Lent 4C - "Bean Head or Bean Counter"

Saint Luke 15:1–3 & 11b-32

 Did you hear the one about the father who had two sons?

Of course you have.  Everybody has.  Even people who haven't been in church since Jesus originally told the story know it. In fact, people who frequent the church may be tempted to tune out the minute the pastor reads the words, "there was a father who had two sons."  "Oh yes," we might say to ourselves, "that old saw.  I've heard it so many times I almost have it memorized. Hearing it again only makes me wonder, 'What's for lunch.  How about a nice roast? Probably not pork but beef or lamb would do quite nicely."

“This magnificent story is known ... as ‘the parable of the prodigal son,’ even by people who never use the word ‘prodigal’ in other contexts.”

This is a human story.  Its power and appeal arise from the reality of the characters. None of them is a plaster saint. The younger son is headstrong, demanding, wasteful, and perhaps even manipulative in his return. The elder son is petty and angry, but his protests have the logic of simple justice and good order. And the father has not been very sensible.1

It is also, as Dr. Fred B. Craddock points out, “extraordinary in its composition, developing the plot in an economy of words, using only the necessary characters, with no more than two onstage at one time, and arriving at a resolution that requires the readers consent to be satisfactory.”2

There was a father who had two sons.

To put it mildly, the first son was a bean head.  He had the emotional I.Q. of a three year old.  His attitude was “I want what I want, and I want it now.”  He didn’t seem to care what it would do to the family.  He didn’t seem to care if his actions would break his father’s heart.  If his brother had to work twice, maybe three times, as hard to keep the place running, so be it.  He wanted what he wanted, and nothing was going to stop him from getting it.

He looks at his father’s 401-k, and landholdings, and livestock and said to himself “there is no way I am going to wait around for my old man to ‘go to glory’ before I get all this. I want it now.”

Every original listener to Jesus' story would have known what we know. This “bean head” is saying in effect, to his father, “I wish you were dead because, if you were I could have my share of your property not tomorrow, or someday, but today.”

This bean head doesn’t seem to realize his only claim to fame is what “Warren Buffett calls “‘the ovarian lottery’ — the random chance of being born into a particular time, place and identity.”3

Compared to the rest of the people in his world, our world, this bean head doesn’t seem to realize how good he has it. 

Still, he asks, ‘I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die!’4

And amazingly his father gives it to him! The young man packs his things and saunters off down the garden path to who knows where leaving his father to just stand at the end of the walk and wonder.

Jesus’ first listeners had to have been perplexed by such a father. People would have raised eyebrows: “His son did… what? Just up and left? And with half his father’s accumulated wealth?” To the father’s face, his neighbors probably doled out pity – that dreaded parody of compassion. But away from him? Not pity, but blame: “Wonder what he did wrong?” He’d clearly not lived up to Proverbs 22:6, “Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

But then, more shame on him: they’d all noticed him gazing down the road day by day, longing for the boy’s return. Had he no pride. Move on.”5

 The father can only stand and wait while his son is somewhere becoming the toast of the town.  

You know how it is when you have money, or people think you have money, everybody is your friend.  It can get very heady.  Everybody in the saloon is your best buddy.  When the cheque comes around at a fine restaurant everybody but you seem to have a severe case of short arms and can’t seem to reach for their wallets or pick up the tab. Meanwhile, your funds are running low, your credit cards are maxed out, and the ATM machine almost laughs in your face when you even approach it.

By the way, please note that, after running away from home this bean head has developed no marketable skills.  He didn’t take his inheritance and become an investment banker.  He didn’t take all the “dough-ray-me” in his pocket and build a business.  With no money, and no skill set the only job he could get is feeding pigs, slopping hogs.  

I love the way The Jerusalem Bible translates this moment. 

“‘When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch, so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs."6

It was a pinch that came like a punch when he wakes up dirty, hungry, and also suffering from the stunning realization that he stinks to high heaven.

At this point this bean head comes up with a plan.  Some may call it repentance, but it sounds more like a scheme to me and a bean headed scheme at that.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’  So, he got up and went to his father.”7

 You can see him, can’t you, rehearsing his speech along the way.  It’s a good speech designed to warm the hearts of even the sternest father. And we know how that turns out.  It turns out better than this bean head could have ever imagined.

His father doesn’t scold him.  His father does lecture him.  His father doesn’t ask him the two obvious questions that everybody in this room would have asked in stronger language than I can share with you today: “Where in the heck have you been? And why do you reek of pig koprion?”

Instead, this father is so glad to see him he throws the party of all parties for his bean headed son and dresses him up to the nines.  Washed up and spruced up the kid is ready again for primetime.

As Father Robert Farrar Capon points out in an essay on this text.

The fascinating thing ...  is that in the whole parable the father never says one single word to the Prodigal Son. Jesus makes the embrace, the kiss, do the whole story of saying, “I have found my son.” The fascinating thing also is that when the father embraces the boy who has come home from wasting his life, the boy never gets his confession out of his mouth until after the kiss, until after the embrace.8

Resolution!  Happy ending!  Oh no, stay with me here because this is a parable of Jesus so there has to be more.  Remember this is a story about a father who had two sons.

Out in the field there is another son, feeling slighted and for good reason. He never ever even received an invitation to the party.  He heard the music and laughter while he was still at work in the field.  It is only when a servant, a servant of all people, comes out to tell him that he finds out what’s going on. Makes you wonder whether he was so taken for granted that nobody noticed he was missing.  Like “Mister Cellophane” in the musical Chicago.  

As the always wonderful Amy Joy Levine observed. “The father indulges the one who slights him and slights the one who indulges him.” 9

Somebody notices that someone is missing.  My former pastor Shannon Kershner thinks it might have been his mother.

Perhaps she was the one thrilled to watch the father and the younger lost son embrace. And perhaps she was also the one who remembered their other son as well. I wonder if the mother sought out the father and said something like, “Remember we have another child, too.” She needed to help him remember all their children. And when she reminded him, the father’s face drained of color, as he realized what he had done. He had forgotten about his faithful child. The one who never caused him any problems. The one he counted on. But because of her reminding, he went searching.

He went to find his other lost son, the one who would not come to the party because he felt forgotten. Due to the mother’s encouragement, the father found the older son and told him everything was already his. Told him how he was full of regret for not having let him know sooner how much he meant to the family, how deeply he was loved, how he, the father, realized that it was the older son who had kept it all going, while he, the father, had been lost in grief and shame and the younger brother had been lost in selfishness and greed.10

The other son is still rightfully angry, and his point is well made.  “‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!”11

The father pleas and begs for him to come in and join the party but there is one thing this young man just can’t get over and Father Capon thinks he knows what it is.  He has the father going out to the son steaming literally and figuratively in the field and says:

“Look, Arthur (let’s call the older brother Arthur), what do you mean I never gave you a goat for a party? If you wanted to have a great veal dinner for all your friends every week in the year, you had the money and the resources. You owned this place, Arthur. You have the money and the resources to have built 52 stalls and kept the oxen fattening as you wanted them to come along, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you do that, Arthur? Because you’re a bean counter, because you’re always keeping track of everybody else. That’s your problem, Arthur, and I have one recipe for you.” (The father is pleading with this fellow to come out of the death of bookkeeping.) He says, “I have one recipe for you, Arthur. That is, go in, kiss your brother, and have a drink.”12

Does he do it?  Jesus never tells us but the one thing we do know is that the father, and the mother too, never gave up on either of their two boys. They never gave up on either whether we be a bean head or a bean counter.

 Long ago at another church in another place and time after I had finished preaching on or leading a bible study on this parable the young man who was the president of the Church Council (Ministry Board to you) came up to me with a question.

He was the kind of person pastor’s dream about.  If I needed something done all I needed to do was ask John.  If there was a flood in the basement, literally, I called John, and he was right there.  He ran excellent, snappy, church council meetings that started on time and ended at a more than reasonable hour.  In addition to all this he was a great father and husband.

John was also a party animal who came early and stayed late.  He could party-hearty with the best of them.  If you tried to keep up with John you would be staying far longer than you intended and consuming so much “liquid libations” that people would be asking about you, “Did he have a hat?”

Anyway, after the sermon, or presentation, or whatever, he came up to me and asked.  “So, pastor, what am I? A bean head or a bean counter?”

And the only thing I could think of to say in response was. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

 ________________

1. David L. Tiede, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament - Luke (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988), 276.

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 186.

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.    St. Luke 15:12b. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]

5.    James C. Howell, “Lost and Found Parties,” Reading Luke Together, March 24, 2025, https://mail.aol.com/d/list/referrer=newMail&folders=1&accountIds=1&listFilter=NEWMAIL/messages/APnsfaISyAh1Z-F_8QzosPIpE_k.

6.    St. Luke 15:14-15. (JB) [JB= The Jerusalem Bible (London, ENG: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1970).

7. St. John 15:17-20. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]  

8. Robert Farrar Capon, “The Father Who Lost Two Sons,” Eclectic Orthodoxy, August 28, 2023, https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2023/08/26/the-father-who-lost-two-sons/.

9. Amy-Jill Levine and Maria Mayo, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi  (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2018), 67.

10. Shannon J. Kershner, “The ‘Missing’ Mother.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 28, 2016.

11. St. Luke 15:28-30. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

12. Capon, loc.cit.

Lent 3C - "Wait Until Next Year"

Saint Luke 13:1-9

Here is a question for you.

What do the Chicago Cubs, Bulls, Blackhawks, Bears, and especially the Chicago White Sox have in common with the fig tree in Jesus’ parable. 

Answer. They are all waiting until next year.

Lot’s of next years have passed in Chicago sports until this year comes to fruition.

Shall we go down the trail of tears. 

The Chicago Cubs waited 107 years before winning a World Series in 2016 and have not been in  one since.

The Chicago Bears last won a Super Bowl in 1985 and have lived off those laurels from then until now.

The Chicago Blackhawks, who had some phenomenal years in the teens with three Stanley Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015 but since then, disappearance.

The Bulls, during the Jordan, Pippin, Phil Jackson days of the 1990's when they won six NBA championships. Count them six championships but, alas, none since.

And the White Sox, who last won a World Series in 2005 after an 88 year drought but who last year set a Major League Baseball record for futility by managing to lose 121 games.  This year doesn’t look much better for them as it looks like their rebuilding process will take longer than that of the Kennedy Expressway.

The only team to have won a championship in recent memory was the Chicago Sky in who were the champions of the WNBA in 2021.  Other than that, Chicago sports teams have had more “five-year plans” than the old Sovie Union.

Clearly, by what I have just put you through, I watch a lot of sports however the one thing I do not do is listen to a lot of sports radio.

The reason is that for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week one can listen to men and women, mostly men – some of whose playing days are long since past and others who couldn’t run 50 yards for 50 million dollars or throw a beach ball into the ocean from the beach – try to explain their favourite team’s latest failures.

In seeking out the reason they usually try to find something or someone to blame for a franchise’s flops which is a temptation in almost any aspect of life.

Who caused this?  Why did this happen? Who's to blame?  

And this, let’s find the victim, and blame them goes far beyond sports or sports radio.  

There is a wonderful line in Amor Towels best-seller, The Lincoln Highway, where one of the characters says about life in a small town. 

“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 {small town} 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.”1

That is the issue that confronts Jesus in today’s gospel.  It is a much bigger question than why sometimes a particular sports team is so bad but rather the age old question of if when bad things happen to some people do they deserve it.

One thing is clear “the people who ask Jesus their versions of the ‘why?’ question already have an answer in mind.  They don’t approach Jesus blank slate; they show up hoping to confirm what they already believe. That is, they come expecting Jesus to verify their deeply held assumption that people suffer because they’re sinful.  That folks get what they deserve.  That bad things happen to bad people.”2

When a piano falls on someone’s head we want to know why they deserved it. 

“We want there to be a reason for human suffering, a moment we can pinpoint where a person’s life went off the rails.”3 

We know why our sports team fail.  No relief pitching.  An offensive line that is porous at best and can’t protect the quarterback. No goal tending. Bad managers. Some years I remember, management and fans have even taken to blaming the broadcasters.  That may be more of an excuse than a reason but still we believe the reasons why failures happen need to be discovered so that may be pointed out. Whether the problems actually get fixed or not is another matter.

In life, pointing out the failures of the guy who has the piano fall on his head, or who are killed by a despot like Pilate, or who meet their end when a building falls on them hold us apart from those who suffer.

“The kind of judgement we are quick to use in other people’s situation based on some ledger of fairness does not reflect God’s logic.”4

The logic Jesus came to tell us about is radically different.  “In Luke’s story Jesus emphatically rejects the simplistic notions {of} blaming the victims of caprice or casualty.”5 Instead Jesus is calling us to repent, to turn our backs on such idle speculation and bear fruit worthy of repentance.

Thus Jesus little story about a fig tree that is  totally non-productive. 

From any rational point of view the owner of the fig tree was absolutely right when he said to his gardener “‘Look, I have come expecting fruit on this fig-tree for three years running and never found any. Better cut it down. Why should it use up valuable space?’”6

And if I could quote Jesus’ solution from the original Greek you would be wide eyed as I am sure his original listeners were.

As Dr. William Willimon told his astounded congregation once.

The Greek word koprion  that’s politely translated in most of our English Bibles as “fertilizer” or sometimes “dung” is a crude word, found nowhere in scripture. “It’s “fertilizer” in church but if this weren’t church, I might tell you what it really means. It’s a crude, four letter word not appropriate for church. And that is the word Jesus uses here! “Let me pile some koprion on it, dig around it, and maybe the dung will do it.7

 Like so many of Jesus parables he just leaves it there.  We never know what happens to that fig tree.  We never know if when next year comes “the ax is being laid to its roots” or it is weighed down with so many figs the land-owner is setting up his own personal first century Fig Newton factory.

What Jesus is telling us is that the same thing offered to the fig tree is being offered us.  It’s a gift we can waist wondering why pianos fall on some guys head, or towers that are supposed to be well-built crumble, or why rulers prey on the innocent or why our sports teams are so consistently bad or we can be like Chicago Sports fans who, just a few days from now will pack both ballparks in the hope that maybe this season, maybe this year, things will be different.

"Sometimes, God’s greatest mercy is time, time to learn from our past, to profit from our mistakes, time to start over.  Christians have a word for that sort of mercy — repentance."8

That’s the message of Lent that there is still time. Time to repent. Time to change. 

“‘Even now, cried John the Baptist, the ax is lying at the root of the trees.’ But instead today Jesus tells us that his “gracious and patient hand reaches out to halt the ax” and instead of giving up when we fail says instead, “‘Let’s give this hopeless case one more year.”9

In other words, let's give this one “time for amendment of life and the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit.” 

________________

1. Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2023)

2. Debie Thomas, “What Are You Asking?” Journey with Jesus, March 13, 2022, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3348-what-are-you-asking.

3. Mihee Kim- Kort, “March 23, 2025: Third Sunday in Lent,” The Christian Century, March 9, 2022, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/march-20-lent-3c-luke-13-1-9

4. ibid. 

5.    David L. Tiede, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament - Luke (Minneapolis,, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988), 247.

6. Luke 13:6-9. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).

7. William H. Willimon, “By God’s Grace There’s Still Time,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 47, no. 1 (2019): 36–38.

8. William H Willimon, “Time to Change,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 53, no. 1 (2025): 36–38.

9. Thomas G. Long, “Breaking and Entering: Sunday, March 18 (Luke 13:1-9) ,” The Christian Century, March 7, 2021, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/breaking-and-entering?

 

Lent 2B - "The Fox and the Hen"

Saint Luke 13:31-15

In light of this morning’s gospel a friend suggested I read the children’s book, The Fox and the Hen.

It’s about a sly fox who spies a little red hen in her garden and decides that she would make a delicious dinner for he and his mother.  So, when she isn’t looking, he sneaks into her henhouse where frightened she flies up into the rafters and calls out, “You won’t catch me. Give up and go home.”

Instead, he sets about chasing his tail.  Round and round he goes and the hen, watching him, becomes dizzy, falls off her perch and into a sack the fox just happened to have to carry her home in.

Gradually, as he walks along, he discovers that she is one heavy hen and so sits down to rest and promptly falls asleep.  

The hen sees it as her chance to escape from the sack and replaces herself with heavy stones.  The fox never notices and lugs the bag the rest of the way home.

Here his mother is waiting with water boiling in a giant kettle and here is also where the story takes a very dark turn. 

The stones splash into the kettle and, instead of ending the story where I would have, with mother and son fox looking at a very wet floor and saying to each other, “That is sure one clever hen.”  The stones hit the water with such force that it splashes all over the two foxes and scalds them so severely that they die.1

This is a children’s book?  Why hasn’t stuff like this been banned?

Kidnapping. Violence. Murder.  This is one grim fairy tale sure to keep, if not the children, at least the adults who were read it to them up at night, scratching their heads, and sleeping with the light on.

But it is also a fairy tale.  A ghastly fairy tale but a fairy tale never-the-less. In the real-world hens rarely outsmart foxes.  In the real-world hens are not the outwitters they are the outwitted. More likely than not they wind up in the kettle with some carrots, potatoes, aromatic vegetables and find themselves the centre piece of the soup.  No, in a battle between a hen and the fox always bet on the fox.

This is exactly why Jesus' response to the Pharisees must have had everyone holding their breath because calling Herod a fox could land oneself in hot water indeed.

Scholars maintain the Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees is not as one sided as we see it. 

“Although,” we are told, “Jesus has conflicts with the Pharisees, in Luke he dines with Pharisees three times.  They represent a group with whom Jesus shares table fellowship and conversation as well as conflict.”2

That is why I see their warning to him as being sincere.  Disagreement does not always have to lead to harm and when they heard rumblings that Herod might be out to get their “worthy adversary” they may have sought to intervene. 

“Luke’s depiction of the complicated relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees renders their warning to Jesus all the more significant.”2

It is significant but it is not an above the fold headline to Jesus.

He must have heard the stories from his mother and father about their journey into Egypt when he was a young lad of two or three.  He must have wondered why they had to hightail it out of their own country for another land and asked for the details. So, he knew that when he was but a boy his father had been warned in a dream “‘Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,’ the angel said. ‘Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’”3

Warnings like that are not easily forgotten. So, Jesus must have known that from the very beginning Herod wanted desperately to do him in. 

The Pharisees were just issuing a warning and Jesus seems to be wanting to add fuel to the fire when he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “You go tell that fox!” 

“Not a fox!” they must have thought or even whispered to one another.  “Oh no, not a fox.  Anything, rather than to be so foolish, than to call Herod ‘a fox.’”

In the Greco-Roman world, “fox” could symbolize deceit and maliciousness as well as intelligence and strength. Within rabbinic literature, foxes are regarded as unclean pests that should be avoided.

We might have tried to avoid a fox, especially a fox that wielded enormous political power at all costs, but Jesus is not done.  He has healing and teaching to do and a death threat is not going to stop him.  So, he replies: “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’”4

It is not long before this spirit of defiance turns into a lament.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of the messengers of God! How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, Her brood safe under her wings— but you refused and turned away!”5

At the First United Methodist church in Chicago there are two altars. The first is in the sanctuary on the main floor and features a carving called “If thou hadst known,” based on the quotation in Luke 19:42 when from the western slope of the Mount of Olives, Christ beheld the city of Jerusalem and wept over it, saying, “If you had known even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.”6

Since the church is located in a skyscraper completed by the United Methodists in 1924 some 400 feet above the city streets is what they affectionately refer to as “The Chapel in the Sky” where  there is another altar with another carving that was done in 1952.

[IMAGE #2] In order to reach this intimate little space you have to use two elevators and a set of stairs.  Once there you would see the “companion piece to the altar in the sanctuary but in the carving on this altar Jesus is shown weeping over the city of Chicago because people still do not know “the things that make for peace.”7

Paddy Bauler, saloon keeper and Alderman, after the 1955 election of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley may have summed up what Jesus was looking at best when uttered the now infamous line "Chicago ain't ready for reform yet!"  Nor does it appear is world and even our nation.

Jesus still laments.  Jesus still weeps.  He weeps at the images of war. 

He knows what is like to be a child ripped from home by a despotic ruler, so he weeps.

He knows what it is like to live in an occupied land surrounded by people who face the daily choice of either battling the occupier or capitulating to the occupation.

He weeps when politicians try to use any reference to words like equity and inclusion as a wedge issue to divide people because that is what his ministry was all about.

He weeps at racial divisions in our land are exploited by the Herods of our time.

He weeps because he knows that we do not know the “things that makes for peace” and that this world “ain’t ready for reform, yet.”

He weeps when “instead of being courageous we are content to be safe” and “allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the good.  Our overwhelming fears need to be overwhelmed by bigger and better things.”8

As Lutheran pastor Jennifer Moland-Kovash wrote in a Christian Century article:

Fear is so very foxy, especially for chickens like us. As it stands there, pretty against the snow, powerful and destructive, we can feel our feathers quiver a bit. Fear doesn’t have to ransack the coop to bring havoc to our lives.

So, what do we do? We look to Jesus’ example. 

He doesn’t hide, even though he knows he will die. Go and tell that fox that I’m busy—bringing good news to those who need it, being the hands and feet of God in this world. Go and tell that fox that I’ve got better things to do in this world than huddle in the corner waiting to die.9

And what we find, says Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Bread of Angels is astounding.

Jesus likened himself to a brooding hen whose chief purpose in life is to protect her young.  She doesn’t have talons or much of a beak. All she can do is fluff herself up and sit on her chicks. She can also put herself between them and the fox, as ill equipped as she is. At the very least, she can hope that she satisfies his appetite so that he leaves her babies alone. . .. How do you like that image of God?10

I’m not sure you that I will or even can understand that image, but it is one that Jesus gave us.  It is love in Jesus, giving life away day after day until he reaches his goal and gives his life away on the cross. 

I’m not sure I understand this.  I’m not sure I comprehend this reforming love that keeps at work even when we might not be willing.

But I do know that apart from that sacrificial love, Christian faith is just another religion, another slogan among many slogans. 

I do know and believe that this one man going humbly to his cross is important to know.  I know and believe that this man who could have, but did not, claim the kind of power and privilege that the “foxes” of the world tell us we must have at any cost shapes my thoughts and my actions. 

I do know that this man is “the truest human being who ever lived and that insofar as you and I live like that, even occasionally, we approach something of the meaning and purpose and glory for which we were created.”11

So go and tell the foxes of the world we got better things to do than huddle in a corner waiting to die. 

Go and tell the foxes of the world that for now we are busy living – bringing good news to those who need it, being the hands of feet of God in the world.

Go and tell the foxes of the world that we know that when our time comes, we’ll be safe under the wings of Jesus.  

But until that time comes, I invite you to join Jesus, with the rest of us chickens, because we still have a lot of living to do.

________________

1. William Anthony and Silvia Nencini, The Fox and the Hen (Minneapolis,, MN: Bearport Publishing, 2023).  Paraphrased.

2.  Shively T.J. Smith, “Luke 13:31-35. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, 2, no. Lent through Pentecost (Nashville: Westminister|John Knox Press,2018): 54–56.

3. Matthew 3:13. (NLT) [NLT=The New Living Translation. (Carol Steam, Il: Tyndale House Publishers, 2015)]

4. St.  Luke 14:21. (NIV) [NIV= The New International Version]

5. Luke 14:34. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene Peterson, The Message  (Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2016)]

6.    “The Altar Carving,” Self-Guided Tour of The Chicago Temple, August 24, 2011, https://tourchicagotemple.wordpress.com/altar-carving/.

7. “The Chicago Temple,” The Chicago Temple, accessed March 9, 2022, https://www.chicagotemple.org/about/history/.

8. Scott Bader-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear: Choosing Trust Over Safety in an Anxious Age (Grand Rapids,, MI: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 31, 60.

9. Jennifer Moland Kovash, “March 16, 2025: Second Sunday in Lent,” The Christian Century, February 23, 2022.

10. Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels: Feeding on the Word (Norwich, Connecticut: Canterbury Press, 2015).  p.  125.

11. John M. Buchanan, “A Strange New Power.” Sermon preached at the Morning Worship service of The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, April 8, 2001.

 

Lent 1C - "Don't Stay in the Wilderness"

Saint Luke 4:1-13

There is a classic Gospel chorus which goes simply: 

My Lord knows the way through the wilderness, 

All I have to do is follow.

Strength for today is mine all the way,

And all that I need for tomorrow.

My Lord knows the way through the wilderness,

All I have to do is follow.

It’s a perfect, even though slightly naive song, that may be perfect for our day when it seems like we are moving from one wilderness experience to another.  Or, as Andrew Egger wrote in the “Morning Shots” newsletter.

Every day is stupid now, but not all stupid days are created equal. Some days are darkly energizing. You want to shout from the rooftops: Look at all the damage these malevolent, clueless jerks are doing! Other days, when the stupidity feels less evil than pointless, are enervating: You’d rather just log off and take a nap. You have to remind yourself: These are actually the good stupid days. You’d rather these than the others.1

It’s like as the wonderful comedian John Mulaney noted in one of his routines.  It’s like were trying to run a hospital and a horse has gotten loose inside. “I think eventually everything is going to be okay but I have no idea what is going to happen next.” he said.  “Noone knows what the horse is going to do next least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital before. There are quiet days when it looks like the horse has finally calmed down and then, at the next moment” the horse is back running down the halls.2

The sense that every day is going to be a stupid news day can leave us feeling as helpless, as if there were a horse is running through our hospital and, day after day, we are going to feel like we’re facing one new wilderness experience after another.

So, it is especially fitting on this day that we discover again that this is where Jesus’ ministry began - in the wilderness.

Dr.  James Howell reminds us:

This wilderness is not a vast expanse of sand with the occasional cactus or tumbleweed.  Instead, we see a rocky, daunting zone of cliffs and caves, the haunts of wild beasts.  People avoided the place, believing demons and evil spirits ranged there, knowing that predators and brigands lurked there.

How silly are we to think that if the Spirit leads, it will be to a smooth, comfortable, pleasant place.3

Nor will it be a place of easy choices – evil or good, war or peace, kindness or aggression.  The choices Jesus made were tough choices that, as the late Dr.  Fred Craddock reminded us, contained “real temptation [that] beckons us to do that about which much good can be said.

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 page”

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.  All this is to say that a real temptation is an offer not to fall but to rise.4 

All of the temptations Jesus faces promised him instant fame, greatness, and that is exactly why they are so, well, tempting.  But temptation is not coercion. 

“‘To tempt’ means to try and convince someone to do something. It means enticing someone to want to do something. Tempters can't make someone do something bad but try to make the temptee want to do something bad. They don't take away the will. Rather, they try to change one's will.  Tempters seek “to change our wills is by lying, by stretching the truth.”5

Politicians are always offering the people “a free lunch.”  Bread and circuses. That’s Jesus first temptation and he knows that this kind of fame is fleeting.   

He knew the story from the history of his people.

How one day they complained that they didn’t have anything to eat, and that life was better back in the old day when, even though they were slaves, at least they had full stomachs.  So, the LORD gave them bread, manna, which is basically a word that means, “what is it?”  However, it wasn’t long before “what is it?” for breakfast, “what is it” for lunch, and “what is it” for dinner got tiring and wasn’t enough and so the people wanted more. They wanted a little variety in their life.  Jesus knew the bread business would never be enough and told the diabolical one so.

But evil never gives up easily and so the temptations of Jesus, at least in our eyes, grow in power and scope.

For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”6

What the tempter didn’t seem to get is what every earthly ruler who is not grounded in the faith forgets: That all those kingdoms belonged to Jesus in the first place.  They were not the “old satanic foes” to give away because they belonged to God.

That is what those who lust for power or who are looking for more power forget.  They want to rule or keep ruling by stealth or force.  They can’t settle for what they have they want “the whole works.”  And if they discover they can’t have it they’ll wage a war or send their followers into the streets in order for them to remain on top, in office, ruling over the people not for the common good but for their pure pleasure and gain.

Jesus knows none of the diabolical plans he has been presented with will last.  Dazzle them with one thing and they will ask for another.  Give them a little power show over even the smallest things and they’ll be looking for something even bigger, more spectacular.  It’s a vicious cycle that we are all caught up in and so we wander from one wilderness to another, and another, and another. 

Even flinging oneself off the top of the temple will bring fame for a day but not much longer.  “‘It’s written, isn’t it,’” says temptation that “‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”7

Yes, indeed, the people will be wowed but it won’t be long before their asking, “What’s next?” 

Jesus is not David Blane or David Copperfield.  He’s going to leave the magic to others.  He’s going to leave the power shows to others.

Human kingdoms that are supposed to last for a thousand years, don’t. Kingdoms established by pure power and might over unwilling subjects usually find their time is short lived.  Putting our faith in human kingdoms leaves us disappointed and wandering.

That is not however, where Jesus leaves us.  He does know that way out of the wilderness.  All we have to do is follow him and not others.

Following others will, even on good days, bring dumb news.  Following others will keep us glued to our televisions, and smart phones, and radios for the latest updates on exactly where “the horse in the hospital is.” 

But following Jesus gives us a different perspective and a way out of our wildernesses. 

My former pastor, the Rev. Shannon Kerscher, gave us a way out of our wilderness wanderings when she said. “In these days of heightened polarization, we are inclined to see the message of the gospel through our already determined political lens, rather than viewing our politics and policies through our gospel lens.”8

Stones to bread will never be enough. All the kingdoms of the world will never be enough. Fantastic stunts will never be enough. But following Jesus, seeing the world with our eyes fixed not on the who gets what world of politics but the who needs what world of Jesus will help us find our way out of our wildernesses by following him and him alone.

Indeed the old gospel hymn is true.  My Lord does know the way not only through but out of the wilderness, all we have is to stop wandering after lesser gods and follow.

________________

1.  Andrew Eggers, “A Good Day in Dumb News,” Morning Shots, March 7, 2025, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-cabinet-musk-cuts-dumbest-timeline-al-green-medicaid-speech?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9qw8e&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

2. John Mulaney, “There’s a Horse in the Hospital.” on Netflix. July 3, 2019.

3. James C Howell, “Luke 4:1-13. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, 2 (Louisville: Westminister\John Knox Press, 2018): 37–39.

4. Fred B Craddock, Luke: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1990), 56.

5. Brian Stoffregen, “Luke 4.1-13 First Sunday in Lent- Year C,” Exegetical Notes, accessed March 8, 2025, https://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke4x1.htm.

6. St.  Luke 4:5-7.  Eugene Peterson, The Message,  (Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2016).

7. St. Luke 4:9-ll. (MESSAGE)

8. Shannon J. Kershner, “Politics and the Pulpit.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 5, 2017.

 

Transfiguation C - "Companions in Darkness and Light"

Saint Luke 9:28-36

When standing in front of the still smoldering ruins of Notre Dame Cathedral French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted  to see Notre Dame Cathedral rebuilt “more beautiful than before” within “five years” most of the ever cynical French and perhaps even the rest of the world probably responded with the word: “Impossible.”

Indeed, even The Guardian reported that there were “warnings that the repairs could take decades and will involve substantial challenges.The main problems include the sourcing of materials and painstaking work to preserve elements of the church that have survived the fire but might have been badly damaged by it.”1

Looking at the pictures no one could fault the dim outlook. Looking at the pictures no one could fault the dim outlook. 

We had watched the spire that dated back to the mid 19th century, tilt, tumble and fall through the roof to the gasps of onlookers. No building could survive this devastation we thought.

We looked down the centre aisle of the church and saw piles and piles of rubble and thought to ourselves it will take five years at least to just clean-up the mess.

Images of the outside made the task seem even more insurmountable. 

Besides we know how long it takes to even build a cathedral much less restore one.  

The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. took around 70 years to complete.  Ground was broken on Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in 1927 and not finished until 1964.  And, we are still waiting for Saint John the Divine in New York to be finished and cranes still   surround the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona in a task the looks like will never be finished.

Besides, some of us non-frankophiles wondered how a country known best for wine, baguets, ennui, and general strikes, could be able to get anything done in five years.  “Non. Mon amie.”  Hercule Pairot might have told the president.  “What you speak of is impossible.”

The secret, according to Bill Whitiker in a 60 Minutes report on the opening, were the hundreds of craftspeople needed to pull off a restoration so fast, so meticulous, and so true to Notre Dame's past. They are known as compagnons, a shorthand for the Compagnons du Devoir, or the Companions of Duty. These workers are part of a French organization of craftsmen and artisans that dates from the Middle Ages and keeps alive medieval skills like stone carving and iron forging.

At Notre Dame, these carpenters, roofers, and art restorers have been guardians of history. The stained-glass windows glow once again. The stone walls, now scrubbed of fire's soot and time's grime, are newly bright. The organ has its own choir of 8,000 pipes, each freshly calibrated.3

What was discovered when they finished was that the grand old cathedral went from being a dark place from centuries of wear and tear to being a stunningly white, bright, beautiful building.  It was transfigured into something that no one had seen in centuries.  And all because of the “companions.”

We all need companions.

That may be why Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to the mountaintop with him to pray.  

They were his companions in life, and he had just told a little more than a week earlier that they were going to be his companions in moments of rejection, suffering, and maybe even death.

He needed companions to be with him as he prayed and in light of the news he had just dropped on them, they needed to pray too.

Suddenly we are told his appearance went from being as they were used to seeing to watching “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”3 He was as bright as the newly restored Cathedral.

To make this scene even more amazing suddenly it looked like Moses and Elijah, two prophets of old, were there speaking with Jesus. This is would more astounding than having Charles de Gaulle and Francois Matterrand sitting side by side at Notre Dame’s opening ceremonies.

Lutheran Pastor Brian Stoffregen has always wondered, how did they know it was Moses and Elijah? 

Did they have pictures of them hanging in their synagogues? Did they have their names over their pockets on their presumably white robes -- or perhaps their names were printed on the back, across their shoulders like football players? However, they knew who they were, they represent the law and the prophets.4

It’s a moment worth preserving which is exactly what Peter wants to do.  And why not?

Moments like this need to be saved and savoured. This is not only a moment worth preserving but it would serve another purpose: It would keep Jesus safe.  All of those predictions about his suffering, and dying could never take place if he was safely ensconced in a house on the mountain.  Nothing could ever happen to him in a mountaintop retreat.

At this moment it is almost as if the LORD God had to blow a whistle, pull back on the reigns and say, “Whoa!  Whoa!  Whoa!” 

While he was babbling on like this, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them. As they found themselves buried in the cloud, they became deeply aware of God. Then there was a voice out of the cloud: “This is my Son, the Chosen! Listen to him.”6

The voice that we think probably sounded like Morgan Freeman’s stops their mountaintop development plans in their tracks and leads them back down the mountain where these companions of Jesus find there is still much work to do.  

The next day they discover just how hard that work will be.  

They are confronted by a father whose son is in terrible trouble. The disciples have tried to heal him, make him whole, but this is one cathedral that they cannot rebuild.

I love the way Saint Mark tells of the exchange between the young man’s father and Jesus.  The father asks Jesus if he could do something that his companions could not and Jesus responds that all things are possible to one who believes him. To this the Father replies: “I believe; help my unbelief.”

Most of us, companions of Christ, live our lives between mountaintop moments of sharp certainty and moments when all we can do is walk on in faith.  

Sometimes life is as grand and glorious as the newly restored Notre Dame but at other times is looks like the ceiling has fallen in and it will take all we have to do our duty and walk with Christ along the way.

That’s why I love the way Saint Mark concludes the stories of Mountaintop moments as companions of Jesus and the father’s plaintive plea as another who seeks to be a companion of our Lord with the father’s words, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

And that is why I also love the way Dr. Tom Are, the interim pastor at Fourth Church concludes every sermon he has every preached in his ministry when he invites the congregation to pray with him saying. “Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.”

So we, as Christ’s companions pray this day those very words. “Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.”

________________

1.    Kate Lyons, “Notre Dame Fire: Macron Promises to Rebuild Cathedral within Five Years,” The Guardian, April 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/17/notre-dame-fire-macron-promises-to-make-cathedral-more-beautiful-than-before.

2.  Brit McCandless Farmer, “The People Who Helped Resurrect Notre Dame,” episode, 60 Minutes Overtime (CBS, December 29, 2024).

3.  St. Luke 9:29. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

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

5.  St. Luke 9:34-35. (MESSAGE)[MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress,1995).]

Epiphany 7c - "Joseph All the Time"

Genesis 45:3-11 & 15

You may have seen the musical but do you know the story of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?  It’s currently playing at Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre.  I’ve seen it countless times on TV, in community theatre productions and, of course with Donny Osmond, and will probably see it again because I know someone in the cast.

I love it for its memorable songs that one comes out of the theatre so embedded in your brain that you find yourself singing them all the way home in the car and in the shower for weeks to come.

In today’s first reading from Genesis, we’re coming in at the last act of what has been a very great story.  We are at the moment where, as they saw in Broadway musicals, the 11 o’clock number is about to be sung.  That’s the song that doesn’t quite end the show but is big and broad and leads to the conclusion which is usually full of love, hugs, tears, and forgiveness. 

But if we read the story of Joseph from the very beginning, we discover it is not “any dream will do” but more like a nightmare.  Jacob and his sons (All of them!) are more like the Kardashian’s, or the Corleone’s, or any member of the Survivor Series and serve as a stunning reminder that the forgiveness that comes at the end is hard won at best.

It is another one of those reminders to people who trumpet the virtues of “Biblical Family Values” that in the real bible those values can be shady at best.

Even the play reminds us of why Joseph was his father’s favourite when his father Jacob sings.  “Joseph's mother, she was quite my favorite wife I never really loved another all my life And Joseph was my joy because He reminded me of her.”

As any parent knows that is a recipe for disaster.  It is one thing to love one child more than another but, if that is the case, it should be a secret that is well kept rather than trumpeted for all the world to see.

Father Jacob can’t contain himself and outfits his beloved boy with what may not have been exactly a “coat of many colours”1 as the King James Bible described it but as one Hebrew translation it is a “tunic reaching to palms and soles.”2

Tunic or technicolour coat, it doesn’t matter because in it Joseph looked smashing.  However, to his brothers who were running around in T-shirts and dirty jeans it shouted loud and clear that “their labour was in the fields, in the heat,” while “Joseph was established in the house with those long sleeves, in a position of power.”3  As Joseph would sing in the play: “When I got to try it on I knew my sheepskin days were gone.”

Now its one thing to have a great job indoors while your brothers are toiling in the noonday sun but it is quite another to tell them about a dream you had that one day they would all be bowing down to you. 

Jacob made a huge mistake by singling out Joseph as his favourite and Joseph makes an even bigger mistake by rubbing his father’s favouritism in his brother’s faces.

So, in this wonderful biblical story of family values they do what most levelheaded brothers do.  They try to kill him.  It’s not a “I’m going to kill him someday.” that every sibling has said or shrieked.  This is a real plot.  

Cooler heads prevail and instead of killing their brother they sell him into slavery.  But, as we say, the cover-up is worse than the crime and so they break father Jacob’s heart by killing a goat, a scapegoat that could be every single one of them and allowing their father to believe that his son had been slain by a wild beast.

The boys didn’t tell Jacob that.  They just allowed him to believe it.  Even though they know otherwise.  Even though they knew and could see that what they had done had broken their father’s heart they refuse to accept responsibility.  

“It’s not my fault!” they claim even though they know, they must know, that all the pain and sorrow has been caused by them.  Maybe they don’t care about Joseph at all. They certainly don’t care about their father’s feelings.  They only care about themselves and saving their own skin.

For Joseph things are going better than be expected as through his skill at managing households, like he did back home, he is put in charge of Pharoah’s entire palace.   

Then it all comes crashing down for him when he is falsely accused by no less that the Pharaoh’s wife of being a little too “handsy” with her and finds himself landing in the clink. 

There, in the deep darkness of his jail cell, things begin to brighten as Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams finds him standing once again in Pharaoh’s presence interpreting his dreams as predicting record harvests followed by a record famine. 

The change in Joseph is seen as he begins to see his abilities as gifts from God and not of his own making.  

This newfound insight will be challenged as never before when his brothers show up at his doorstep and, as predicted long ago, bow down before him begging for food. “Grovel, grovel, cringe, bow, stoop, fall. Worship, worship, beg, kneel, sponge, crawl.” they sing in the play.

He has been wise and virtuous with others, but what about with his family?  Family can bring out the worse in us.  Joseph must work out the complex feelings he has after his brothers’ profound betrayal of him.4

What will he do to them?  After all, as he says in they play, “they tried fratricide.”

Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has written wisely and well of what is happening.

Every person and every family knows about these extremities of pain and estrangement in which humanness is at issue.  Where yearning and hurt, deception and grief, hope and ruthlessness come together is where this special family moves toward dream fulfilment.5

We come in at the magic moment. It comes in the very first words of today’s reading.  “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”6

Both the pathos and hope of the whole story are packed into these words.  

At the heart of both the pain and redemption in this text lie core issues that concern every human in every time, identity, and relationship.  In the episodes leading up to this text, he has toyed with his brothers, and cruelly so, but now he makes a choice that changes everything: he forgives them.  Even within a family system loaded with manipulation, jealousy, and fear, a single person within the system has the power to transform relationships, and even the system itself, through an unexpected act of reconciliation.7

In the play we are at the big finish.  There is singing, and dancing, and hugging, and weeping before it all ends on a big major chord at the end.

That’s why we love plays!  All the tension, resolution, and forgiveness is accomplished in the case of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” less than an hour-and-a-half.  

“That’s one of the hardest qualities to capture when we consider scripture.” wrote Liz Goodman in a Christian Century article. “All the stories of the Bible take time, more time than we moderns might realize. In fact, I think one of the greatest errors people of faith commit ... is to bring our immense impatience to the question.”8

Forgiveness takes time. Reconciliation takes effort.  And in a time where, in the words of the great theologian and “Saturday Night Live” alumi John Mulaney, “It seems like everyone, everywhere, is super mad about everything, all the time” we may not even see those traits as possibilities.  

But as followers of Jesus, it is still our cause. Not to be push-overs.  Not to allow ourselves to be trampled upon by those people who are angry all the time and spend most of their days and nights thinking about how to exploit those who have less than them in money and power but to stand tall and say, “This is not our way!  This is not the way the world works! This is not what our faith tells us we should be doing!”

We still hope for a world where people are forgiving, and kind, and generous knowing that the time is not yet but still working for a time when what is not yet, will be.

Or, as Joseph will sing at the conclusion of “Dreamcoat” “The light is dimming, and the dream is too. The world and I, we are still waiting. Still hesitating.” Waiting for the dream of Joseph and Jesus to come true. 

May that day come soon.

________________

1.  Genesis 37:3. (KJV) [KJV=The King James Version]
 

2. Genesis 37:3. (OJB) [OJB=The Orthodox Jewish Bible]

3. James D. Howell, “What can we say come August 20? 11th after Pentecost,” James Howell's Weekly Peaching Notions (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, August 7, 2017), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/2017/07/what-can-we-say-come-august-20-11th.html.

4. Brent A Strawn, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018): pp. 255-257.

5. Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982). p. 342.

6. Genesis 45:4b (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

7.    Stacey  Simpson Duke, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018), 258.

8. Liz Goodman, “Joseph’s Whole Story (Genesis 45:3-11, 15),” The Christian Century, February 18, 2022, https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/sundays-coming/joseph-s-whole-story-genesis-453-11-15?