Love Is All We Need

1 Corinthians 13

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 31st January 2010

At the risk of sounding like I’m channeling the Beatles or even contemporary artist Mary J. Blige in her recent hit single: All we need is love…for love is all we need. Burt Bacharach’s, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love,” is also running through my head. (1) In many ways, it’s really that simple and that complex. All we need is love, for love is all we need. We both desire love and fear it, sometimes at the same time.

Paul turned to love as the remedy for the many divisions facing First Church, Corinth. As we’ve seen over the last two week moving through this portion of Paul’s epistle, the congregation was plagued with all kind of divisions, disturbed by an assortment of moral and dogmatic sins. The place was a mess. There was a group in the church who believed they were specially gifted with particular gifts of the Spirit. And so there was this competition or struggle among them over gifts, who had them, which ones counted more than others, how to get them. It was really, looking back on it, very childish. But it almost tore the church apart.

In this larger discussion about spiritual gifts, Paul takes a breather, pauses, and then launches into one of the most beautiful and well-known poems in the Bible. He offers a hymn to love that continues to be sung across the ages, even by people who aren’t Christian. Paul says to the Christians in Corinth, all you need is love because love is all you need. Love is lifted up as the solution to the conflict. But if it were really that simple, then the church throughout its long history would be a far more accepting, understanding, and loving place. As with most things pertaining to the gospel, it’s complicated, complex.

Part of the problem is the way Christians have come to think of love. Perhaps the first thing we should do is retrieve this entire love chapter back from public domain. It’s our text and not the domain of the greeting card industry, for example. I wish there was a way to copyright the text, to make it the domain of the church, prohibit its use as tattoos, on posters, plaques, coffee mugs, or any other form of Christian kitsch, or on greeting cards particularly cards celebrating marriage or Valentine’s Day. That’s what we most often associate with this text, with romantic love. And of course it’s been read at countless weddings across the ages, maybe even at your wedding or someone you know. One of my good friends, Tom Sheffield, a Presbyterian minister who served in New Jersey with me said that after one wedding in which he read 1 Corinthians, a guest going out the door said, “That was really beautiful. Did you write it yourself?”

In some ways, it makes the perfect text for a wedding, the way it shapes what a marriage should and can be like. Yet, it’s overused. Plus, this isn’t a marriage text; Paul had no vision of it being used in a wedding ceremony, and he certainly did not understand all of his references to love as having anything to do with what we might call romantic love. Right after Paul finishes this poem he continues to talk about spiritual gifts. So, we have to be careful not to decontextualize the text and make it into something it’s not.

So what is Paul trying to say to his church? Of course, the answer is contained in the Greek, which has three words for the one English word for love. There was philos – love of friendship; there was eros – sexual love, or better desire; and there was agape – a rarely used word adopted by the early church to summarize Christian living because it means selfless or sacrificial kind of love. This is not to say that a Christian only loves agapeically (Yes, this is a word, a theological word. Theologians love to make up words.), with no place for desire, sexual love, or friendship. All three matter. Every time love is mentioned to this church in conflict, the Greek reads agape.

It’s the experience of agape that Paul turns to as the remedy for the problems facing Corinth. Because while eros and philos are important, it is agape that actually forms the church of Jesus Christ. It’s agape that forms the body of Christ. Because Jesus was the fullest embodiment of agape, agape emanates from the body of Christ the church. It’s the heart-beat of the congregation, it’s what sets the pulse and rhythm of this living, breathing body we call the church.

What is agape? First, it’s not all about feelings, the way romantic love is. In some ways, feelings have very little to do with it. This kind of love is a choice, not necessarily based on how one feels on a given day. But a choice to do what? Yes, it’s selfless love – choosing to putting others first over your own needs and wishes. Yes, it’s sacrificial love, making sacrifices for the sake of the other. There are plenty of people who are really good at putting the needs of others first, who make all kind of sacrifices for the other (sometimes for the wrong reasons). These people might be celebrated for the sacrifices and even selflessness they embody, but it’s not necessarily love. There is a dimension of love here. But is there anything distinctively Christian about it? There are plenty of Muslim mothers in the world who makes all kinds of sacrifices for their children, who put their family’s needs ahead of her own.

We have to go a little deeper and remember something one would think would be very obvious to us, but, I think, has been sadly neglected when we talk about Christian love. If Christian love is the kind of love Jesus embodied in his life and calls his followers to embody, then we must say at some level Christian love means choosing to suffer for the sake of the other. I’m not talking about some kind of masochistic obsession. It’s not intentional self-flagellation (which has a long history on the church). Jesus demonstrated with his life that: “there can be no love without suffering.” Contemporary Paul Fiddes offers this powerful summary of love and suffering. “[For] suffering in the widest sense means the capacity to be acted upon, to be changed, moved, transformed by the action of, or the reality of another.” (2)

To suffer means, literally, to undergo, to bear, to permit, to allow. It means, at some level, to be moved, to be acted upon by the experiences of the other. Love means a sharing of experience and when we risk the sharing of another’s experience we also risk being changed, moved, impacted in our own lives. It bears all things experienced by another, it believes all things believed by another, hopes all things hoped by another, endures all things endured by another. We suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice (1 Corinthian 12:26). And when we choose to put ourselves in the lives of others, when we risk empathically putting ourselves in the lives of those around us, when we wonder what it must feel like for them, when we risk that kind of imaginative wondering of what it’s like to be another, something happens – we are acted upon by their experience and in a moment or slowly over a lifetime, we are changed, we are moved, and maybe even transformed by what we share and experience together.

This is a different kind of love – when we choose, risk getting close to another, undergo another’s experience, to care for their needs, to share hopes and sorrows, we are acted upon and there’s always the possibility that we will be changed. And because we resist change, there’s a part of us that doesn’t want to be acted upon, which means we withhold love. We resist love because we don’t want to be change. And sometimes that fear is so great that we don’t get close to another human being, we build and maintain walls that keep us far apart.

But once you start wondering what it’s like for another human being to exist – particularly if that person scares you or what she represents, if that person raises all kinds of fears and anxieties in you, even if it’s someone you really despise, or if that person is homeless and really smells, makes you uncomfortable, whether it’s an orphaned child in Haiti, a couple going through a rough patch or on the verge of divorce, the lost, the confused, the sick, the dying – then there’s the possibility that such a consideration will change you. For once we allow ourselves to be acted upon, literally or imaginatively participating in the experience of another, then inevitably our actions change. If we stay with this posture long enough we just might find ourselves become more accepting or forgiving. We just might find ourselves suddenly becoming more patient (1 Cor. 13:4), maybe even kind (1 Cor. 13:4). We might suddenly find ourselves holding back our agenda or opinions and not insisting on our own way (1 Cor. 13:5). May we stop being irritable or irritating to others and give up being resentful and jealous and maybe even fearful (1 Cor. 13:5). We stop competing with each other – in Paul’s context, you stop worrying about gifts and focus on the other – we find in the other a fellow-member of the body of Christ.

Do you see how agape – unlike philos or eros – builds up the church? Because through it we build community, it draws people together. Through it we build one another up – and then the concrete actions a particular community makes are reflective of this deeper desire to really love one another, to get close enough to each other that we really know the suffering of another, be touched by it, and may be so moved to do something about it, if only to just dwell with the suffering of another so she, so he know they’re not alone. Or to get close enough to each other that we really know another’s joy, learn what makes us tick, what we’re passionate about, and share in making sure these joys and hopes and passions are honored and protected.

As you read over the reports to the Annual Meeting this morning, just revel in how much we have and are accomplishing together as a church. Christ’s love is in this place, our capacity to suffer with and for one another and for the world, are reflected in the concrete actions we have taken this past year. Love is a choice. These reports reflect our choices. Pay attention to all of the verbs in the report. All of the activity rotates around the desire to be a church that embodies Christ’s love.

It’s all there in our actions: in mission, in outreach, in worship, in our care and improvement of the facilities, in education for all ages, our counseling center, in acts of peace and justice, in tangible and intangible ways, a unique kind of love permeates all that we do. It’s there, especially in the deacons work: 221 visits; 215 phone calls; 684 cards/notes. And all of our financial resources and gifts, all of our various income streams allow us to do this amazing work, even in an enormously challenging economy. The work of the Vision Task Force will, no doubt, celebrate who are and help us deepen our ability to risk the kind of love that even more reflects Christ’s presence in us and among us – because this is what the world really needs from us.

This, Paul tells us, is what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ. It’s this simple and this complex. It’s the vision and work entrusted to us. It’s what we’re called to. It’s about love in action.

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Sources:
1. Beatles, “All You Need is Love,” (1967), written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney; Mary J. Blige, “Love Is All We Need,” (2004). Burt Bacharach, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love,” (1965).
2. Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 171.

Becoming the Body of Christ

1 Corinthians 12: 13-31a

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 24th January 2010

There’s a theological error in the sermon title. Do you see it? It’s a theological error because it contradicts what we just heard from the apostle Paul. It’s right there in verse 27, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of him.” Did you hear it? In reading scripture and in doing theology, tense means everything. Paul didn’t say you were the body of Christ or one day will be the body of Christ. Hence the problem with the title. “You are the body of Christ.” Now, not will be someday, one day. To First Church, Corinth, Paul says, you are today, the body of Christ.

The fact that Paul had to write this to them means that, at some level, they had forgotten this about themselves. Or perhaps they never really knew it to be true. Maybe they never knew what it means to be church. As we saw last week, the church in Corinth, organized by Paul, was a contentious place, full of quarrels and divisions. There was a lot of bad theology oozing all over the place and putting the life of the church at risk. There were some who thought they were more spiritual than others. There were some who believed they had special gifts that set them apart from others, a kind of spiritual elite. Paul said, basically, the Spirit is gifting everyone in the community with a variety of gifts, varieties of service, varieties of ministries.

Now he continues his argument by lifting up his well-known body metaphor to describe what a community of Jesus looks like. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” The body is one, with many members, many parts, many organs, with many functions that when harmonized yield a functioning, healthy, living body. From here we are reminded that Christ’s community is like an organism, a living, breathing body that requires care and sustenance, that is dependent upon the health of the parts for the health of the whole. All the parts are needed for the whole. Though many, we are one body. So it is with Christ.

When Christ’s Spirit moves within us and among us, the Spirit moves people into community, a fellowship, what Paul describes as a koinonia – a fellowship of people, a wide assortment of people with varieties of ministries, gifts, experience, personalities, individualities, a wildly divergent, different assortment of people, a disparate people who come together around a center who is Jesus Christ. The Spirit moves people into a koinonia, deep, intimate, honest fellowship of people who form a unity with diversity around their love for Jesus Christ. The Spirit forms a individuals into a koinonia, a unique community of people, a church, but less church as an institution, but a relationship of members who are formed into the body of Christ.

And when this occurs something different happens. As Paul said, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greek, slaves or free – all were made to drink of one Spirit.” The unity we find in Christ allows for diversity. And the diverse parts are equal, not one better than the other. In fact, all the divisions that are found out in the world, all the labels and opinions and parties that separate people, judge people, divide, and exclude people are not to exist in the church of Jesus Christ, because Christ is the great equalizer. In him is found equality. Therefore his people must be treat all people equally. And that’s how Paul treats them.

In fact, reflecting on this text, Calvin (1509-1564) makes this observation about what Paul is doing. “Among the Corinthians no slight number had gone astray; in fact, almost the whole body was infected. There was not one kind of sin only, but very many; and they were no light errors but frightful misdeed; there was corruption not only of morals but of doctrine. What does the holy apostle …do about this? Does he seek to separate himself from such? Does he cast them out of Christ’s kingdom? Does he fell them with ultimate thunderbolts of anathema? He not only does nothing of the sort; he even recognizes and proclaims them to be the church of Christ and the communion of saints.”(1) He treats them as if they are already the body of Christ. And he hopes they would view themselves the same way.

Paul develops his argument around this body metaphor in order to help the Corinthians discover or rediscover what it means to be in Christ. He wants them – and us, of course – to know we are the body of Christ already. And yet, we know, as Paul knew, there is something in all of us – call it sin – that causes us to forget who we are. Yes, we are the body of Christ. But there’s also the truth that we’re not there yet. In the Christian life there is always this paradox of the already and the not-yet. We are already children of God, but not-yet, because we spend our entire lives growing into realizing this, believing it, claiming it what this really means. If we really knew this, then we would be different people, the world would be different, the church would be a very different place. We are already saved, but in some sense, not-yet, because we spend our lives living as if this were not the case. We are already forgiven, but not yet because we act and live, at times, as if we’re not forgiven. If we believed we were already forgiven, then we might be freer with granting forgiveness. You are already the body of Christ, but not-yet, because if the church really believed this and lived from this, then the church today throughout the world would be a very different place, we wouldn’t be fearful or anxious, we wouldn’t be worried about membership decline, we wouldn’t be anxious about tomorrow, and we wouldn’t be treating fellow Christians (and non-Christians) the way we do, as if they too were not part of the body of Christ. So often Paul says, and it’s embedded in the Greek, “Become who you are.” Become who you already are. Become the people God already knows you to be. Live into this image. We are always living into who we are. We are becoming the body of Christ.

But what does this really mean? It means we’re called to see how we are organically related to one another. Each member is a part of the body. It means we have a responsibility for one another. There’s mutuality, equality, radical acceptance. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; equally, if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” Because of our interconnectivity, we are not alone, but part of the whole. I remember hearing as a boy that when my mother was pregnant with me, when she was in some pain and discomfort before going into labor, that my grandmother, sitting across the room had similar pain and discomfort in her body. She had sympathy pains. It seems to me that that’s a pretty good image of what it means to be the body of Christ, it’s the place where we suffer with and for, that we bear the pain and suffering of our fellow sisters and brothers in Christ. Similarly, we’re called to sympathy joys, when we affirm the joy of the other, when we celebrate and honor the other. Rejoice with and for and over the joy of our sisters and brothers in Christ.

How do we do this? While every member of the body has a special part to play in making up the whole, Paul tells us that in God’s providence greater honor is given to the inferior part. In the body of Christ special attention is given to the poorer, lesser, lower part, to the weaker part of the body. This is one of the most marvelous aspects of the church – when the church is really being the body of Christ, the body of the crucified – the way we really care for those in greatest need, how we care for the weak, make space for the vulnerable among us, protect minorities, and even advocate for the rights of people who have none or little. Our capacity to care for the least of these gives some indication whether or not a church is actually being the body of Christ.

To know the needs of the weak, the inferior, the excluded, the rejected, and dejected means we have to risk getting close to those members of the body. For how can we share their suffering and their joys when we do not know them? How can we have sympathy, when keep people at arms’ length. Paul’s vision of the church involves authenticity, honesty, truth-telling which are all very risky and costly. It requires, the still more excellent way, which informs all that we do, which is love – the love that bears all things for the sake of the other, believes all things for the sake of the way, endures all things for the sake of the other.

That the church of Jesus Christ has yet to fully realize this vision of itself, has yet to fully live into who Christ claims we are, it’s clear we have plenty of work to do. The church is not completely without its moments when it’s really being the body of Christ and we need to celebrate them. The church as a whole doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to really being the kind of place Jesus had in mind. If that were the case, Christianity wouldn’t be in the trouble it is in the West. We need to be honest about this without giving into despair and giving up on the church. It’s a call to remember we are a community of sinners who are trying to be faithful. Lift up some images…

Consider this image. Think of a Gothic cathedral. It’s cruciform; it has the floor plan of a cross. “It is officially possible to enter a Gothic church only through one of the west doors under one of the two spires…. The choir has no doors, although the north and south transepts have doors. But none of these may be used for official entry into the church. Why? The cathedral represents the body of Christ. His head is the choir, his arms are the transepts, the crossing in his navel, and the west towers are his feet. It is only through the feet that the – what might call the inferior, lowly part of the body, often dirty in Jesus’ day, a part of the body that raises all kinds of anxieties in us, so very personal – it’s through the feet that we enter into the body of Christ..never through the choir, his head. For this reason the bottoms of the feet are called the soles, our souls of the feet - it’s through this part of the body, tradition has it, that our souls enter and leave. (2) That’s not biblical, of course, but the symbolism is quite poignant – that there’s something about the low, the inferior, the part of the body that takes quite a pounding every day, with more nerves than any other part of our bodies (which I discovered when I had foot surgery last summer), is precisely through what the foot represents that we are brought into the community.

I’m reminded of the ministry of Jean Vanier, founder of the l’Arche communities, communities around the world with and for people with severe disabilities. In his work he has come to know first-hand the greater honor given to the people with the greatest needs, and find in the risk to care for them, the very face of God. In one of his meditations growing from his experience, he wrote, “ Our body, our whole being, carries within it the marks of each act of gentleness and tenderness but also each wound, each sense of rejection, each word or gesture which gave us the impression that we were loved or not loved…” (3) How we reach out with compassion toward those wounded in the body and the way we reach out with compassion toward our own woundedness says something about what it means to be the body of Christ: Caring for our wounds within the body.

In Washington, DC, there’s a gathering of Christians called the Church of the Savior, founded more than fifty years ago, a church and larger organization that envisions a church made of small groups and home churches, small groups of people that seek to be authentic, real, honest, that search for reconciliation and justice in their groups and in the world. They are trying to really listen to Jesus and follow in unconventional ways, no matter the risk or cost. They have a bookstore and café in DC on Columbia Road. Beside the front door there is a sign for their administrative offices, that summarizes what they’re about. It simply reads: Becoming Church. It says something about how they understand their ministry. We’re not there yet, we’re on the way – risk becoming the people Christ knows us to be.

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Sources:
1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), 4.1.14.
2. Robert A. Johnson, Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy (HarperSanFrancisco, 1987), 60.
3. Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 31.

Claiming Our Gifts(2)

1 Corinthians 12: 1-11

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 17th January 2010

Paul wrote this letter to a church in conflict. The church in Corinth, which was founded by Paul himself, was burdened by many quarrels, disagreements, and strong differences of opinion. Paul’s challenge was this: how to gather a widely-divergent group of people around their love and commitment to Christ, to form them into what he called a fellowship, a koinonia,– a community that sought to embody the love of Christ in the world because Christ was at the center of their lives.

One of the many problems in First Church, Corinth – a busy, intellectual, cultural trade center at the heart of the Roman Empire, full of all kinds of temples and religious practices – was that there was a group of people who thought they were better than the others because they claimed to have special spiritual gifts. Paul refers to them as the pneumatikoi, the spiritual ones. They seemed to be a class or sect within the church that sought special status and authority because they claimed to be better Christians, as it were, than everyone else. This infuriated Paul – he was a bit of a hot-head and had strong reactions against anything that contradicted his vision for the church. But, first and foremost, Paul was a pastor, who, as a pastor, helped the community to theologically reflect upon what it really means to say one is spiritually gifted.

You can hear the matter at hand in 12:1, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed,” because, obviously, they were grossly misinformed. They were misinformed about the work of the Spirit within the community. When the Spirit is present one never says, “Jesus is cursed,” either in words or in action. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” because that confession of faith, too, requires the Spirit who gives the gift of faith.

The point here is that the church needs to pay attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of its people. And in the church – and one can even argue beyond the church – the Spirit of God is unleashed in the world endowing, giving, gifting God’s people. Whether the church likes it or not, the Spirit of God is unleashed in the church and beyond in the world bestowing gifts.

Chapter 12 is probably most familiar because we read it every time we ordain and install church officers. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” In these beautifully poetic verses we find Paul’s pastoral-theological response to the situation in Corinth.

Now, we could go through this text, verse by verse, and analyze the Greek meaning behind the gifts Paul describes: the gift of wisdom, the gift of the utterance of knowledge, the gift of faith, the gift of healing, the working of miracles, the gift of prophecy (or preaching), the gift of discernment, the gift of speaking in tongues (a kind of ecstatic, holy speech), the gift to interpret tongues. But we have to be very careful that we don’t see this as an exhaustive list – Paul wasn’t trying to say there are only nine spiritual gifts. That’s not the point. In Galatians, Paul comes up with another list, the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5: 22-23). Also nine.

Whether we call them gifts or fruits of the Spirit, the point is that the gifting agent in creation, in our individual lives, in the church is none other than the Spirit. (1) What needs to be lifted up here is that before and after each gift we have reference to the Spirit. Listen to Paul: “…of the Spirit…” “Though the Spirit…” “According to the Spirit…” “The same Spirit…” “The one Spirit…” Then we have, “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”

The Holy Spirit is the giver of gifts. And not only is the Spirit the giver, Paul makes it clear that the Spirit also activates them within us. I love this. The Greek word here is energei – meaning to work in, to energize. “The word is often used of the working of the power of God in a miraculous way.” (2) It seems to suggest that yes, the Spirit gives gifts, but it’s as if there comes a time when the Spirit turns the gift on within us, activates it, energizes us, gives us power – God’s power – to do, to be, to say, to experience, to see, to bless, to give, to forgive, to love, to suffer in love, to sacrifice, to serve, to care in ways that leave us speechless, in ways we could never have realized on our own without God’s help. When the Spirit activates the gifts within us it’s as if we become the conduits for the power of God to pour through us to reach out and touch the world.

The Holy Spirit is the giver of gifts – many gifts – and activates them in us, in the community. And the stress here is on the many, the variety. That’s why we can’t see this as an exhaustive list. Remarkably, Paul is stressing that variety is the trademark of God’s Spirit and therefore a trademark of the church. Variety can also be translated difference, even diversity. Just as there’s difference and diversity within the Triune God (and there are early Trinitarian references in this text long before the doctrine of the Trinity was formalized), when our lives and the church reflect this Triune God, then expect to find variety, difference, and diversity – wild variety, difference and diversity. Because this is what the Spirit loves to do – to get things mixed up and stirred up, blessing God’s people with a variety of gifts.

In thinking about this text, I was reminded of an experience from my elementary school days. I can remember hearing about the Gifted and Talented Program in the school system, a special program that put special, gifted and talented students in a class, literally, above or apart from the rest. I had one or two friends in the program. I wasn’t part of it. From my perspective, as a child, I was led to believe that they were the only ones with gifts and talent. There are truly gifted and talented children who really warrant special attention and I’m not criticizing the program. But it left me with the impression that there students with special gifts, and the rest of us were out of luck. That gave me a horrible feeling.

It’s easy to see how destructive this idea can be, particularly from a faith perspective, to think there’s a kind of spiritual elite in the church – the truly divinely gifted and talented, as it were, and then everyone else. Scripture doesn’t say this. Paul doesn’t say this. In fact, Paul is saying the opposite – to be in Christ means that the Holy Spirit is active in one’s life and if the Holy Spirit is present then that means we’ve also been gifted. There are a variety of gifts given by the Spirit within each of us. Some were given when we were young and cultivated throughout our life. Others came later. Some might have arrived only yesterday. Others will come tomorrow. The point is – everyone has a gift or gifts. The Spirit is very generous. We are all gifted and talented in Christ – we are called to believe this and claim it and live courageously with this knowledge.

All of us, whatever our age, have been gifted by God and it is incumbent upon us, it is our task, our life purpose to discern our gifts, to claim them, to accept them, to not reject, or deny them, or withhold them, but to use them. In the letter of James we find these words, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17).” God’s generosity has given us a multitude of gifts that we might then give away, showered us with blessings that we then bless others. This is because all the gifts we receive from the Spirit are not ours – they do not belong to us, they are not given to puff us up or make us feel good or better or happy or anything else. “To each is given the manifestation for the Spirit…” Why? Why have you been gifted? Why have we been gifted? Why has God been so generous to us? “For the common good.”

And that is indeed the test whether something is really a gift from God – because the gifts of God can be used for the common good. When they are used and shared for the common good – for everyone – then they are of God. When the gifts we have can edify the members of the community, when the gifts and talents and assets we’ve been given build people up, support and strengthen people, give life and hope and meaning to the common good, then it can be said they are of God. That’s the test. When our gifts and talents and assets are withheld, when they are rejected, or denied, then it can be said they are not of God, that they wear down the common good and humanity suffers.

This week we have seen the horrific images coming from Haiti after the devastating earthquake on Tuesday. Believe me, I have wondered and cried, like you, and have asked how God can allow something like that to happen. Sometimes you have to wonder, Who’s really in control of this universe? We cannot even begin to imagine the depth of pain and suffering of the people, the fear and anxiety, particularly in the children, so many of whom are now orphaned. The country is on the verge of chaos and citizens are walking through the streets of Port-au-Prince with machetes to take matters into their own hands. The many “Why?” questions have no immediate answers and anyone who tries to answer them is probably a fool.

But coming up from under the rubble are stories of people who have witnessed something – dare I say – of the Spirit of God. Why in some places and not in others, I don’t know. Yet, to see the aid workers arriving from around the world,– search and rescue teams, medical personnel, mission workers, military personnel – using their skills, their talents being used for the common good, for the edification of the people, building people up, saving lives (or trying to), caring, holding, extending hope in the face of hopelessness – is this not God’s Spirit? Offering love and kindness – are these not of God? Are they not gifts of healing and the working of miracles, given for the common good? When we are generous in our giving, are we not using our gifts for the common good of the people of Haiti? On Wednesday evening, Session decided to send $1,000 Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, immediately, even though we don’t have our budget in place for 2010. To see priests praying over the dead, to hear the Haitians singing psalms to God in the darkness, having that kind of faith in God when the easy thing would be to give up on God altogether, are these not manifestations of the Spirit – allowing ordinary human beings to do extraordinary things? I think so.

What are your gifts? What skill, talent, asset, gift, passion, interest, what burden or concern has the Lord placed in your heart? In your gut, your body? In your soul? What is the the Spirit trying to activate and energize in you and through you? We’re all gifted – some of our gifts we know and claim. Some we’re using and sharing. This church is gifted. The evidence is all around us, just take a good, hard look around this church and see how we’re using our gifts and talents, assets and resources to do so much for our common good, but the good of others. There’s no doubt God’s Spirit is at work in us, in this place, in this community.

But the Holy Spirit never stops gifting us. One of the ways we grow as Christians – and as a church – is to ask periodically whether we’re really using all of our gifts. With our visioning process now underway led by the work of the vision task force, this is our season to ask – are we using all of our gifts or assets as a church? What are we being called to share, to use for the common good? What gifts need to activated, “flipped-on” in our life together? Are there areas of our life together that are not being realized? Are there gifts we are afraid to acknowledge and claim because if we accepted them, acknowledged them, they would change us or call us to go in directions we would rather not take? And in denying them, are we somehow hindering the common good that can be realized through us? It’s the gifts we’re afraid to admit to, to claim that just might be the ones God is calling us to receive and use and in so doing, grow in deeper faith and commitment. (3) I’m not sure what they are, but it’s a question we have to ask, to discern together.

So let us ask: What are your gifts? What are our gifts? Then let us be open to what we hear, to what we discover. Putting fear – for fear kills the soul – and putting anxiety aside, let us in this season of discernment open ourselves up to what the Spirit longs to give us, given for the sake of the common good, given through us for the world. May it be so. Amen.

____________
Sources:
1. Cf. the quote from the worship bulletin: “God has gifted creation with everything that is necessary.” Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess & mystic.
2. Cleon L. Rogers, Jr. & Cleon L. Roberts III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 377.
3. Cf. the quote from the worship bulletin, “What gifts are you afraid of receiving?” David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (Riverhead Books, 2002).

Remember Who You Are

Isaiah 43: 1-7 and Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
Baptism of the Lord/ 10th January 2010

What’s the appropriate place for the baptismal font in the church? Where should it be placed? In some of the oldest cathedrals of Europe, the font – often large, stone, eight-sided, supported by one pedestal or four – is found at the entrance of the sanctuary, what we might think of as the back of the church (if the front is where the pulpit and table or altar might be located). The location of the font says something about how we view baptism. Placing it at the entrance of the church suggests that it is through or because of one’s baptism that one enters the church community. Baptism is then primarily understood as a sacrament of initiation. It’s what is required in order to be a member of a church, to be a Christian. Placing it at the entrance of the church is a constant remember to everyone who enters a church how one “gets in,” as it were.

At some of the oldest churches in Italy, the font is in a baptistery, a massive, free-standing structure built in front of the duomo or cathedral, but not connected to the church. Baptism takes place outside the church and only then is one permitted to enter into the life of the church. Once again, baptism is viewed as an act of initiation and incorporation into the church. The location of the font says something about how a church views baptism.

It’s very rare to find a baptismal font at the entrance of a Presbyterian church (Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church in Severna Park, MD, is one possible exception). There’s a part of me that would love to have the font at the entrance of our sanctuary, but we have two ways into the sanctuary and we can’t have two fonts (at least I don’t think we can).

Yes, Presbyterians believe that baptism is about incorporation into the church, becoming part of the body of Christ. There is even the suggestion that one must be baptized in order to be a member of a church. Many view baptism primarily as a kind of initiation into the community of Christians – and it is this, to be sure. But there are other views. Some hold the view that if you’re baptized, it means you’re “in” – you’re in the church, you’re “safe” in God, you’re a Christian, your eternal destiny secure in heaven. If not, well, you’re not marked by Christ.

One time I was asked to do a funeral service for someone I had never met. The funeral home in Mendham, NJ, was a few doors from the church I served there and we were often the place to go when a family was looking for a generic, Protestant service. The service was at the funeral home. Friends and then family said their last good-byes and left the room. The nephew of the deceased, one of a few surviving relatives, approached me in a panic just before the casket was closed. “My uncle had never been baptized,” he said, “Do you think we can baptize him now?” That was a startling moment! The Book of Order doesn’t allow for that, nor should it. Princeton Seminary didn’t prepare me for that question either. The question and the possible act were loaded with all kinds of theological and pastoral implications (in fact, this scenario was later used on a polity exam for Presbyterians at a local divinity school in NJ) – just the thought of it, I was sure, was bordering on all kinds of heresies (although at the moment I couldn’t say what they were)! I didn’t baptize his uncle. We talked about it. But it spoke volumes about how the nephew understood the meaning of baptism and Christianity for that matter.

What does the font mean? What does baptism mean? At the Mendham church, the wooden font was kept tucked away in the corner of the sanctuary, out of view. It only came out when we had a baptism. That always bothered me. So, when I became the interim/acting head of staff, I moved the font out and kept it front and center for every service and we talked about why this matters.

Does the font have only an occasional meaning for us? Is it secondary to the table? Do we pull it out only when we need it? Does it only matter when someone is being baptized? What purpose does it play on Sundays when we don’t have a baptism? Should it only have water it in on Sundays when we baptize? Why don’t we have water in it all the time? I would love to have water in it all the time. This could conceivably drive the worship committee mad. How do we keep the water clean? This font isn’t easy to empty once it’s filled with water. I knew of a minister in the Church of Scotland who kept the font at her church filled with water every week – and stocked it with gold fish! Something about the waters of creation connecting with the waters of new creation in baptism. The same water was then used for baptisms. Needless to say, she didn’t stay long in parish ministry.

What does the font mean for us? There are Christians who don’t understand why we have font instead of a pool. The earliest churches had deep baptismal pools, often in the shape of the cross. You stepped down into the pool on one said and, after being completely immersed, you stepped up out of the pool into the new life in Christ. Down, buried under the water in a kind of death, a watery grave; up, out of the water in a kind of resurrection. Down and up. Death and resurrection. Transformation. Change. That’s what baptism meant for the first Christians – and for many Christians today. Less about incorporation into the church, less about becoming a member of the church; more about identification into the life of Christ, more about becoming a child of God and stepping out into the new life given to us in Christ.

What I’m trying to do this morning is to get us to think of baptism as less an act of initiation into the church (which it is, of course), and more as an act of identification. In other words, I want us to keep the baptismal font front and center – both literally and metaphorically (at least for today) – and not brought out only when we’re baptizing an infant or adult. I want us to remember our baptism. I want us to remember who we are because we are baptized. I want us to claim for ourselves who we are because of our baptisms, to see baptism as something that doesn’t happen once and then we forget about it, but something we remember and claim and continually live from, discovering ever new dimensions to what it means to be a son or daughter of God. To see baptism less as a one-time event, but more of an event and a process that we continually live into and realize. To see the Christian life as ongoing, where we’re continually living into the full implications of what it actually means for us to say we’re baptize in Christ, of living into our baptism. To see the Christian life as an ongoing unfolding of what it means to be claimed by God’s grace and then living out that claim in our lives, in our relationships, in service to the world.

It is identification – identity – that stands at the center of Jesus’ baptism, not entrance into the church, and certainly Jesus didn’t become a Christian when he was baptized. Baptism for him meant identifying himself, his life, with God, with God’s life, with God’s vision and purpose for his life. Baptism, from baptizo, means “to immerse,” and in Jesus’ time referred to a bath or a kind of washing. It was used as an act of purification to prepare one for an encounter with God. It’s an act of cleansing to prepare one to receive a word from God, to experience God’s coming, God’s presence.

It’s interesting that Luke tells us that when all the people were baptized, and after Jesus had been baptized, Jesus was in a state of prayer. He was praying – he was waiting, listening, talking, relating, engaging God, opening himself up to God’s presence, God’s will, God’s direction, God’s direction. It was after he had been baptized and while he was praying that the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him and a voice was heard, “This is my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Identity. This is who you are, Jesus, the voice says. This is who you are: Son of God. Beloved of God. The object of God’s pleasure and delight. And then in the next verse, we find Jesus beginning his ministry at about thirty years of age. In knowing who he is and whose he is, Jesus is then free to live the life he was born to experience.

If that’s what baptism meant for Jesus and if we are in Christ (and we are) and Christ is within us (and he is), then is this not also, to some degree, what baptism can mean for us? Christ is not some distant, historical figure about whom we have a certain set of beliefs that we are asked to confess. Christ is a present person, a present reality, alive here and how, who invites us into an experience of God through him. Jesus’ life reveals the mystery of God’s love and grace and included in this love and grace is the capacity for us claim the same truth in ourselves and all of creation. Jesus is the “microcosm of the macrocosm.” (1) What we see in him and discover through him, we need to see and discover within ourselves. This is, in part, what it means to follow him.

Contemporary writer, Richard Rohr, offers in a recent book, suggests this Christian axiom for us – I can really resonate with this. See how it sits with you. It goes like this; it has two parts: “1. All statements and beliefs about Jesus are also statements about the journey of the soul (birth, choseness, ordinary life, initiation, career, misunderstanding and opposition, failure, death in several forms, resurrection, return to God). 2. All statements about “the Christ” are statements about the “Body” of Christ, too.” We are not the historical Jesus, but we are the Body of Christ. “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name (of course), but the “field of communion,” and to be “in Christ” includes all of us with him. (2) We are not asked to simply “believe” a certain set of doctrines about Christ; but we know them to be true, because we know Christ. We know them through our own realizations and personal life experiences. You know them because you go on the journey Christ calls you to.

Now apply this to the way we view baptism. In knowing who he is and whose he is, Jesus was free to live the life he was born to experience. In knowing who we are and whose we are, we are then free to live the life we were born to experience. Jesus’ baptism, what he experienced tells us something about what it means to be human in relationship with God, what’s available to us in the relationship with God.

It’s about identity. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? That’s the “great puzzle.” From the moment consciousness emerges as a child through adolescence into adulthood, these are questions that plague us, haunt us, and inspire us. The answers we provide shape and inform us, define us. In many ways, these are the questions that permeate every moment of our existence, from our first breath to our last. They don’t sound like religious questions, but oh they are. They’re human questions – everyone is asking them, wrestling with them, coming up with all of responses to them (some meaningful, others not). The Christian experience says these are not only human questions, they are divine questions, they are theological questions because God is committed to our humanity; they are theological questions that are answered within the context of one’s relationship with God, in prayer. Jesus, as the fully-human one, in prayer, discovers who he is. Just as Jesus came to know who he was and whose he was in that moment of grace, so too, in our baptism – and when we remember that we are baptized – we come to know who we are and whose we.

Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? The beloved of God. Whose am I? Whose are we? The sons and daughters of God – in whom God is well pleased. That’s what, I believe, Jesus wants us to know about ourselves – not in an ego-centric or narcissistic way – but in a way that affirms who we are. Why is this so important? Because so many suffer daily, suffer a lifetime because they don’t really know who they are. So many suffer daily, even a lifetime because they believe a false narrative about themselves, they tell a story about themselves that cannot affirm, only judge and condemn and condemn.

Baptism is given as a sign that Christ has changed the narrative of our lives, he has changed how we view ourselves. It might sound blasphemous but I think Jesus’ baptism, what was offered to him in the voice from heaven, was also meant for us to hear and know at some level about ourselves. To claim our baptism, to remember our baptism, to remember who we are, what we discover and know about ourselves is of utmost critical importance. Think of the people who live their lives without believing, without really knowing they are the beloved of God. Didn’t Jesus come to show us that? To tell us this? So that we know it deep within the depths of our souls? Think of the people who do not know where they belong or to whom, who wonder aimlessly, lost, confused, fascinated and seduced by every whim and fad, but never really seeing themselves as a son of God, a daughter of God, a child of God. Yet, this is the good news. We can see ourselves as one in whom God is well pleased – now, not in some future, not when we get our life together (whenever that is), not when we become more moral, more ethical, more “Christian,” but now, through grace, now – this the good news that is offered to us in Christ, in our baptism. Can you see why such an insight, such a truth, such a claim requires an entire life to fathom and fully live into?

Do you see yourself as God’s beloved? When you look at yourself in the mirror to do you see someone in whom God takes immense delight?

When I look in the mirror I need to be reminded, because it’s so easy to forget. It’s why we all need to be reminded, almost daily. It’s so easy to forget. We need to remind ourselves and our children growing up in the church, saying: This is who you are; this is whose you are. It’s probably the greatest gift we can give to a child, to a teenager, to an adult: You are the beloved of God and belong to God. That’s why we can’t push the font out of the way. It’s why I need to see it, with water in it. To feel the water. The font reminds me: Remember your baptism. Remember who you are.

Then we can leave here better equipped to live the lives we were created by God to live.

___________
Image: Baptistery, Ravenna, Italy.

Sources
1.Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (New York: Crossroad Book, 2009), 147.
2.Rohr, 147-148.
3.Cf. the quote for the day from the worship bulletin: “Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.” Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland (1865).

Growing Before God

1 Samuel 2:18-20,26 & Luke 2: 41-52

First Sunday After Christmas/ 27th December 2009

This story from 1 Samuel is inextricably linked to the gospel reading for this Sunday in Christmastide. The theological themes in 1 Samuel are extended in Luke 2. When Luke wrote his account of Jesus in the temple, he had this story from 1 Samuel in mind. Both texts in both testaments coalesce around the experience of change and growth – the necessity of change and growth.

First to Samuel. Samuel’s development as a priest took place within the temple, a priest who embarked upon a new venture of faith and politics that eventually reformed temple practice. Samuel’s life, here his early life, is lived out within the wider context of God’s providential care and direction. Samuel doesn’t belong to himself. He belongs to God. Samuel’s destiny is in God’s hand and he will be used for God’s purpose to bring about change and reform.

Twice, in verse 21 and again in verse 26, we find similar statements that reinforce a significant theological claim. Of course the boy Samuel eventually grew up into a man, but the growth he experienced was “in the presence of Yahweh.” In his notes on this text, John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, stressed that Samuel, “Grew – Not only in age and stature; but especially in wisdom and goodness. Before the Lord – Not only before men, who might be deceived,” Wesley wrote,” but in the presence and judgment of the all-seeing God.” (1) It is one thing to grow naturally into adulthood and quite another to develop to maturity in the presence of God, so that God’s wisdom and strength fully inform the process and the goal of that growth.

It’s perhaps easy to overlook these two verses as throw-away lines, stating the obvious. Except that it is this idea of growing up in the presence of God – and the difference it makes in the formation of one’s identity, destiny, and purpose – that Luke chooses to use in his brief, although significant, telling of Jesus’ early development. Luke uses the language of 2.40, “The child grew and become strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” – and then again after the temple scene in 2.52. Although the NRSV uses the world “strength” in v. 40, “vigor” is probably more accurate. Jesus’ growth was vigorous not only in the sense of physical strength, but also in terms of possessing considerable vitality, force, and dynamism.

By quoting the description of Samuel’s growth in the temple within the account of Jesus’ development in and around the temple, Luke sees in Jesus a priestly role. This is important for Luke. He lifts up the priestly role of Jesus. The role of a priest is to mediate the presence of God. The priest goes goes before God on behalf of God’s people. The authority Jesus will later fully claim for himself is dependent upon the time spent as a child growing in vigor, wisdom, and before both divine and human favor. Just as Samuel learned through obedience and training, so, too, does Jesus grow in maturity through a process of obedience, not to Mary, nor to Joseph, but to God. Jesus’ life does not belong to himself. It belongs to God.
Samuel was not born knowing all that he needed to be and do as a priest.

Similarly, Jesus, although fully divine was also fully human and therefore grew progressing through every stage of the life-cycle, the stages we will all progress through (Lord willing). The same eight stages of developmental psychologist Erik Erikson (1902-1994) famously identified, starting with infancy, childhood, adulthood, to old age. (2) Here human development is linked with divine or theological development or awareness in Jesus. Again, it’s easy to overlook this, but this text leads us to pose an important question, Is there something theological, divine about human development? (3) What does human development, from infancy to old age, say about God? What does it mean for a human being to grow from infancy to old age in the presence of God? For what? Why were we born? For what purpose? What is the purpose of our lives?

It’s of the utmost significance that we see in Jesus’ life, from infancy through adolescence into adulthood, the growth of a human being within the presence of God. Granted, we don’t know much about his childhood or his adolescence – but we know he was born. He didn’t just arrive on the scene as an adult. He’s the same human being whose existence – born among us, full of grace and truth, who took on flesh – whose life was given to redeem humanity, not only mature adults, but through a redemptive process that has the power to bring healing to every stage of human development. I like to view Jesus’ life – from his birth through his death and resurrection – as a kind of template paced over our lives, his story over our stories, his life touching our lives at every stage of existence. Our lives then have the capacity to become sermons that proclaim the glory of God – like Jesus. Yes, Jesus was unique, but Jesus came to show us what our life can be, what we can become, the kind of people we can be through him. The early church father, Irenaeus (c.115-190) said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” The life of Jesus in our lives has the capacity to make us more humane and human, more fully alive.

One of the leading theologians of the twentieth century was Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007). (I had occasion to meet him two and corresponded with him briefly for a time. His son, Iain Torrance, is now president of Princeton Theological Seminary). T. F. Torrance makes this point in one of his many reflections on the incarnation, particularly through a moving interpretation of Luke 2:52, Jesus “increased in wisdom and in years.” Obedient as he was through his life, Jesus had to learn obedience to God in order to achieve reconciliation for humanity with God. As the Son of Adam he was “born in our alienation, our God-forsakeness and darkness, and grew up within our bondage and ignorance, so that he had to beat his way forward blow by blow, as St. Luke puts it, growing in wisdom, growing in grace, before God as well as before man.” It is Jesus as priest who “beat[s] his way forward” on our behalf, through every step along the way of human growth, offering his obedience and redeemed humanity up to God. Torrance wrote, “[Jesus] learned obedience by the things he suffered, for that obedience from within our alienated humanity was a struggle with our sin and temptation; it had to be fought out with strong crying and tears and achieved in desperate anguish and weakness…. Through the whole course of his life he bent the will of man in perfect submission to the will of God,…and offered a perfect obedience to the Father, that we might be redeemed and reconciled to him.” (4)

Although some of the images and language in Torrance’s theology might prove problematic to us and appear very abstract, this notion of Jesus redeeming humanity at every stage in its development with his life in order to present our lives back to God, reconciled and holy, is a very uplifting image. It elevates the idea that all of Jesus’ life was salvific for humanity, not only his death and resurrection. It’s the totality of Jesus’ life that saves.
As we sang here on Christmas Eve in the carol, Once in Royal David’s City, “He is our childhood pattern.” He is the pattern of our lives.

Yes, we know that Jesus was born to die, as the carols teach us. We often tell the Christmas story in such a way that we tend to think that Jesus was born only to die. Yes, we should not forget the cross, the destiny of the baby born in a manger. But there have been theologians and traditions in the history of the church that have refused to focus only on the cross, that want us to see the meaning of his entire life (and I would agree with them). If God’s love and grace were revealed in the cross and an empty tomb, if we see God’s love there, then we must also see God’s love and grace in this baby and his childhood and adolescence and his adulthood. For all these, too, tell us something about God, about how God chooses to live and be born in the world. To see Jesus as infant, teenager, adult, say something of God, how God is linked to us as infant, teenager, adult. Every step of our lives matter to God because we see that they matter in Jesus.

The birth and life of Jesus says something about our lives – that our lives, how we grow, how we develop in the presence of God is of ultimate value to God. Incarnation – that God took on flesh, tells us something of the significance about our flesh, of our lives. Jesus grew in the Lord. So, too, we who are in him must grow in the Lord – growing in likeness, growing in faith, growing in witness, growing along our own unique journey (as Jesus’ journey was unique), growing in love. Changing, ever constantly changing, becoming the people we were created by God to be – growing in the presence of God.

In his work, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the American author James Agee (1909-1955) wrote, “In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again.” How much more for that child who “grew in the presence of Yahweh,” through whose life the world has been redeemed? To what extent is the potential of the human race born in you and me?

Sources:

Photo: The Nativity Star, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem - the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ.

1. John Wesley, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Wesley’s Notes on the Bible: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/notes.ii.x.iii.ii.html. Emphasis added.
2. Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, second edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963), 247ff.
3. See James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 27.
4. Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM Press, 1965), 132. Emphasis added.
5. Text by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895) and included in her Hymns for Little Children (1848).

Born to Save

Luke 2: 1-20

Christmas Eve/ 24th December 2009

One of the many challenges preaching on a text like Luke’s birth narrative is familiarity. How many times have we heard this story? There’s always the risk of thinking we’ve heard it all before. But when this happens we run the risk of losing that sense of holy awe and fear, the terror and wonder found in this extraordinary text, and we miss an opportunity to hear the Word of God with fresh ears, to have it dwell within us, to have it enfleshed in our bodies, dance in our hearts.

First as a boy and even now, Luke 2 never fails to leave me speechless. Luke’s way of telling the story is masterful, theologically, even politically astonishingly rich. It is bold and radical. There’s nothing “all is bright, all is calm” about it. Sometimes, I fear, we have domesticated and tamed this story, at times almost beyond recognition. We always need new eyes.

The word that caught my eye this year – and, I’ll admit, I never noticed it until just last week – is host as in “a multitude of heavenly host.” My study Bible has a little superscript that reads, army as an alternate reading of host, which I’ve overlooked. But then it hit me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given what we know about this birth story. The Greek reads, stratia, an army, a band of soldiers, Roman soldiers. It’s the designation for a Roman army, except here in Luke we have an army of angels who bring not war or the threat of violence for stepping out of line, but peace, God’s peace. Luke is up to something.

Yes, the angels bring, “Good news of great joy for all the people.” That’s wonderful. But the subtext, the text behind this text, the story behind this story, the people behind the shepherds and Mary and Joseph, are the gods and armies of Rome. Indeed, the person in the foreground of Luke’s Christmas pageant, the person who is never depicted in any crèche scene, or pageants or nativity plays that I’ve ever seen is none other than Caesar Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD), Emperor of Rome. That’s where the story begins – Augustus sets into motion the journey to Bethlehem. But he’s more than an incidental in this drama. The cultural, political background to this text, to this story that we celebrate tonight is none other than Rome. To our eyes it’s difficult to see; it’s implicit to Luke’s world. But scratch the surface, do a few word studies (pay attention to a word like host), and we find the historical setting for the birth of Jesus Christ – Imperial Rome.

Here’s another example. Supposed we traveled together to Berlin. I would take you into the Pergamum Museum. There we’ll find an inscription on marble that came from Turkey, near Ephesus. It’s a gift to mark the birth of a divine child. See if this sounds familiar: providence, “filled with virtues for the benefit of mankind, bestowing him upon us and our descendants as savior – he who put an end to war and will order peace, …who by his epiphany exceeded the hopes of those who prophesied good tidings [good news] not only outdoing the benefactors of the past, but also allowing no hope of greater benefactors in the future; and since the birthday of the god first brought to the world the good tidings residing him.” (1) This is not a Christian inscription. It did mark the birth of one who claimed to be god, though: Caesar Augustus. It dates from 9 B.C. In Luke’s time Savior, soter, s_t_r, was a title given to Emperors, along with Divine, Son of God, God, God of God, Lord, Redeemer, Liberator, Savior of the world. (2) Sounds like Luke 2, doesn’t it?

See what Luke was doing? Hear what he’s saying? All of these titles, along with other birth proclamations for the Emperor, would have been familiar in Luke’s church. He would have known about the birthday celebrations of Caesar and so would have the early church. Here we see just how courageous the early Christians really were. To use them to refer to the “new born Jesus is either low lampoon or high treason.” (3) The good news – the good tidings – God’s army of angels bring to the world, to you and to me that deafens every other competing voice is this:
Jesus is the true Benefactor of benefactors, not Caesar.
Jesus tends to the needs of his people, not Caesar.
Jesus is the true savior, not Caesar.
Jesus – and only Jesus – as Savior
has the power to bring the peace of God, not Caesar.
Jesus does not offer peace achieved by imperial violence
(which is not really peace),
but the peace given through healing,
liberation,
compassion, and
table fellowship,
where he invites us to sit at table in the kingdom of God.

In this way, Jesus is the true savior to a world crying out in need. Luke wants us to know: this is how a true God, a true Savior is born.

This is real joy to the world. That’s what God’s heavenly army shouts from the heavens. Glory! Joy to the world – to all people, the people, the faces of the people. For the true giver of peace is born, born for the people, for common, ordinary people – like shepherds.

What we find at the heart of this story is this astounding, radical idea – that God refuses to be God without us. For you shall name him, Emmanuel, “God with us. (Matthew 1:23)” It is God’s graceful determination to not be God without us, to get mixed up with our humanity and not be God without it, without our flesh and blood, because he comes to save, to liberate, to redeem, to restore, to bring light to the darkest recesses of our souls. This is what the Incarnation of God announces to us that Jesus was born to live and in and through his living, he saves.

On this night we listen to a very old story that is ever new and real. It’s for this world, with all of its aches and pains, its sorrow and suffering that God comes down and comes close. It’s for you and me, for the faces of our loved ones, the faces of people we miss tonight of all nights, the faces of strangers we meet, the faces of children, hungry faces, tired and broken faces, young and old alike; faces of the unemployed; faces of people this night struggling with disease; the faces of our armies at war; faces of people who are alone, tired, confused, worried, people who are looking for a little peace. God comes to the world to save us from everything and everyone who seeks to destroy our lives. Whoever your Caesar might be – Caesar can’t save you, Caesar can’t give true peace, can’t give what your hearts are hungering for, can’t give us a hope that won’t disappoint.

There’s a choral piece written for this night. This is the text:
The hills are bare at Bethlehem,
No future for the world they show;
Yet here new life begins to grow,
From earth’s old dust a greenwood stem.

The heart is tired at Bethlehem,
No human dream unbroken stands;
Yet here God comes to mortal hands,
And hope renewed cries out: ‘Amen.’ (4) Amen. Yes!

To a real world, full of broken dreams, God has come to save. “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17)” Into the world, to the world, in this world, in the darkness we proclaim the light. And never denying all the challenges of reality we face daily, into this real world comes the message that has the power to claim us and overwhelm us and even ravish us: God’s joy. By God’s grace we are called to bear to the world, God’s unspeakable joy. God’s joy. So let us live and so let us sing.

Sources:

Photo: Duccio Di Buoninsengna (1308-1311), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1. Inscription from Priene, cited in Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth (HarperOne, 2007), 160.
2. Borg & Crossan, 63.
3. Borg & Crossan, 63.
4. “The Hills are Bare at Bethlehem, “ arr. Robert Scholz; text by Royce J. Scherf., Christmas at St. Olaf, Vol. VI, “What Wondrous Love,” (1993).

The Godbearer

Luke 1: 39-45

For the Fourth Sunday of Advent/ 20th December 2009

We might expect from Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary a skeptical response, shock, surprise. But there’s nothing in the record. There’s no debate or even protest with Gabriel, there’s no, “I’m not worthy.” Instead, Luke tells us, Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1: 39).” There’s no argument from either Mary or Gabriel.

When one encounters the holiness of God – or God’s holy messengers – all one can do is be open to the experience, to receive it, humbly – and then share it. In the encounter with Gabriel, Mary came to know of the unfolding mystery of God’s work of salvation. Something happened and in that holy act Mary received an insight into the nature of the child growing within her. All she could do is receive this news, which is what she did. Some might view Mary’s response as unrealistic, unnatural – there’s no struggle, no doubt. But she did do something – again, she took the experience seriously and then she did as everyone who encountered the holiness of God has ever done: she bore witness to it. “With haste (Luke 1: 39),” Mary went into the hill country, to Judah, to see her cousin, Elizabeth. She had to tell someone.

This is how the God of the Bible moves in the world. Indeed, the foundations of the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition were shaken by the Judeo-Christian view that truth is not an idea, but a person. Truth, particularly religious or theological truth, is arrived at, is known through personal encounter. For example, “When speaking of how God is known, the Bible seldom speaks of insight or illumination or demonstration; rather, it says that God appeared, [God] did something, [God] showed [God]self, or spoke to someone…, the way to God begins not with arguments or proofs, [which we are wont to do in our skeptical, overly rationalistic world], but with discernment and faith.” This is because the “the Word of God makes its way not by argument but as men and women bear witness to what happened.” (1) When we bear witness to what we know, God is known.

This is what made and makes Mary so significant. She models a way for us to be open to the movement of God in our lives and then shows us how to respond to it. It’s in the midst of her witness to Elizabeth that Luke has Mary signing a song of praise in the Magnificat, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Yes, Mary is significant, of course. But, needless to say, Protestants have been hesitant when it comes to her important role in Jesus’ birth. Martin Luther (1483-1546) speaks for many when he preached in a Christmas sermon, “…the text does not proclaim the honor of the mother,… I am to accept the child and his birth and forget the mother, as far as possible, although her part cannot be forgotten, for where there is a birth there must be a mother.” Forget the mother? How? “We dare not put our faith in the mother,” he said, “but only in the fact that the child was born.” (2) At least Luther could admit and affirm, “Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, [and] prepared broth…for God.” (3) However, Luther, along with the other reformers, could not support the kind of Marian devotion that evolved in Roman Catholicism through the Middle Ages, using texts like, “Blessed are you among women (Luke 1: 42) or “For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed (Luke 1: 48), as proof texts. Marian devotion within Catholicism continued and developed after the Reformation, maybe because of it. Beliefs about Mary were actually codified quite recently (without Biblical support, it must be said), such as Mary’s perpetual virginity, her freedom from actual and original sin (Immaculate Conception, 1854), and the idea that she did not die but was taken directly to heaven (Bodily Assumption, 1950). “We Protestants also get agitated about exalted language that sounds like Mary is a co-redeemer of humanity. And finally, in popular devotion the cult of Mary can drift into excess and superstition. For these reasons, Protestants emphasize a distinction that both Catholic and Orthodox believers acknowledge, that Christians honor or venerate (duleia) Mary as the Mother of God, but we don't worship her (latreia), which worship is due to God alone.” (4)

Perhaps a deeper theological claim can be made about Mary, one also shared across the ecumenical spectrum. It’s that Mary is significant because she shows us how to be receptive to God’s will. She demonstrates how one encounters the holiness of God, how we engage mystery.

The birth of God’s son is a mystery that overwhelms reason and thought; it cannot be demonstrated or argued. The ancient world made a distinction between a mystery and a puzzle. A mystery, by definition, cannot be explained or explained away. A puzzle can be solved, figured out. A mystery is not a puzzle. A mystery remains a mystery and in the presence of, engagement with, encounter with the mystery, knowledge is gained. Similarly, the birth of God’s son is a mystery – it is experienced and received with holy awe. It cannot be domesticated, made comfortable, or safe. It cannot be prettified, tamed, or contained. It cannot be put in a box, wrapped with a nice ribbon, placed under a Christmas tree, and adored from a distance. The Magnificat is Mary’s song of response to the mystery she encountered and was about to experience. It is sung in awe before the Holiness of God whose glory cannot be tame or contained, who chooses to dwell within humanity in order to redeem us and to restore us. The Akathistos Hymn, first sun for the Patriarch of Constantinople in 626 beautifully captured this image, “Hail, space for the uncontained God.”

The revealed, uncontained mystery unleashes the power of God’s redemptive work in the world. Mary’s blessing is shared with the world because of what God will do through her son. Then and now these claims – these amazing verses – are extraordinary: “He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away (Luke 1: 51-54).”

God will overturn the imbalance of power; all authority will be subjected to the authority of God. The song identifies and anchors God’s salvation in the lives of God’s people in concrete, physical, tangible ways; not only in “spiritual” ways, but in touchable, solid, real, and social ways. Through this one about to be born the proud and haughty will be scattered. God will bring down the powerful from their thrones and put the lowly ones there instead. He is coming and will be born for the hungry ones, not for those who are rich and satisfied. Radical stuff, indeed – it’s all there in the text. Now imagine this text circulating through the Roman Empire, under the nose of Caesar. This is what the birth of Jesus means in Luke’s gospel. These claims are unsettling, troublesome, disturbing, and disruptive. One of our church school teachers said to me once after reading this text, “We let third graders read this stuff?”

Mary models for us how to be servants of the mystery of God. She shows us how to say, “Yes,” to God, and through her life she bears the Son of God. In this way, Mary was literally Theotokos, the Godbearer, the title given to her at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Godbearer. It’s a powerful image. It’s an apt description of Mary. But, I wonder, if it doesn’t also, in some way, also apply to us? Yes, Mary was special and significant. There was only one, actual, Mother of God. Yet, if Mary is held up here as a model of faithful witness and discipleship, then I wonder if perhaps Luke wants us to also claim the “Mary” in all of us – both women and men. (5) I’m not talking literally here, of course (!), but metaphorically. We are not asked literally to bring Christ into the world as she did. But are we not filled with grace? When we receive this grace, can we recognize ourselves in the salutation, “Greetings, favored one!”? Are we not, too, the object of God’s address? Can we see ourselves this way? Do we not desire to be servants of this grace? Are we not then also in some sense called to be Godbearers – Godbearers who help to give birth to the presence of God in this world through concrete, tangible, physical, social ways for all to see? Are we not called, with Mary, to do the impossible, to bear the impossible into a world that forever wants to give up on hope? Are we not called to carry signs of new life and hope with our lives to the world in the name of Christ? “Christ is born!” we will proclaim on Christmas morning. But is it not also true that Christ is being born – and wants to be born – again and again through you and me? Is this not what we’re called to as followers of Christ? In this sense, then, we are Godbearers – bearing witness to God’s amazing grace and love, God’s tidings of great joy and peace and hope.

I close with an Advent Credo, written by the Roman Catholic priest, writer, activist, Daniel Berrigan. It calls us to affirm what the birth of Jesus means, to claim it’s truth, to live from it, to share it, encouraging us to bear witness to another reality, other than what the world wants us to believe is true. (If we were in worship this morning at Catonsville Presbyterian Church, we would have shared this responsively.)

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers—
This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us [leave] Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world. (6)

Come, Lord Jesus. Come.


____________
Sources
1 Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 6.
2 Martin Luther in John D. Witvliet and David Vroege, eds. Proclaiming the Christmas Gospel: Ancient Sermons and Hymns for Contemporary Christian Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 109.
3 Cited in Time, March 13, 2005. For Protestant views of Mary see Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999) and Cynthia L. Rigby, Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).
4 Daniel B. Glendenin, Journey with Jesus, http://journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml.
5 Kenneth E. Kovacs, Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XXI, Number 1(December 2009-January 2010): 8ff.
6 Daniel Berrigan, S. J., Testimony: The Word Made Flesh (Orbis Books, 2004).

Transformation Required

Malachi 3: 1-6 & Luke 3: 1-6

Second Sunday of Advent/ 6th December

We could say that Ol’ Man Malachi needs a little Christmas cheer. He’s full of venom and judgment and warning. This is not the kind of text we really want to hear this time of year, is it? It’s not very Christmassy – at all. Instead of sugar plums, Malachi gives us soap – fuller’s soap, strong lye-based soap. Instead offering a festive spirit, Malachi gives us fire, not the warm-glow of a fire in a hearth, but a refiner’s fire, a fire’s forced-air, a white-hot blaze that melts metallic ores. With fuller’s soap and the refiner’s fire, God’s messenger prepares Israel for the coming of the Lord. “Who can endure the day of the [Lord’s] coming, and who can stand when he appears?” That’s the question before us. How does one prepare for such a day?

We're probably more familiar with the Luke text for today; we know how John asked us to prepare, bellowing out warning in the wilderness. Both texts are Advent texts because they offer some indication of what's required before the coming of the Lord. I want to focus on Malachi, for demanding as this text might sound it offers an amazing word of promise and hope, believe it or not. It tells us what is required before an encounter with God.

Malachi is the last prophet of Judah, the last book in the Old Testament. After Malachi there’s 450 years of prophetic silence. Before the end of the prophetic era Malachi extends a word of hope, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Malachi, as Yahweh’s messenger, envisions a day when God will fully dwell in the temple and all will know it. Judah is tired and weary (and wearing God down with their weariness), “You have wearied the LORD with your word,” he says. The people are asking, “Where is the God of justice? (Mal. 2:17)” They are people hoping, longing, desiring for the presence of God, for an appearance of God, eager for a time when the Lord of hosts will be seen, will be tangible, fully known by them. Malachi gives them this assurance. That time is coming and is near. The Lord is coming; one needs to prepare. But he never said when. And for centuries they waited and waited for a future promised by the messenger.

Yet, the people never gave up hope. The Lord, who is coming, is on the move. Israel’s God isn’t static. Malachi has a dynamic vision of God. God is about to do something new, to show up, to make an appearance, to “stand” before their eyes. By the time Jesus was born that sense of anticipation was enormous. As a people weighed down under Roman oppression, the Jewish people we’re waiting, hoping for something to happen. That’s why the crowds were flocking to John out in the wilderness. God is on the way, so prepare. But how? That’s the question before Malachi and the question before John and the question that’s before you and me whenever we anticipate a moment of encounter.

How does one prepare for an encounter with God? For, “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” How does one stand before the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of Hosts, the great I AM? How does one stand before Holiness? Who can withstand the penetrating gaze of the God’s piercing eyes? Who can bear the “weight of glory,” to use C. S. Lewis’ (1898-1963) wonderful phrase, who is strong enough, who is holy enough, who is good enough, pure enough? Who can withstand the awesomeness of God? (1) That’s the question.

How we prepare for a divine encounter is largely conditioned by one’s image of God. Our image of God is of paramount significance. Our images of God are more often conditioned and fashioned by psychological determinants than from a theological reflection upon who we know God to be, particularly in the face of Jesus Christ. Wondering who can “endure” and withstand the coming of the Lord might seem that God’s coming is terrible and to be feared, filled with vengeance and anger instead of a spirit of joyful expectation; more awful than awe-filled. If we see God as only a fierce judge who is coming to judge and then destroy, well that’s going to have considerable impact upon how we relate to and prepare for God. If we’re conditioned by fear, then the coming is certainly not an occasion for hope. Malachi and John both see the coming of God as an occasion of hope. Yet, a destructive God image can easily be reinforced in the way one hears this text; it all depends upon that internal interpretative filter that processes verses 3 and 4. “For [the Lord] is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers soap” – ouch. How is this good news? (2) Why should one get so excited about the coming of a God coming with fire and lye? It doesn’t make sense.

That is unless we view this text as a purification process, as something done in and through grace in order to prepare us for an encounter with the Holy One of Israel. God comes with not just any kind of fire, but with a refiner’s fire – it’s the kind of fire a metal worker uses to melt metallic ores in order to bring their impurities to the surface and remove them, to leave in place something pure, of considerable value. And fuller’s soap, not just any kind of soap, filled with lye, is used to remove the impurities from material and cloth, especially wool. There’s nothing in the text – frightening as it is – that says the Lord will come and completely annihilate or destroy. If that’s how we hear it, well then that says something about our image of God, how we view God.

Malachi tells us that something has to happen before we stand before the Lord, a purification that prepares us to stand before a Holy God. For without this we’re not worthy or equipped or able to approach the holiness of God. Yes, there is judgment here, but it’s a judgment of all the impurities, of all that is sinful within us, everything within us that distorts God’s image in us. God judges sin in order to save us. Judgment is never for judgment sake. It’s sin that is judged so that we might be free from sin. It’s the impurities within us that are purged, leaving behind something – someone – better in its place, the people we were created by God to be. God judges to save. God purges to save. All is done in order to prepare us for a face-to-face meeting with the Holy.

Malachi’s focus is on meeting the Lord and he wants to prepare us for it – for an experience, that sense of holy awe and wonder when we stand before God’s glory, the Holy of Holies, that feeling of holy fear and trembling when we stand before God, the Wholly Other – not the god of our understanding, not our domesticated and trivial notions of god, not the god who agrees with our worldview or our opinions, not the god who always reassures and comforts us, but the Holy One who disturbs and shocks and offends and challenges us with the shattering grace of presence. It’s the experience of God in burning bushes that burn and burn, yet do not consume (Exodus 3:3). Before such encounters, before this awareness of God we take off our shoes, for we stand on holy ground. To see the Lord in the temple – or in a manger – calls for a change.

All this talk of purification, refiner’s fire and fullers’ soap, probably doesn’t speak to us. What the prophet is really getting at here is transformation (or as John the Baptist would say, repentance), a change in thinking, in behavior. If we really want to experience God, really want to have an encounter with God, then we need to know that something has to change. It’s as if there’s a door and on the other side of that door is God in all God’s holiness. The door is closed. To all who wish to enter, facing us is a sign of caution that reads: WARNING: TRANSFORMATION REQUIRED.

The Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1962) said the critical turning point in analysis, when healing and transformation take place, often follows this searing realization: that “there are things higher than the ego’s will, and to these one must bow.”(3) What does it take for us to bow? It’s not unlike what Malachi and John the Baptist are saying, our hearts, our lives need to be “purified,” our impurities acknowledged, our brokenness, our sin confessed, everything that separates us from our neighbor or ourselves or God, a confession that we are not in control of the universe or of our lives. It all needs to be “burned away,” even our “virtues,” as Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) reminded us, need to be burned away, because they too have impurities that corrupt.(4) All this is done in grace, for the one doing the purifying is the Lord – who burns away all that which corrupts, all of our impurities, leaving in place the finest gold and silver, our truest holy selves as a gift to the Lord.

When you go to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, down in the undercroft of the nave there are two holy shrines. One marks the place of the manger; the other marks the site of Jesus’ birth. In order to see the site of his birth and the candles surrounding it you have to get down on your knees and look under a stone slab, you have to lower your heart and your head in order to see. This is how we “endure” or withstand or prepare for such an encounter. In a sense, we do not stand, but we bow, we kneel in awe before the coming of the Lord, before an infant whose weight of glory the world beheld with holy fear, before an infant whose weight of glory we behold with holy fear and trembling and exceeding joy.

Sources:
1. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, Edited, and with an Introduction by Walter Hooper (New York: Collier Books, 1980), 3-19.
2. Kenneth E. Kovacs, Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XXI, Number 1(December 2009-January 2010): 8.
3. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Recorded and edited by Aniel Jaffé (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 181.
4. See Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation.”