was not a caricature of the devil.  This Lucifer, as played by the Welch actor, Tom Ellis, is urbane, witty, more than a little bit of a rogue, and plays a mean jazz piano.  He is also more than handsome.  Walking down the street or mixing with the crowds in his night club one would never expect that he was the Devil of hell, prince of the underworld.  

Only on occasion, when he wants to scare the liver out of someone, does he show them what he calls his “scary face” but, other than that, except for being a raging egomaniac, he is a charmer.

So charming is he that, when he wants to lure the truth or a confession out a crook, he looks them directly in their eyes and asks with a wry smile, “Tell me what it is that you want.  What is it that you really, really want?”

The temptation story in Genesis tells us what Adam and Eve, and every human after them “really, really wants” and it is not something that be found in the fruit and vegetable aisle of your nearest green grocer.  No matter how we have tried to render the story down to being tempted by a forbidden fruit hanging from a tree it is about much more than that.

Back in seminary, long ages ago, Donald M. Baillie, in his classic book, God Was In Christ, gave me this insight into what sin really is.  He wrote:

In the story of Eden, the serpent says to the woman: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ That is the temptation to which mankind has succumbed: we have put ourselves, each one individually, in the centre of our universe, where God ought to be.  And when persons do that, it separates them both from God and from each other.  That is what is wrong with mankind. That is original sin.”1

That is a constant struggle because what we want, what we really, really want is to be at the centre of our universe, to be our own gods.  

As Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminded us: “a real temptation is an offer not to fall but to rise.” 

It is important to keep in mind that a real temptation beckons us to do that about which much good can be said. {In Jesus’ case} Stones to bread – the hungry hope so; take political control – the oppressed hope so; leap from the temple – those longing for proof of God’s power among us hope so.  The tempter in Eden did not ask, “Do you wish to be as the devil?” but, “Do you wish to be as god?” No self-respecting devil would approach a person with offers of personal, domestic, or social ruin.  That is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation.”2

Adam and Eve gave into their desire to “be as god” Jesus is struggling with what it would mean for him to be about God’s business.

Adam and Eve gave into their desire to “be as god” Jesus is struggling with what it would mean for him to be about God’s business.

Since you are the Son of God,” the tempter kept asking in one form or another, “just modify your ministry ever so slightly so that the purpose of your life becomes your purpose, instead of God’s purpose. So you can be the kind of Messiah, the kind of Savior, the kind of God’s Son that the people can understand and get behind, might even follow with ease since it will demand so little of them.3

But we know, that people’s desires change.  They demand one kind of leader one day and another kind of leader the next.  What is in fashion today is out of fashion tomorrow.  What satisfies on Monday may not satisfy on Tuesday.  What we want one day we may not want the next.

Think about the bread business.  Jesus did that once.  He may not of used stones but he turned a few little loaves into so much bread that over 5,000 men, women, and children not only ate and were satisfied but had leftovers.  That’s the attendance figure we all remember 5,000 plus. 

This occurs is the 14th chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, but did you know that in the very next chapter, Matthew 15, almost the very same type of miracle is recorded except that the crowd is only reported as being 4,000 or so.

Scholars have attributed this to all kinds of things – life, different circumstances or a different location.  Some have suggested that it was a “scrivener's error” included twice when it was only meant to be recorded once.  But what if it wasn’t those things at all?  What if it was that this bread business only goes so far?  

“What’s Jesus up to today?” the crowds might have asked.  

And those who only came for dinner and a show might have replied, “He’s doing the bread and fish thing again.  Been there.  Done that.  Let me know when there is something else on the menu.”  And so those who didn’t see the reign and rule of God as being revealed in this miracle stayed home and waited for Jesus to do something more with something else.  What they wanted, what they really wanted, was a full stomach and a fresh menu.  

What Jesus told the tempter was true. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”4  His ministry was going to have to be about more than what Luther called “belly miracles.”

So, if Jesus’ ministry wasn’t going to be about bread neither could it be just about circuses either.  

Isn’t that what the tempter is asking Jesus to give the people by throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple?  Now that would get the peoples’ attention.  That would give them what they really wanted – aerobatics!  But how long would that last? 

At best this is a one off event unless one day Jesus decided to act like Rocket J. “Rockey the flying” Squirrel and swoop down toward the earth only to pull up and the very last second and wow the crowd with a “ta-dah” surrounded by approving angels.  Or perhaps, the next time he could be more like Wyle E. Coyote and hit the ground in a cloud of dust only to walk away unscathed aided by angels from Acme. 

This comic strip idea of the diabolical one only has so much run time before the crowds would be off looking for something else they thought they really wanted.  Bread alone won’t do it and neither will circuses. 

So how about the most tempting temptation of all – power and prestige.  

As Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased this offer in The Message:

For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, “They’re yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”5

How many times have we seen people think this is really, really what they wanted while innocents have had to live with the consequences.

A year ago Friday, someone consumed by a desire to restore the “motherland” to its former glory – with the theological blessing of his archbishop no less – brutally invaded another country hoping to make that land his.  He wanted the land he thought was his back and he was willing to sell his soul and sacrifice countless lives to get it.  He put himself in the centre of his own universe where God ought to have been.

We’ve seen people in power – again aided by some righteous leaders in the church –  almost drive our Republic to the brink because they thought that the office they held belonged to them and them alone.  They wanted to be, if not the centre of the universe, at least the centre of attention. They wanted to be their own god’s in the place of God.

Or other leaders, some of whom wear crosses around their necks, who would use their platforms to divide us on the basis of race, creed, gender, ethnic origins, or sexual orientation in order to “play to their base” and the lesser angels of their followers.  In so doing they became centres of the sound bite universe with one god-forsaken idea after another.

And what would Jesus say to these despots large and small?  “Away with you.”6 “Get out of here.”  “‘Beat it, Satan!’ And he would back his “rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute singleheartedness.’”

Serving God with a single-minded, single hearted devotion was what Jesus really, really wants from us. And, as Father Robert Farrar Capon in a wonderful chapter called “Superman” in his book Hunting the Divine Fox reminds us, that the “messianic sign” that God decreed for Jesus is the cross.  As Capon says:

We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because ... He claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.8

 Lent reminds us that the deepest desire of our hearts, what we should really, want is to follow him.  To discover again that his ways are far superior that all the ways the world could possibly offer.  To remember that what Jesus did we could never do and that is to be our Saviour. 

So maybe the question asked by the character from a crazy television show isn’t so far-fetched after all.  When temptation asks us: “Tell me what it is that you want.  What is it that you really, really want?”

Maybe our answer should echo the words of that old, wonderful spiritual: “Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.”

_______________

1. D. M. Baillie, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (C. Scribner's Sons, 1948), p. 204.

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 56.

3. Shannon Kershner, “Scene 1: The Wilderness.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. March 10, 2019.

4. St. Matthew 4:4. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

5. St. Matthew 4:8-9. (MESSAGE)   [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]

6. St. Matthew 4:10. (NRSV)

7. St. Matthew 4:10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)

8. Robert Farrar Capon, in Hunting the Divine Fox; Images and Mystery in Christian Faith (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 91.

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMG13efcLGA

 

"Simple Is Best" - Epiphany 5A

 

Isaiah 58:1-9a [9b-12]

1 Corinthians 2:1-12 [13-16]

Saint Matthew 5:13-20

"Simple is best" That little piece of wisdom has been attributed to William of Ockham and has become known as Occam's Razor but what he really said was: “Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.” Apparently William didn't take his own advice.  He would have done better if he left it at: "Simple is best."

But he is not alone.  I would venture to say that almost every character in history would have done well to heed this “simple is best” advice as would every preacher in Christendom.

There is an old saying:  "Don't ask a preacher what time it is because they will tell you how to build a watch and when he or she is finished, you will go away still not knowing what time it is but, in theory, you will know how to build a watch.”

What is true for the clergy is also old as time true for politicians.

In the play Hamilton, when Alexander Hamilton finally meets Arron Burr, and runs on at the mouth on all manner of things, Burr offers this sage piece of advice:  "Talk less, smile more."  We know how that turned out, don't we?  After much talk there is less smiling and, forces Burr to comes to the point where he has to admit, "I'm the damn fool who shot him."

The cover story of the most recent Time magazine was called “On Mute: Overtalkers are Everywhere – but Saying Less Will Get You More.” In it Dan Lions observed that most people “are champions at over-talking. We bulldoze. We hog the floor. We interrupt, deliver monologues.”  He says that he especially has the problem, writing for himself he expresses what may be true for us all “The issue is not only that I talk too muchl It’s that I never have been able to resist blurting out inappropriate things, I can’t keep my opinions to myself.”1

Join the crowd Dan!  A crowd which has some very good company.

Saint Paul would have done well to heed the advice to "keep it simple" had he just stuck with his original promise: “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”2  That’s keeping it simple! That will preach!

However, not three sentences later, when the great saint tries to explain how he came to know about “Jesus Christ, and him crucified”  he ran the risk of leaving the poor scribe who was trying to get his words down for eternity, the listeners then, and lectors and hearer now a bit confused.  What he knows is simple and clear but just exactly how he came to know it gets a bit confusing.

It might be easier to turn our attention to Jesus who says quite simply: “You are the salt of the earth ... you are the light of the world.”

“You are salt and light,” he said. Modest metaphors. Neither is necessarily dramatic, certainly not overwhelming. Functional metaphors. Both act on the environment; both, in spite of their modesty, have a dramatic effect. Salt changes food, makes it more tasty, more lively. Light abolishes darkness. The darker the darkness, the more visible the light—even a tiny candle. You need to have light in order to see, you need light in order to find your way home, or wherever it is you are going.3

Few people know the usefulness of salt better than Chicagoans.  At the first measurable amount of snow the question on every drivers lips is: “Are the salt trucks out?”  We feel more secure driving on salt-covered streets until after days, that salt becomes so pulverized that we find ourselves driving around in man-made cloudbanks made of salt dust.  And all of our cars become two-toned, the original colour on the top and white on the sides. 

We also know the importance of light.  After a long, dark, cloudy period, we look out the window and rejoice that there seems to be one more minute of daylight.  We greet this news with the excitement of our ancestor Druids who rejoiced that this little bit more light meant that the sun god was no longer angry and was coming back.

Salt and light. We know that we need them, but Jesus is telling us that we not only need them but that we are them!

“Jesus begins  ... by indicating to his audience that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  All of them."4 

“Unlike so many other languages, including the Greek in which this text is written, English is impoverished for its lack of differentiation between the singular and plural second person ‘you.’”5  Except for perhaps the south where the term would be “Y ‘all” or Wisconsin where Jesus might have said, “yous.”

It’s not a later thing, it’s a now thing.  It’s not a those guys and gals over there thing it’s an us thing.  We all, “Wes”, are to be salt of the earth together.

Sometimes we can lose our saltiness and our lights can go out.

Light can be snuffed out when someone who has sworn to uphold the law reaches into a car and, along with others similarly sworn to “serve and protect,” grabs a young man by the nape of his neck and then beats that young man to death.  When this happens, those officer’s lights went out for reasons I will never understand, and society’s light dimmed a little bit.

When young people not only shoot each other but innocent bystanders over some piece of neighborhood turf their lights go out and society’s light dims a little bit. 

When politicians and regular yous guys demean each other for any reason – race, creed, orientation, economic or legal status – their light’s go out and society’s light dims a little bit.

Salt and light are not only very simple metaphors for the Christian life they are very fragile metaphors.  

The fragility even cropped up among the original disciples when they began to “smile less and talk more.”  They got themselves into all kinds of trouble when they couldn’t help but burst out inappropriate things or keep their opinions, especially if it was an exceptionally high opinion of themselves, to themselves.

I can think of countless examples but in the interest of keeping this simple I’ll just remind you of “that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"6

Dr. Scott Black Johnson, wondered once in a sermon preached at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, “If there is a better recipe for human conflict than to put a couple of fragile egos together in the same room.”

So here we have the disciples starting to play the game of what Dr. Johnson called, “anything you can do I can do better.”7  When the disciples ask him who might be the brightest light, the saltiest salt lick in the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus takes a little child plunks the little person down in the middle of them and says, “‘Believe me, unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” 

Changing our outlook means putting our ultimate trust not in ourselves but “Christ and him crucified.”

When Jesus talks about this trust he is still keeping it simple.  

Why trust God?  Jesus says come with me, I’ll show you and he leads them outside, into a field of flora and fauna and invites them to just look around.

Turn your attention skyward, he says, and look at the birds of the air “free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more.”8  Jesus is talking about “y’all”, “yous”, us!

Now look around you on the ground, he says.

Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don’t fuss with their appearance—but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the wildflowers, most of them never even seen, don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?9

It’s all pretty simple.    We don’t need to be “revved up by the Rev” to understand it. And just his case we missed the point in Jesus’ little excursion into the botanic backyard Jesus concludes his simple, little tour with these words: “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”10 

It’s ours already!  It’s a gift!  And having been gifted with the kingdom of God, the presence of God even in the smallest things, we are to act like it.  If we can’t be shining cities on a hill we can be lights on a lamp stand letting our baptismal lights shine and not letting them go out!

Sometimes we can feel God’s light shining on us in obvious places but Jesus is telling us to look for it also in the simple, not so obvious places.

Since we’ve retired and we are DINKS (Double Income No Kids) Lowell and I have started the tradition of what we call our “Annual Vacations-of-a-Lifetime” which I am mentioning now in a sermon so that I can use them as a tax-deduction.

Two falls ago we were at the Vatican, and it was totally astounding for this middle-class, northwest side of Chicago kid, to be standing in the square where crowds gathered for Christmas and Easter masses; to cheer on the election of new Popes and to bury those who have died.  Then to go into through the museum, and the Sistine Chapel, and finally the enormous basilica.  The art, and size of the buildings, and history behind them was overwhelming.

This year the same thing happened when we were in London. (Why do I feel another tax-deduction coming on?)  Standing in Westminster Abbey when not many weeks before the Queen’s funeral had taken place.  Walking around Saint Paul’s with all it’s rich history. It was grand.

But perhaps the grandest thing of all took place on the flight home.  

A young man came on to the plane with his aged mother.  She was feeble beyond measure and I feared that this may have been her last trip home.  

The flight-crew rearranged seats so that they could sit together and after we had them settled most of us went back to minding our own business.

Westbound flights from Europe usually start in darkness but somewhere on the way, just as the sun was coming up, I open my blind just a bit and saw that the sun had appeared as an resplendent orange orb appearing between the clouds and the horizon.  The sight was magnificent and reminded me of all that I had seen on this vacation that shown forth the glory of God.

But then my attention turned to the young man and his mom.  She was clearly having a hard time so, there he was, feeding her just like at one time in their lives together, she had fed him.  

There he was holding her glass or cup for her so she could take a sip just like she had done for him when he was too young to do it by himself.  

And finally, when she finished, he did what all parents have done from time immemorial, he dipped his napkin in his water glass and carefully wiped her lips.

Of all the grand and glorious things we saw on that trip.  Cathedrals, Basilicas, historical sites, that were built to remind us of the greatness of God.  That young man, lovingly, gently, caring for his mom gave me the real idea of what it meant to be “salt of the earth” and a “light of the world” and forced me to conclude that it’s true:  “Simple is Best.”

________________

1,    Dan Lyons, “On Mute: Overtalkers are Everywhere – but Saying Less Will Get You More,” Time, February 6, 2022, pp. 64-66.

2.   1 Corinthians 2:1-2.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

3.  John M. Buchanan, “Salt...Light” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 14, 1999.

4.  ibid.

5.  Melanie A. Howard, “Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, January 25, 2023), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-513-20-5.

6.  St. Matthew 16:1. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

7,  Scott Black-Johnson, “Friend or Foe.”  Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York City.  January 29, 2023.

8.  St. Luke 12:24. (MESSAGE) (MESSAGE)   [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]

9. St. Luke 12:25-28.  (MESSAGE)

10.  St. Luke 12:32. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5TRgNMBgws