Pentecost 3B - "The Impossible Dream"

 

Saint Mark 3:20-35

Depending on your level of luck in high school either your English teacher made you read Miguel de Cervantes’ massive over thousand-page novel Don Quixote or sent you off to see the play “The Man of LaMancha.”  Since my attention span was not much longer than that of the average teenager at the time, I opted for the play. And besides, it was a musical.

Either way, the reader or the watcher, would have been introduced to the adventures of Don Quixote who obsessed “with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read, decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked.”1 

This defending the helpless and destroying the wicked seems like, as the song goes, “an impossible dream.”  And, as far as chivalry goes, in our day, we would settle for some civility.

Never-the-less Quixote enlists the services of “a somewhat befuddled laborer named Sancho Panza, whom he has persuaded to accompany him as his faithful squire.”

At one point they come upon, in Servantes’ account, “thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, ‘Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.’”2

Thus Quixote gave birth the phrase “tilting at windmills” which is defined as simply fighting imaginary enemies.

In his sermon last Sunday Dr. Scott Black Johnson, Senior Minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church which is literally in the shadow of Trump Tower in New York, reminded his congregation that we can find ourselves fighting enemies, real or imagined, all the time because, as he said,  “It’s fun to call out the world’s villains. {As we say to ourselves} ‘Let me tell you about some really messed up people.’ It can feel satisfying to point out everything that is wrong {and to} criticize politicians, and criminals, and politicians who are criminals. The blame game can be the easy way out.”3

Peggy Noonan, wrote in her Wall Street Journal column: 

What I am seeing is that we don’t mind disliking each other now.  We like it. That’s the new thing, that we are enjoying the estrangement.  Nobody’s trying to win anybody over.  Some enjoy their hatred because they are by nature shallow and see the implications of nothing. Some enjoy it because they see politics as an extension of sport — booing the other team is part of the fun of being at the game. Some enjoy it because it lets them feel immersed in a warm bath of righteousness.4

 Turn against this and try to introduce a new way and people just might wonder if you might be dreaming an impossible dream.

In the book, two “of Don Quixote’s friends, the priest and the barber, come to drag him home. Believing that he is under the force of an enchantment.”

In the text from The Good Book we have before us today people were saying the same thing about Jesus, “‘He’s out of his mind,’ they said.”5

Word gets back to his family, and they show up. “His family heard the local gossip that Jesus was stark raving mad, and they came to collect him up and take him home, get him away from the public eye.”6

They are defiantly not buying into his dream.

They want to get Jesus back home safe and sound because it looks like he is going to get in a whole lot of trouble turning the world upside down and right side out.

Here’s what’s going on as the always insightful Debi Thomas sees it:

Outside the house stand the insiders — the family, the religious folk, the pious, the careful.  They think they have God pinned down.  They know what the Holy Spirit is supposed to look like, and Jesus doesn’t fit the bill. Inside the house sit the outsiders — the misfits, the rejects, the tax collectors, the prostitutes.  They’re not interested in dogma or piety; they just need love and they seem to have found it in a man who heals the sick and feeds the hungry. And in the midst of them?  Smack in the center of the sick, the insane, the deviant, the hungry, the unorthodox and the unwashed?  There sits Jesus, saying, “This. This is my family.”

Outside is in, and inside is out, and the people least likely to get it are the ones who consider themselves the most knowledgeable, the most “churchy,” and the most spiritually stable.  

Jesus divides the house, and that process hurts.  But he doesn’t divide it to make us homeless.  He divides it to rebuild it.  To make it more spacious, more welcoming, and more beautiful.7

He makes it more beautiful by expanding our definition of family and healing the hurts that may have been caused by our old ones.  As Peter Marty pointed out in a Christian Century article. “Jesus creates a new concept of family, one based not on blood but on love in action.”8  

And when our blood family, or family of origin, lets us down Jesus is giving us permission to create a new one.  It seems like an impossible dream, but it can happen.

Let me tell you a story about how I saw this work.

Back in my youth group days, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I had a friend who was there on Sunday nights when we got together, sang in the youth choir, and who was bright beyond measure.  So bright was he that he eventually minted a Ph. D. from the University of Iowa in Physics.

In his senior year of high school his parents got a divorce.  It was a long time in coming because, to put it mildly, his dad was a bounder, a philander, an aging Casanova who did not wear it well.  The divorce was amicable. My friend’s mom got the house while his dad moved in with his girlfriend.

Most of us were not surprised but still saddened.  Few of us knew, or even suspected the impact it had on my friend.

He went off to college and found himself joining a group of really conservative Christians.  He didn’t just become an Evangelical he became a Evangelical’s Evangelical.  He was the poster boy for Evangelicals.  Needless-to-say he stopped attending the Lutheran Church of his youth.  

Both the Pastor of his home church and I wondered what happened.  Why did this seemingly level-headed young man go so far afield?  He’d visit home, even going so far as to visit us when he came to town, but still hanging as tightly to his ways as, frankly, we were to ours.  Our visits left both the older Pastor and I, who was then a newbie to the trade wondering what happened.  And even wondering if we might have done something.

This was until his father died and, as an adult,  my friend came back to give the eulogy at his dad’s funeral and said, “I found love from my Heavenly Father that my earthly father never gave me.”

Wow! Mike drop. The other pastor and I were seated in the chancel across from each other and our eyes widened for at that moment we knew exactly what happened.  We knew what shook this man’s faith to its very core. His earthly father had failed him, maybe even betrayed him, and so he went running into the arms of his Heavenly Father.  

In our opinion there was no better place for him to be.

I think that is what Jesus was talking about when he held out the really radical notion that loyalty to anything less than the message of the Gospel was loyalty to a lesser god.

Unquestioned loyalty to a candidate or a political party is a loyalty to something less than what Jesus is offering.  Think of all those people on social media who can’t seem to find anything else going on in their lives besides what they see on CNN, MSNBC or FOX news.  As Jonah Goldberg wrote last week: “In our polarized political climate, even Republicans and Democrats talk and act like they are a special caste."9

Unquestioned loyalty to a nation can lead to Gaza or require the sacrifice of D-day.

Unquestioned loyalty to any individual – mother, father, sister, brother, pastor, is dangerous because as my pastor in Bellingham wrote in a recently published poem about his own father who fought his own demons: “Let my father be a man who loved me poorly which means he loved me.” 10

Try as hard as it might loyalty to earthly love is loyalty to something less than the love Jesus offers.

Yes, loyalty even to one's race, or creed, or gender, and yes even in this Pride Month, even one’s orientation is something less than what Jesus offers. For hidden in these other worthwhile identities is a danger that can divide.

It doesn’t have to be that way, you know, as the whole of Jesus’ life shows us.

On this day in particular Mary was there, outside, waiting, hoping, maybe even praying that her son would come home.  She wanted what any good mother would want for her son, a life of safety and security. If he came with her and his family that day he could live a good long life as a carpenter in Nazareth. It was her impossible dream because it was defiantly not what her son had in mind for his.

Jesus rejects her offer.  He has a bigger family to care for and down through the ages that family includes us, you and me.

But and this is most important, in the end, Mary never let go of Jesus and Jesus never let his mother go either.

She was there at the cross for his awful dying moments.  And from the cross, with his last breaths, he made sure she would be okay.   

Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by her side, and said to her, “Look, there is your son!” And then he said to the disciple, “And there is your mother!” And from that time the disciple took Mary into his own home."12

Family continued.  Family was extended. Family was being redefined.

 “Anyone who does the will of God,” Jesus says, “is brother and sister and mother to me.”

Doing the will of God, even knowing the will of God may seem like an impossible dream to us, but it is Jesus' dream, and so it must be our dream too.

Don't you think?

________________

1. “Don Quixote Full Book Summary,” Sparknotes, accessed June 7, 2024, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/donquixote/summary/.

2. “Tilting at Windmills - Meaning & Origin of the Phrase,” Phrase Finder, December 20, 2023, https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tilting-at-windmills.html.

3. Scott Black Johnson, “The View From Here, XVII”. Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. 2 June 2024.

4. Peggy Noonan, “We Are Starting to Enjoy Hatred,” The Wall Street Journal. wsj.com, May 30, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-are-starting-to-enjoy-hatred-c3005b05.

5. St. Mark 3:21b. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Publishing House, 1971]]

6. St. Mark 3:21b. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Publishing House, 1971]

7. Michael Fitzpatrick, “What Cannot Be Seen,” Journey with Jesus, May 30, 2021, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3027-what-cannot-be-seen.

8.    Peter Marty, "Has Family Become an Idol?" The Christian Century. 1 January 2020

9. Jonah Goldberg, “The G-File.” The Dispatch. 7 June 2024. Accessed 8 June 2024

10.   Jory Mickelson, “Every Unhappy Family Manifesto Is Unhappy in Its Own Way,” Bellingham Review, June 5, 2024, https://bhreview.org/articles/every-unhappy-family-manifesto-is-unhappy-in-its-own-way

11. St. John 19:23-27. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).

Pentecost 2B - "Good Sabbath"

 

Deuteronomy 5:12–15 and Saint Mark 2:23–3:6

"Relax. Slow down. Take it easy.”  Implored the visiting preacher from New York City, Dr. Harrison Everett Breen, in an impressive stained glass tone reserved only for preachers, to the congregants gather at the All Souls Church in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina.

Even before The Reverend Dr. Breen was three paragraphs into his sermon some of the residents had taken him up on his offer.  

Gomer had fallen so sound asleep that his snoring could be heard to from the back of the church all the way to the pulpit causing Dr. Breen to pause for a moment to collect his thoughts.  

While Aunt Bea and Clara Edwards sat smiling Barney’s eyelids were also growing heavy and soon he too was beginning to doze only to be bumped awake by Sheriff Taylor.

As parishioners in the pews, you don’t usually get to see this, but clergy do, and it could have been a scene from any church anywhere, in any place in time except this one, this day, I hope.

This episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” first aired in October of 1963 and it’s funny how our problems now seemed to be our problems then as Dr. Breen pointed out:

"Consider how we live our lives today.  Everything is run, run, run. We bolt our breakfast, we scan the headlines, we race to the office, a full schedule in a split second. These are our gages of success. We drive ourselves from morn to night. We have forgotten the meaning of the word relaxation?”

“Relax. Slow down. Take it easy.” the good doctor says before he unwittingly plants a seed in their head.  

What has become of the old-fashioned ways. Who can forget at twilight the old-fashioned band concert on the village green.  The joy and Serenity of just sitting and listening.  This is lost to us and this we should strive to recapture. A simple innocent pleasure."1

The residents of Mayberry take his words to heart and decide to have a band concert that very day.

The rest of the episode is all madness as mayhem as they community begins to discover that there are innumerable obstacles to their impromptu band concerts.

Sorry, this is a little sexist, but the ladies have been dispatched to check out the band uniforms which are in a terrible state of disrepair.   They are dusty.  There is mildew.  They are rips and since the band members have grown in size but not in numbers most of the uniforms have to be let out in order to fit properly.  Soon there is a battle raging as the ladies’ frustration mounts.

Across town at the bandstand Barney and Gomer discover that it has been neglected to the point of near collapse.  There is more than days work to be done and even this will be delayed because Gomer won’t go under the bandstand because “There might be spiders under there.” he tells Barney with a wide-eyed worried look. “I hate spiders.” he tells him just incase he missed the point.

Back at the courthouse Andy is rehearsing the band.  Never very good on their best days they have fallen so far out of practice that they make Professors Harold Hill’s River City Boy’s Band sound like “The Chicago Symphony.”

It seems that nobody is relaxing, or slowing down, or taking it easy.

Now at this point, this sermon could take an unhappy turn because for many of us the idea of Sabbath is a quaint, outdated notion yet for the Children of Israel and for us it can contain an important theological truth: Even God relaxed, showed down, took it easy.

As Walter Bruggemann said of God after the work of creation was finished: “I’m not going into the office tomorrow. I’m taking the day off. I’ve put in long hours every day all week and tomorrow I’m putting my feet up and enjoying all that I’ve accomplished.”2

 That is what Sabbath is. It is taking time to enjoy all that we have accomplished.

Understand please, I am talking about you and me, what Warren Buffett called winners in “the overian lottery.”  He tells shareholders at his annual meeting in Omaha that winning or losing this lottery “would determine their place of birth, ethnicity, wealth, gender and intellectual abilities.” And he always reminds them and us that we are in the luckiest one percent of the world right now.”3

We are not scrounging for scraps or looking for a handout on the street corner.  While our lives may not be, in the words of the Tommy Bahama ad, “one long weekend” our lives, compared to most folks in the world, can be considered to be quite good, thank you very much.

And so were the lives of their disciples as they took their stroll through the grainfield and plucked some grain.  

They are not stealing grain as they journey. What concerns the Pharisees instead is the fact that they are traveling and gleaning on the sabbath. They should have stayed put and prepared their snacks on the previous day. To the Pharisees, this behavior appears to deliberately neglect the mandate to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.4

But Jesus has a greater point to make and St. Mark helps him make it for us when he remembers “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.”5

Jesus calls the unsuspecting man forward and asks the crowd.  ““What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?”6

Everybody, from the learned ones to the toddlers in the crowd knew the answer: There was no violation of Sabbath laws if one’s actions met the essential needs of oneself or of others.

Just as the disciples could have packed a lunch because they were not starving this man could have come back the next day because his condition was not life threatening.  But what Jesus is asking a more fundamental question: “If you have a chance to do some good, why not do it now?”

“Sabbath ... was instituted not only to respect God but also to bring rest and wholeness to all members of the community.”7

That’s what the good people of Mayberry forgot and sometimes we forget it too because Sabbath seems like such an arcane notion.  Taking an entire day and maybe for some just an entire hour to do nothing just goes against our finally tuned Protestant work ethic but in its original form it was designed to be a time of delight.  A day to remind the Children of Israel that at one time in their history they were slaves, in bondage to taskmasters in Egypt.  Keeping a “Good Sabbath” was there to remind them every week that slaves don’t get days off.  They work when they are told to work and rest at the pleasure of their captures.  A Good Sabbath reminded them or who they were and who they are now. 

Folks that’s what we are doing right here and right now.  We are keeping Sabbath in a radical way.  We are taking time to pray, relax, and be fed by the bread of life offered as we gather around the table and remind ourselves that we have been washed clean in the waters of baptism as we all gather around the font with Zoey and her mom and dad to welcome her as she begins her adventure with Jesus.

At the conclusion of the episode of the Andy Griffith Show Dr. Breen reappears and finds the whole gang seated on Sheriff Taylor’s porch looking completely relaxed but, in fact, totally exhausted from the kind of Sabbath Day they had.  For them it was not a Good Sabbath it was a hectic Sabbath that has left them completely worn out.

The visiting preacher congratulates himself by complementing them saying, still in his stained-glass peaching voice, something like: “I see you are taking my advice, relaxing and taking it easy.”

Gomer almost spills the beans saying, “Oh no Reverend.  It’s been quite a day.” But before he launches into his litany of events that has made the day anything but restful and relaxing Andy cuts him off. 

It took them awhile just as it may take us awhile, but they got Jesus' message: The Sabbath was made for us.  It is a day in which we are to take time for each other and take time to delight in Jesus.

So, without any guilt, lets heed at least a little of Dr. Breen’s advice and for the rest of this day or at least sometime this week: “Relax. Slow down. Take it Easy.”

________________

1. “The Andy Griffth Show, episode, “The Sermon for Today” (Chicago, IL: CBS, October 21, 1963).

2. John M. Buchanan, “The Hallowing of Time.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, July 9, 2000.

3.    Jeannine Mancini, “Warren Buffett Says Winning This ‘lottery’ Is Most Important Thing in Life, and You Have No Control over It - ‘I Am in the Luckiest 1% of the World Right Now,’” Yahoo! Finance, August 8, 2023, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-says-winning-lottery-171412689.html.

4. Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 2:23-3:6,” Working Preacher, November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-09-2/commentary-on-mark-223-28-31-6.

5. St. Mark 3:1. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. St. Mark 3:4. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]

7.    Renata Furst, “Mark 2:23-3:6. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, 2, no. 3 (2021): 49–51.

Pentecost 2024B - "Somethings Happening Here"

 

Acts 2:1-21

There is something happening here

What is is ain’t exactly clear

Stop, children, what's that sound?

EV'rybody look what's goin' down

Those words from the late ‘60's protest song by the group Buffalo Springfield could perfectly sum up what was going on inside and outside of the house on that first Pentecost for whenever and whatever we think of this day we think of it as a noisy event.

The disciples may have been behind locked doors but the city, Jerusalem, was teeming with visitors.  There was a lot going on. 

It was a holiday weekend, and the city was filled with people from all over the place. 

Many of them were visiting Jerusalem because it was Shavuot, the Jewish Festival of Weeks, and devout Jews were required by Jewish law to come to Jerusalem to celebrate. Shavuot was the marking of seven weeks from Passover, and the remembrance of Yahweh giving the Torah, the law, to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  But not all of the people in Jerusalem that day were Jews, because it was also a holiday in the way that holidays bring families and celebrations, travel and obligation into our lives, and lots of worshippers, merchants, and travelers joined the regular population of Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday.1

 Yet, there was something going on that might have been hard to hear over the noise of the city.  We might have had to strain our ears to hear it.  “Hush, children, what’s that sound?”  It was the sound of the wind. 

We, who live in Chicago know what windstorms are like.  The trees bend; hats are blown off; umbrellas go inside out; but we soldier on.  We put our shoulders to the gale and move forward as best we can.

But something was happening here that couldn’t be fought against.  What we have in this moment was the movement of something bigger, something greater, it was the untamed movement of the Holy Spirit.

Now I know that we Lutherans can be a bit uncomfortable when it comes to this movement of the Holy Spirit business.  We like things done “decently and in good order.”  If the Holy Spirit would like to work its way into our worship, we would ask that it submit its ideas into the church office by Monday, Tuesday at the latest, so we can find a proper place for it in the bulletin.  We are wary of any sudden movement of the Holy Spirit because it seems be dangerous when it causes people to act in ways that seem, just a little out of control.

Whenever we think of a Pentecost moment, or having the gift of the Spirit we usually envision what Timothy J. Nelson, describe in his book Everytime I Feel the Spirit.

The congregation was very quiet during the Scripture reading and remained quite still for the several minutes until Reverend Dayton set out her theme and established her rhythm. Then she moved out from behind the pulpit ... and the people started to come alive. It happened gradually. At first one person in the choir stood up.  Then more choir members stood, and then people in the congregation started standing up, until after several minutes the whole choir and the congregation were on their feet.  The drummer tossed a drumstick into the air and caught it again with a flourish. The organ and drums started chiming in during response times building in volume and emphasis... One man in a black suit and red shoes started running to the front of the center aisle, pointing his finger, then running back to his seat. Several woman began to shout in earnest, moving out to dance ... in front of the pulpit. One woman ... began jumping up and down on both feet like a child on a pogo stick.  After about half-a-minute she ended up prone on the floor... The energy level began to subside and the service continued with the hymn of meditation.2

 And we think incense, some stage smoke, bubbles and strawberries in sparking cider are special and really way out there.

That was the response of the original onlookers on that first Pentecost when their attentions was drawn away from the noise of the city to the cacophony coming from behind the locked doors where the disciples were. Some of the bystanders make fun of what was going on believing that those inside and making such a racket were “three-sheets-to-the-wind-in-a-gale.”

What the crowd couldn’t deny was that something was happening here and what was happening was pretty important.  People were hearing about Jesus in ways they could understand. 

“The miracle in Acts,” says Dr. Greg Carey of Lancaster Theological Seminary, “is every preacher’s fantasy. The miracle resides not with the speaking of the disciples but in the hearing of the crowd. They hear the gospel in their own languages. This is what we all want: through the work of the Spirit to communicate with every person in a language particular to that individual.”3

That was the job of the church in it’s infant moments and it is still the job of the church now.  Our job is too present the gospel in such a way that it is interesting to people, moves people, engages people.  This is especially important now, more than ever, because Tim Alberta reminds us in his wonderful new book, The Kingdom, The Power, And the Glory, of something we all know.

In 1991, according to the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian, while just 5 percent called themselves religiously unaffiliated. Thirty years later, the collapse was staggering: 63 percent of Americans identified as Christian and 29 percent called themselves unaffiliated.4

In a recent Christian Century article, reflecting on the goings on in the United Methodist Church, Dr. William H. Willimon former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and Bishop of the Alabama Conference wrote: “Too scary to mention were the massive church attendance decline and the rapid greying of the denomination. United Methodists are 90 percent white, and 62 percent of them are over age 50.”5

It is more than likely that same can be said for the ELCA.

That is not good news but it presents a challenge. 

“Our challenge is to make friends with {the Holy} Spirit – to listen for that voice ... in our midst” and help others to hear it too.  To tell about Jesus in such a winsome and winning way that others will look at us and our churches as say to themselves, “something is happening here.” 

[T]hat is our challenge—to be friends with that spirit—to be open to the power of the Holy Spirit—to allow that spirit to challenge our human spirit—to live believing that that Spirit can change our lives—transform our lives—as individuals and as a congregation. Our charge is this. . . to live as if anything is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit—to believe it and to live it—to live in full anticipation and confidence that Pentecost is a moment of the past and of the present and of the future.6

Like the disciples, every day you and I stand on the edge of something. And today, Pentecost, is the day that we collectively stand on the edge of all we can do and be as the church in the world. It will be painful. We do not know now what we will know in another two years, or 2000 years, but be bold we must. The dream of healing, hope, justice, peace, beloved community is too important to shrink back to the familiar. 

    In other words: it’s Pentecost. The wind is blowing; the fire is burning...”7

Once again “something is happening here.  What it is ain’t exactly clear. Stop, children, what’s that sound?”

It just might be the Holy Spirit. 

 ________________

1.  Amy Butler Bass, “If We Knew Then...,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 12, 2024, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/.

2. Timothy Jon Nelson, Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African American Church (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005), 145 

3. Greg Carey, “Commentary on Acts 2:1-21,” Working Preacher, November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/day-of-pentecost-2/commentary-on-acts-21-21-12.

4, Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (New York, NY: Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2024), 96.

5. William  H Willimon, “Missed Opportunities at the UMC General Conference,” The Christian Century, May 16, 2024, https://www.christiancentury.org/features/missed-opportunities-umc-general-conference.

6. Dana Ferguson, “Past, Present, and Future.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, May 23, 1999.

7.     Bass, loc.cit.

AscensionB - "Witnesses of the Resurrection"

 Acts 1:1–11 and Acts 1:15–17 & 21–26

Some of the best summer evenings of my essentially wasted childhood were spent sitting in the screened-in porch of our backyard reading Mad Magazine.

For those under the age of 40 Mad Magazine was to your parents and grandparents what “The Simpsons” and “South Park” is to you. {Just saying that, I worry that even those references might be dated and make me seem older than I am, which is, after all, quite old.} 

When the magazine stopped publishing a print edition in favor of an online version even the staid and sophisticated New Yorker took notice: “‘The Mad ‘idiots’ subverted the comic form into a mainstream ideological weapon, aimed at icons of the left and the right.”1

Al Jaffe may have been one of the most prolific of the “idiots” contributing to almost every issue and a collection of one of his recurring offerings was even assembled into a book.  

I loved the book so much that, as a freshman in seminary when we were asked to compile a list of the most important books we ever read I really wanted to include Mad’s Magazines’  Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions until my more mature friends talked me out of it.

The book is a collection of retorts everybody wishes they’d come up with (but never do) when somebody asked them a stupid question.  

I learned a lot from that book and so today, as the self-proclaimed master of the quick comeback to people who are being snarky, and with almost two thousand years to think about it, I’m going to begin by taking up the disciple’s cause and suggesting what they should have said to that know-it-all pair of angels when they asked “why do you stand here looking into the sky?”

Why are we gazing up into heaven?  Why are we just standing here looking up into the sky?  I’ll tell you why!” they might have said.

“At an impulse we tied ourselves to this man Jesus and his mission.  We had three wonderful years with him and watched him do some amazing things.  He healed countless sick people!  He catered a banquet for a few thousand with provisions that were meagre at best.  He reached across boundaries and talked to people, helped people, that we would have never thought to speak to much less help.  These were high times.

“Sure, on occasion, he upset the political and religious apple cart and called into question some long held and cherished beliefs of both state and church, but we never thought that would be enough to get him killed, much less crucified.

“Then, listen our two fine winged friends, he came back!  Not in spirit, not as a ghost, he came back, and we had resurrection parties.  They started when people, dressed a lot like you two, told us he had risen. 

“Sure, he was not with us all the time like he used to be, but two members of our group met him when they sadly took a hike to Emmaus and he came to them, broke bread with them and blessed them and it was if their hearts were on fire with new life, new hope.

“Then, later that evening he showed up again!  He invited us to look at the scares in his hands and feet!  He had supper with us.  Had a little broiled fish that he seemed to enjoy a lot.  

He was in and out of our lives countless times.  Ask Thomas who couldn’t believe but now does!  Ask Peter, and the rest of the fisherman who saw him and ate breakfast with him on a beach.  Now he’s gone, and it looks like he’s gone for good.

As Barbara Lundblad once said of this moment: “Jesus’ disciples must have felt the earth slipping beneath their feet at the thought of being left alone.”2

To which Amy Butler adds:

You can imagine their confusion and downright horror.  They were ready to follow him to whatever was next. And then . . . away he went. Away. Unbelievably, there they were on the hillsides of Galilee hands cupping their eyes, staring up into a brilliant blue sky, trying desperately to understand what Jesus was up to now. And then he was gone. I have to admit that if I had been among the group of disciples there I also would have stared, mouth gaping open, at the clouds in the sky and the wisp left behind as Jesus ascended.3

 Suddenly, he was gone, ‘vanishing into the fog like the end of a dream too good to be true.’”4

So, there they were looking up into to the sky and wondering, wondering, just wondering.

It was a spell that had to be broken and that is what the angel’s question did. While it may have called for a snappy answer it was a call to get moving.  “It’s time to stop staring and get going, time to stop pondering eternity ... withdrawing from the world and recommit yourself to it. The text continues, “Then they returned to Jerusalem.” They did not go off into the desert to meditate; they went to work.”5

It is quite possible that we, who have been to far too many church meetings, may wince at what they did first but it looks like the first thing they did was call a meeting. And, in an “O My God” moment for this church, it was a call committee meeting.

They were looking for someone to take the place of Judas and, one might argue, that they had no place to go but up, so they put forth two candidates Justus and Matthias and instead of reviewing resumes, curriculum vitaes, asking for references, and going over financial packages, they cast lots.  Yes, essentially with a little prayer for good measure, the twelfth apostle was chosen by a roll of the dice.  

I’m not sure the system would have been better than ours but it certainly would have been quicker.  Just saying.

But if you listened carefully to Peter outlining the candidates’ requirements you would have heard a perfect description of what, not only they, but all of us are to be about. Peter says that “one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection."6

There is a complete job description for all of us embedded so deep in the minutes of the first church meeting that we just might miss it.  We are to be “a witness to Jesus’ resurrection.”  That’s the thesis sentence of Christianity!  That’s our reason for existence!  That is what we are to be about.  We are to bear witness to the resurrection!

That’s what the disciples did.  

Matthias, who is never mentioned again in all of Scripture but who it is believed carried his witness to the resurrection to “Cappadocia, a mountainous district now in central Turkey, and later journeyed to the region about the Caspian Sea, where he was martyred.”7

And Justice, whom the National Catholic Register called “An-Almost Apostle” who never travelled any further than twenty-five miles from Jerusalem.8

Near or far, famous or never heard of, we are to be witnesses of the resurrection.

Witness to the resurrection in the marketplace as we shop for food at the grocery or widgets at the hardware store. 

Witness to the resurrection in our homes as we wash dishes, do laundry, and mow the lawn.

  

Witness to the resurrection at our workplace and our play places.

Witness to the resurrection as we “live here among real people who have bills to pay, and children to raise, and parents to be cared for, and questions to be answered.”9

With more and more people opting to go to breakfast rather than come to church.  With more and more people opting for the health club, or a coffee at Starbucks or to go on a bike ride or for a run being a witness to the resurrection is more important than ever.

Biblical scholar, Martin Culpepper, said it best in his commentary:

Where the Lord's physical hands and feet are no longer present, the ministry of the hands of countless saints in simple and sincere ministries continues to bear witness to the Lord's living presence. {It is in}  the daily testimony of the faithful that the Christ still lives and the work of his kingdom continues.  The uniqueness of the Easter message is that it invariably changes the lives of those who find themselves touched by it.10

So, for us, the angel’s question is not a stupid one but an important one. “why are you standing here staring at the sky?”11  There are lives waiting to be touched by our witness to the resurrection.  The angel  is not so much asking us a question but issuing a call to get moving.  

So, off we go to be “witnesses of the resurrection.”

 ________________

1. Jordan Orlando, “A World without Mad Magazine,” The New Yorker, July 25, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-world-without-mad-magazine.

2. Barbara Lundblad, “Commentary on Luke 24:44-53,” Working Preacher , November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-luke-2444-53-4#.

3. Amy Butler, “‘Don’t Just Stand There Do Something,’” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 6, 2024, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/.

4. Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1995), 80.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Into the World.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 24 May 2009.

6. Acts 1:22b. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

7. “St. Matthias,” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 26, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Matthias.

8. Theresa Doyle Nelson , “Blessed Joseph Barsabbas - An Almost-Apostle,” NCR, July 21, 2020, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/blessed-joseph-barsabbas-an-almost-apostle.

9. William H Willimon, “The Body of Christ,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 43, no. 2 (2015): 29 – 32.

10. R. Alan Culpepper, Luke: The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IN (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), 490.

11. Acts 1:11b. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson,  The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress,1995).]

Easter 6B - "Love Changes Everything"

 

Saint John 15:9-17

Whenever this text comes up, in which Jesus waxes grand-eloquent on the subject of love, I am always reminded of Calvin Cooledge.  It’s a stretch, I know, so hang with me. 

The story goes that President Calvin Coolidge, who was known as a person of few words, one day went to church and his wife Grace stayed home. When he got home, Grace asked him what the sermon had been about. “Sin,” replied Cal. “What did the preacher have to say about it.” Grace asked. Cal paused, sighed, and replied, “He was against it.”

If today, on the highly unlikely chance that someone asked you what your pastor talked about you can say: “Love.”  And it they ask you to say more, you can reply “He was for it.”

I am. But in a measured, some would say, a little cynical way.  Perhaps that because I am such a fan of Operas and Musicals.

True love that ends tragically is the part of countless operas.  From the moment that the hero or heroine professes undying love you know that somebody’s death will come before the final curtain falls.  Even a light-hearted opera like Carman, with one memorable tune after another, Carmen is murdered by her lover, bringing to a close another fun-filled evening of theatre.

The same is true for musicals that usually revolve around the almost identical  plot of one person meeting another person “across a crowded room” and finding true love. Think of it! 

Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French expatriate, who has become a plantation owner on a South Pacific Island, instantly falls in love with Ensign Nellie Forbush, an optimistic and naive young American navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas.

Tony and Maria, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, from different ethnic groups and different gangs spy each other at a community dance and before you know it, they are staring into each other’s eyes, kissing, and pledging that they never be apart. We all know the trouble that caused.

Even in the play “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing”, which gave us such a heart-warming title song the main character is killed off.  While, some musicals tell us that, love may make “the world go round” they should come with Harry Carey’s warning, “there’s danger here Charie.”

I always thought a better, more truthful song about love appears in the rarely performed musical Aspects of Love by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.  “Love Changes Everything.  Brings you glory. Brings you shame. {Yes, love changes everything and} Nothing in the world will ever be the same ”

That is more like it. It is not starry-eyed and star-crossed lovers in a chance encounter on a South Pacific Island. It is not sweaty teenagers on a dance floor.

All of us who have experienced real love in our lives know it has challenges, takes work, and causes us to grow.  It can “change everything.”

This is the kind of love Jesus was talking about when he gave his one and only commandment to his disciples. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”1

You won’t find that in many musicals. It is a love so radical, so tough, that is has led more than one cynic to suggest that we would have been better off if Jesus had just stuck with the original ten commandments rather than adding this additional one. Furthermore, the context makes this command seem even more daunting. 

The scholars who constructed the Revised Common Lectionary (Whom some of us believe were members of the faculty of Hogwarts!) have magically transported us back, on this the Fifth Sunday of Easter, to not only before the resurrection but before the crucifixion. 

We are, once again, in the upper room with Jesus and his disciples. They have just finished their Passover Seder. Jesus, noticing that none of his friends had done this menial task, gets up from the table, girds himself with a towel and washes his disciples' feet. Then he predicts that one of those friends whose feet he has just washed will verbally betray him (Peter) while another will physically betray him (Judas). 

Instead of lashing out with a real scolding for being so disloyal Jesus instead commands them to love one another in the same way he has loved them. 

However, for John, “the love that Jesus commands his disciples to have for one another is specifically a love for other believers. It is a love directed at those who have believed in Jesus as the Messiah and who follow him. This group of believers include both Jews and Gentiles.”2

In other words, it is a love that is meant for everybody. 

That was the early Church’s problem as they goes around preaching about Jesus. 

They were attracting all sorts of believers. Not only devout Jews but also Gentiles and even those who had no former religious interest or affiliation. “And it is at this point of growth, and change, and expansion that the first church faces a conflict and controversy that will either unmake it or reorganize it completely.”3

Jesus’ love will either change everything, or it won’t.

We’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.  

We’ve seen what happens when people are excluded because they think in ways that are different or, worse yet, not exactly like our own.  We know what happens in the name of theological purity.  Churches, people, nations become divided.

We've seen what happens when people are excluded because of their race, or creed, clan or faction, or orientation.  I’ve always wondered how many good people have been kept outside of the church by the unlovely attitudes of the people on the inside?

This is not some new struggle that we have just developed it is an attitude that goes all the way back to the Book of Acts.

We see it in today’s reading.  

Peter has been struggling with the new direction of inclusion that he has been given. The church then, as is sometimes the case with the church now, is highly resistant to Peter’s spirit.  Peter’s new notion of the inclusive love of Jesus will change everything.

Was this following Jesus business for insiders or was it for outsiders? And what kind of outsiders? Was it for people like them, who looked like them, acted like them, followed the same religious customs, or was Peter and his friends just going to let in anybody and everybody. 

It seems that Peter is going to let everybody in and let Christ’s love change them.

He was looking around and discovering that the same message that moved him to follow Jesus was moving others. This thing they were a part of was unstoppable, uncontrollable, unimaginable. It was going to be bigger than they ever dared dreamed because it was going to be for all people, everywhere. 

Peter and his sister and brother followers of Jesus were bearing fruit with a love that changed them, was changing others, was changing everything.

Not all musicals or operas end in disaster and death.

Good-by Mr. Chips, concludes with Professor Arthur Chipping, looking back at his life and remembering that day when his liberal, modern, young wife upended the singing of the school song during a morning chapel turning it from a dirge into a rousing chorus. She started as a lone voice picking up the tempo, and was surprisingly joined by the headmaster’s wife, and finally, gradually, the students and even members of the faculty. 

After his retirement Professor Chipping, Mr. Chips, while walking around campus, looks back at the school he served and loved for so long and remembers that moment and the words of the song, singing it softly to himself: 

    “In the evening of my life I shall look to the sunset, 

      At a moment in my life when the night is due. 

    And the question I shall ask only God can answer. 

    Was I brave and strong and true? 

    Did I fill the world with love my whole life though?” 

That's all Jesus asks us to do — fill our world with love.

It is more than enough for any of us, but it comes with the promise that by this everyone, yes everyone, shall know we are his disciples, if we "fill the world with love our whole lives through.” 

So, in the highly unlikely chance, that sometime this week anyone should ask you what the preacher talked about last Sunday you can tell them: “Love.” Then wait for a moment and add: “He was for it.”

________________

1. St. John 13:34-35. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version] 

2. Mark Price, “John 13:31-35. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading to Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018): pp. 262-265.

3. Kristin Adkins Whitesides, “Standing in the Way,” Day 1, May 9, 2022, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/62700a5c6615fba476000180/kristin-adkins-w hitesides-standing-in-the-way. 

Easter 5B - "Weirdos Welcome"

 

Acts 8:26–40 and Saint John 15:1–8

Several years ago, I was asked to serve on the board of a Campus Ministry at the prestigious University on the North Shore.

Because their congregation was made up exclusively of college and graduate students who were incurring enormous debt to get an education the ministry was always scrounging for money. So, as with most board meetings, the conversation was more about money than ministry and I got to thinking about people I knew. 

There was a Lutheran church on the south side of town and another on the north side leaving people in the center of town with no place to worship anyplace near what was called the “ministry center.”

I thought about the young couple who had twins under the age of three who weren’t particularly faithful not because they didn’t want to come to church but because even if they started getting ready for church at 8 A.M. by the time they got their children dressed, ready, strapped into their car seats, removed from the car seats because one of them had to go to the bathroom, and stopped them from fussing the only worship they could attend was the 5 P.M. “last chance mass” at Saint Monica’s.  

What if we told them there was a “ministry center” with preaching and a full Eucharist every Sunday that they could walk to and would welcome them?  

I thought about the older person with the broken hip who might have lived three doors away and who couldn’t drive yet but who could hobble over?  Wouldn’t it be great to reach out to them?

I thought about how good it would be for the students to worship and fellowship with people who were not like them. 

When I spoke my thoughts aloud the pastor’s response was (And how I wish I was making this up!):  “As long as they are not weirdos, it’s okay.”

I thought she was kidding and said: “Hey!  Hey!  I’m a weirdo and I resent that remark.” The lack of laughter told me that she was not joking in the least.

I was reminded of the classic comment made by Dawn French who played Geraldine Granger in “The Vicar of Dibley” when one of her usually strange parish council meetings went completely off the rails.  “I see,” said the ever-patient vicar, “that the last bus from Looneyville has finally arrived.”

Apparently, in some places, people who might need the Gospel must live up to some arbitrary standard that we are creating on the fly before they can join the fellowship.  They are welcome so long as they are not “weird.”  A stipulation that would exclude not only me but almost everybody I know or would choose to be associated with.

And it probably would exclude the two central characters in today’s reading from the Book of Acts.  They both must have thought the other just a little on the weird side.

We would never suspect that the place of the meeting would be a good location for a biblical discussion.  Did you hear the word?  Did you hear the word where this little tet-a-tet took place. It was in Gaza!  

And we may be wondering, can anything good come out of Gaza?  A place of distrust, one attack after another, Palestinian versus Israelis, Israelis versus Palestinian, that in the last few weeks have bled over to our college campuses.  Gaza is a place where truces never last, anger and retribution rage to the point where now it has been reduced to rubble and refugees.  

In this land of violence, it would be weird to listen in on a civil conversation between  a Greek-speaking Jew from the Holy Land and a dark-skinned African from Ethiopia.

But here we are and there they are so even though it may feel a little weird it would be well for us to listen in.

Our entire knowledge of Ethiopia may be centered around two images.  The famine of the 1980's and the opera “Aida” where the title character is an Ethiopian Princess who is imprisoned by her captures in Egypt.  Both images lead us to a land of mystery, intrigue, and, in the case of the opera, ill-fated romance.

The Ethiopian in the chariot is a mix of contradictions.  He has an important role and exalted title but he is still and outcast.  He may be the Secretary of the Treasury to his queen but he is still, because of the labels put on him by his sexuality, an outcast who “does not conform to the rules set by standard boundaries.”

He is powerless yet powerful, strange yet impressive, ignorant yet knowledgeable. He—indeed even as inscribed on his own body—projects a sense of liminality. That doesn’t mean he is by definition oppressed or an object of pity. It means he might represent surprise, subversion, and expanse.1

 He also is a stunning example of how the gospel can help us expand our boundaries and limitations.

Out of the corner of his eye Philip sees someone reading from a scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.  The biggest surprise for Philip is that some guy, riding in a chariot, had enough dough to own his very own scroll.  Owning your own scroll and racing along in a chariot meant you were super wealthy and a very intriguing character.

Philip races up to him and asks him a question: ““Do you understand what you are reading?”2 The good thing for Philip is that the guy is from Ethiopia and not Chicago.  A Chicagoen would have answered, “What’s it to you?  Mind your own business! Go away!”

Instead, this very polite man says, in effect, “No. Can you help me?”

Philip, in a really weird moment, steps over the countless boundaries of race, and orientation, clan, and faction and simply tells him about Jesus.  So powerful is his witness that the man responds by saying:  “Look, here is some water; is there any reason why I should not be baptized now?”3

Well, we might hem-and-haw at this question.  “The Church’s historic, embarrassing reply has been plenty of things. “4

Ahh, church order.  Church order can think of countless reasons for this sacrament to be withheld.  “Isn’t this all a little sudden?” we rational Westerners might ask.  “Have you thought about this?”  Or, in some traditions, “Are you really willing to walk ‘the saw-dust trail’ and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?”  “Do you really want to do this?”  “Don’t worry if you’d like to think about this awhile,” in the words that Billy Graham used to conclude every campaign for Christ, “the busses will wait! The busses will wait!”

Neither Philip nor his newfound friend and brother wait a second, or a nano-second.  They’re in the river, using who knows what kind of appropriate or inappropriate baptismal formula. Dunking, sprinkling, splashing?  They get the job done.  Philip disappears and, we are told, the Ethiopian leader, “went on his way rejoicing.”5

Suddenly, the one who wants to be included is included. The foreigners are in; the eunuchs are in. The church’s boundaries are being muddied on the banks of some unknown body of water...jarring us beyond “our comfort zone. Beyond our regulations. Beyond our worshiping of texts over people. Beyond our understanding. Beyond our racism. Beyond our classism. Beyond our control.”

Suddenly, the one who wants to be included is included. The foreigners are in; the eunuchs are in. The church’s boundaries are being muddied on the banks of some unknown body of water...jarring us beyond “our comfort zone. Beyond our regulations. Beyond our worshiping of texts over people. Beyond our understanding. Beyond our racism. Beyond our classism. Beyond our control.6

  As a former pastor of mine said once to her congregation on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile:

God takes our boundaries; God takes our stereotypes; God takes our rules; God takes our expectations; God takes all of that and often God looks at ... it and says, No. I don’t have favorites. Your limits, your litmus tests, your fears—none of that limits me. I embrace whom I embrace and guess what, God says, I have got really long arms.7

 Luke reminds us that the Gospel is about new possibilities for everyone! No one is outside of God’s grace. No one is outside of God’s love. No one is outside of the embrace of the Gospel! Jesus was always going to reaching out to the ones on the outside to bring them in. Jesus was always breaking social expectations to make clear that he cared and wouldn’t ever stop caring.

For me, my fellow weirdos, and weirdo Wanna-Be's the idea that Christ has long enough arms to reach across any artificial barriers that might be created is good news. The idea that Christ cares and will never stop caring is amazing news.

For all of you who have ever felt excluded in any way the idea that we have all been embraced by God’s love is good news too.  

It is nothing less than the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is meant for everybody, even weirdos.

________________

1.  F. Scott Spencer, “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40,” Working Preacher, April 10, 2024, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40-5.

2. Acts 8:30b. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

3. Acts 8:36. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips,  The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: Collins, 2009)]

4. James C. Howell, “‘What Can We Say April 28? Easter 5,’” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, accessed April 27, 2024.

5. Acts 8:39d. (NRSVUE)

6. Andrew Foster Conners, “‘Get Up and Go,’” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 3, 2015, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/tag/andrew-foster-connors/page/2/.

7. Shannon J. Kershner, "Hindering" Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, April 24, 2016. http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/042416.htm