The Community Gathered in Jesus’ Name

Sermon for Sept. 10, 2023, Pentecost 15A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew 18:15—20

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”                   

The text we read from Matthew’s gospel reflects a time in Matthew’s young Christian community as they tried to work out life together.  To read this in our context we will need to clear out some weeds that we will get to in a minute. But let us start with this:  Communities are made up of people, and people will never fail to step on each other’s toes, offend each other, try to control each other, and hurt each other. 

People are people; we are human, and we all have both positive characteristics and dark sides, good days, and bad days. 

So, how should a community handle the behaviors that come from those dark sides on those bad days?  Well, a principle that they knew from the Jewish Law in the Hebrew Bible was that you never convict a person on the basis of a single testimony (Dut. 19:15). 

Whenever you hear a story from one person about another, always remember that you have heard one side of the story, and every story has more than one side. So, be slow to join accusations.  

The whole point is to try to work it out. Don’t rush to judgment. Try to get to a resolution, to reconciliation. In other words, keep your ego in check. 

The goal is not punishment, but the peace that comes from honesty. In order for this to work, someone is going to have to back down. Someone is going to have to admit fault. Someone is going to have to own what they did, stop making excuses for it, and apologize. 

Then, the other one is going to have to accept the apology and move on. Otherwise, what would be the point of talking about it?  

Ego Work

Both admitting fault and forgiving require ego work. What does that mean?  We all have egos, meaning our sense of who we are and what we are entitled to. 

We all think everyone in the world owes us respect. We all want to be taken seriously. 

We all think our own perspective is right. 

We all want everyone else to give us the benefit of the doubt, to assume that we had perfect motives, and did our best, even when we didn’t. 

All those things are what we call ego. The self, or the ego, is that part of us that takes offense, and holds grudges. The ego is that part of ourselves that gets its feelings hurt when we don’t get what we think we are entitled to.  

Now, this is tricky for two reasons. We believe that Jesus taught us to live in such a way that we show respect to everyone, so, in that sense, everyone deserves respect. That is what we extend to others. But that is not what we are to demand for ourselves in the context of our community.  

The second way this teaching is tricky is that we are talking about life together in community. We are not talking about larger social issues. It is right for oppressed groups to demand justice and to be treated with respect. But inside the community, we are to turn the other cheek, and forgive “seventy times seven times.” 

Clearing Matthew’s Weeds

Now, I mentioned that there were weeds that needed to be cleared away from this text.

The following advice, I believe, is not a memory of the historical Jesus, but an expansion on that memory from Matthew’s community. It is the advice about what to do if negotiations fail and the one at fault does not own it, back down, admit it, and apologize. Matthew says, 

“if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.”

Scholars do not believe the historical Jesus said that, because of the way he treated Gentiles and tax-collectors. In fact, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the disciple named Mathew was himself, a tax collector, and also that Jesus accepted him, and that he was compassionate to Gentiles.  

The Community Gathered in Jesus’ Name

But the final statement in this teaching is the key. Matthew says Jesus said:

“where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Two or three is the smallest community you can imagine, but it is sufficient.

When we gather, we gather in the name of Jesus. That means that Jesus is the basis for our community. The life and teachings of Jesus show us the way to live, including how to live together in community. 

We gather to remember Jesus and to let his words shape our lives. What we see, when we look at Jesus, is a person who demonstrated love at every turn. 

He loved his disciples, even when they failed. 

He loved people whom he called “lost,” whom other people wrote off as “sinners.” 

He loved people whom other people neglected, disrespected, or despised: sick people, Samaritan people, women, Gentile people, poor people, even children, which was counter-cultural at that time. 

Jesus was able to love because he had his ego under control. He did not get offended, even when he was being challenged. He did not need to be first, in fact, our tradition tells us that he washed the feet of his disciples; something only servants did. 

Jesus practiced the kind of spiritual practices, like meditation, or contemplation, that put his own ego in place. The community that gathers in his name seeks to do the same.  

Liberation from Enslavement to Ego

This is one of the forms of liberation we talk about: we can be liberated from slavery to ego when we practice the Jesus way of living. 

We can be freed from the necessity of protecting our pride and defending our right-ness. 

We can be unshackled from the need to have the last word, be recognized, and be taken seriously by everyone. 

That is what Jesus saves us from, if we let him.  

The sign we wear to the world is the sign that Jesus said would distinguish us as his followers: love.  

I cannot think of a time when we have needed this more than today. Our country is so divided; there is so much hostility, anger, arrogance, and derision — we all know it. Let us not be part of it! Let us be the solution. 

Let us be a community that models the Jesus-way of love; love for each other, and love for our enemies. 

All of our work for justice, equity, and inclusion is motivated, not by resentment and bitterness, but by love. Even when we have to confront systems of injustice and repression, we do it in love. Even when threatened, we respond with love. 

We keep doing the ego-work, keep our spiritual disciplines alive, we keep meditating, so that we can pray for those who oppose us: 

“may they be happy, may they be well, may they be filled with kindness and peace.” 

As our scriptural wisdom tradition teaches,

“love covers a multitude of sins.”

Romans 12

Servant Style

Sermon for Oct. 17, 2021, Pentecost 21B

Audio is here.

Video will be available at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith, AR. after the Sunday service under the Traditional Services playlist.

Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

I do not believe that any of us would be as shameless as James and John.  We live in different times.  In our culture, we democratize power.  We do not use titles like Mister or Misses much anymore.  We address our doctors by their first names.  Even professors invite students to use first names.    

In the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, one of the issues was power and the abuse of power, which is why we, in the Reformed tradition do not have bishops.  

But power still plays a huge role among us.  Everyone has an ego, and that is where it starts.  From there it grows to include the collective egos of institutions, organizations, and systems.

Power Matters to God

Power matters to God.  Richard Rohr says “A [primary] idea of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is its very straightforward critique of misuses of power.”  Specifically, power as domination.  

The central narrative of the Hebrew Bible is the exodus story which begins as  God hears the cries of the suffering Hebrew people.  They have been bearing the weight of the empire’s pretentious ambitions, but God calls Moses to lead them to freedom.  

Domination systems are antithetical to human flourishing, and therefore, contrary to God’s good will for humanity.  

Power is Seductive

But that lesson is hard to learn.  Power is seductive.  People like being in control.  Even Jesus had a frustratingly difficult time convincing his own inner circle of disciples to relinquish aspirations of power.  

We will focus on the story we read from Mark 10, but we have to remember that this is the second time Jesus has tried to teach the same thing.  In Mark 9, Jesus questioned the disciples about the subject of their recent argument and learned that it was about which one of them was the greatest.  

That was when he asked a child to come and stand before them and said, 

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  

The words “servant” and “child” have a common root, so Jesus was making a play on words, which, combined with a live object lesson should have made the teaching memorable.  

But it is one thing to remember a lesson and quite another to internalize it. Clearly, the disciples did not yet internalize the teaching that in the community formed around following Jesus, power was not to be used for domination.  

The Shameless Request

In our text, we read that James and John come to Jesus with a request; they want to sit on Jesus’ left and right in his “glory.”  They want to be in the second and third positions of power behind Jesus when his kingdom finally arrives in full.  

Not only do they completely fail to grasp the nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus has been teaching, they also fail to understand the values of the kingdom.  The nature of the kingdom of God is that it is not like an earthly kingdom.  The kingdom of God is not hierarchical.   It does not center power at the top, so that it flows downward in decreasing degrees as hierarchies do.  

The values of the kingdom are different too.  The kingdom of God does not center the voices of the elite, but of the marginal.  

Children are the icons of the kingdom because greatness and domination are not their concerns.  James and John are way off track at this point in the story.

It is remarkable that the Gospels recorded this scene.  James and John have completely misconstrued Jesus’ ethical vision of a kingdom of equals in which leaders use their positions for service instead of domination.  

But the early Christian communities finally got the message and considered it of such importance that this story was transmitted, even at the expense of the reputations of the community’s leaders.  

It is such an embarrassing story that when Matthew re-told it, he had James and John’s mother make the request on their behalf, as if to shift responsibility away from them. 

But it was not only James and John whose reputations were sullied by this story.  The other disciples stumble into the same ego-pit.  When they heard of James and John’s request, they became angry with them.  

Why?  The only reason could be that they believed James and John had jumped the gun, grasping for something they all wanted as well. 

Jesus’ Responses

Jesus had two responses; first to James and John, then to the whole group.  To James and John Jesus asked if they were going to be able to drink the cup he had to drink, or be baptized with his baptism.  

Both cup and baptism are metaphors for suffering.  The cup of suffering Jesus can see coming is so excruciating that later,  in the garden, on the night of his arrest,  even Jesus himself will ask God to remove  it from him.  

The baptism is a baptism of fire, a full submersion into agony.  That is the path Jesus is facing, not the path that leads to a glorious throne of power.  

Jesus’ mission included a direct confrontation with the domination system that was oppressing his people.  He was on his way to Jerusalem where he was going to perform a publicly provocative action.  He was going to shut down the center of power, the very location where the records of debts were stored, the temple.  

In his day, many peasants, which comprised the majority of the population, were being forced off of their land and into virtual debt-slavery.   The aristocratic families that controlled the high priesthood were becoming wealthier and wealthier at their expense. 

Jesus, like Moses before him, was called by God to confront that domination system, even at the cost of his life.   

How absurd then, for the people who were his front line staff to be quibbling about power, greatness, and thrones.  And yet, at that point, they had not awakened to Jesus’ vision.  

Exposing Cultural Values

Why not?  They had absorbed the values of the dominant culture.  

This is what humans do.   We take on the attitudes, the norms, the perspectives of our culture.  We do not even think to question our culture’s values.  

We are blind to our cultural assumptions until someone enlightened holds up a mirror to us and we see them from another perspective.  

That is what Jesus did.  He held up a mirror to the disciples and said, in effect, look at yourselves; you have pagan values.  You have the values of people who never heard the Genesis creation story.  

They do not understand that God created everyone in God’s image so that every person has dignity and value equally.  If you had internalized that story you would understand that there is no justification for domination.  So he said, 

“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”

Jesus is saying, in effect, yes, that is the dominant culture; but look how that works out; you yourselves have suffered under this domination; how could you possibly want to turn around and dominate others?  He said flatly,

“But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

Then he used himself as the example to follow.  Using the title for himself that literally means “The human one” he said, 

 “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  

A ransom here means the price you pay to release someone from debt slavery.  Jesus was willing to put his life on the line on behalf of many, to oppose the structures of domination.  

The Work Continues

That is why we who seek to follow Jesus believe it is our duty to continue his work.  We know that our culture has been blind to how systems of domination have oppressed people, but now, more and more are being exposed. 

We can see ourselves in the mirror when we hear the voices of those who have suffered.  

We listen to women’s stories and come to understand the role that sexism and patriarchy has played in our society, from the home and family to the world of business and politics.  

We listen to the voices of people of color and come to understand how racism has infected our society since the first white people arrived here four hundred years ago.

We listen to the voices of people who are in the LGBTQ+ community and we have a whole new set of reasons to have sympathetic concern, knowing that there was never a time when we cis-gendered heterosexuals ever chose to be what we are.

This is why leadership in the church only makes sense if it is servant leadership.  As followers of Jesus, we demonstrate an alternative value system; the values of the kingdom of God.  

Our officers take vows to “serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.”  Leadership is servant-style.  It is for the flourishing of our community of faith, so that we can make a difference in the world, doing what Jesus did: exposing oppressive systems of domination which cause suffering to the people made in God’s image.  

Today we will finish the process of installing officers for our church.  They will repeat the same vows we ministers make.  The only difference is the specific roles we play in the community.  

None of us is perfect.  The standards we affirm are high  standards.  The call to be servant-leaders is aspirational.  None of us reaches them perfectly.  

That is why the call to these high standards must be accompanied by disciplined spiritual practices that help us along the journey.  Specifically, practices that help us with our ego issues are essential.  

Meditation is a powerful spiritual technology that, over time, helps a great deal with ego.  The Enneagram is also a powerful tool to help us see ourselves as we are so that we can grow towards transformation.  

So, we engage these and other practices so that we can be as authentic in our quest to follow Jesus as we are able to be, as we seek to emulate  the one who came, “not to be served, but to serve.”

Fighting for the Powerless

Sermon for Sept. 12, 2021, Pentecost 16B

Audio podcast is here.

Video is available at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR. after the Sunday Service.

Mark 5:21, 24b—33

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea.

 And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

What kind of story is this? On the surface, it is a miracle story.  Jesus miraculously cures a woman of a disease.  

But why tell a miracle story at all?  One reason may be to show how special the miracle worker was.  But how many miracle stories do you need to get that done?  Why keep telling them?

There is a danger in telling a miracle story.  It could just make you frustrated, or even angry.  If you or someone you love is ill or suffering, hearing a miracle story just emphasizes the fact that you have not had the miracle.  Jesus is not present now as he was when he walked the earth.  

No one else seems to have special powers.  Even modern medicine has its limits.  Anyway, no one lives forever, not even Lazarus, so why tell the story to people out of reach of the hem of Jesus’ robe?

Because there is a lot to learn by telling this story this way.  So let us walk through the story together and try to understand why early Christians wanted this to be part of the way they remembered and learned from Jesus.

Location Matters

The story opens by setting the location.  It is not random; it is specific. Jesus is just returning from ministry on the other side of Lake Tiberius, the gentile side.  

Back on the Jewish side of the lake, let us notice where Jesus is.  This is going to be a story about a person, in this case, a woman, encountering Divine power; healing power.  Where doe this happen?  It is not in the holy city of Jerusalem.  It is not in the holy temple or even the outer courts where women were permitted.  

No, this story takes place in an ordinary, everyday space where common people live.  Ordinary space, not just religious spaces are where the Divine can be encountered.  

Healing can happen anywhere; in fact everywhere.  That fact is part of the point of the story.  Wherever you are, healing can happen.

We notice  also that Jesus’ ministry was not localized to one place.  He did not ask people to come to him.  He did not set up a headquarters as an alternative to the Jerusalem temple.  He did not collect tithes or require membership.  

He kept moving, town to town, to where people lived, to bring them the healing message of the kingdom, which he said was already present where they were, if they had eyes open to seeing it.  

Even when he gave that famous invitation

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” 

(Matt. 11:28)

he said that out in one of those villages he was passing through. 

No More Monopoly

We forget how radical this was.  The temple priests thought they had a monopoly on God.  They thought they had a monopoly on forgiveness of sins, on pronouncing formerly impure people cured, on atonement and on worship, but Jesus completely deconstructed that monopoly.  

For Jesus, God could be encountered wherever you could look up and see the birds of the air, or look around and see the lilies of the field.  In other words, anywhere, and especially in nature.  

I know so many people who say that the place they are most likely to encounter the Divine in nature, even people in professional Christian ministry.  Of course they do.  God is the Source of everything and is in and through everything.  

Richard Rohr even goes so far as to say that Reality itself is an acceptable way of naming the Divine (and he is a Roman Catholic, Franciscan priest).   

So, apart from an institutionally religious place, out there with the common people,  with no professional clergy around, a woman encounters divine healing.  

Many people today feel alienated from institutional religion.  Are they outside the reach of Divine Love?  Not at all.  

The Powerless Woman

Now let’s notice some specifics about this woman.  First, she is an unaccompanied woman.  Was she a widow?  We do not know, but it seems likely.  No man was around to intercede for her, as would be expected in that culture.  

Widows, along with similarly powerless, vulnerable people, orphans, were icons of  poverty and helplessness in the Jewish world.  The Hebrew bible is teaming with admonitions to give support to widows and orphans, and often that pair is tied to a third powerless, vulnerable group: aliens, or strangers, in other words, non-citizens; we call them immigrants.  Listen to just a few of the many admonitions from the Hebrew bible:

Deut. 10:17 “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.” 

Deut. 24:21   “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.”

Isaiah 1:17 “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

In this story we see Jesus putting into practice this mandate to fight for the powerless.   Probably everybody in that crowd had some kind of problem.  

In a time when there were no dentists, no idea of germs and infections, no treatments for torn cartilage or broken bones, everybody had medical problems.  

But this story singles out for particular concern an icon of powerlessness: a woman, likely a widow.

Ignoring Impurity

Her powerlessness does not merely derive from her gender and singleness, it is even deeper.  She has a blood disorder.  The exact nature of it does not matter.  All we need to know is that it involves blood.  

Blood, and all bodily fluids associate with reproduction, made the person who touched them religiously impure.  

According to the Law of Moses, everything she touched became impure.  The remedy was seven days of isolation, followed by offering sacrifice with the help of a priest.  

Jesus completely ignored this purity regulation, as he did so many other times.  For Jesus, access to the Divine was not limited to the pure people.  

Institutional religions, including Christianity, long after Jesus, have set up all kinds of purity standards as obstacles to the Divine — but none of them come from Jesus.  The Roman Catholics invented the confessional.  Protestants, in the Reformation, invented communion tokens, dispensed by elders after you passed their worthiness tests.  

Modern people have all kinds of purity standards, mostly unwritten, that shame people with tattoos, or substance abuse issues, or body piercings, or who use colorful language, or who are gay or non-binary.  The list is long.  None of it comes from Jesus.  

There is a powerful lesson there.  Purity standards always feed the egos of people who require them of others.  Maybe that is the essential point of them?  Maybe that is why they never seem to go away, in spite of Jesus’ example.  

The Power of Touch

Back to the story, we notice that this powerless woman took an enormous risk.  She reached out and touched Jesus’ robe.  She had no guarantee of what would happen.  No guarantee that she would experience healing, no guarantee that she would remain anonymous, no guarantee that her effrontery would go unpunished.  But she risked it all by reaching out to touch Jesus.  

Remember, this story was written long after Jesus was around to be touched.  If healing came from touch, then are all of us who live after Jesus’ earthly presence out of luck?  Is there any more access to Divine healing if touch is not available?

The Christian tradition teaches us that there is a way we can encounter the Divine that includes touch, even today.  

On the night before Jesus was arrested, he ate a final supper with his disciples.  After the meal, he gave them a way of invoking his memory after he was no longer physically present.  He said that they should remember him, not just by talking about him, but also by taking bread, giving thanks, breaking it, and sharing it together.  The same with the wine, poured out into a cup all could share.  

The breaking and the pouring would remind them of how Jesus was broken and poured out for them.  Everyone received it by touching the bread and tasting the wine.  It was physical.  It was real.  It was earthly and tangible.  And that act of touch made Jesus real to them.

That is why the Lord’s Supper is so important to us.  It goes beyond merely spoken words, beyond even music.  It is in touch that we remember Jesus at a deeply human level.  

Remember Luke’s story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus who encounter Jesus without recognizing him?  It says, their eyes were opened, and 

“he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” . 

(Luke 24:35)

How frequently are we to celebrate communion? Paul, quoting Jesus, used the word “often.”  

But again, church tradition muddied those waters, as it has done with so many things Jesus taught.  There is healing in touch.  How often do we need that?  That is worth thinking about. 

Trust Heals

There is so much more to this story of a healing encounter with the divine that took place out there in peasantville when Jesus was touched by an impure, powerless woman.  We have time only to notice what Jesus said upon discovering her.  He called her “daughter.”  

She was not shunned, not isolated, not quarantined, but accepted into the family of Jesus’ company of radical inclusion.  And then Jesus told her how it her healing happened.  He said, 

“daughter, your faith has made you well.”  

Faith used to mean simply “trust.”  It eventually came to mean believing things, like statements in a creed.  But originally faith just meant “trust.”  

She trusted, and her trust in the presence of the Divine was healing for her.  Jesus’ whole ministry was filled with encouraging people to trust the Divine.  His favorite metaphor was “Heavenly Father.”  As we said earlier, some call it “Reality as it is.”  Some call it a “higher power.”  The name is not the main thing: trust is.  

This story challenges us to live lives of trust.  Trust that the Divine is present and can heal us of all kinds of sicknesses: of our ego issues, our fears, our hopelessness and our despair.  

Trust can give us the courage to go outside the walls of the religious institution and encounter normal people, where they live, and be, for them, agents of healing.  

Trust can enable us to, as the banner says, “Be the church” by doing what Jesus did: fighting for the powerless.  

Trust enables us to believe that God is doing something important in our day, even if it looks different from what came before.  

Trust enables us to think outside the boxes of our traditions, just as Jesus did, to do new things in new ways, and watch the healing happen. 

Mysticism and Unity

Sermon for May 24, 2020, Easter 7A

Audio will be here for several weeks. Video is at the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR YouTube channel

John 17:1-11

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

In our Monday Morning Seekers class we have been recently discussing Celtic Christianity. We have been reading John Phillip Newell’s book, “Listening for the Heartbeat of God.” In it, he describes the way the early Celtic Christians put more emphasis on right living than on right belief. Unlike the Roman church, they were more practical than theoretical. But historically, Roman Christianity prevailed, and right belief has been the dominating center of attention for centuries. 

Believing the right things, for example, about the Trinity made all the difference between who was considered orthodox and who was a heretic.  

There is a great irony there when we think about Jesus and where he placed the emphasis. Jesus never spoke of the Trinity or asked us to believe in that difficult doctrine.

Another irony, at least in my opinion, is that there are things we are asked to believe that are much harder than the Trinitarian co-equal status of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How about what we are asked to believe in the text we just read, that we all should be one, like God and Jesus are one?  

On one hand, nothing is more obviously not the case. It never has been the case that humans have considered themselves one with each other. 

In fact, the bizarre truth is that the worst conflicts seem to happen from those who are most like each other, save in minor details: Hutus against Tootsies in Rwanda, Serbs versus Croats in former Yugoslavia, and this past week, I just read of the deaths of hundreds of people in South Sudan because of inter-communal conflict. Having a conflict during a global pandemic ensures that even more people will die. 

People simply do not consider themselves one, even with their ethnic or ideological cousins. We tend, instead, to be tribal: viscously tribal. They say that this is how we learned to survive, back when we all wore animal skins and had bones in our noses. We are good at being one with our tribe, but only with our tribe.  

Reading John

So what do we do with texts like this? Well, let us look at it together. First, we remember that this text came from a community of Christians, living at least six decades after Jesus walked the earth. They revered Jesus. 

Jesus epitomized for them the possibility of living with a transformative God-consciousness. The historical Jesus attracted many followers, partly because people who were with him experienced the presence of God when he was present. He seemed to exude a confident trust in God. 

He spoke of God in intimate terms, calling God, Abba, Father, or more like, “papa.” Jesus had an uncanny ability to see beyond petty and socially-constructed divisions between people, welcoming and loving people who were considered uncouth and undesirable by society.  

So the community that the Gospel of John comes from revered Jesus. When John wrote his version of the Jesus-story, he used Jesus to represent God. It is admittedly a bit hard for us to grasp, but in John’s gospel, Jesus literally represents God. So, Jesus and God share the same “glory” which is a word that literally means a brilliantly shining God-ish-ness.  

And, to make it clear, John breaks the rules of grammar, portraying Jesus speaking of himself in the third person, not as first-person “me,” but as “Jesus Christ” as Jesus describes “eternal life,” saying, as he prays,  

“And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

The Mysticism of Jesus and the Early Church

Even though the grammar is weird, the meaning is clear. John’s community experienced a transformed life, by getting to know God through knowing Jesus. Jesus led them to a spirituality of oneness with God. 

This is the essence of mysticism, which was clearly practiced by Jesus and by early Christian communities. It is a sad anomaly of history that we gave up mystical experience for theology, creeds, and catechisms. 

But anyway, in the early centuries, they were still mystics, and they experienced oneness with God, just as Jesus did.  

So, John wrote this section in which he presents Jesus, who stands for God, in prayer to God. So, Jesus’ prayer requests are meant to express God’s will. God’s will for people is for the healing of all of the divisions between each other. He wills for their oneness. Jesus prays,

“that they may be one, as we are one.”  

Protection Needed

In order for them to be one, Jesus prays for their protection, saying, 

“protect them in your name that you have given me”. 

What would they need protection from? From all of the forces that subvert God’s will for oneness. What would those be? 

There are so many forces against unity. For example, I think we need protection from the forces of tribalism that make it easy to ignore, write-off, or even despise people who are not in our tribe, our race, our religion, our party, our orientation. 

When former Evangelical pastor and author Rob Bell wrote his book “Love Wins,” in which he expressed doubt about the existence of hell, another leading Evangelical Theologian tweeted “Farewell, Rob Bell.” Belief in hell is a requirement for that tribe.  

There are many kinds of tribes these days, with their exclusions and litmus tests. I think today we need protection from the forces of tribalism that make it impossible for Democrats and Republicans to work together for common solutions to the health and economic crisis we are in because of the pandemic. 

Covid-19 could have been the common enemy that we all united to fight against together, like the way we united to fight fascism in the Second World War; but instead, we are fighting each other. Our lack of unity literally kills people.

Eternal Life Starting Now

In John, the transformed life that has experienced healing of those divisions is actually called “eternal life” that begins already here and now, in this life. Let us hear it again. Jesus prays, 

“And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

“Eternal life” is knowing God, and specifically, knowing God in the form of Jesus. For us, God is Jesus-shaped. In other words, although God is a mystery beyond human understanding, there are some things we can say about God. 

God must be as compassionate as Jesus was. God must be as inclusive as Jesus was. God must be as responsive to human suffering as Jesus was. 

Eternal life begins now, as the kind of transformed life that emulates the Jesus-perspective. 

I believe that this kind of transformation comes from mystical practices, like meditation, specifically because those practices help us with the ego; the very basis of our feeling of separation and superiority to other tribes. 

The ego wants to be superior and exclusive, to be tribal, but mystics know that that is an illusion; a dangerous, destructive illusion. Meditation, which reduces the ego voice in our heads, is what nearly all mystics practice because it is so effective.  

Unified Mission

People who have the kind of mystical insight into our essential unity are not in it for themselves; they naturally reach out to help others. John says that God “sent” Jesus into the world. 

But, lest we think that this kind of sending happened only once and only to Jesus, let us remember that that was only the first step in the sending process. Later we will hear Jesus say to the disciples, 

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  

John 20:21

So, a sense of mystical unity leads naturally to a sense of mission. We are one, sent on a mission from God to overcome all the forces of division that separate us.  

How?

How? For the historical Jesus it meant having table fellowship that broke down those divisions. It meant conducting his ministry in non-Jewish territory. It meant having conversations with people who had been marginalized, like lepers, women, and Samaritans, and with people who were responsible for marginalizing his people, the Romans, even with Roman soldiers who were implementing the repression.  

How about us? It is specifically our mission to reach out to all kinds of people with the belief that, at least in God’s perspective, we are all one. 

This fundamental belief draws us to participate in the Interfaith Fellowship. We believe that beneath our external differences, we are all one. 

This is also what opens our hearts to the poor among us, as we participate in several feeding ministries like Second Sunday Salvation Army Suppers and weekly collecting canned goods. 

We are not above people just because we have been blessed with material resources. At root, we are all one, and we have been sent on a mission in Jesus’ name. 

This sense of our foundational oneness opens us to people who have been marginalized in every way, including people with disabilities, people with mental illness, and people who have non-heterosexual orientations. 

Before this pandemic hit, we were formulating plans to create a safe space for LGBTQ youth to come for fellowship, for education, and for connection to community resources, like counseling and medical resources. 

We have become aware of the huge problem of homelessness and suicidality among those young people, and as people of faith who believe we are essentially one, we feel the call to minister to them.  

We will probably never achieve the kind of oneness we seek. The world will never be fully healed of its divisions. There will probably always be tribalism and war, just as there will always be poverty and hunger.  

But we are here because we have embraced Jesus’ vision. We believe we have been sent with a purpose to be part of God’s mission of compassion and healing. 

We will continue the kinds of mystical ego work that keep our hearts in tune with God’s heart, and leads to transformation. We will affirm together, that despite appearances to the contrary, we are one. 

Being Called to Follow Jesus

Sermon for Jan. 26, 2020, Epiphany 3A.

Audio will be available here for several weeks.

Matthew 4:12-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake–for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

The early church struggled with a question that was hard to answer. The question was, how was Jesus related to God? Clearly, Jesus was a person of great God-consciousness. People were drawn to him because they felt the presence of God when he was present. Some experienced healing. His teaching showed that he had insight into God’s purposes. His prayer life was intimate, not pro-forma or ritualized. But how, exactly did Jesus relate to God, the early Christians wondered?  

They came up with many different explanations. Some said he was totally God, just appearing to be human, like the way Greek gods could do. Others said he was totally human, but was adopted by God as God’s son at his baptism. There were other ideas too. 

Christians eventually took sides, proclaimed their view correct, and the other views were wrong; heresies. There were fights, even street fights. The question for them was, what do you believe is the right answer? In other words, believing the right theology about Jesus and God became the central Christian question.  

Christianity spread in those early years. The Roman empire was so divided with bishops condemning each other and their flocks that by the early 300’s the situation was dire. So, Emperor Constantine convened a meeting of all the bishops, requiring them to come to the city of Nicea to hammer out one creed they could all agree on.  Eventually, they did. Most of them did. There was one bishop who, even on pain of punishment would not agree, but the others did. 

They produced the Nicene Creed. The point of Christianity had become: do you believe the right things about Jesus and God? If not, you were condemned as a heretic, and you were told you were not saved, and were destined for the fires of hell, forever.  

Nicea vs. Jesus

Some of us here know that story well, but I wanted to review it this morning because it is such a stark contrast with the text we read. What did Jesus want from people? Did Jesus have a creed? Did Jesus demand that people believe a set of ideas about himself? 

What is the gospel? Is it, “believe this and you will escape hell when you die?” It is my opinion that we should let Jesus answer that question. He did, in the text we just read.  

Matthew tells us, 

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.” 

“Good news” means “gospel.” So what was the gospel that Jesus proclaimed?  Let’s hear it straight from Jesus:

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Kingdom of heaven is the same as kingdom of God. Jews avoided saying the sacred name of God, so they often said, “heaven” or “the name” instead. So for Jesus, the gospel is the message that “the kingdom of God has come near.” It is not off in the distant future. It is not after you die, up in heaven. It is not waiting for a miracle or a war; the kingdom of God has arrived.  

It is not a place, it is not a territory, it is not a physical or political kingdom, it is, as Jesus spells out so clearly in the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come” is when “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When people live as if God is king, then that’s the kingdom. The kingdom of God is present when people live their lives the way God wants. Notice how different that is from believing the right creed.  

And that is why we need to “repent” as Jesus said. “Repent” simply means “change the way you have been thinking”, which of course, will change how you behave. Change from what to what? What does repentance look like? Again, let us let Jesus answer the question for us. Matthew says,

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake–for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Repentance then means leaving behind an old way of life, and following Jesus. The old nets, the fishing business were symbols of business as usual; a way of saying that following Jesus leads to a whole new way of living.  In other words, leaving behind the default position.

 The way we describe it today is to call it the ego-driven life; the false self, or the small self. The self that is self-concerned. The self that has to compete and compare; the fragile ego that is offended so easily. That is what we repent of, instead of remaining tangled up in those old nets.  

If we turn from our old ego-driven self, what do we turn towards? A life of fishing for others. In other words, an other-centered life. A life that cares about the concerns of others, instead of merely our own. A life of concern especially for the weak, the vulnerable, the suffering and the oppressed. That is what a life of following Jesus looks like. 

In other words, following Jesus by turning from the ego-driven life and turning towards a life for others is pretty much the opposite of a life of merely believing the “right” things and condemning as heretics those who believe the “wrong” things. But after Nicea, that’s what the church taught, and she taught it for centuries.

A New Day

Thankfully, we are living in a new day. Many people have awakened to this story.  When he talks about how the church got it wrong for so many years, Brian McLaren calls it, “Adventures in missing the point.” The point should have been the quest to live in the kingdom of God by following Jesus, the man of God who was a man “for others” as theologians have called him.  

The church has a lot of egg on its face for having missed the point for so long. In the minds of many people, the church’s reputation is unredeemable. Some have walked out, never to return. 

Others, who want to stay in, feel the need to distance themselves from the name “Christian” with all its historical baggage, preferring instead to simply call themselves “followers of Jesus.” I sympathize with them, but I’m afraid that is an insider distinction that is lost on everyone else. 

Why We are Here

To me, that is why we are here; to follow Jesus. So we gather to remember Jesus, to hear his teachings, and to reflect on how to put them into practice in our lives. It means we keep doing our regular spiritual practices, which are the tools by which we manage our self-concerned egos, especially the practices of prayer and meditation. 

It means we figure out ways to be “for others” including using our resources, our buildings, and our energies, to make a real difference. That’s why we have a New Vision Home for the DHS children. That’s why we open our doors to so many community groups like Monday Morning Seekers, Enneagram groups, Police And Community Engagement, Bridges, Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Nar-Anon, and others. 

That’s why session just voted to open our doors to the seven-week “Strengthening Families” program of the Comprehensive Juvenile Services Agency of Sebastian County which will begin later this spring.  

We can only do these things as a united community, working together for the common good, with a common vision. So today, we are thankful to add 3 new members into our community.

 Becoming a member means making a commitment to join this community and its mission. All three are already involved in community groups and service through this congregation. We need their gifts, their energy, their wisdom, and their love. They need our prayers and encouragement, our love and support.  

Let this next liturgy of reception of new members be a time when we all reaffirm our commitment to this faith-community and our common mission. 

The committee that has been meeting to answer the question: should we stay here in this location or make a change, has recommended, and session has approved that we stay and minister here. We believe that God has a future for us here. We have a mission, and we have a tremendous asset here on Rogers Avenue. 

We believe that we are uniquely poised to be an inclusive alternative with a beautiful, compelling message: God loves us all, and calls us all to follow the Jesus path, connected deeply with God, and fully activated on behalf of others.  

Being the Shepherd’s Sheep

Sermon for May 12, 2019, Easter 4C. An audio version can be found here for several weeks.

John 10:22-30

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

I remember how bemused I was as a young person, when someone, probably my father, pointed out to me that the bad cowboys in the TV show we were watching wore black hats, while the good cowboys wore white hats.  That was my first introduction to the concept of symbolism in story-telling.  

When John tells his version of the story of Jesus, six or more decades after the first Easter Sunday, he loads his narrative with symbols.  We will look at the symbolism as key to the meaning, and then we will find a surprising conundrum that opens the door to our current situation and how this text speaks to us. 

Timing is Everything

In this scene, the first thing we learn is the timing.  The action in this story takes place, the author tells us, during the festival of Dedication.  If you are trying to recall when, in the Hebrew Bible, you read about it, do not bother; it is not there.  

Rather, this feast commemorates a time after most of the Hebrew Bible was written.  It was a time of re-dedication of the temple that had been desecrated by the Greek-Seleucid king, Antiochus IV.  He had been trying to wipe out Judaism and thought that by building a statue to either himself, or to Zeus (it’s not clear) in the temple, and offing a non-Kosher pig on the altar, he could ruin it for the Jews.  

Long story short, he was so aggressive and brutal in his suppression of Judaism that he provoked a predictable response; the people revolted.  The violent Maccabean revolution was eventually successful.  The Greeks were defeated, the temple was restored, and in December of 167 BCE, it was dedicated.  

So Jesus is in the temple, in the winter, on the anniversary of that Dedication.  What would that symbolic date mean?  Jesus is in that restored, re-dedicated temple, just at the time in which everyone was remembering the violent Maccabean revolution of the past, and many were wishing for the new violent revolution to begin, this time, against the Romans.  

I think if we wanted to grasp how this may have felt, imagine a memorial ceremony at the location of the Twin Towers on the anniversary of 9/11, at the dedication of smaller towers.

Location, location, location

The symbols continue.  John tells us that Jesus was in the part of the temple called the portico of Solomon.  Again, a symbol.  It calls to mind several thoughts.  

First that this re-dedicated temple was quite the contrast to Solomon’s temple as described in the Hebrew Bible.  How was it different?  For one thing, it’s much smaller.  

But more importantly, the High Priest in charge was not a descendant of Aaron, as the Bible required, but was appointed by Rome, for political purposes, and therefore under the Roman thumb.  

The local King, unlike Solomon, was not a descendant of David or even Jewish.  If you were Jewish and respected the Torah, all of this is a nightmare of in-authenticity, corruption, and oppression.  

But calling to mind Solomon also recalls what kind of a king he was — oppressive, self-aggrandizing, rich, and ultimately responsible for the division of Israel into  North and South, from which it never recovered.  

Jesus is in Solomon’s portico, in the days before a new unraveling of the nation that will even be worse.   By 70 CE it looked like the Twin Towers after 9/11.  By the time John’s gospel was written, that had happened.  

The Cryptic Messiah scene

So, in this symbolic context, the leaders of the people — which is what John always means when he says, “the Jews” — not everybody, but rather, the leadership — challenges Jesus about being the Messiah (meaning “the Christ”).  

By the way, Jesus’ voice, in John’s gospel, is quite unlike his tone and manner in the other gospels.  The overwhelming consensus among New Testament scholars is that in John, when Jesus speaks, we are not hearing the historical Jesus, but rather the Christian community’s decades-long reflection on the meaning and significance of this man Jesus, whom they experienced as the Christ, the Messiah.  

In John, Jesus speaks in cryptic ways, sometimes awkwardly, as he does here.  

So, they ask Jesus, 

“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” 

You would think that if Jesus wanted to be clear, this is his golden opportunity.  But instead, in this version of the story, he answers:

“I have told you, and you do not believe.”

Jesus then tells them the reason they do not believe him, in spite of the works that he as done in the Father’s name, which should have convinced them.  Jesus says, 

“you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.”

Good Sheep, Bad Sheep

Now to a Jewish person, the sheep and shepherd symbol were well known.  It is not just the 23rd Psalm that makes the idea of us being God’ sheep famous, the prophets too, used the symbol.  The people were the sheep, and the kings and leadership were the shepherds.  

Throughout most of Israel’s history, they were horrible at their job as shepherds — unless fleecing the sheep for all they were worth was part of their job!  Protecting the sheep is not what they were in it for. 

So Jesus’ response could be read as a double insult to these leaders.  Instead of being good shepherds, looking out for the interests of the sheep, they were sheep themselves.  But instead of being good sheep, they were bad sheep.  Good sheep follow the shepherd’s voice, bad sheep do not.  

Jesus says, 

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

And of course, as the Good Shepherd, Jesus is looking out for his sheep’s best interest, as he says, 

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

“Eternal life,” in John’s gospel,  means the quality of life experienced by someone who knows Jesus as the Christ.  At one point in the gospel, Jesus says plainly that eternal life means knowing Jesus in a transformative way. (John 17:3) Then, Jesus says, as he only does in John’s gospel, a concluding sentence that seems to come out of nowhere, 

“The Father and I are one.”

Mystical Unity with God

If you tried to read this scene as a literal historical moment, it would be odd, to say the least.  But if you read it as John’s community symbolically describing their life-experience as followers of Jesus, who believe that the Christ was still among them spiritually, it makes great sense.  

So, let’s put these symbols back together.  Jesus is in the temple with memories of a successful violent revolution of the past, evoking the disastrous memory of Solomon, talking about the current leadership as bad sheep that don’t listen.  

John’s community is a community which is trying to follow Jesus, who famously refused to fight back violently, even at the cost of his life.  This is a community that practices non-violence.  

So they tell the story of Jesus, in contrast to the violence of the Maccabees, even in the face of the successful rededication of the temple.  Violence is not justified even by its success, as if might made right.  

But the story they tell was written after another attempted revolt, 40 years after Jesus, which resulted in the complete destruction of the temple where the story takes place.  As Jesus said,

“those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”

In this context you have to ask the question, why did so many people not want to follow the Jesus path of non-violence?  Why are people still so in love with the sword?  Why are we so ready to justify every use of force for every far-flung cause?  You still hear it today.  How do you explain our lust for blood and gleeful vengeance?  Or, our acceptance of so many of our children slaughtered in our schools?

It is hard to explain.  Maybe some people just have no intention of listening to this shepherd and belonging to his kind of sheep.  

But maybe we are in a new day.  Just a few years ago, a Vatican conference was held in which bishops called for rejecting the “just war” theory.  They argued that this theory has been used to justify almost every war anyone ever wanted to fight.  They called for a complete re-thinking of what it means to follow Jesus.  

One archbishop said that when Jesus, from the cross, said “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing” he was referring to all of us, and that “In this statement, he united the whole of humanity under one father.”  source: http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/landmark-vatican-conference-rejects-just-war-theory-asks-encyclical-nonviolence

Ego and Violence

Where does this urge to violence come from?  From where this need to fight back, to inflict wound for wound, eye for eye, tooth for tooth?  

Clearly, it is something we have within us.  It is natural, instinctive, and appeals to our sense of entitlement.  Nothing celebrates the ego like vengeance.  

And perhaps this is why John’s community concludes this scene with the awkward non-sequitur from Jesus, 

“The father and I are one.”

The Non-violent community

John’s community was a mystical community.  They believed that not only was Jesus one with the Father, but that all of his followers are one with him, one with each other, and also at one with the Father.  There is a mystical union that connects all of us with each other and with God.  (John 17:20-23)  How can you justify violence against people with whom you are one?

It is the tragedy of humanity that we do not know this.  It is not knowing, not understanding, not appreciating and living into our union with God and each other that keeps us identifying ourselves as separate, as not-belonging, as not-his-sheep.   

And from that mistaken sense of separateness, we feel that we must look out for ourselves.  We must fight back in kind.  

Violence, aggression, anger, it all comes from the same source.  It is our ego.  Our sense of self, or what Richard Rohr calls the false self, or the small self.  So, I think this text calls us all to do some serious soul-searching.  

The Conundrum of Listening

There is one more idea to explore here which is important for us.   I mentioned at the beginning that there is a conundrum in this text.  Here it is: in this version of the Jesus story, we hear him say,

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

The surface level meaning would be that our job is to listen to Jesus’ voice and commit ourselves to follow.  So what is the conundrum?  It is that the voice of Jesus we hear in John’s gospel is so different from the voice of Jesus in the three “synoptic” gospels which were written much closer to Jesus’ life on earth.  

Let me illustrate:  in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the subject of Jesus’ teaching is the Kingdom. In John, the subject is Jesus himself.  In John we hear all the “I am’s” — I am the door, the vine, the light of the world, the way the truth and the life, the good shepherd.   

So the conundrum is that we are being told to listen to Jesus’ voice, by a Gospel text that presents to us his voice in a very evolved form.  They have processed the teachings of Jesus through their experience of God, and have described Jesus himself as saying what they believe about him.  

In other words, they have found him to be their guiding shepherd, so in this story he “says,”

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

What does that mean for us?  This opens the door for us to keep considering what it means to be led by Jesus, asking questions that were not being asked back then, but discerning new answers.  

Jesus never spoke about plastics or recycling.  He never mentioned climate change or the use of drones and missiles.  He did not have an opinion about gun violence.  Jesus never said a word about gay people, or immigration, or even about slavery.

But he did say

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

He even said,

“love your enemies.” 

What would it look like to continue to hear that voice in our context?  

John’s gospel shows us what it is like to be a community of continued reflection on the significance and meanings of Jesus in our context.  

The only question that matters is, are we trying to listen?  Yes, this community is committed to continuing to listen.  We believe God is still speaking.  Our common commitment is to keep following.

Death(s) and Resurrections(s)

Sermon for Easter Sunday, Year C, April 21, 2019. Audio will be available here for several weeks.

Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

My brother and I have these amazing conversations about everything from consciousness, to ancient literature, to modern ethics. He is a lot smarter than me, so when we disagree I usually lose.

But there is one subject we disagree about on which he has not persuaded me to change my mind. It goes like this: according to him, when you look at the world we live in, and how we got here, what do you see? It looks like prey and predation are the way it always works. Organisms prey on other organisms to survive. “Eat or be eaten” is the simple way to say it. We are all in competition for scarce resources.

Generally, that is undeniable. But is that all that we can say about how our world operates? Look around: it is spring now. Everything is budding and blooming; my allergies are in full bloom too. The Azaleas are showing off, the leaves have returned, the grass has greened again, and the new eggs are about to hatch open with new life.

It is not simply that all of this is happening, what is even more astounding is that we are here to be aware of it, and to love it. We are here to love the sunrises and the colors of spring, to rejoice in beauty and the wonder of nature, in a way that no other animal has any idea about. The dogs I have owned over the years have been like members of the family; nearly human. But they have never marveled over flowers.

What I am trying to argue is that there is a significant word that must be said, in my opinion, after saying “prey and predation.” I want to say “but”. Predation happens, yes, but tooth, and claw, and blood on the ground are not the last words.

I believe that the very force of evolution itself, even though it does include predatory nature, also has a direction that is amazing and wonderful. We have evolved to be animals with rational minds, we have the gift of speech, and we are conscious: conscious of ourselves and of other selves, and of beauty, in so many forms. Teeth and claws do not have the last word. Yes, nature has designed many deaths into the system, but also many births, and, I believe, many new births, after death.

Jesus’ Context

If you were alive in Jesus’ world, you might conclude that life was only “nasty, brutish and short,” as Thomas Hobbes concluded, many years later. Jews had lost their independence in 63 BCE to the Roman Empire. They had a local king over them who was not even Jewish, whose delusions of grander were costing them dearly, as they were taxed to pay for his opulent building projects. The local aristocratic elites controlled most of the land. Most people were illiterate, landless peasants, without even the benefits of aspirin for their pain.

All of this may be why the emotional tone of Luke’s version of this story is amazement and disbelief.

Sidebar: I don’t know how you read this story. You are free to take it literally, if that works for you. For me, any story with an angel or two in it, is a story that, I think, the author is signaling, should be read like a parable. It is trying to say something true, using all the symbols that the author has in his or her took kit.

I think what Luke is trying to say, with all that amazement and disbelief, is that the story everyone else is telling, about how bad life is, is not the only story, and certainly not the last word. And, I believe, that the central Christian story, that we celebrate on Easter, our highest holy day, is that resurrections happen!

Scholars of the historical Jesus and early Christian movement do not dispute the fact that Jesus’ followers had experiences, powerful experiences, that led them to believe that Jesus was a living presence. Paul had one of those experiences as well, several years later. They concluded that you could look for, and find Jesus, “not among the dead, but among the living.”

How? Luke, for his part, believed that the way to see Jesus was to gather around a table and break bread in memory of him — as the two disciples on the Emmaus road discovered.

Matthew said you found Jesus in the faces of the poor and oppressed, the “least of these.”

In other words, the passionate vision of Jesus had lived on, and lives on. Jesus’ passion for the poor lives on. Jesus’ opposition to systems of domination and oppression live on.

Jesus’ orientation to God as Abba, or we might say, “Papa,” as good and as “for us” instead of harsh, judgmental and against us, lives on, and continues to be transformative.

And, most importantly, Jesus conviction that death was not the worst thing that could happen to you, but that living inauthentically, or unjustly, or apathetically, and certainly arrogantly may very well be.

And so he was willing to proclaim the kingdom of God, knowing, and accepting, that it might cost him his earthly life, which it did. The Christian story is that death is not the last word.

As the Christian community grew, it frequently used the symbols of death and resurrection to try to communicate this amazing, and nearly unbelievable message: that deaths are necessary but that resurrections follow.

So, for example, the letter to the Colossians, advises:

“put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature.”

Col. 3

Why? Because, it says,

“you have been raised with Christ.”

Col. 3

That is it, right there. There are deaths you have experienced, and can, and should experience, because you have already experienced resurrections.

What Spring Teaches

So, all of that made me reflect, this Easter season, on my argument with my brother over wether prey and predation was at the heart of the structure of the universe — which is where that conversation goes.

I want to say, “no;” I believe in Springtime; I believe in beauty; I believe that the world-as-it-is, is not the world-as-it-has-to-be. I believe in justice, and I believe in equality, and I believe in human dignity — as true of all humans, without any exceptions. I don’t believe anyone is “trash”!

It sounds trite to say it, but, I’m sorry, it must be said, in my opinion: I believe in love. In fact I believe that love is at the heart of the structure of the universe.

I believe that the very Ground of our Being is an emerging process that is ever-renewing and ever-presenting us with new possibilities for better future states, for goodness, and truth, and for beauty. It is spring; look around!

Two Levels of Resurrection

There are two levels on which the good news that resurrections follow death can be explored. I will just briefly mention the first one, that deserves so much more time, and focus on the second this morning.

The first is that there is new life, and a good life possible, after every death that we experience. All of us face deaths. We lose people we love, relationships die, careers crash and burn, we lose our health and our abilities; there are many ways we experience the awful, soul-chilling horror of deaths.

But death is never the last word. Resurrections from each of those is possible. God, I believe, is present to us, and for us, in every experience of suffering and dying.

We are not alone. We have not been abandoned. God is there, even suffering with us, and giving us the strength — which Christians call grace — to rise up and live again. That’s one level.

Necessary Deaths

The other level is the one Colossians was talking about. There are, indeed, things we need to “put to death” intentionally, in order for something new to be born. This is what Jesus was talking about when he said we should “take up our cross daily and follow him.” There are things that we need to die to.

To be succinct, the primary one is the ego. The ego is that voice in our heads that says, “I must be recognized, I must be in charge, I must be taken care of, I must have my way.”

The ego says the world is a place of scarcity, in which “me and my people” need to be looked out for. So, other people need to move to the back of the line, stay across the border, stay in the closet, and stay out of my neighborhood.

That ego-orientation creates and maintains the world-as-it-is; a world of discrimination, of injustice, of haves and have-nots, of enormous and obscene disparities between rich and poor, and conditions like mass incarceration, for-profit prisons, and the blasé acceptance of mass shootings.

That ego-driven life needs to be “put to death,” so that a life-for-others can rise up. For humans, the ego-driven life creates the very world of prey and predation that undermines the enormous advantages we have evolved to possess: empathy, compassion, cooperation, and yes, even reconciliation and restitution. In other words, resurrections.

This may be a story of nearly unbelievable amazement, which is how Luke tells it. That’s the story I want to tell. That’s why I want to win the argument with my brother.

We humans are no longer wearing animal skins and running around with bones in our noses. We do not have to live lives of ego exclusivity and xenophobia. We can die to that world, and be raised to celebrate the kingdom of God.

We can be, like Jesus, welcoming-kinds of people who are willing to put down our privilege and grow out of our fragility, to embrace the full, richly diverse world God has made, which announces itself in the invitation to resurrection we call spring.

I used to think it was rather scandalous that the timing of Easter was determined by the moon, to coincide with the arrival of spring. Now, I understand better. I think it’s perfect. If the earth can practice resurrections, why couldn’t we also? We can be the people who do not “look for the living among the dead.” We believe in the paschal mystery of resurrection.

“Are We Related to Something Infinite or Not?”

Sermon on Luke 4:1-13 for March 10, 2018, Lent 1C. Audio will be available here for several weeks.

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.'”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.'”
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
    ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
        to protect you,’
 and
    ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
        so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Hero stories follow patterns, according to the work of people like Joseph Campbell.  In fact, the same basic story keeps getting told again and again in world literature, from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to the Wizard of Oz, and now in film; think of Star Trek and Star Wars.  

It is possible to analyze our lives in this hero story structure too.  This is what Richard Rohr does in his book “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.”  

Our Hero Stories

It works like this:  You have a story in your mind that you tell yourself.  We all do.  We are the main characters in our internal stories.  The stories we tell ourselves start with our first memories.  They include our experiences with our primary caregivers and the formative events of our lives.  

Each one of us is the hero of our own story.   That is not to belittle these stories.  They are profoundly powerful. They tell us who we are, and who we should be.  They tell us what we can and cannot be.  They are our way of making sense of the world.  

That is not to say that the stories we tell ourselves are true.  They are just the world from our perspective.  

So, we are the heroes and heroines of our own hero story.  Heroes set out on a journey.  Along the way, they encounter difficulties, even ordeals.  

We have all faced at least one, maybe many, life-changing ordeals. It is part of that predictable pattern.   A hero story always has ordeals that the hero/heroine must face.  

What have been your ordeals?  What has been the ordeal that has shaped you the most profoundly?  It will help today if you can fix at least one in your mind.

In hero stories, the great ordeal divides life into before and after.  Rohr calls that the first and second halves of life.  The ordeal is not just a problem or a setback.  

The ordeal that separates life into before and after is the one that confronts us with our deepest fears, like the fear of not being in control, the fear of failure, the fear of death, the fear of meaninglessness, the fear of being unloved or unloveable.  The fear that we are not related to something infinite after all.  

In mythical hero stories, the ordeal is some sort of battle or confrontation with an opposing force.  That force represents the hero’s own shadow side.  The hero fights and apparently dies; at least “dies” in some sense.  

Actually, it is the ego which dies. After that ego-death, the hero gains a new perspective; a consciousness of the connectedness of all things.  After the ordeal, comes the journey back home.  

After the Trojan war, Odysseus, the hero, sets out on his journey home to Ithaca.  But on the way, he has to face the Cyclops, he has to survive the straits of Scylla and Charybdis, and avoid the deadly seductions of the sirens. 

Odysseus hears the prophecy that guides him in his second half of life, after the Trojan war.  But he had to journey to the land of the dead in order to find the prophet.  He is literally at his lowest point in life.  Rohr says, 

“It is often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction….”  

All of these ideas will become important as we consider the text of the temptation of Jesus today.

Jesus’ Ordeal 

The stories of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were well known in the ancient world.  One ancient writer said,

“From the earliest age, children beginning their studies are nursed on Homer’s teaching.”

Ps.-Heraclitus  “Homeric Questions” 1.5-6, cited in D. R. Macdonald’s “Mythologizing Jesus” p. 3

Without a doubt, the Gospel writers knew these stories. Some New Testament Scholars suggest that they modeled this text of the temptation of Jesus on the stories of the hero facing ordeals.  

So, how would this work? Jesus is on a Spirit-led journey, just after his baptism.  Remember it was that visionary experience during his baptism in which he became aware of his identity as God’s son.  Immediately after, we could say, still dripping, the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness to face the diabolical ordeal.

It comes in the form of three temptations: to turn a stone into bread, to get all the glory and authority of the world’s kingdoms, and to test God by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple.  All three are temptations of the ego-self.

Jesus is tempted to use his gifts for himself, for short term ends, like satisfying his hunger, to acquire political power unethically, and to manipulate religion for his own personal benefit.   If he does any of these, his quest to be the faithful son of God who can authentically proclaim the presence of the kingdom of God will fail.  And these must have been real temptations in the mind of Jesus, as they would be for any human with leadership gifts.   This is Jesus’ ordeal.

Relying on Spiritual Formation

In each of the three temptations, Jesus relies on the spiritual formation that has shaped him all his life.  He reaches back into texts he has heard since he was a boy.  They have shaped his vision of the good.   He knows, in his soul, that “One does not live by bread alone,’” that one should ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’” and that you “’Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”  

We know that Jesus’ spiritual practices included both formal public worship in synagogue services, and private meditation, often lengthy nights in solitude and contemplation.  He was ready for the ordeal, and when it came, he defeated his own devils.   

Notice how overcoming each of these three temptations affected his ministry.  He did not turn stones to bread for himself, but without ego-driven fanfare, he taught multitudes to feed each other.  

He had huge crowds following him, but he had done the ego work; he never let his fame get to his head.  He was willing to tell them hard truths that they did not want to hear, even at the cost of his popularity, like the fact that one has to deny one’s ego, and take up the cross of self-denial daily, to be on the spiritual path of the second half of life with him.  

And he did not put God to the test, asking for special favors; instead, in the end, he was able to say, “not my will, but yours be done” in an act of calm acceptance, even of suffering and death.  

In other words, by his spiritual practices he had done the ego work, and found himself able to trust.  He knew that he was not alone.  He knew that he was related to something infinite.  

The Question: Trust or Not?

This is the question that we probably have all already faced, as we have gone through ordeals, and certainly is the question we will face again.  When the ordeal comes, will we be able to trust?  Even when we are not in control; even when the worst could happen, or does happen.  Even when what we most fear is staring us in the face?  

The answer may well depend on what we bring to that moment of the ordeal.  Ideally, we will bring the certain knowledge of our baptismal identity: that we know that we are indeed sons and daughters of God.  

We will bring our history of spiritual formation formed in a worshipping, practicing community of faith.  

We will bring our cumulative hours of meditation, and the innumerable tiny ego-deaths we have practiced, as we have said no to the chatter of our inner voice.  

And we will bring our confident trust that just as God was with Jesus in his wilderness ordeal, God is with us in ours, 

“in the darkness before the dawn, in the waiting and uncertainty, where fear and courage join hands.”

The Iona Community, Affirmation

There is Enough

Sermon for Feb. 10, 2019, Epiphany +5 Year C. Audio will be available here for several weeks.

Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

I’ve tried to imagine what it was like to be in one of those crowds who came to listen to Jesus.  We do not know too much.  No one who was there wrote about it — at least not that we know of.  The earliest historical description of how a gospel was written comes from Eusebius in the 4th century.  He said that he had heard from Bishop Papias that Mark, the first gospel, got his knowledge of Jesus’ teaching from listening to Peter’s sermons.  We don’t know if that is true, but that’s what Eusebius believed.  So, we do not have eye-witness gospels, but rather a tradition, passed down orally for decades, and eventually written down.  

The Spirt-Person

So, we are left to our imaginations based on the texts as we have them.  What was it like to be in Jesus’ company?  We have enough evidence for people like New Testament scholar Marcus Borg to call Jesus a “spirit-man.”  

“Spirit-man” is an anthropological category.  There are people in every culture who are “spirit-people.”  In some cultures, they are priests, in others, shamans, or prophets.  

A spirit-person is someone who has frequent and intense experiences of the divine realm, perhaps visions or other kinds of mystical experiences.  

People identify a person as a spirit-person because they sense something about them that attracts them.  People seek out spirit-people because they seem to be able to convey a sense of the non-material world.   

To put it in Christian language, you sense the presence of God when you are around a spirit-person.  That’s exactly what Peter felt at the end of this story when he knelt before Jesus and felt unworthy to be with him.  

I think that is how people felt about Jesus.  Luke tells us that when Jesus taught, people came expecting to hear no less than “the word of God.”  That’s saying a lot.  

Jesus was famous for teaching about the kingdom of God using short stories called parables.  In his book on Parables, New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan says that the early Christian community continued that practice of telling parables — not about the kingdom, but about Jesus.  

You can feel free to take this story as literally historical, or any way you wish; I take it as a parable.  Parables try to say what is true in the form of a story.  So what true things does this story tell us?

The Setting of Scarcity

Details matter.  The setting is beside the lake where Peter and the others make their living as fishermen.  There are two empty boats on shore.  The fishermen are doing what they did after they had returned from fishing: mending their nets.  

The Hebrew Bible, in several places, speaks of the places where fishermen spread their nets as barren, empty places, so already we are getting hints that scarcity is going to be a theme in this story.  

Jesus asks Simon, whom we know as Peter, to row him a bit offshore so he can teach the crowd that had gathered.  We presume he wants to use the water as a natural megaphone, at least that’s our guess; Luke doesn’t explain.  

Anyway, they do, but when Jesus is finished teaching, he makes a curious request of Peter, saying, 

“Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

In Deep Water

Peter is going to end up in deep water soon enough.  In fact, he will feel like he is in over his head already by the end of this story, and there is much more to come for him as he journeys with Jesus.  

I believe that is exactly what anyone who wants to follow Jesus should be prepared for.  It is deep water.  It is deep because of the inner-work it requires of us, and because of the outward implications for our lifestyle, our relationships, and our life goals.  

The Objection (Ego)

Peter objects.  Why?  Well, he gives a reason.  He says,

“Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.”

But that is just the surface answer.  Maybe the deeper water is that he is a professional fisherman who knows his business, and he does not need to be told how to do his job by a non-specialist, no matter how good a teacher he may be.  

In other words, it may well be an ego issue. “Don’t tell me what to do.”  He says, “look I have experience, I know this is not a good time or place for fishing.  They aren’t there today.  He says,

“we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.”

Maybe the implication that Peter doesn’t know his own business is insulting.  Well, that is the ego at work.  That is the small self that needs to use externals to prop up the self-image.  

Richard Rohr says that anytime we are insulted, it’s the ego, false-self that is being insulted.  Your true self, who you are as a beloved child of God, cannot be insulted.  But the ego can.  

The ego never has enough.  The ego lives in perpetual scarcity.  There is never enough appreciation, there is never enough praise, or admiration to make the ego feel fulfilled and secure.  This is a scarcity story on many levels.  

So Peter objects.  But, on the other hand, he is already in the boat with Jesus.  Maybe he has already started to do some ego-work as he has heard Jesus pronounce blessings on the “meek,” the “peacemakers,” and the “pure in heart.”  In any case, he has a change of heart, and agrees to stay in the boat with Jesus, and head out to the deep water.  

The Catch

So they do.  And we know how it goes: they let down the nets, and, Luke says,

“they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.” 

I have seen the boat in the museum in Israel that archeologists found on the shores of that lake.  They believe it is from the first century, which means it was one of the fishing boats used by people like Peter.  It’s 26 feet long, over 7 feet wide and over 5 feet high.  

In other words, it would take an enormous number of fish to get it close to sinking.   For a fisherman, this kind of catch would be like winning the lottery.  There is so much, it’s nearly too much.  So, the story has turned 180 degrees, from scarcity to abundance.  

Abundance

There are several levels of abundance we see in this story.  Let’s start with the fish, on the surface level.  Jesus is going to ask Peter and the others to join him on his itinerant ministry.  They will leave their fishing jobs and set out with someone who will describe himself later saying 

“birds have nests and foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”  

And yet, they will be taken care of.  There will be enough.  Trusting that there will be enough is the key to their decision to abandon fishing and follow Jesus.

That’s the level we start on too.  Following Jesus begins when we have sufficient trust to believe that there will be enough, so that we can live lives, not exclusively for ourselves but for others.   There is enough to give some of it away on behalf of others in need.  

Generosity does not come from a narrative of scarcity, but of abundance.  Following Jesus means living into the narrative of abundance.  

Unworthiness

Let’s go down to a deeper level.  We talked about Peter’s ego-battle that first made him resistant to following the fishing advice of a non-specialist.  We said that the false, ego-self will always live in the scarcity narrative of never being sufficiently protected.  

It goes even further in this story.  In the end, after the miraculous abundance of fish, Peter instinctively recognizes that this had been a divine encounter.  Only a spirit-person of exceptional connection to the divine could have made that miraculous catch happen.  

So, in response, what does Peter do?  He feels unworthy.  Luke says,

“But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!””

This is a deeper kind of scarcity.  It is the scarcity of undervaluing our belovedness in God’s eyes.  Jesus never wanted to make anyone feel unworthy, or dirty, or shameful, or sinful.  Jesus was the one that said, “neither do I condemn you.”  So here, we watch as Jesus rejects Peter’s guilt and shame, saying to him:

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

In other words, “you have nothing to fear, I am not here to judge or condemn.  Not only that, but there’s more: I have a future for you.  You are important.  You are going to be part of the mission.  You have a role to play in a good future.”

The Next Good Thing

This is what God is constantly doing in every moment in our lives.  The Spirit is present, luring us, coaxing us, encouraging us to do the next right thing, the next good thing, the next trusting, loving, compassionate, merciful thing.  And so, to start, we believe in our own belovedness.  Our true selves are who we are as God’s beloved daughters and sons.  

I was talking with someone about their interesting tattoo the other day, which they said they regretted because it came from a relationship they were no longer in.  I don’t have any tattoos (yet?) but I replied that the only ones I think I would ever get would be the names of my two sons.  No matter what, they will always be my sons, and I will always love them.  

How did we ever think that God could love us any less than that?  “God is love” according to the New Testament.  And that is exactly what Jesus modeled for Peter, saying, in effect, “Get up; stop groveling; you are loved.  I have a future for you; a future of abundance.”  

Imitating Jesus

Let’s go further.  We follow Jesus by imitating his response to Peter.  We do not judge people, we do not shame people, we do not put people under a load of guilt, but instead, we take people just as they are, and become part of their good future, their next good thing.   

There is enough mercy, enough compassion, enough forgiveness in our hearts to fill up two boats and nearly break the nets.  We have an abundance of goodwill because we have been the recipients of God’s abundant compassion.  

We become, for others, agents of reconciliation by our acceptance of their belovedness.  Together, we form a beloved community, working for the reconciliation of the world.  

We can do this because we are not just theoretical Christians, we are practicing Christians.  We believe in the daily spiritual practices that are specifically designed to help us do the ego-work.  

We take time for daily meditation which trains us to disbelieve the narrator we all have in our minds, that is so concerned about ourselves.  

We write in our gratitude journals, training ourselves to look for and celebrate the good in us and all around us.  

We pray for each other, we worship together, we serve our community, and do all of the practices of a Christian so that we can be followers of Jesus, living in God’s gracious abundance.  

There is enough.  There will always be enough, maybe not for everyone’s greed, but definitely for everyone’s need.  

Amos’ Rant, Jesus’ Question, and the Disciple’s Incredulity

Sermon for Oct. 14, 2018, on Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 and Mark 10:17-31  Audio version available here (for several weeks)

Mark 10:17-31

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

In their book, Words Can Change Your Brain, neuroscientist Andrew B. Newberg, and co-author Mark Robert Waldman, discuss exactly what the title says: that words can change our brains.  Negative words can damage our brains.  Positive words improve our brains. 

This is one of the reasons I am so thankful for Jesus, which will become clear in a minute.